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CUCR Occasional paper series
Margarita ARAGON Michael STONE Brown Youth, Black Fashion and a White Riot, 2007 Social Housing in the UK and US: Evolution, Issues and Progress S t r e e t S i g n s Brian W.ALLEYNE William (Lez)HENRY Personal Narrative and Activism: a bio-ethnography of Projecting the 'Natural': Language and Citizenship in "Life Experience with Britain" Outernational Culture
Mette ANDERSSON Colin KING Centre for Urban and Community Research The Situated Politics of Recognition: Ethnic Minority, Play the White Man:The Theatre of Racialised Youth and Indentity Work. Performance in the Institutions of Soccer
Les BACK,Tim CRABBE, John SOLOMOS Larry LOHMANN Lions, Black Skins and Reggae Gyals Ethnic Discrimination in "Global" Conservation
Andrew BARRY Ben LOOKER Motor ecology: the political chemistry of urban air Exhibiting Imperial London: Empire and City in late Victorian and Edwardian guidebooks Zygmunt BAUMAN City of Fears, City of Hopes Hiroki OGASAWARA Performing Sectarianism:Terror, Spectacle and Urban Vikki BELL Myth in Glasgow Football Cultures Show and tell: passing, narrative and Tony Morrison's Jazz Garry ROBSON Eva BERGLUND Class, criminality and embodied consciousness: Legacies of Empire and Spatial Divides: new and old Charlie Richardson and a South East London Habitus challanges for Environmentalists in the UK Flemming RØGILDS Tine BLOM Charlie Nielsen's Journey:Wandering through Multi- Dostoyevsky's Inquisitor:The Question of Evil, Suffering cultural Landscapes and Freedom of Will in Totalitarian Regimes Fran TONKISS Bridget BYRNE The 'marketisation' of urban government: private finance How English am I? and urban policy
Ben CARRINGTON Danielle TURNEY Race,Representation and the Sporting Body The language of anti-racism in social work: towards a deconstructuve reading Stephen DOBSON The Urban Pedagogy of Walter Benjamin: lessons for Gordon WALKER and Karen BICKERSTAFF the 21st Century Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 Polluting the poor: an emerging environmental justice agenda for the UK? Ben GIDLEY The proletarian other: Charles Booth and the politics of Louisa THOMSON representation The Respect Drive: the Politics of Young People and Community Paul GILROY The status of difference: from epidermalisation to nano- please refer to www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr Spring 2009 politics for downloads and further information.
Centre For Urban and Community Research Goldsmiths College Phone: +44 (0) 20 7919 7390 University of London Fax: +44 (0) 20 7919 7383 New Cross Email: [email protected] London Website: www.gold.ac.uk SE146NW www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr FINAL_Cover_january2009.qxd 9/12/08 17:30 Page 3
MA IN CULTURE, GLOBALISATION AND THE CITY The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR) The Urban Globe? CONTENTS Our world is moving from being a global village to an Multiculture, Hybridity and Racism and the Spatial Politics urban globe. One of the big challenges of the 21st of Gender and Sexuality. A multi-disciplinary approach is Century is how to understand the social organisation of applied that draws on Sociology, Cultural Geography, contemporary urban life. The MA in Culture, Cultural Studies, Politics and Social Policy. The MA is INTRODUCTION by Caroline Knowles page 1 Globalisation and the City gives you the theoretical and dedicated to turning students into active researchers, The Political economy of the monument by Aida Sánchez page 2 practical tools to make sense of cities like London, Los critics and writers. Angeles, Nairobi or Tokyo. Religion in Inner City Oslo by Mette Andersson page 5 The programme consists of 3 core courses, dissertation Kettering Road by Sayed Hasan page 8 The course examines a range of issues from the and a choice of options. It can be followed either full-time Sueno de despierto en un mundo que se desvanece... by Karla Berrens page 10 economics of the global city to the politics of graffiti or part-time. ESRC funding for one UK resident is writing. These include analysing Urban Youth Cultures, currently under review and may not be available next year. Open-Up photogrpahic project by Gonzalo Osmos page 11 Literary and Political Milieux, the Political Economy of the Next available entry point: October 2009. Borderlands by Caroline Knowles and Sylvia Meichsner page 12 City, Science and the Technology of Urban Life, Urban Romans,Trains and Star Trek by Michael Edema Leary page 14 Street Photography and Social Research: Brick Lane Re-Visited by Charlotte Bates,Adrian Harris, Isaac Marrero Guillamon, MA IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND URBAN CULTURES Jo Sanderson-Mann, Craig Owen, Lisa Mckenzie The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR) and Sireita Mullings-Lawrence page 16 Introducing the MA Structure Why is it so easy to place art and regeneration in the same sentence The MA in Photography and Urban Cultures has been A combination of written and practical work to include a by Sophie Risner page 20 developed in response to the increasing interests in urban research dissertation and a portfolio of photographs and In hiding, on display by Helena Holgersson page 22 theory and the visual representation and investigation of final exhibition. It can be followed either full-time or part- urban life and the physical environments of the city. time. Next available entry point: October 2009. Home Sweet Home (Not) by Emma Jackson page 23 Tourism,Inbetweeness and Teotihuacán by Jeremy Clouser page 24 Who is it for? The MA is run by the Centre for Urban and Community What is British? by Michael Wayne Plant page 26 Photographers, visual artists and media practitioners, as Research (CUCR), a national and international leader in research on urban and community life. CUCR is multi- Environment: urbanisation and biodiversity by Peter Coles page 28 well as those with a background in social sciences, interested in exploring the creative interplay between disciplinary and focuses on issues such as citizenship and Work/Space: a visual exploration by Yael Gerson Ugalde page 30 cultural research, urban studies and photographic practice. cosmopolitanism; social exclusion and cultures of racism; Strandline: beachcombing on the Greenwich Peninsula by Melissa Bliss page 32 You should have a degree or equivalent in a relevant area. sport, popular culture and music; regeneration and wealth Balkanising Taxonomy by Nela Milic page 33 creation; issues of crime and community safety; technology Signs of the City by Alison Rooke page 34 and new patterns of digital culture. Signs of the City: Photogrpahic Workshop by Campbellworks page 36 Landmarks of cut, gaze and fiction for a Distant Landscape by Soledad Garcia on the photographs of Sanchiyo Nishimura page 38 MPhil / PhD in Visual Sociology The Invisible man,The Invisible City Exhibition by Kimberly Keith page 39 Goldsmiths, University of London Our programme offers you the opportunity to combine media components of the thesis will form an integrated REVIEWS page 40 written sociological argument with film, sound, or whole.The use of multimedia will enhance and evidence photographic material.We provide researchers the space in your analysis, interpretation and understanding of social The Politics of Hope by Will Davis page 40 which to re-think both the conduct and form of phenomena.The written component of the thesis will Too Far South Exhibition review by Paul Halliday page 41 contemporary social research, in a college environment engage with multi-media components and be set within a Seeing the Invisible Noir: Dirty Pretty Things by Michael Edema Leary page 42 animated by visual arts and design.The Visual Sociology substantive research topic and its wider social context. Vital Signs conference by Alex Rhys-Taylor and Charlotte Bates page 44 programme builds on the success of our MA in Your practice will be supported by a programme of audio- This Is Not A Gateway Festival (TINAG) by David Kendall page 46 Photography and Urban Cultures and contributes to visual training workshops as well as expert superision in Goldsmiths’ leading position internationally in visual your chosen area of resaerch. Urban Edge Workshops at CUCR page 47 research and analysis
You will carry out research in an area that interests you To find out more, contact: edited by Caroline Knowles and prepare a written thesis in combination with a video, a Professor Caroline Knowles, [email protected] soundpiece or a series of photographs.Written and multi- or Bridget Ward (secretary), [email protected] Emma Jackson Britt Hatzius Further information and how to apply: UK and EU students:Admissions Office, telephone 020 7919 7060 (direct line), fax Ben Gidley 020 7717 2240 or e-mail [email protected]; Overseas (non EU) students: International Office, telephone 020 7919 7700 (direct line), fax 020 7919 7704 or e-mail [email protected]; photograph on front cover by Britt Hatzius For further information about the Centre: Please call 020 7919 7390; e-mail [email protected] or visit www.gold.ac.uk/cucr/ FINAL_Street_Signs_January2009.qxd 9/12/08 17:38 Page 1
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Seventy-Two (23rd and 24th January 2009), see the website, Introduction by Caroline Knowles, Professor of booking essential and places are limited. Future workshops Sociology, Head of Centre, CUCR include collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery led by Alison Rooke The Art of Social Practice: a Dialogue and AbduMaliq Simone's Urban Intervention: Exploratory Work with Like the rest of the country CUCR lives in interesting Community Residents in Kinshasa and Jakarta. Further times. Established in 1994 it has had just one head of centre, workshops will be announced throughout 2009 and 2010. Professor Michael Keith. Michael has just moved to Oxford to become head of the ESRC COMPASS Centre for the study of migration. Congratulations to Michael. We all wish you We continue our collaboration with Deptford.TV, an on- well in your new job. Michael's relentless energy and ideas line open source archive of collaborative film-making which have made the centre what it is today: a place of high quality documents urban change in Deptford, South London. This urban scholarship with grassroots impact through local Autumn D.TV's Adnan Hadzi and CUCR's Ben Gidley government, community and activist intervention. Michael is worked with Goldsmiths MA Screen Documentary a passionate urbanist whose scholarship and enthusiasm for students to make three short films on the area's black London, and more recently Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing, history (featuring Les Back and Lez Henry). These were rubs-off on those around him. Whether he is leading premiered in Deptford Town Hall as part of Black History students along Brick Lane at 6am or showing them the view Month, sponsored by CUCR with the Goldsmiths Media from Canary Wharf,his intellectual and political passion for Department and the Centre for the study of Global Media East London is infectious. He set up the Rich Mix Centre in and Democracy.They were followed by a screening of Small Shoreditch and for a time ran Tower Hamlets council, all the Fry Films' Shelf Life, a short film made by CUCR graduate while teaching, supervising his PhD students and running Glen Mottishead and then a Talkaoke event hosted by The the Centre. Few academics make such a difference in People Speak. We have a long-term commitment to people's lives. He's a hard act to follow and we will miss developing research strategies for the arts to demonstrate him. CUCR has become a 'soft' research and specialist their value in social regeneration. Our innovative arts/social postgraduate teaching centre within the Sociology science collaborative projects, such as the Sci-Dentity Department at Goldsmiths. Old autonomies offer new project, the Beyond The Numbers Game project and the Signs collaboration.There are new and exciting developments are of the City project, using digital photography to allow young underway at CUCR as well as a shift in focus. We are Europeans to engage with urbanism, are all part of this developing our research in the constitution and commitment.The Creative Impact project, developed by Ben (dis)organisation of city life, the built and the social fabric of Gidley and Alison Rooke in partnership with dance and cities, with a stronger lean towards the cultural and the music conservatoire Trinity Laban, focuses on the role of visual. Core intellectual concerns are: circulations of people performing arts in urban regeneration. December 2008 saw and objects; non-cities; activist and other urban the launch at Laban of our research report. The Creative interventions from Deptford to Jakarta; communities, Impact project has led to new collaboration with the difference and social inequalities; and the relationship London Thames Gateway Dance Partnership.Alison Rooke between art, activist intervention and urban theory. and Ben Gidley are also working with the Serpentine Gallery on the Skills Exchange project, looking at how artists can work with communities - in this case, older London September saw the inauguration of the CUCR gallery when residents. Artists involved in this project are Markus the first of a series of urban photography exhibitions was Miessen,Tom Hunter, Marcus Coates and Barby Asante. hung in the stairwell of Laurie Grove Baths. Santiago Escobar's Invisible Man: The Invisible City was curated by Kimberly Keith. Santiago is a Colombian architect and Following last year’s successful Urban Encounters former soldier. He plays with scale to create new urban Conference we are pleased to announce a second one day space.The result is a visual version of Italo Calvino's Invisible international conference, planned for mid June. This will Cities. Kimberly is a talented curator as well as a CUCR- involve collaboration between CUCR, Photofusion and Tate based PhD student. We plan to further capitalise on the Britain.Again, watch the website for developments. wealth of photographic talent drawn by our MA in Photography and Urban Culture by holding further Welcome to visiting scholars. Helena Holgersson is visiting exhibitions throughout 2009 and 2010. Drop in to Laurie from the University of Gothenburg, Carle Andre Espeland Grove Baths if you are in the Deptford area. We hold from the University of Bergen, Aida Sanchez de Serdio 'coffee morning discussions' every other Monday at 10am. Martin from the University of Barcelona, Gabrielle We are in the process of launching Urban Edge our new Bendiner-Viani from New York, Santiago Escobar from workshop series. This is aimed at urban scholars, Colombia and, more locally, Simon Rowe who is developing photographers and filmmakers who want to develop new new projects in the Deptford area and beyond. Finally, I visual and other analytic skills and inventive methods of would like to say how delighted I am to be CUCR's new urban investigation. Current workshops include Peter director. Difficult times provide new challenge for us all and Coles' Islands and Corridors: The Urban Biosphere (28th I look forward to our collective future and new areas of February and March 1st) and Santiago Escobar's One-to- collaboration. Happy 2009!
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The political economy of the monument: history, memory, neutralisation Aida Sánchez de Serdio Martín
(Barcelona. Primavera Sound music festival. May, 2008) These are questions seldom asked, but very materially Grabbing my beer firmly, I stood for a while looking at answered in every urban regeneration project. the ground for clues. There should be a slab somewhere. People walked past me on their way to Thus the city as it appears in tourist guides is sprinkled the next concert. I could hear as much French and with buildings by Gaudí (along with trendy clothes English spoken as Spanish or Catalan around me. My shops, and chic restaurants decorated with second visual field had a clear limit drawn by the areas covered hand or cutting edge design furniture). There is a by the floodlights. Beyond that, it was dark night. Stages politics of public memory materialised in urban space and tents blocked other references within this lit area, that selects which buildings deserve to be listed and and of course, there was the incessant flow of the promoted as heritage and which have fallen into multitude that eventually swept me away to the stage ‘functional obsolescence’. The material past of the where Lightspeed Champion were playing the first bourgeoisie is easily preserved in the form of notes. OK, I thought, maybe next year. internationally well-known Art Nouveau buildings such * * * as La Pedrera, La Sagrada Familia or the Casa Batlló. But the working classes find it more difficult to make their When Barcelona was elected in 1986 to host the way into the lists of heritage. Not only do their Olympic Games of 1992 the local government had ‘monuments’ fall out of the city centre and of tourist already realised that the city must turn to culture and tours, but they are also more likely to be diagnosed as tourism in order to survive the crisis of its productive obsolete, and so they are erased unless transformed economy (Balibrea, 2001). After the international into sanitised receptacles for culture or archaeological staging of a city (and a country) completely props emptied of history and conflict (Balibrea 2001, modernised and democratic during the Olympics, Delgado 2007). Barcelona found itself in a complex situation within the marketing of global cities, since it didn't achieve any relevant position as a financial centre and the industrial economy was being dismantled at a pace. But it quickly managed to become one of the most popular destinations for tourism through the refurbishment of the city centre; thanks to a heritage, cultural scene and life-style that the Olympics helped promote internationally. This cultural turn is a common dynamic in other European cities with a rich historical past (both cultural and industrial) that need to position themselves in the global market of urban identities in a post-industrial scenario (Balibrea 2004, Kwon 1997).
In this immaterial economy of symbolic values, material pasts play a key role. The built environment becomes both a backdrop for urban life and an investment in terms of the tourist economy. But at the same time it This selective memory is not a malfunction of the must be considered an ideological battlefield in which ‘proper’ way memory should work. Rather the opposing visions of meaning and history clash. As opposite. In order for a place of memory to exist, Balibrea (2007) says, “the built environment is a there needs to be a massive production of oblivion. historical creature. […] The conditions for survival of Delgado pairs both terms arguing that they are all and every one of these built environments depend inseparable: “Memory is also a colossal forgetting on their being considered productive in the present”. machine, an extraordinary amnesic device that erases Whose memory gets to be preserved and whose all the elements that could be considered superfluous, doesn't? And at the service of who is it preserved? dysfunctional or contradictory in relation to the given
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ideological goals” (2007: 123). Moreover, the the area to give way to new ‘clean’ cultural and production of a common narrative in terms of technological industries. This opened a wide debate as historical memory is a totalising device whereby public to what was to be done with the industrial buildings.A memory is domesticised and unified, neutralising the diverse group of agents had different visions about its conflict inherent in all historical processes. future: owners of small industries who were forced to move, their employees, neighbours, artists, academics, Perhaps one of the clearest examples of architects and cultural activists had irreducible memorialisation of public space is the monument.This differences among themselves. The variety of nuances is also a profoundly ambivalent political object. In the of this discussion was great but, for the sake of a context of a country that lived under a dictatorship for synthesis, two of them may be seen as fundamental: on almost 40 years (1939-1975), and in which the revision the one hand there was a defence of the actual diversity of the democratic transition and issues of historical of uses (both industrial and cultural), and on the other memory are right now the centre of a heated political the argument was for the preservation of the building and legal debate, monuments are just the tip of the as an example of working-class heritage. For a moment iceberg - but a very significant tip indeed. After years there was even talk about the possibility of its being of silencing certain groups and fights, a new impulse for transformed into a museum of labour - a turn of the their being written back into history has come from events, which given the circumstances, couldn't have political, cultural and academic fronts. Monuments then been more ironic. Now Can Ricart is an enormous ruin mean the possibility of making publicly visible and and in the future will probably host a museum of acknowledging a sometimes haunting past. Citizens languages. might now have the opportunity to get to know and celebrate (or meditate on) events and people that were erased or forgotten in history, for social or political reasons. But at the same time the monument freezes and unifies memory. Citing Delgado again: “Rather than something that remembers the past, the monument is something that allows us to cancel it, deny it, annihilate it. [...] The monument is neither synchronic nor diachronic, but purely anachronic, as it represents a-historicity itself” (Ibid: 94).What's more, the erecting of monuments usually goes along with the disappearance of the actual object of the monument itself.
One specific area of Barcelona where these processes are notorious is El Poble Nou. Situated in the south- east of the city, it has a long history as a working-class neighbourhood in which numerous fights took place during the 19th and 20th centuries. From the late The second example of monumentalisation is 1980's it has undergone a profound social, urban and connected with the memory of the Civil War and economic transformation that hasn't always been immediate post-war period. The Forum Park that was respectful of the memory of the place nor, perhaps built for that invention called Universal Forum of Cultures more importantly, its present inhabitants (Gdaniec 2004 stands just over the waste ground known as Camp 2000, Marrero 2003). de la Bota where 1,704 political prisoners or detainees were shot between 1939 and 1952 as a result of the Two examples of monumentalisation emerge in this Francoist repression. The urban transformation of the context. The first one is related to the industrial site for the Forum started without any consideration of heritage of the area. Can Ricart was a 19th century this fact, and some civic pressure was necessary in industrial complex still in use in which some small order to get the spot marked by a monument industrial businesses and arts organisations co-existed. remembering those murdered in that place. It remains By 2004 Can Ricart was facing a dramatic to be seen whether this was the best way of honouring transformation or even total demolition due to the their memory in the middle of an area used mainly for implementation of the Plan 22@, whose aim is the cultural events, fairs and festivals. More critical ways of transformation or relocation of industries working in confronting this historic event have been attempted by
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the arts field by constructing an ongoing public archive of those murdered, and reactivating the memory of their living relatives by bringing them to talk about their experience of political repression. * * *
(Barcelona. Forum Park. August, 2008) I had already walked around the Forum Building twice and still couldn't figure out where it could be. This time the sunlight flattened everything into a blinding pale yellowish grey, except for the Forum Building, which outstood as blue, incongruous and nonnegotiable as ever. I ventured a little farther, beyond the place where the fences had enclosed and signalled the limit of the Primavera Sound Festival last spring. This was terra References: incognita. Nothing other than concerts had ever drawn Balibrea, Mari Paz (2001) Urbanism, Culture and the Post- me to this bleak park. On a Sunday morning it was industrial City: Challenging the 'Barcelona Model'. Journal of deserted but for a few families with children scattered Spanish Cultural Studies. 2:2 (p.187-210.) in the playground or having lunch sitting on the Balibrea, Mari Paz (2004) Barcelona: del modelo a la marca. concrete benches. I spotted the unmistakable sign: a Desacuerdos. Sobre arte, políticas y esfera pública en el bronze monolith standing in the middle of the cement Estado Español [Online] surface. I walked towards it with my camera ready. I http://www.arteleku.net/desacuerdos/index.jsp?PAR=p&ID=1193 took a couple of pictures that showed the whole Balibrea, Mari Paz (2007) Strategies of Remembrance: Branding the new Barcelona.Tourisic urbanism - Between monument. I got closer. A little girl rode her bicycle local and global. Holcim Forum For Sustainable over a flat lump on the ground next to the monolith. Construction. (p. 1-10) That must be it. I reached the base and looked down:
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Religion in Inner City Oslo Mette Anderson
The Norwegian team in the NORFACE-funded project The Architecture of Contemporary Religious Transmission have interviewed young Muslims, Christians and non- believers in the Grønland area of Oslo about their relationship to faith. Grønland is located in inner-city Oslo East. From the mid 1800s the area was central in the industrialisation of the city, being an entrance port to Oslo for new workers from the countryside. From the late 1960s the area has been an entrance port for immigrants and refugees to Oslo and to Norway. Grønland is located close to the main railway station in Oslo, a hot spot for traffic as well as for drug dealing. For this, and for other reasons, the area has for long been rumoured to be a ‘dangerous place’.The area also houses the Oslo police headquarters and a large prison. Islamic Cultural Centre Until the mid 1990s when gentrification increasingly took hold, Grønland was (in line with its history from the 1800s) one of the cheapest places to live in central Oslo, and therefore attractive to immigrants and refugees. Today, the area is commonly seen as the multiethnic area of central Oslo, located as it is close to the central railway station and the main street in the city centre. 44% of the inhabitants are first or second generation immigrants, and white Norwegian children are a small minority group in most primary schools. Earlier, names like ‘little Karachi’ and ‘little Pakistan’ were frequently used to identify the area. Whereas Pakistanis tended to dominate until recently, Somalis are now the dominant group. The criminal image of the area has increasingly been associated with immigration, and a central association is ethnic World Islamic Mission, Central Jam-e Mosque minority drug import and ‘immigrant youth gangs’.The last, and the most relevant association in regard to our project, relates to religion, and especially to the visibility of religion in the area.
Visible religion
Grønland is the place for purpose-built mosques in Norway: Among many mosques in warehouses and ordinary buildings, the area houses three purpose-built mosques: One from the 1990s, one from 2006 and one about to be opened in December 2008.
World Islamic Mission, Central Jamaat-E-Ahl-E-Sunnat Mosque
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Other signs of Muslim presence in the area are Muslim The image of the Catholic Church is less well known by clothing in the streets, halal-signs in restaurants and the majority of informants. Among Catholic informants shops, and a newly built shopping centre, owned by the church was associated with many people, with one of Oslo's white building-moguls. The shopping (too) few ornaments (as compared to another Catholic centre is called Grønland Bazar and is built in traditional church in Oslo) and with people of many different Arabic architectural style. Although most Pakistanis ethnic origins. In Oslo, Poles are now the major nowadays have moved out of Grønland to eastern churchgoing group, but Vietnamese, Singhalese, Tamil suburbs, Pakistanis are dominant in the boards of the and people with Latin and South American backgrounds purpose-built mosques in the area. Two of these are are also among the major users. On Sundays the church associated with the Pakistani Barelwi-tradition, and arranges several services in different languages. Thus, one with the Deobandi tradition. In Norway religious whereas both Catholic churches and Mosques are organisations are supported by the Norwegian state associated with liveliness and crowds, Protestant according to the number of members, creating a churches are, especially among Muslims and the non- situation of competition for new members. In a religious, associated with loneliness and few members. religion not associated with formal membership, the state support per member system makes mosques (as Religious change and transmission well as other religious congregations) creative when it comes to member recruitment. In one of the Oslo mosques, for example, free funeral services seemed to Although a large majority of Norwegians are members be a means to attract potential members to this of the Protestant state church, Norway is among the Mosque. Another interesting finding is how the most secularised countries in Europe. Only 5,5% of the mosques lived up to the Norwegian State requirement population go regularly to church, and the country that religious organisations should be open to hosts a large member-based Humanist association everyone, and not restricted to particular ethnic offering alternative ceremonies for baptising (name- groups. In the largest Oslo Mosque, the Central day), confirmation and funerals. The young non- Jamaat-E-Ahl-E-Sunnat, which also is the biggest believers in our sample give valuable information about mosque in Scandinavia, ornaments, carpets and the image of different religions in the large non-believer furniture was collected from most Islamic core- segment of the Norwegian population. A dominant countries in the world. Thus, the architecture of this image in this group is that faith had gradually vanished mosque - apart from referring to the globality of the with their grandparents' generation, and that their own Islamic Ummah - also reflects the Norwegian policy to parents largely held secular values. This informant include everyone in civil society organisations, group (most of them with relatively high cultural including religious ones. capital) seem to be more generously attuned to religion when the religion in question is a minority religion in Grønland also houses two Protestant churches, one Norway. Their attitudes towards mainstream Catholic church and several smaller congregations Protestantism thus, are typically more negative than related to Pentacostalism and evangelism. The main their attitudes toward Islam and Catholicism. In spite of Protestant church is rather large and visible in the their criticism of practises often associated with Islam, main street of the area, while the Catholic Church is such as forced marriages and female circumscription, smaller and located away from the main street.When they hold nuanced views of the relationship between our informants (aged 18-25) are shown images of the patriarchy, culture and religion, and are trained in Protestant church, many associate it with times passed, avoiding easy, essentialist, interpretations of Islam. elderly church-goers, and with loneliness. Such images come up among Muslims and non-believers, as well as The interviews with Muslims and Christians reflect a among some Christians. Interviews with clerics from trend noted in other literature about religious change, this church confirm this finding, pointing to few namely an increasing tendency for young people to church-goers in ordinary services and to the need to switch prayer house and religious communities. Among create special services in order to attract the young. the young Muslims, quite a few argue that they go to
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the Mosque their friends go to, and some of our difference that for many carries a responsibility to be Christian informants have been members of many good role models of Norwegian Islam. different congregations in the course of the last few years. For many in this group, moving into Oslo was a One of our informants, a young woman raised in a small major point of change when it came to congregational place in Southern Norway by Pakistani parents, tells of switching. A second trend in the Oslo material is the her ‘journey through herself’ as she moves through tendency for some young Christians and Muslims to Oslo.Walking through the main street from the Royal see each other as in a common situation vis-à-vis Castle towards the Central Railway Station she feels secular society. Such a trend is facilitated and upheld by completely Norwegian. Passing the Railway station and the various interfaith group initiatives developed in entering the area of Grønland she feels her Pakistani Norway, and specifically in this area. Other findings and Muslim identity. To her, and to other informants, from these interviews is that some second generation Grønland has a specific standing as the ethnic and Muslims see Islam's position as having moved from religious minority symbolic space in Norway. This ‘Islam in Norway’ towards ‘Norwegian Islam’.They are symbolic space is to some associated with the concerned with providing good Norwegian Muslim increased status of Islam in Norway.To others, it brings role models who could appeal to youth in their own associations to violence and criminality and the need to generation. bring young people back to religion. And to a third group, most notably white secular Norwegians with In regard to religious transmission both informant leftist sympathies, Grønland is seen as an interesting groups reveal that their parents have been most place where religion and urban multiculture meets a important in teaching them about religion. Most are traditional working class culture creating a vibrant brought up in religious families and have learnt about glocal space. faith and religion from childhood onwards. In some cases faith was revitalized as a consequence of serious illness and death in close family. For young Muslims the ideal of being a ‘practising Muslim’ following the five pillars of Islam is strong. We find some evidence of a complex relation between ethnicity and religion in the area in spite of everyone's insistence that “our mosque is open to everyone”.There are also tendencies to an individualised approach to Islam where a personal faith relationship between believer and God prevails.
Whereas the young Muslims seem confident in their The Architecture of Contemporary Religious Transmission research faith and in their identity as Muslims, several young project was conducted in three different cities: London (Finsbury Christians seem more reluctant to show off their Park), Hamburg (St.Georg) and Oslo (Grønland) by three different religious identity in public space. In a secular society teams: like Norway, the chance to being exposed as a CUCR, Goldsmiths University (Dr. Roger Hewitt, Dr. Caroline ‘personal Christian’ is a potential risk in interaction Knowles,Vicky Skitftou, Britt Hatzius); with others outside of religious arenas. For the Muslims, however, religious identity is not associated Institute for Comparative and Multicultural Studies, University of with risk in the same sense.They are concerned with Hamburg (Prof. Ingrid Gogolin, Ben Hintze, Johannes Bucher; not being seeing as terrorists or Islamists, and are aware that their religious identity seems to be ‘read IMER, University of Bergen (Dr. Mette Andersson, Anders off’ their non-whiteness in inter-ethnic as well as intra- Vassenden). ethnic interaction. Used to being seen as Others, ‘immigrants, ‘Pakistanis’ or ‘Somalis’, their religious For further information please refer to: identity seem to be associated with a positive www.relemerge.org/project_02
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Kettering Road Sayed Hasan
Kettering Road means something to me because I've worked there for several years. I have become part of a cast of everyday characters who perform their daily routines in and around the street: continuously shifting between states of voyeurism and participation. My gaze is camouflaged by my everyday disguise enabling me to watch the world undisturbed in a state of reverie, while simultaneously plotting multiple courses of action needed to navigate corporeal space. I can tell you that the post man will pull up in his van at one o' clock with a cigarillo in his mouth. In the afternoon Saff the dog will run up and down the opposing green, chasing after a ball her owner hurls from a red catapult. When I buy a paper or bottle of water from the news agents I slowly exit the shop allowing room for the usual small talk, on weather or trade. On the street I recognise a passer by, we smile, say hello, shake hands. A car beeps as it goes past. I react with an outstretched arm, sometimes the wrong person waves, but absorbs the error in their stride. Time and circumstance has allowed me to identify certain patterns in human activity along Kettering Road, but the unpredictability of everyday life is another aspect that characterises the street. The unfamiliar takes different forms, in the shape of unknown stranger/s, to aleatory situations that reveal unexpected qualities in the people you presume to know. The Kettering Road I belong to skips to the transient beat of human traffic, which moves in all directions. Repetitious cycles of daily, weekly , monthly activity, one way journeys; it all seem ephemeral as time dissipates the illusion of permanence. Carrying my camera and background on to Kettering Road, I pitched up a make shift street studio and waited for people to walk by. ”Can I take your photo?” was the usual and most direct approach. Some people stopped, others chose to walk on. A photographic interpretation of life on Kettering Road was always going to be limited, the absence and inclusivity of the portraiture reflects the imperfection of my everyday experiences.
The Kettering Road Project was funded by Arts Council England.
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Wendy Courtney
Mathew Adriana and girls
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SUEÑO DESPIERTO EN UN MUNDO QUE SE DESVANECE… Karla Berrens
Lost in the city, looking for inspiration... trying to Hip-hop has, for a long time already, been putting escape from the surrounding blocks, tall uniform rhythm to the daily routine of some of the people block... making my life a grey reality, same grey as the living in those conurbations. buildings walls...
Noglobal hip-hop songs talk about feeling trapped in The words get lost in the labyrinth buildings create. a world that is unreal, created in between fiction Cosmopolitan cities seem to forget that some of happiness and freedom and an asphalt hard reality. their inner architectural characteristics are not Their songs reflect upon the struggle of the working thought to eliminate ghettoisation. In London there class and the conflict between the urban landscape are massive constructions of council estates that give and property speculation.They talk about their city, birth to a sub-city. The latter have their own rules, Madrid, but also about many other cities such as L.A., their social structure, their own business London, and Tijuana where they find patterns of organisation and development. These architectures labyrinth, block constructions where it seems as if create ghettos of people, maybe oppressed, maybe people were left to their own fate, from the hoodies trapped. Often regarded as 'pariahs', never classified to the concert halls, their hip-hop gives a strong and as such. their feeling in the city is more than informed insight to some areas of the city that complex. Nevertheless those constructions are remains unknown to most.Through their songs they frequently a creative nest of alternative ways of depict their reality, finding familiar areas in Madrid, expressing this felt disregard, this alienation. but also in unknown cities as they have a strange sensation of recognition of the articulation of certain areas, hip-hop might be disregarded by some but it provides its listener with a surprising analysis of the urban landscape.
www.myspace.com/noglobalmc
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Open-Up photographic project Gonzalo Osmos
I engage in acts of dérive and detourments following in people, help to 'open up' and reveal some facts and the fashion of the French Situationist International. I ‘something true’ about their inner-self (e.g. what is the engage in performances of situations by engaging happiest memory of your life?). For instance, the l´étranger of the periphery to participate in my openness of Johnny is articulated when he states that photographic project. the happiest memory of his life was when he won the first amateur boxing. Or the drama student - Lincoln - Open Up is characterized by the encounter, interplay when he states that he found out that Jesus is alive and and co-presence of both the photographer and the that he loves him or for liberal physicist Andreas when sitter. In other words, one can argue that my portraits he realised that there is no god. stand as documents or ‘proof’ of my empathic performance as a photographer and inter-subjective My photographic project aims to reveal the ephemeral encounters with strangers. For example, the strangers private identities of the stranger, the complex textures I am encountering do not have time to verify the of social distinctions of travellers in a public place. I integrity and honesty of my photographic project.Thus, would like to think that my portraits capture the dualist my credibility mainly relies on my own performance, essential inner quality of the subject against their expressive repertoire, and my capacity to establish objective living body. I see my project as an effort empathy with people in a short period of time. Erving towards capturing matter (flesh and bones) and spirit Goffman referenced this progression from disbelief - (feelings and mind). To paraphrase the photographer to - belief. From the initial cynicism towards the Robert Frank, I just want to capture the strange capacity to establish trust. Thus securing an adequate humanity of the moment. level of rapport is important in a short span is crucial. Gestures of spontaneity in my own performance with www.olmosphoto.com
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Borderlands Caroline Knowles and Sylvia Meichsner
Borderlands, the strips of territory where nation relaxed, even post 9-11, than to its poorer neighbour to states intersect, are often side-lined in urban studies in the South. favour of more stylish cities with signature buildings designed by leading architects like Dubai, Shanghai and The US-Mexico border is almost 2,000 miles long. It Barcelona. And yet borderlands are crucial corridors stretches from the Pacific border town of Tijuana to of activity, reflecting and composing life on both sides the Gulf of Mexico. Between 1950 and 1980 it was one and providing information about how the world is of the fastest growing urban areas on the continent. It organised. Disjunctions between states are sometimes is now a 'border metropolis' supporting ten million US radical and sometimes less obvious. The border and Mexican citizens for whom it is a sphere of daily between Zimbabwe and Botswana, for example, is hard urban/non-urban interaction (Herzog, 1990). A mix of to distinguish. It is not heavily fortified and at a cursory cities and non-city spaces, towns and open country, the glance the scenery looks the same on both sides. US-Mexico borderland is composed in the activities Botswana looks prosperous; Zimbabwe is visibly and things that circulate it; circuits of goods and people, ground into the dirt. In places the border is simply shifted in particular geopolitical circumstances. The marked by increased movement, as refugees pour out borderland is literally fabricated in these activities: of Zimbabwe. Other borderlands generate more social trodden by the feet and tyre marks of those who pass and political tension. Compare the US-Canada border, back and forth across the border with their bundles; by for example, to the US-Mexico border. The US the haulage trucks loaded with goods that straddle it approach to its affluent Northern neighbour is more from the special manufacturing zones under the regulatory gaze of NAFTA.
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This particular borderland is more than a place of maybe even direct, torture in Saudi, Moroccan and intersection between neighbouring nation states. It is a Syrian prisons: all (flexible) extensions of US borders. global fault-line between North and South.This border The US-Mexico border is less well fortified than the sustains a $26,000 gap in GDP - $30,000 in the US and wall separating Israel and Palestine; but only just. $4,000 in Mexico. Perhaps one of the biggest income Technologies of separation are ever-evolving. differentials of any border, it acts like a magnet drawing Mexicans and other Central Americans from places like Migrant response to this militarised matrix of control El Salvador who see Mexico as a bridge to a new life in is inventive. Since 9-11 forty tunnels have been the US. This differential between incomes and the discovered in the San Diego-Tijuana area alone. Some lifestyles they support generates the activities of this were as much as half a mile long and sixty to eight feet borderland between worlds. deep. There are tunnels with concrete floors that are wired with electricity: testament to an 'impossible The US-Mexico borderland is a staging post in the politics of separation’ (Weizman, 2007), ingenuity and circularities of North South migration.There are guest enterprise. houses, provisions stores, brothels, orphanages and 'travel guides' who generate and navigate a shifting ‘Migration is a huge business.The same countries that expel matrix of routes North: at a price. Each year between are also accomplices in the network of human trafficking. It 4000,000 and one million undocumented Mexican is the human trafficking network that becomes rich migrants slip over the border. In 2005 alone 1.2 million particularly in the expelling countries; they become rich at were apprehended by the US border patrol, which the cost of crossing people. They are so corrupt the estimates that it catches perhaps one in five would-be migration officers, the army, the bodies of security….It is a migrants en-route to a new life in the US (1). Migrants network of complicities that take advantage of the are successful in crossing the border: six to twelve situation….Its terrible what they charge them, four million undocumented migrants live in the US, the thousand dollars, three thousand dollars for crossing them. majority of them Mexican (2). At night fall Mexicans can So if they cross fifty within one month you can imagine how be seen running for the border, carrying only water much…And there are very good traffickers who tell the bottles and toothbrushes, in places where security is person “You give me five thousand dollars and you'll be in considered weaker than others. In 2007 alone 383 the states tomorrow” and so it is. people died trying to migrate to the US: mostly they [Anonymous View from the South: an employee in a died of thirst or hypothermia as well as more lethal religious orphanage near Tijuana]. applications of US border security (3). But still Mexicans make it to the other side on trains, in the trunks of cars Borderlands, particularly this one, are densely rich sites and trucks, through tunnels, over walls and on foot. for urban exploration. What kinds of security and defence are practiced? Who crosses them and on what The US response is a new geography of national terms? By what means do they cross? What risks are defences that adds a layer of activity to the borderland. taken? What rewards are possible? What circumstances These involve checkpoints and barriers, strengthened generate their circulation back and forth? What forms border patrols, night vision goggles, land cruisers, foot of business do borderlands sustain? What forms of patrols, motion sensors, stadium lighting. Would be architecture are possible? What kinds of urban planning migrants caught by the authorities are digitally and regulation? And whom do they serve? photographed and finger printed. Where state action weakens local vigilantes organise their own patrols: a References: militarization of citizenship. Texas and California now Herzog, Lawrence A. (1990) Where North Meets South. City have 80 miles of federally enforced barriers and fences Space and Politics on the US-Mexico Border, University of at strategic points along the border. Operation Texas Press. Weizman, Eyal (2007) Hollow Land, Israel's Architecture of Gatekeeper sealed the border around San Diego with Occupation, London :Verso p144,161 14 miles of fencing and stadium lighting. The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee proposed (1) Global Security.Org 'Homeland Security' 2008 'The Great Wall two parallel steel and wire fences from the Gulf of of Mexico' Mexico to the Pacific coast. It would cost $2 billion to (2) Time.Com 'Special Report 'The New Frontier' Terry McCartney 'The Coyote's Game' Narco,Arizona. fence the entire border in concrete (4). This (3) Time.Com 'Special Report 'The New Frontier' Terry McCartney militarization of borderlands resonates with other 'The Coyote's Game' Narco,Arizona spheres of US global influence in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in (4) Global Security.Org 'Homeland Security' 2008 'The Great Wall the hidden processes in which US agents observe, and of Mexico'.This website is linked with the Israel Security Fence.
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Romans, Trains and Star Trek: Contesting the Production of Castlefield Space Michael Edema Leary
“There should be no cause for surprise when a space- related issue spurs collaboration (often denounced on that basis by party politicians) between very different kinds of people, between those who 'react'… and 'liberals' or 'radicals'… Such coalitions around some particular counter-project or counter plan, promoting a counter-space in opposition to the one embedded in the strategies of power, occur all over the world…” (Lefebvre 1991: 380)
A public inquiry into a proposal by Peel Holdings (owner of the Trafford Centre and the Manchester Ship Canal) for a 117 unit apartment complex at Jackson's Wharf in the Castlefield conservation area was held in November 2008.Thousands of Mancunians 1980s Roman Gate - inventing heritage oppose the plans as do several local councillors and web campaigns such as the one by Pride of Manchester. Given Manchester's reputation as an iconic entrepreneurial city (Leary 2008) it is no surprise that this was the first scheme in the city centre to be rejected by the council's planners in 5 years. The scheme by Manchester architect Ian Simpson, of Urbis fame, has been dubbed by Manchester wags the Star Trek development because of its futuristic design (Linton 2008). The outcome is awaited eagerly. In 1999 Castlefield was placed on the UK's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage Site status. Castlefield is the site of a Roman fort dating from 79AD. Castlefield is the area in Manchester, the world's first modern industrial city, where the industrial revolution started. It was here that Britain's first true canal terminated: Barge and the Viaduct - Canal heritage and leisure the Bridgewater canal opened in 1763, bringing coal from the 3rd Duke's mines in Worsley to the burgeoning cotton mills of Ancoats and Chorlton-on- Medlock, an area castigated for its degrading squalor by Engels in his 1845 The Condition of the Working Class in England. The world's first intercity passenger railway followed in 1830 locating its terminus at Liverpool Road Station in Castlefield. Having carried out PhD research focused on Castlefield for the last four years it is evident that the contestation of space regarding the Jackson Wharf housing proposal is similar to that which happened in the 1970s when the city council wanted to redevelop Castlefield for housing and in the 1980/90s when the Central Manchester Development Corporation wanted to do the same.
The Rocket Simulacrum Symbol of 1980s Heritage Dominance
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In the 1970 and 80s reimagining Castlefield as a heritage the only recognition in the city of the links between space was a Lefebvrian counter-project championed by Castlefield and European colonial enslavement spatial amenity societies in alliance with the Greater practices. The silence on this aspect of Castlefield's Manchester Council (Leary forthcoming) in opposition past is deafening. to the embedded power of the Manchester City Council and British Rail (a major Castlefield If the building is approved it will end Castlefield's landowner). Heritage representations of Castlefield tentative status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. space triumphed in 1983 when the hugely successful Peel Holdings, a Manchester company founded in 1920 Museum of Science and Industry open in the converted by the descendents of Sir Robert Peel, made Liverpool Road Station buildings in 1983. By then the enormous profits in the last property boom. Hopefully, heritage industry as a vehicle for post industrial city it will not get through the appeal, but even if it does it reimaging was in full swing (Lowenthal 1998 and Wright is unlikely to go ahead in the present financial climate. 2003). The heritage dominated understanding of When funding is available things will have moved on. In Castlefield went largely unchallenged in the 1990s the meantime the site should be donated to the city as (Degen 2008), exemplified by this breathless Lonely public open space with a maintenance trust fund Planet eulogy: attached. If the building is approved it should be subject to a legal planning agreement for the “Castlefield has now been redeveloped into an Urban maintenance in perpetuity of the significant public Heritage Park.Aside from the huge science museum, the big spaces of Castlefield. If long silenced Castlefield draw here is the Castlefield Basin. The Bridgewater Canal histories are to be heard, and its heritage revalorised runs through it; in summertime thousands of people amble for the 21st century, a political coalition of difference about the place and patronise its fine pubs and trendy will be required, first to defeat the wholly restaurants.” inappropriate Jackson's Wharf scheme, then to (Lonely Planet 2007 www.lonelyplanet.com/) embrace the area with the arms of heritage inclusivity.
But now the struggle to impose a new meaning and If you want to follow the struggle for Castlefield or join in, future for Castlefield has resurfaced as it did in the see the websites of Pride of Manchester, Eye Witness in 1970s.Today the heritage representation of Castlefield Manchester and Manchester Confidential. space is under threat precisely because it became too narrowly focused on Romans, canals, railways and References: warehouses: ignoring crucial aspects of the area's Degen, M. 2008, Sensing Cities: Regenerating Public Life in complex histories. The area has a much richer history Barcelona and Manchester, Routledge, London. including: elegant Georgian housing, working class Leary, M.E. (forthcoming) "Of Potato, Shrine and Vendetta, housing, gritty industry (the abattoir) and a rather Liverpool Road Station and the Production of Castlefield, exuberant but riotous and short lived 19th century Manchester:Applying Henri Lefebvre's Spatial Triad" annual fair.This was reinvented for a brief time in the Leary, M.E. 2008, "Gin and Tonic or Oil and Water: The 1980s with the popular Castlefield funfair, street Entrepreneurial City and Sustainable Managerial markets and festivals: local Lefebvrian spaces of Regeneration in Manchester", Local Economy, vol. 23, no. 3, representation. But the most important part of pp. 222-233. Castlefield's history is the link with the Transatlantic Lefebvre, H. 1991, The Production of Space, Blackwell, Oxford (first published in 1974 as La production de Trade in West African peoples. Manchester textiles l'espace). were traded for abducted West African peoples who Linton, D. 2008 (5 June), "'Star Trek' flats go to appeal", were later enslaved. The Liverpool and Manchester Manchester Evening News. Railway Company was funded partly from the proceeds Williams, E. 1994 [1944], Capitalism and Slavery, The of the Transatlantic Trade (Williams 1944).The statue in University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Lincoln Square with its inscription of thanks from Wright, P. 2003 (13 September), "Restoration tragedy: The Abraham Lincoln for the support of Manchester heritage industry is now so powerful that it is impossible to workers during the 1860s cotton famine is just about criticise, let alone demolish, old buildings".
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Street Photography and Social Research: Brick Lane Re-Visited Charlotte Bates On 29 June 2008 fourteen postgraduate students met Reflections by Adrian Harris in Brick Lane, East London. The group came from universities across the UK and brought together Working with the Medium Format Camera was harder students from a variety of disciplines, all with an than I imagined simply because many people seemed interest in the visual. Paying homage to the About the reluctant to be involved. Several factors contributed to Streets project conducted by staff and students at this. Because we'd set up at the less 'trendy' end of the Goldsmiths, University of London and Croydon street, there were mostly locals going about their College in 2001, we set up two 4x5 large format business, many of whom had English as a second cameras in the midst of the market in Brick Lane and language. We also chose to be on a side street, so invited people to have their portrait taken while doing weren't as noticeable to passers-by. While we achieved their Sunday shopping. Individuals took their turn our intention to minimize obstructive disruption and before the lens and the ensuing photographs created a be more in the community, this made interaction visual narrative of metropolitan life.The day offered a harder. We always had to go out and invite people, valuable opportunity to both create and engage in a rather than them being drawn by curiosity to us. The sociological event.The spectacle of the large Victorian time it took to make a photograph had some cameras on the streets and the intricate process of advantages in that it gave us time to interact but we did setting up for a portrait became an enactment of doing lose people who were waiting for their turn. I research, through which we were able to discuss how occasionally felt a hint of impatience from our portrait photographs can be made instead of taken, and how subjects as light levels were measured, lens cocked, light the act of making them can reveal stories and reflect re-checked, and then the whole process repeated as we the changing urban landscape. made a second exposure to be sure we had a good image. Here, some of the participants offer glimpses of the day, showing what they brought to the workshop and Wandering the street asking people more casually if I what they took from it, and telling how cameras and could ‘take a photograph’ with my digital camera was portraits were negotiated and stories unfolded, much easier. The immediacy of the encounter meant I questioning the spectacle that we created and didn't need to interact so much as with the medium commenting on the culture of Brick Lane. format equipment, but the option was always there and occasionally I took the opportunity to chat. I used my Thanks to the British Sociological Association for their usual documentary photographer approach: Ask if it's financial support, and to Les Back, Paul Halliday, Caroline ok, chat a bit, then back off to make the image, though Knowles, Antonio Genco, Simon Rowe, Manuel Vazquez I'd take one shot straight away if they were posing. and Jane Offerman for their involvement and support Usually I'd sit back for a while until, half forgotten, I without which this workshop would not have been possible. could make a more 'natural' image. After a few shots of
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random people I found 'interesting' I felt the need to I think, however, that we lacked the time to engage in a structure my approach more, so decided to photograph true collaboration between the photographers and the stallholders. This felt more satisfying as I began to see photographed. In fact, I would have liked the distinction patterns and relationships between the layout of the between the former and the latter to be irrelevant. I stalls, the goods they sold and the stallholders would have liked to agree upon the camera's location themselves. and framing, maybe give the shutter to the photographee. In my opinion, engaging in a more Notes from Behind the Scenes by extensive process of cooperation would be relevant Isaac Marrero Guillamón both for making street portraits and producing images with a larger potential for research. If we were able to truly alter our perspective and expectations in the This sequence attempts to 'bring into the picture' one process of negotiating a portrait I think we would be of the things I found most interesting about the one step further towards images that represent the workshop: the relationship between the in-frame and kind of encounter we were interested in. the off-frame. The large format Polaroids provided by themselves a very limited output of the dynamics involved in their production. Putting one of them next to a shot/counter-shot of the 'making of' was a simple Ghosts of Brick Lane way of introducing various key issues. by Jo Sanderson-Mann First of all, the three-image sequence points at the I have chosen this image because it shows passers by in weight of the machinery and the labour needed to Brick Lane, people moving, perhaps with a suitcase, it is operate it.Taking a picture with a 4x5 camera is a fairly not possible to see them clearly. My aim was to listen complex procedure; it is far from immediate. Each task to people's stories. I took photos, I talked to people, (framing, focusing, light metering, loading film, shooting) but I did not really get to know them - the encounters requires a certain time and, most importantly, re- were transitory. In fact I was a tourist in Brick Lane. To inscribes the technology involved in the process. attend the workshop, me, my husband and my son What's been, to a great extent, effaced by digital travelled down to London and stayed overnight, and photography the large format camera brings back. We we saw the sights on Saturday. On Sunday while I was somehow rediscovered the intricacies of measuring an in Brick Lane my husband and son carried on sight ever changing light, framing and focusing an upside- seeing. I felt that there was a parallel between what down and not so clear image, and using Polaroid film. they were doing and what I was doing in Brick Lane. It was perhaps not a coincidence that I was drawn to For all that to happen a number of agreements had to photograph people who were also tourists, people be reached: On the one hand, the collaboration who did not live there. Brick Lane was a spectacle, between us went further than sharing the technical something strange and unfamiliar, and my presence tasks: first of all we had to decide about location (this there was a one-off, perhaps theirs was too. The or that side of the street?), framing (full, American?), photos I took were of people who were there for depth of field (maximum, minimum?) and who we pleasure, there was a strong sense of having a ‘day out’, wanted to photograph (a certain 'kind', everyone who and each time I took a photo it was an encounter with wants to be photographed?). These decisions shaped two foreigners, them and me. the basic structure of the pictures and represented, to a certain degree at least, our intentions as photographers. On the other hand, we had to negotiate with the people to be photographed: we had to tell them about the project, they had to give us consent and sign a form.
Once there was someone before the camera, ready to have her or his portrait taken, the situation became a sort of social event.The old, big, heavy camera sat on a tripod surrounded by a team of photographers produced interest and expectation among passers by. Conversations emerged.The taking of photographs was starting to become making.
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What I learnt from my team mates In comparison, my experiences were rather dire.When passed the digital SLR camera my first concerns were: and from my mistakes “How do I wear the camera strap, how do I hold the by Craig Owen camera, what do I do with all these buttons and how do I possibly get comfortable?” Seeing the exasperated Beccy seemed to have a skill for weaving in and out of look on face my other team mate Charlotte came over the rush of human traffic filtering up, down and across and provided some much needed assistance. With Brick Lane. She skipped from one side of the street to encouragement I approached two young men who another in order to investigate and photograph were sat casually on their Jamie Oliver style mopeds. someone or something that interested her. I saw Dressed in ultra trendy clothes and flaunting highly Beccy talk to and subsequently photograph a smart styled haircuts I was sure they would make good looking old man who was standing in a doorway subjects for a photo. I introduced myself and almost smoking roll ups. I also listened to Beccy engage in immediately dropped into the conversation a cheeky banter with two self identifying 'Del Boys' who disclaimer about my lack of skill with the camera. proudly proclaimed they had been selling carpets from the same stall on Brick Lane for 15 years. Introducing The lesson I have drawn from these experiences is that the purpose of our project, showing these people the the skill and experience the researcher has with LCD screen to allow them to view the photos and particular methods has significant implications for their inviting them to talk about their experiences of Brick identity as a researcher and for the processes through Lane, Beccy was able to develop positive relationships which the research is crafted. Finally, visiting Brick Lane that enabled us to later return with the Victorian has shown me that if I wish to improve my skills as an camera and photograph these men again. I was urban ethnographer I must continue to learn in thoroughly impressed with how social and fun Beccy practice and by practice. had made urban photography appear.
Polaroid Portraits
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Small Stories Who is the photographer? by Lisa Mckenzie by Sireita Mullings - Lawrence
The first two guys we met were Billy and his friend There is something interesting about the multiple Mick who were sat on a doorstep. As soon as I saw authorship of a photograph. Indecisive as to its them I knew I wanted to chat with them. Mick was importance, the question of who is the photographer probably in his sixties and was looking dapper wearing became apparent whilst a participant of the Street a cream safari suit, cravat, and matching hat, with a pair Photography and Social Research workshop held in of good leather oxford brogues which he told me he'd Brick Lane. Having formed our groups, one digital bought from an old shoe shop round the corner called camera per group with the exception of a few people Blackmans, one of the few shops still on Brick Lane who brought their own cameras we set off to from the 1960's. Mick was proud that he was a real document life in Brick Lane.The way our group worked 'Eastender' and had been coming to Brick Lane market to compose, capture and create the images was as every Sunday since he was a kid. His friend Billy was though we were a team who had worked previously from Glasgow and was wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt for an extended period of time. Each person fell into and bright red plastic glasses. They were both hanging roll, sharing methods and ideas. Ensuring each out on the market and lived in a hostel close by.When suggestion was considered and each member given the we took the picture Billy really posed and enjoyed the chance to exchange positions experiencing what attention, whilst Mick sat unassuming on the step 'in his another would do to assist in image creation.There are finest'. some key silent sounds in the orchestration of an image.When we read the final product we often don't There was a wonderful woman called Dorothy who hear the verbal making of the picture. told us she was 76. When we asked if we could take her picture she was delighted. She wanted to show off “Excuse me do you mind if we take a quick picture of you?” her earrings which were purple flowered diamantes, “Look at the look on his face…we need to get a shot!” and she told us that she had matched her whole outfit “Do you mind if we stand over here so that the sun is behind around those earrings. She was wearing a lovely purple us?” flowered dress and matching necklace, and was off to a “Those cookies look nice.”…“More like artificial, lets take a tea dance. Dorothy told us that she went to tea dances photo!” every Sunday on the bus and had always liked to dance “Could you stand right there so we could just take your - 'in her younger days' she had danced at the Lyceum, picture?” “What about them do you think they will mind?” Astoria, and Café de Paris, but they had all closed now. “Yea you can take my photo if you want…will social services She said that people had often asked to take her picture see my face?” at the tea dances but had rarely sent them on to her as “I'm gonna grab that bloke with the strange hat?” they promised. “Ahh aint that sweet, let's grab that couple over there and ask them if they will have us take their photo?!?” These stories may seem unimportant even trivial to some, but these are the typical small stories that were Nuances of creatorship can be heard amongst the recounted to us that day, they were literal snapshots of utterances of the photography team on the pursuit for life, lives that few are interested in, unless as interesting life in Brick Lane. In a non specific order we researchers we are studying the effects of poverty, or would often use the walk, look, listen and shoot tools, family breakdown, or how gender and culture collectively making suggestions about interesting interrelates, or some other wider and important issue people or situations. In many instances subjects helped we need everyday people's interpretation of. How to construct the photograph as they offered often do we just talk to people without wanting to themselves for photographing or made reference to make some inferences on the bigger picture? What I things they too found interesting. The act of took from that day is how important small stories are. photographing seems to present, reinforce and I agree with Les Back in his book The Art of Listening that question; interests, personalities, the obscure, the urban sociology is about getting out, meeting people, familiar, the other, the sadness, the painfulness, the likes and engaging in everyday life. and dislikes. Seen through a collection of viewpoints and various frames of reference leaving the images to capture our gaze whilst making an enquiry into, “who is the photographer?”
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Why is it so easy to place art and regeneration in the same sentence? Sophie Risner
The Gorbals district on the south bank of the river project of Amanada Currie. Inspired by the 1975 Clyde is an area of mixed Irish Catholic Jewish decent. mayoral project of Ravio Puusemp in which the artist Predominantly working class, it has long had a managed to become successfully elected as mayor of reputation for being a slum area. It has suffered several Rosendale, New York, a small town of 1,500 Puusemp different attempts at clearance, with the most notable implemented radical water supply and sewage changes happening in 1866 by the City Improvement Trust.This as well as uniting the community through collective was then overshadowed by a 1960s rebuild, which, like participation. He eventually resigned on completion of many enclaves of urban regeneration, saw the tried and the project - a move which saw the community upset, tested mark of modernism scalding the Gorbals yet impressed, with his work. Puusemp's tale is not one district with concrete high rises designed by Sir Basil of few. Many times before has art come into play with Spence. In its wake an area feverish with crime and bureaucratic change. Currie on the other hand had no keen for re-management emerged. The Spence tower qualms about admitting her incentive. Her interests in blocks were removed in 1993 with further demolitions The Artworks Programme website are listed as ‘viewing arriving in 1994. Any remaining high rises were either public art as an ideal platform’, simply a way to re-clad or refurbished with most of the surviving communicate ideas stretching beyond the usual gallery victorian terraces reconfigured and surrounded with protocol. The use of the word public in any shape is new builds. Art has found a place in amongst this last always problematic. Currie’s work presupposes a phase of regeneration as a signifier of the new dawn of public and the realms with which she determines her city re-management. More and more art in the public art interactions into a community setting. Curries realm is becoming inextricably linked to the reality of project looked at building an orchard or allotment with contemporary regeneration, something that the community of Gorbals. Unlike some of the more governmental procedure is not totally unaware of. aesthetic interventions that found their way into The Most London local authorities have a by-line on art in Artworks Programme, the allotment project by Currie the public realm within their unitary development plan looked at crafting something more indelible - the (Local Area Framework) and with new strategies such cohesion of community through a collaborative effort. as Percent for Art becoming popular schemes for city Working with the community from design, to final management. Between developers and local authorities completion and then to nurture and growth, Currie it has now become very clear that art is part and looked at how she can truly be useful to this particular parcel of the formation of new space from the old. moment of regeneration. This could be seen as a curious move, the alignment of artistic practice against From 1999 to 2005, The Artworks Programme social practice has, since the minimalist understanding commissioned 20 artists to produce work within the of institutional critique become a very well trodden Gorbals district, leaning on the pre-existing Spence path.What is truly at stake when comprehending such architecture as well as taking inspiration from its a close connection between practice and community? history and previously demolished buildings. Like the In her 2006 take on Claes Oldenburgs I am for an art, MUF art strategy currently being played out on the the artist Carey Young mimicks Oldenburgs sentiments Greenwich Peninsula, The Artworks Programme used a with her own understanding of her practice moment of urban change to surface art production. Pioneered by artist collective Heisenberg consisting of “I am for an art that does not aspire to be a cure for artists Matt Baker and Dan Dubowitz The Artworks alienated humanity...” Programme's website alone extensively understands the all-encompassing approach needed for such an I am for an art...(after Claes Oldenburg) integrated relationship to be built between artists, (Carey Young 2006) community, building, developer and council. It isn't an easy relationship, and often finds confusion over By placing Young's stance on her own art production cohesion. The debate is how can art remain truly next to the Currie allotment project a very autonomous when shifted into the spectrum of contemporary idiom begins to shine through - that of regeneration? Within the Gorbals strategy is the arts awkward relationship with societal concerns.
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Young's stance would not have her helping a community outside of the institutional framework. Risk thus to build a thriving allotment, yet Currie’s decision to becomes shredded in time. Does an outside project manifest a discipline from this involvement loosens art’s have to baer resemblance to the outside space it own ability to form an active critique and remain inhabits or can a different pattern arise, re-defining completely autonomous. The tricky objective is that how art negotiates the tricky terms of regeneration? Currie actively sought to place arts position as social What can be justified from these various integrated healer, as almost a social worker. Her project is not practices is that art as a moment of critical practice of strictly functional in terms of defining an objective the concept of urban regeneration is still an incisive reality on the process of regeneration under way in the product with which to develop a discourse on the very Gorbals district, yet it serves to function as a coming subject of regeneration. together of the community. In essence art by-passes critique and finds itself as a state of mending and 'In the end, I contend that conflict, far from the ruin of repairing. By seeking to distance herself from the democratic public space, is the condition of its existence' information that her practice concerns,Young attempts (Rosalyn Deutsche Evictions: Art and Spacial Politics to form a more thorough discussion with what it is 1996) exactl, that comes from building a social relationship or social practice. This is not to discredit Currie. In Both Currie and Young look towards establishing context both ideas are interesting as they shift the role modes of operation with democratic public space.The of art into a new dimension and make for a different very nature of democratic space makes for both a attack on the understanding of social space. physical and theoretical realm that looks more and more towards art as a negotiator of critical best To bring this to a more current relevance it can be seen practice. This can only be a good thing in terms of that the recent regeneration of the Greenwich relinquishing art from the bowels of institutional Peninsula finds a community-centric art involvement in production. Whilst it comprehends art’s growing place from the outset. Dancing on the Peninsula which importance within the public realm, it also clarifies it as was held on July the 10th this year, looked to combine one of the more challenging ways with which to choreography from Temujin Gill, a local dancer in vocalize the conflict that arises when going about the residence, and over fifty local children from the problem of regeneration in the public sector. Millennium and Halstow Primary Schools. This work Deutsche goes on to look at how this is beneficial, boasts site specificity and explores current themes of while legitimating urban conditions as inevitable. Less sustainability, regeneration and the natural and built does art find itself the demon of the public realm but environment. In a bid to re-surface this through Currie’s more the public realm demonizes itself. A critical shift exploration, there is a tried and tested navigation of that sits positively for art’s future inclusion in such a understanding site, collaboration with local people and fruitful debate. discussion on the very terms at play. Art in this case has come to serve as signifier for regeneration. Whilst Rachel Whiteread’s House, 1993/94 was criticized for aesthetically being too close-to-the-bone in terms of art being a signifier of regeneration. A mere 14 years later and art (found in the public realm) has become almost only about regeneration .
This has changed art’s place within the spectrum of the public sphere and made for a different approach to practice; collaboration here becomes key to defining the local area. Consultation and obvious relationship building between artist, site and community tragically become all too important when crafting projects
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In hiding, on display Helena Holgersson
And there we were, on bar stools in the display received a joyful text message from him simply saying window of his favourite café inside Nordstan, a “HI! WE'VE GOT OUR RESIDENCE PERMIT!”. shopping centre in Göteborg, the second largest city in Consequently, when I contacted him about the walk I Sweden, laughing. Looking back I realize that when I had was very curious about how he would relate to called him on his mobile phone the week before to ask Bergsjön now that he did not have to hide from the him if he wanted to take a walk with me at a place of police anymore. In my PhD thesis I look at how non- his choice, I was expecting him to bring me to some citizenship is articulated in urban space. However, he part of Bergjön, the neighbourhood were he had been immediately suggested that we would meet up at staying during the year when he had been at risk of Drottingtorget, a square right next to the central being deported. In the interview that I did with him station, and then go somewhere for a coffee. back then, in a small room at a local voluntary organisation, he had told me that he would rather not When I arrived he was already there, waiting at the leave this area. In the map that he drew of ‘his newsstand. I spotted him from a long distance away.As Göteborg’ on this occation ‘hem’ [home] was the I came closer I noticed that he was wearing new central node. glasses. Chatting, we started to walk towards what he described as his favourite café, which turned out to be Despite this he regularly travelled throughout large located well into Nordstan. He preferred the seats in parts of Göteborg. In order to raise money for the rent the display window he told me,“so that you can watch he collected empty tins along the tramlines together the people passing by”, and we sat down there, doing with his parents and his younger sister. “I think I'd just that. Soon we found ourselves just smiling though. rather not be seen”, he told me, “but I have to”. Most How could we not? The symbolism of it all was of the places he included in his map are tram stops.The overwhelming. exceptions are ‘kyrkan’ [the church], ‘biblioteket’ [the library] and ‘Ica’ [a grocery store], which are all located at a walking-distance from the family's apartment. A few weeks before our meeting at the café I had
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‘Home Sweet Home (Not)’ Emma Jackson
[From a project looking at place and belonging in the Kirsty's map points out places from her past, relating lives of young homeless people.] to drugs and the arrests of her friends, she elaborates on the post-it note comment, Clapham Common is We sit in a circle on the floor around the map that has 'Swag Endz - bad experiences happn'd there'. Saba says been backed on white paper. The map is of London, she is too new in London to do the exercise, I say she 'Eastenders!' is the first reaction of a few of the young should just put down the places that she knows. She people. They seem unsure about what they are draws a very faint map of her hostel, Euston and the supposed to do. Me saying “Draw a map of your youth centre. Between the hostel and youth centre is London”, doesn't seem to be helping. I explain that first a figure, signifying that she walks between the two. we are going to draw our own maps, especially thinking These tentative markings of a newcomer are drawn so about safety and danger and then plot those personal faintly that someone writes over them by accident. maps on the big communal map. Kirsty takes a post-it Nicola on the other hand, draws all over the big map note, writes 'Swag' on it and sticks it on Clapham pointing out a good Portuguese café here and a place Common. More silence. I start to worry, but then to get cheap piercings there. Others recall stories that people begin drawing. happened in places.“On Notting Hill Carnival Day me and Kirsty had to stop at the toilets at Liverpool street Marcos scribbles North,West, East, South on his paper coz I had a bad tummy”. Kelly comments that she hates and writes 'Crackheads' on East, 'Over gangster' on Camden because she once saw a man with horns West,'Dickheads' on North. But then he starts to write there. She adds to the map “I hate Camden coz of men on the big map 'Smoking spot' in Regents Park, he with horns”.Those who draw all over the map contrast marks a hostel he used to live in. Nicola also draws with Michael who takes great care in finding 4 points in North, East, South and West on the edges of her paper South London. He marks them with stars and then but carefully. She then fills it in. NW1 is her 'adopted joins them up. When asked what it means he replies home' the first place she came to when she moved to 'my territory'. London. In the middle is central (Soho and Oxford Street) at the bottom is Victoria and a picture of a The maps when put together rub each other up the house with a chimney and smoke coming out of it wrong way. Someone has scribbled over the Arsenal 'where I live'. East London is marked 'Weave' (she used ground 'Lidl' which is corrected by John who proclaims to get her hair done there). Kelly says she can't draw it 'the best football team in Britain'. There is much and that this exercise is making her feel 'disabled'. She consternation over the labelling of East London, removes herself from the group. I think she has especially Hackney. The map only extends so far and abandoned the task but actually she sits away from the arrows have to be written off to the side to other group with another worker and draws a neat map of places, Rochester prison, Kent, Enfield. Both fun and the bus route that goes from her house to the youth painful experiences are marked on the map and the centre. She names all the tube stops, Holloway Prison difficult relationship between feelings of territory and and churches. She lines the route with trees and bins dislocation is summed up in someone's comment, an (“because you always get bins next to bus stops don't arrow pointing to somewhere in East London reading you?”). She is keen to take home 'the original' but 'Home Sweet Home (not)!' allows me to take a copy. She won't even let me take the map to the photocopier on my own, 'It's my work. I'm an artist.' Marie also takes herself away from the group and comes back with a map of Victoria. Copying her map onto the big map, she labels Victoria 'a peaceful place' and adds “I got lost [the first time] I tried to find Victoria”. She draws in the Channel 4 building, shops and churches naming 'Costcutters', 'Tesco', 'Pizza' and 'Greggs'. She also draws buses naming them by their number and destination.
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Tourism, Inbetweeness and Teotihuacán Jeremy Clouser
The desire to explore and have new experiences is a acceptance.This inbetweeness can often lead to absurd prime motivation for traveling to new countries and situations and a rather tragicomedy exocitization of immersing oneself in a different culture. Being a tourist, the 'other', as is aptly shown in the 'Dani' photographic places one in an in-between situation. As our world project by Susan Meiselas (2). becomes more and more homogenized we are told to seek out the 'real' of a particular place. This is amply For me, this inbetween feeling is heightened when demonstrated by TV shows like No Reservations by visiting a designated tourist destination, especially Anthony Bourdain, where eating how the locals eat ancient ruins. To truly say that you've been to Rome, it allows you to identify yourself as a local(1). However, is assumed that you will have paid the obligatory visit without truly understanding the language or being to the Coliseum. What would your friends say if you aware of unspoken cultural indicators, a two week went to Athens and you didn't visit the Parthenon? The holiday somewhere, will always leave one floating in layers of the palimpsest at these destinations can be limbo between wanting to be a genuine member of a overwhelming and visiting these sites does help one particular culture, and the impossibility of full get a sense of history and to put that history into a
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present-day context. But doesn't an almost blind visit to In the photographic images I made, my focus was these sites only enhance that nagging feeling of drawn time and again to a modern necessity, the inbetweenness? rubbish bin. The fact that no matter where we are, we are continually producing waste (and waste that will be Like Greece and Italy, Mexico is a country with a around for generations to come) is something that is a plethora of ancient sites, with many of them once striking contrast with an ancient society whose playing host to thriving metropolises. Alas, today, these 'lifestyle' (and waste) was essentially 'organic'. This once mighty cities have been reduced to (or built up to dichotomy is where the inbetweeness of travel and be) carefully preserved ruins and primarily tourist tourism lies and it lends itself perfectly to attractions or places of archaeological research. An photography's ability to record and memorialize the example one such place is the ancient Aztec city of 'real' of a particular time and place. Teotihuacán. Teotihuacán, along with the Zócalo (Mexico City's central Plaza), and Frida Kahlo's Casa As an Australian/U.S. citizen who has now been living Azul, are all obligatory tourist destinations for visitors in Mexico City for over three years, this inbetweeness (3). After visiting these destinations 2 or 3 times whilst has become internalized and is something that I deal playing host I start to ask my self questions.What role with on a daily basis. But above all, perhaps the most does the ancient play in contemporary society? What important thing I've learned is that after seeing the does it mean to visit these spaces? How am I to behave juxtaposition of grand pyramids and seemingly in a place as old as this? What can I learn from being inconsequential rubbish bins our contemporary here? society needs to create societal remnants that will be as celebrated as those left behind by the Aztecs and Like most things in life, one's answers are based on an other ancient civilizations. individual perspective shaped by lifelong formal and informal learning. I try to find answers to these questions by allowing myself to be transported back in time and imagining people going about their daily References: business; cooking, praying or, perhaps, procreating. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life However, my envisioning of the past is continually Penguin Books: New York, 1990. influenced by the way that I'm reading the space (4).It is extremely difficult for me to get past my recognition (1) In each episode, the former chef,Anthony Bourdain, chooses a that the place where I find myself standing was once an country that he thinks would be interesting to visit. In the urban center that could resemble a contemporary city beginning, he seemingly knows little about these countries, and he in complexity, yet it is has taken on a completely proceeds to explore the culture through the food of the 'common' person and in the process gaining an understanding of what that different form, exuding a cemetery-like calm that which country is 'really' like. makes me feel hushed and reverent for times past and www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdain the people who had their hearts ripped out while alive (2) “In this subjective, fragmentary history, Meiselas draws from the to appease various gods. experiences of missionaries, colonists, anthropologists and modern-day ecotourists, all of whom have come to the Dani's Baliem Valley [Papua New Guinea] and transformed the conditions As to figuring out how to behave, like most social under which they live.The ambiguous relations between power and situations, the guesswork is taken care of by observing representation - whether in the form of Dutch colonial patrol others in close proximity and following their lead notes from the 1930s, the sensationalized media accounts of the (Goffman, 1990). One is rarely alone in these spaces, survivors of a downed U.S. army plane in "Shangri-La" from the 1940s or a tourist's snapshots from the 1990s - become visible in there are always other tourists, hawkers of souvenirs Meiselas's book, through both the contradictions and unexpected and park officials.We are given plenty of opportunity to continuities of the gathered materials.” Quote taken from the gather clues to combine with our knowledge of book's synoposis. previous experiences in order to act appropriately. store.magnumphotos.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&pr oducts_id=2029 One's behavior is further modified by signs and (3) This is evidenced by the number of photos of visiting strategically places barriers guiding movements and performers, celebrities, dignitaries and/or politicians that are taken actions. The message is; stay on the path and enjoy in these places and that appear in the social pages of the local yourself responsibility. By being aware of these things, newspapers. modernity keeps creeping into my imaginings of times (4) This could be put another way, “through the prism of my Goldsmiths education”. past. It is in this constant mixing of history and the contemporary from which this series of photos emerges.
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What is British? Michael Wayne Plant
The What is British? Project arose out of a desire to particular, a specific person, event or place. As an explore identities found and encountered within a artist, I work using photography to explore the social limited urban area. From a sociological point of view I landscape using a documentary style that explores wanted to explore in photographs notions of British notions of identity. By creating imagery that retains identity. However to do this on a scale that is the person within the landscape and social setting, it is economically feasible and practical would not be possible to understand more of the sociological possible within that time frame and financial resources context within which the subject lives. Supplying visual that were available to me. I decided that by limiting clues to their identities are not only what they are the area to within approximately one mile of the wearing, their accessories, or hairstyles but also their Rotherhithe tunnel in the East End of London, this ethnicity and their physiognomy. This then makes it would give me an area that was both economically, possible to use these outward signifiers to allow us to culturally and ethnically diverse enough that it would make assumptions about identities. allow me to make a start in examining contemporary British identities. My photographs are influenced by the work of Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand, William Eggleston and Paul While notions of identity have far ranging Graham, photographers who chose to use consequences for the individual, recent postmodern photography as a means of personal exploration of conceptions of identity have implications for all their social milieu. members of societies globally. Post-modern interpretations of how the ‘other’ is seen within societies (Sardar, 1998) and boundaries that are The project What is British? is currently ongoing.There will created and maintained, all affect how differing be an exhibition in April 2009 at Departure Gallery identities are perceived. London is a city that has (http://www.depart.in/). undergone rapid change from an industrial city at the centre of a global empire in the nineteenth century, to the current global city as defined by Sassen (Sassen, References: 2001) which de-industrialised while becoming a global Sardar, Ziauddin (1998) Postmodernism and the other. hub for the finance and banking industries. The East London: Pluto Press. End of London has been at the centre of this change; Sassen, Saskia (2001) The global city; New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton: Princeton University Press. developments have dramatically altered the area’s Bauman, Zygmunt (2004: 38) Identity. Cambridge: Polity urban environment. Press. Beck, Ulrich & Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth (2001) Using photography to study various identities can help Individualization. London: Sage define who has access to the many varieties of urban Bauman, Zygmunt (2001: 151) The individualised society. space available within an area.While some people get Cambridge: Polity Press. to choose their identity, others have their identities forced on them by their circumstances (Bauman, 2004:38) We live in a society where community has been under threat by a process of individualization (Beck/ Beck-Bernsheim, 2001) leading us to assert our own individual identities. This renders our common sense of community redundant. With identities becoming surrogates of community (Bauman, 2001:151), the possibility of overcoming communal or social misfortune gets negated as individual trouble or strife. Photography, by its nature, looks at the
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Worlds apart
Outside Lehman Bros
How to walk though a street
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Environment: urbanisation and biodiversity Bringing a hotspot in from the cold Peter Coles
Cape Town explores new ways to conserve its unique floral confined to townships on the urban edge. Since the heritage in the face of exploding poverty and urban sprawl late 1980s, though, almost a million (mostly Xhosa people) have settled on the city's outskirts, many in Behind the romantic names of some of Cape Town's the township of Khayelitsha.These vast slums of tiny 'townships' (suburbs for non-white populations under houses and tin shacks stretch as far as the eye can see, apartheid) poverty and violent crime are rife. Soft- across the fragile dunes and seasonal wetlands of sounding Lavender Hill is not somewhere a white Cape Flats. In some areas, over half the adults are Capetonian is likely to set foot - and certainly not a unemployed, while more than 35% are infected with place he or she would want to get lost at night.Yet, a HIV/AIDS. few hundred metres away, down a surprisingly quiet, tidy street is the Rondevlei Nature Reserve. Once But the Cape Flats is also part of the Cape Floristic inside the gate, a haven of tranquil beauty opens up.A Kingdom, and has a rare, lowland kind of Fynbos, with kingfisher dives off a tall reed; pelicans, spoonbills and perhaps the world's highest concentration of pink flamingos mass on the banks of a vlei (lake), and, endangered plants.Yet,to the new arrivals, it looks like as night falls, a couple of hippos rise like submarines to 'scrubland' - an ideal place to put up a makeshift wallow and graze. “I'd come here with my granny for home. “How do you look after biodiversity in a the weekend,” says my guide. context of extreme poverty, where local communities have little history of involvement in conservation?” Cape Town has become a city of sharp contrasts like asks Tanya Goldman, Project Manager of Cape Flats this, where 'urban' and 'natural' worlds often coincide Nature, a partnership project between the City of - or collide. Table Mountain, the spiritual and physical Cape Town, the National Botanical Institute, the Table heart of the city, is slap in the middle of business and Mountain Fund, and the Botanical Society of South up-market residential areas.Yet it is home to Fynbos Africa.“This was the challenge for our project.” (pronounced fain-boss), a unique vegetation, and the main component of the Cape Floristic Kingdom - the One response, she explains, is the City of Cape Town's world's richest, and geographically smallest, floral Integrated Metropolitan Environment Policy (IMEP), kingdom (plants confined to a geographical area). adopted in 2001, according to which “there doesn't Some 9600 species can be found in an area the size of have to be a choice between environment or people. Portugal, 70% of them endemic (found nowhere else), You can protect the environment in a way that while 1406 are listed in the World Conservation supports peoples' needs.” At the heart of the IMEP is Union's (IUCN) Red Data book of endangered a Biodiversity Strategy, implemented through a species. The mountain's 57 km2 alone boasts about network of 261 areas that should preserve a minimum 1500 species. Just for comparison, one of the five other floral kingdoms - the Boreal Kingdom - comprises the whole of the northern hemisphere.
The proximity of what some claim is the world's hottest plant biodiversity 'hotspot' to an urban area poses obvious conservation problems, especially given Cape Town's open access policy to its national park - which means no fences and few pay points. But these 'urban nature' conservation challenges are multiplied many times over by an explosion of economic migrants from the rural Eastern Cape in search of jobs, arriving at a rate of about 45,000 every three months. Under apartheid, black Africans were not allowed to live in central Cape Town and were Khayaletscha
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of Cape Town's unique biodiversity. These sites range While Cape Flats Nature is working with traditional in size from traffic islands a few metres square, to healers at Macassar Dunes to grow medicinal plants whole stretches of coastal dunes - many are on the between the shacks and the dunes - to act as a buffer Cape Flats. For the moment, Cape Flats Nature is against further sprawl, Brett Myrdal, Manager of Table concentrating on four experimental sites among these. Mountain National Park has a more controversial proposition - housing. He wants to see “a middle class One of them, the 37-hectare Edith Stephens Wetland community from the townships overlooking the Park, surrounded by poor townships, is a modest start, coastal area, and thus providing protection through but a success all the same.“The City has started to get line-of-sight.” But he says,“environmentalists don't see the message that they won't find support for housing as part of a conservation solution.They see it conservation in the Cape Flats by fencing people out,” as a threat.” In the end, though, both may be right. says Tanya Goldman. “Sustainable conservation Across on the north side of the city, luxury houses management has to win the hearts, involvement and costing up to 3 million Rand ($400,000) jostle for an understanding of the surrounding communities.” Two of unspoiled view over the beautiful coast and dunes the other three pilot sites are more of a challenge, around the Blaauwberg Conservation Area (BCA).The though. Both the Wolfgat Nature Reserve and Macassar City planning department forecasts that 500,000 Dunes are isolated no-go areas, sandwiched between people, of all income brackets, will be living around the Khayelitsha and deserted beaches. Spectacularly BCA in the next 20 years or so. beautiful, and studded with arum lilies, they are also where gangsters dump their victims, and are being encroached on relentlessly.
Isoetes' last stand
The Edith Stephens Wetland Park, just outside Cape Town, is a humble 37-hectare patch of land bounded on two sides by roads, and a township bursting at the seams, on the third.At the heart of the park is a 3.7 hectare patch of seasonal wetland, donated to the city's Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens by an eccentric patron in the 1950's. It is the only surviving habitat on the planet for a kind of fern, Isoetes capensis.“The first response by conservationists,” says Zwai Peter, the Park's communication officer,“was to fence it off to keep people out. But fencing is ideal material for informal housing. It wouldn't have lasted two days.” Rather than keep local people out, he explains, they looked for ways to get them involved in conservation in ways that were meaningful to them.“We turned the question round,” he says,“asking: what are the social challenges that we can relate to biodiversity?”
Employment was an obvious starting place. So, after painstaking consultation with local people, the project recruited youth from the surrounding townships to clear the park of alien invasive species.An old farmhouse was turned into an environmental education centre. A bird-watching hide was built, and children encouraged to help monitor the birds, rather than hunt them. A medicinal garden has been planted with help from traditional healers, featuring plants that can be found locally.There's even a picnic site, although alcohol is not allowed.
“This used to be a dump site, and a place gangs would meet,” says Zwai Peter.“Now it is a place of tranquillity and recreation. Local people realise they don't have to spend money to go to Table Mountain to see nature.” With 300 visitors a week,” he says,“we're winning the battle; but we should be getting more.”
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Work/Space: a visual exploration Yael Gerson Ugalde
It is perhaps not rare for anyone writing to experience spaces. In a sense then, as Joe Moran describes, the what is called 'writers block', which our 'trusted' office describes both a building and a particular work Wikipedia defines as a 'phenomenon involving culture. temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity'. As a So how do people live those workspaces in their PhD student in the process of 'writing up', this is an everyday? What kinds of relationships do we have ever present phenomenon. Recently, I announced such with them? As I sit and write these lines from my a 'block' via Facebook, and got all sorts of helpful office in Warmington Tower - the tallest building in advise: go for a run, have a cup of tea, get some fresh Goldsmiths College - the howling wind distracts me. I air, and so on. All of them involved me tearing myself feel quite lucky for having one of the best views from away from my desk. But how could I? I should at least 'the tower'. I can see most of the London landmarks, pretend that I was working, even though I was secretly from the emerging 'cheese grater' to Battersea Power procrastinating [on Facebook], catching up on the Station. But I could also tell you that from my window latest episodes of Gossip Girl (it's all research), and I have the best view of Sainsbury's, Currys and Tops emailing other equally bored people stuck at work in Tiles by New Cross Gate Station. Do I look at the their offices. In fact, the architecture of 'my' office, distance because of some romanticized idea of allows me to give the appearance of hard work-not inspiration, or is it a work/space that I have least because of the piles of books and papers I have constructed? Henri Lefebvre holds that ‘social space is all around me (oh yes, the symbol of the academic), a social product - the space produced in a certain but also because Warmington Tower,which houses the manner serves as a tool of thought and action. It is not Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College, used to only a means of production but also a means of be a residential building (halls of residence to be control, and hence of domination/power’ and that precise) which now, as offices, have become a series of every society produces its own space. We are isolated boxes connected by a small hallway. It constantly (re)defining our spaces and laying out our resembles the 'traditional' corridor offices. But the spatial politics through the mundane su/objects of great thing about WT is its view. And in the midst of daily life. As we become more interconnected, both my writers block, unable to watch Gossip Girl for fear as subjects with objects, but also globally, workspace of being caught by Hannah (my office-mate), I looked throughout the world has become increasingly out the window. standardized; it is subsumed into a global corporate culture thereby creating a tension between globalised In an email conversation with a friend, I asked him sameness and local inequality. about his workplace. Seeing as he has a rather confidential job, I imagined work spaces where these Is there a way in which we can read this tension? In secretive and very important tasks would take place. sharing similar office spaces (physical and cultural) do As it turns out, it was not a Bond film. But this got me we create a different space through our everyday thinking about the intersection of work and space; practices? I wanted to see how people understand about the ways in which we construct our workplace and construct their work/space. For this, I sent an (through objects, photographs, plants) and how the email to some friends, asking them to send me a office space creates a working experience (through its picture of their work/space: the framing was open to architecture). I remember walking along the South them; and they could add any comments about the Bank in London where many of the offices at street kind of work they do, their workplace and so on.The are very 'open plan'. Here, it is no longer open plan idea was to collate images from different kinds of just within the office, but to the rest of London.Their work/space and see whether we could map a walls are made of glass, and as I gleefully pass those homogenous office that becomes (or is becoming) offices, I smile to myself. It's not me in there… through our everyday presence resulting in an working, but I see myself in many of those office appropriation of that space.
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The first response arrived 35 minutes after sending note, whilst I am very grateful to all who took time out the original email. Somehow, I don't know the person and sent me their pictures, I couldn't help but feel a who sent me this picture. Yes, I emailed J, and yes, I sense of idleness which this project interrupted. must have had at some point some correspondence with J (we are at least on the same mailing list), but I “The everyday exists as a kind of 'residual deposit' that didn't know who J was.This may sound irrelevant, but lags behind the more glamorous,accelerated experiences of upon reading the caption to his image, I wasn't sure contemporary society” whether J was being sarcastic or honest. Here are his -Henri Lefebvre. picture and caption:
Tom y Al, Graphico, Designo, Notting Hill
“This is view from my desk.Top floor in Clerkenwell EC1. I work for one of the worlds largest branding consultancies and open space and outdoor light is essential within the creative business, gives you ability to think freely!” -James
As you can see from the image, although the office space fits into to the 'open plan' design, it doesn't seem to me to be an 'open space', nor does it seem to let in much 'outdoor light'. I don't know J, but from Martin’s office reading his words and seeing his workspace, I have begun to create an image of the kind of work/space in creative consultancy in London. There is a MacBook ('creative'), Mr.T and a red Double Decker bus, a dataroller,an 'ideas board', empty cups and classes, and even some Marmite.This office space has slowly been occupied by the mundane and bit by bit we make the office 'ours'.
Here are a few more images for you. I have kept the images as they were sent. Rather than translating their spaces, I felt it best to show their framing and their work/space as they constructed them. On a personal And last but not least: my office!
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Strandline - beachcombing on the Greenwich Peninsula Melissa Bliss
On 27 September 2008 people came down to the 1857 by the Crown after a long-running dispute with foreshore on Greenwich Peninsula to beachcomb the City of London over the tidal river.The riverside after the high autumn tides.They arranged their finds walkway - part of the Thames Path national trail - is on the sands - by colour, shape or to create a picture: owned by English Partnerships, a regeneration public This was Strandline, my collaborative art project. body - which acquired 120 hectares of the peninsula in 1997. The shore from the high water mark to the From the high tide at noon until 6pm we encouraged riverside walkway has uncertain ownership but has people onto the foreshore to beachcomb. There was been claimed by Greenwich Yacht Club. plenty of debris washed up onto the shore from the high autumn tides.We created displays of our findings Ownership and rights over the foreshore in Britain in marked-out areas on the sand which would last for have long been fought over.The Crown owns the sea the day then be carried away on the evening tide.We bed up to the high water mark, with a few historical found glass, pottery, bones, plastic, plants and wood, exceptions. People have some common law rights to some recent, some centuries old, and as we collected access and to collect bait and fish but this is often we talked. Most people lived locally. Some had been disputed by private landowners. On the peninsula, onto the foreshore before, some not.The foreshore is English Partnership's redevelopment led to the an inbetween area - people are often unsure if they are creation of a riverside path for pedestrians and allowed onto it.At the Strandline site there is a waist cyclists around the whole peninsula from Greenwich high railing but gaps at either end.The sands are often in the west to the Thames Barrier. The riverside used by people to walk dogs or look out over the walkway is well managed, with landscaping and river. Lydia, a young girl, and her family made a face benches.You can walk past large sculptures by Richard with an aerosol can for a nose, chalk pebbles for eyes Wilson and Anthony Gormley. Public access to the and vegetation for hair. Sophie arranges objects in foreshore itself, however, has been denied, except of rows by colour - a pantone chart of debris. Jes creates the slipway accesible by vehicles on the west side. On glasshenge, an array of glass fragments standing upright my last visit a group of Romanian men were filling a in the sand. Earlier in the week Jol, a local man, had van with scrap metal washed up by the tide. created a sculpture on the sands nearby, from debris Otherwise, it is all fenced off. washed up on the shore. Looking like a marlin, the curved back of the fish echoeds that of the Dome in Strandline was part of Art in the Open - four artists creating new work the distance. outdoors on the Greenwich Peninsula, commissioned by Stream (formerly known as Independent Photography). It was part of Stream's response to the Cultural Olympiad, the 2012 Olympics' four year arts My land or your land programme. Stream produces public and collaborative arts, working with artists to create projects which are location specific and respond to the characteristics of a place. Stream has its roots in the community Strandline's site is a microcosm of the complex media movement of the 1970s and has been through several name relations along the Thames. The riverbed and changes and relaunches since then. It is based on the Greenwich foreshore to the high water mark is owned by the Peninsula and works across the borough of Greenwich.. Melissa Bliss Port of London Authority [PLA] which was given it in (livingcinema.org); streamarts.org.uk; artintheopen.wordpress.com.
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Balkanising Taxonomy Nela Milic
'Memories, whether individual or collective, are not static and frozen in time, but are alive, rooted in the present as much as in the past, and linked to aspirations as much as social experience.' N. Sadig Al-Ali (2007), Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present
Context
This symposium/exhibition aimed to interrogate notions of Balkan identity, and trouble the impulse to create a stable taxonomic account of the Eastern European subject. Through the construction of protective preservation chambers (light-safe boxes sewn out of black felt), fetishized Balkans can only be encountered through a small peephole.Also, photographs of Balkan people are placed in glass jars, to ensure that they are not physically handled by the viewing public.The voyeuristic impulse hidden behind the project of preservation is exposed, where the boxes and jars claim to protect the objects from light and decay, but instead contribute to widening the gap between the (Western) self and (Balkan) other. The labels which accompanied the garments and photographs contain a mixture of factual and imagined information, once more calling into question the taxonomic urge, and highlighting the problematic process at work behind studying and representing the other. Through the methods of conservation employed in this project, which intensify the relationship between the merging of scientific and absurd classification practices, the curators hoped to contribute visually to the already vast field of study which questions the space from which the Balkan subject is formed.
Exhibition narrative
This exhibition poses many questions in relation to the impulse to collect Balkan artefacts.The collector subject is mediating the relationship between East and West by manipulating the framework within which the textiles are presented, and hence directs the dialogue and tension between two worlds. In this dichotomy, however, the curator can expose the paradigm s/he works from as a positionality, but also as a fragile space within which the objects are captured.
Her/his narrative is formed by grouping, and by creating an identity of Balkanness, recognisable nowadays by conflicts. The impulse to taxonomize is justified by questioning the impulsiveness of others and is constructed as a binary - archiving against chaotic existence. In this argument, wild Balkan objects play the role of the other. If the audience is led through the understanding of this via labelling, division and distance, they are not engaging with the objects in an active and creative way. Curators are interpreting the objects as violated by navigation and want to put their perception on an equal footing with the choosers and the viewers, so the misconceptions of the Balkans do not continue.
They believe that the desire of the collector to protect against decay is often wrapped up in the fear of the other and s/he expresses that by trying to contain, to tame the objects, but that disables her/himself from understanding them. The process of classification, however comforting, cannot last.The nature of objects on show is inherent. They live through the cultures they were formed in, and as that society progresses, transforming itself into various shapes, they start to slip out from the domestic environment into the public realm. If classified, they become invisible and the slippage incomprehensible, but if left to live as they are, they might provide more than data: a snippet of history.
www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/balkanising-taxonomy
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Signs of the City: Young People's Photographic Imaginary of the European Metropolis Alison Rooke
London Conference Report The first panel of the day on Young People, Cities and Citizenship included a paper by Ben Gidley from The Signs of the City conference took place at the CUCR entitled Young citizens: local inflections of the Goethe Institute, in Kensington, London on the 4th global. This paper, based on a series of research October 2008. This one day event organised by projects conducted at CUCR, some of which used CUCR in partnership with urban dialogues bought visual and media-based methods, explored emerging together students, educationalists, artists, forms of multiculture among young people in urban practitioners and academics working in the area of South London. Ben discussed how these forms are cultural education, media and pedagogy, visual arts, shaped by global cultural corporate culture while at urban studies, languages and European studies to the same time being intensely local, rooted in explore a cross-disciplinary perspective on neighbourhoods - they are simultaneously hybrid and participatory arts practice with a particular focus on creole. Graham Jeffrey from the School of Media, young people's urban culture. The conference, Languages and Music at the University of the West of together with an exhibition at Watermans arts Scotland's paper offered some reflections on his centre in West London marked the end of the extensive work on the discourses of learning and eighteen month long London Signs of the City project. inclusion in informal performing arts projects with It was part of a month long series of conferences and young people. Graham set out many of the strengths exhibitions in four participating cities: Berlin, London, of participatory arts, the ways that they are Sofia and Barcelona. profoundly social and often validating to young people and placing their voices in a wider social context. Graham's paper was followed by a After introductions by Karl Pfeiffer (Goethe Institute presentation by Mónica Segura Márquez, a Berlin- London) and Uta Staiger (urban dialogues) Michael based artist who ran several workshops in Berlin as Keith (CUCR) opened up the conference with a part of the Signs of the City Project. Monica presented keynote address which set the scene for the day. a short film which illustrated some of the central Michael’s paper discussed how cities are changing so motifs in her work which aims to offer a process rapidly in a global process of re-invention that the whereby young people learn to see the city through city can become a stranger to itself. In this context fresh eyes, discover aspects of the city that they pass photography offers the possibility of mediating the over in their daily routines. relationship between urban practices of visioning and re-invention and the ways in which we inhabit cities at the level of everyday routine praxis. Multi- media After lunch the discussion turned to visualising participatory arts projects such as Signs of the City contemporary urbanism. In a session chaired by use this possibility of photography to investigate the Rudolf Netzelmann (from Zukunftsbau/urban ways young people inhabit and imagine their place in dialogues, Berlin), Gillian Rose, a leading theorist in cities today. This in turn tells us about young peoples visual methodologies, gave a paper entitled sense of, place, of neighbourhood and their 'right to Photographs of/as Urban Identity which questioned the city. Michael discussed how the project works some of the assumptions about photograph’s to disrupt the deceptively simple stories of young creators that are often employed by social scientists. people, identity and contemporary urbanism Fiona Fieber, from Space media in Hackney, London, circulating today. At its best the project displays the reflected on her experience as Head of sort of Relational Aesthetics identified with Bourriaud, Collaborations at Space media which was founded in a theorist who, in foregrounding the interplay of May 1968. Fiona reflected on the organisation’s urbanism, curation and aesthetics has opened up arts development and its current place in the in the practice in the last decade. changing cultural landscape of collaborative and participatory arts, and the spatial changes to
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Hackney as an Olympic borough. Alison Rooke from begins and ends. Also, the requirements of funders CUCR discussed the challenges presented by and the social contexts in which such practices are Evaluating the Signs of the City project, reflecting on currently being commissioned and the ways in which the ways in which the process of engagement is as participatory photography connects matters of significant as the images produced and the projects aesthetics, lived experience and social processes. legacy, the Citipix web platform. She then discussed the photographs produced in the project and the ways in which the images are understood as The conference was a welcome opportunity to semiotics, art and sociological statements. come together to discuss the ethical, political, pedagogical and aesthetic dimensions of socially engaged photographic practice across a variety of The final session focused on participative arts sites. practice. The session was chaired by Britt Hatzius an artists and member of CUCR. The first paper was by Aida Sanchez from the University of Barcelona To conclude, engaging projects such as Signs of the entitled The Politics of Collaboration in Signs of the City City speak to our understanding of young peoples - the challenge is the asset. It examined some of the conditions of inhabiting the contemporary relational and organisational aspects of collaborative metropolis in language mediated by the visual arts project such as Signs of the City.This paper placed practises and performances of the photographic. In the project in the broader context of cultural Berlin, Barcelona, London and Sofia artists worked policies aimed at the creation of concensus and with young people through the medium of the symbolic identification with notions of 'citizenship' photograph and in many ways curated both their or 'community'. Aida examined some of the neighbourhoods and representations of the city at negotiations, debates and tensions that characterise large.The signs of the city they produced are more collaborative projects. Rather than see these as complex than those found in simplistic geographical flaws, she discussed the ways that these are at the tropes of the city as a playground, a site of danger core of such projects and therefore need to be part or governmentality. In this way the project provided of the way such projects are represented and powerful axes through which the research project evaluated. Douglas Nicholson, one of the artists who intervened in urban form, identity and space ran one of the Signs of the City workshops in mediated by very different experiments in Hackney, London gave a paper Participatory photographic practice. Conventional tropes of the Photographic Methods. He discussed the diverse four cities were reconfigured by these alternative settings he has carried out such work in and the curations; the hidden disclosed, the visible ways that photography can be used in areas as varied reconfigured. as health, heritage and community development. Melissa Bliss, also a London artist, presented her Thanks to Michael Keith for his input into this article. work which uses mobile devices in youth arts projects such as Signs of the City, BBC Blast and FreqOut . The conference has received generous support from the Delegation to the United Kingdom of the Government of Catalonia and the Institute Ramon Llull. It has also been Considered together the mix of panellists, their supported by the Catalan Institute for the Cultural different disciplinary approaches together, with Industries (ICIC) in London, and the Spanish Embassy engaging questions from the floor led to a stimulating London. day where artists, academics and educationalists Signs of the City was initiated by Berlin-based youth art together considered some of the dilemmas and organization urban dialogues (www.urbandialogues.de). It opportunities raised by participative and has been carried out with the support of the Culture collaborative arts practice and the social and political Programme of the European Union, the Capital Cultural contexts in which this kind of work takes place. Fund Berlin, the Institute of Culture of the City of These discussions included the extent to which Barcelona, the British Council Berlin, the Spanish Embassy projects are participative or collaborative and the in Berlin, and SONY. It works in collaboration with the balance of power in deciding where participation Goethe-Institutes in Sofia, Barcelona and London.
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Signs of the City: Photographic Workshop Campbell works
Campbell Works is the collaboration between artists Neil Taylor We discussed the possibility with the initiators of the and Harriet Murray. Since 1997 Taylor and Murray's practice project Urban Dialogues of including deaf has extended to include curating an exhibition program at their participants, intrigued by the idea of working with a artist run gallery and project space in East London, initiating group that may potentially have a very different new participatory art projects and creating collaborations with relationship or unique experience with the city artists, scientists, local authorities, and other organization.They environment. Following on from research encompass an eclectic attitude to cross-disciplinary approaches, placing value on the experience, process and risk undertaken for a previous Campbell Works project taking involved in collaborative projects. For Signs of the City titled MindMine, (2006), we wanted to explore how they ran a workshop at the Wilhelm-Von-Turk-Schule (School) perceptions can vary for the hearing impaired, and for children with varying degrees of hearing and speaking which if any of the other senses are enhanced to take impairment in Potsdam near Berlin in April 2008. on the role of the missing sensory input. Hearing is (www.campbellworks.org) part of our communication system along with sight, so, do deaf people see the world differently? And what in the urban landscape attracts their attention? The project kicked off at the Arts and Education Lab Do they see details and notice more incidental (AEL) in autumn 2007 at the House of Cultures of moments that get missed through the audio clutter the World (HKW) in Berlin. It was an exciting three of our cities? days with a packed programme of presentations, open debate, speed dating and intellectual duelling. The emphasis was for all participating artists, technicians, directors and facilitators to meet and get Our methodology to know each other through developing key issues Our approach was to try and explore the possibility involved within the project. Many hours were spent of communicating largely through pictures and discussing different aspects of the project from actions.With the projects focus on photography we ethical and international legal issues to the projects were interested in creating an approach that would technical implementation. We collectively explored allow the participants a rewind from digital the function of the public website (www.citipix.net) technologies back to the birth of photography, the and its usability for the young photographers. The aim being to inform their thinking by creating a question hanging was how, in a relatively short dialogue between the photographer and the period of time, could you maximise the creative instrument of image capture. In order to retain output of a group of individuals that you have never mobility we developed a portable darkroom that can met before, while at the same time ensuring that the be transported and erected almost anywhere, and experience be meaningful and not just an exercise in used to develop large format black and white images speed teaching and photo extraction. in the 'field'.
We were given the opportunity to determine our own framework for delivery and through the A&E lab we developed the embryo of an idea. By exploring the inherent core values within the project that lay beyond the pictorial surface of the website, we asked what was the inner heart of the project that excited us? Assuming that one of the aims of Signs of the City was to take a snapshot of city life seen through the eyes of Europe's youth, then, as many different representatives should be included as possible. The range of participating countries was as good as the finance would allow and the groups seemed fairly diverse in their catchments. But none included young people with a recognised disability.
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Examining their results they assessed the pros and cons of 150 years of technological advancement as they struggled with long exposure times and cardboard camera shake. It quickly became apparent that their focus was largely on portraiture, photographing each other within familiar surroundings.We realised that for them, and perhaps all teenagers, the most immediate and interesting subjects are friends. There was also an element of hesitation. To walk around the city or stand in a public space next to a strange cardboard box and not feel self-conscious is hard. You have to be very keen or oblivious not to be mildly embarrassed, and for a group of young people who do not generally want to draw attention to themselves there were issues for some, about the spectacle of an often The Workshop extremely long exposure and being seen carrying the cardboard cameras. The 15 students were very quick on the uptake and eager to engage in the project. Using fundamental analogue principles, they constructed large format The participating photographers were as mixed in pinhole cameras from found cardboard boxes.With their creative interests and skills as any group of 15 a digital camera in one hand and their pinhole teenagers. But, the emotional perceptions and speed camera in the other they set out to explore their at which the students gathered information from surroundings. As they began returning to the their surroundings seemed significantly faster than darkroom 'base camp' they learnt how to develop those of us who rely on our ears, and their ability to and fix their images. In the glowing red darkness of assimilate learning was impressive. Many of our the developing tent, the pinhole negatives were projects involve the creation of disorientating transformed into positive composite images. The environments, and during these workshops the students began overlaying cut paper stencils onto students' reliance on their visual communication their negatives, immediately creating new signage and systems was severely hampered when they worked narratives.We were also able to create a wonderful within the darkroom tent. This loss of juxtaposition of technologies by attaching a GPS communication systems, both verbal and visual, device to the cardboard cameras to log and map the strangely created an atmosphere of calm, a kind of 'globally positioned situations' of the pinhole 'lost at sea' feeling for all involved. As artists we were exposures. working within a communicative environment that was alien to us, and now, the participants were experiencing it too. By removing the ability to communicate through conventional channels, they were forced to learn from each other's actions and encouraged to take risks even if it meant making mistakes. By dissolving the conversational communication systems, including signing, the framework allowed for the creation of new imagery within an experimental platform, where practical activity became the form of communication. The imagery the photographers produced is beautiful, compelling and ethereal, and their upload selection will remain as a legacy to the project, and easily speak for itself, but we hope a deeper legacy is left in the students ability to question, learn from and act on their actions and imaginations, as they did during the five days we had the pleasure to be with them.
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Landmarks of cut, gaze and fiction for a Distant Landscape: On the photographs of Sachiyo Nishimura Soledad García
Selecting three different city sceneries within distant interruption visibly in its intercalate format, exposing vision and condensed through a breadth of natural the first explicit traces of her cutting system. The landscape, Sachiyo Nishimura seems to portray the second and implicit trace regards the several apparent uniform and familiar urban topography. At horizontal, vertical and oblique grids acting as first glance, the photographs evidently contain landmarks that indicate the complex construction of references to the city features; nevertheless the the entire landscape. Both outside and inner recognition of the specific locations remains partial. cuttingsconform to the logic of multiple manipulations Time becomes essential not only for the identification based on a meticulous programme of reconstruction. of the diverse pieces, but also for the detection of Under the processes of overlapping, addition and the repetition, the condition of iteration and the spatial effects of mirror image, the initial unification of the activation through discreet measurements and photographs are displaced as fragments, the scales are continual extensions. altered, and the surfaces retouched in maximum grey saturation, leaving the impression of an excessive flat In a panoramic view, the nine photograph pieces of city un-inhabited. Sachiyo Nishimura reveal the constant and exact
If London City Airport, Ventanas and Docklands, the One of the crucial elements explored in the series of three initial photographs of this Distant Landscape have photographs regards the sources of tension: the layers something in common, it is the archetype of non- of intersections and the reiterative oppositions. Yet places. As the anthropologist Marc Augé once more than a system of coordinates, the different described, “the space of non-place creates neither landmarks - grids, signs and urban structures subtly singular identity nor relations; only solitude, and emphasized not a real mapping, but the construction similitude”(Augé, 1995). Addressing states of of fiction. Some questions arise.Why persist with the impersonality and sameness, the complete nine pieces effects of illusion? Is it the only residue of non-places´ puzzle organized by Nishimura seem to reinforce the spaces? What kind of game might appear on the notion of non-places to gloomy excess. Nevertheless, interference between pieces of non-places and its while signs and urban structures are replicated, construction towards fiction? Rather than a simple juxtaposed and extended to an overabundance of tautology, Distant Landscape keeps an ambivalent miniature forms and shapes, the sober natural position; a puzzle that still can be prolonged in an landscape draws our ubiquitous concentration. unlimited projection. Mediated by the attraction of the punctum the photographs reveal the play of motion between the Augé, Marc (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthology of close and distant gaze; the parallel differences and the Supermodernity, Pubilshed by Verso. decisive fictional territory suspended on the purity of Sachiyo Nishimura Photography: www.snishimura.com its surroundings.
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The Invisible Man, The Invisible City On the photographs of Santiago Escobar Kimberly Keith
The reflection in my photos is the invisible layer that divides potent reminder of all that was lost in their enforced the real from the unreal, war from peace. Is the reflection flight to the metropolis. Plastic toy soldiers evoke in the mirror, in the image and in the question: which is the notions of play and present an allusion to the idea that image? Who is the subject? Where is the hope?... war, whether based in the cocaine fields of Colombia Santiago Escobar or in the desert of Iraq, is just a game to those who move the pieces around the board. The miniature Reflection has multiple meanings and interpretations - army assembles on an escalator in a tube station to an image thrown back, as if from a mirror that is either symbolize the violence inherent in the daily waves of literal or metaphorical; a correspondence to chaos contained within that very station. A reflection something because of its influence, such as a rise in on these symbols gives way to an exploration of the consciousness resulting from the contemplation of uncanny, whereby familiar and unfamiliar elements of injustice, perhaps symbolically depicted through the metaphor cause discomfort on the part of the photography; or a deep thought, and the ideas and viewer; yet rather than rejecting the object, the viewer expressions that spring forth from it. The work of is encouraged to engage with the material on a deeper Santiago Escobar encompasses each aspect of level. This is due to Escobar's literal use of reflection reflection described above. on the surface of his photographs - which are so glossy that the viewer becomes an element within the The photographs selected for The Invisible Man, The image - and due to his minimalist distillation of the Invisible City exhibition come from a body of work that figurative elements of each composition, which both has been evolving over a five year period. Escobar has accentuates what is present and enhances the negative spent time in reflection upon the circumstances of his space in each photograph. native Colombia, the state of affairs in the cities and in the countryside, and the nature of space and place in Provocative imagery encourages the viewer to make his adopted city of London. Each image on display meaning from the object based on their own contains symbols which create metaphors about the subjectivity and has the potential to create change condition of the city and its, often unintended, within the individual. The uncanny, in concert with inhabitants. The toy soldiers represent guerrillas, literal and figurative reflection, compels the viewer to paramilitary groups and army forces that have caused decipher the layers of meaning inherent in Escobar's the displacement of millions from rural areas of work. An exploration for which they will be richly Colombia into the cities; for the displaced person, they rewarded. are a symbol of power and aggression as well as a
Move-on, Lond-on Abajo del Mar encima el Amor
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REVIEWS
The Politics of Hope Will Davis
“Not summer's bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar Les Back's concerns are somewhat different. He talked night of icy darkness and hardness”. So concluded Max about the possibility for an 'ethnography of hope' to Weber in his famous lecture, Politics as a Vocation, given in uncover the practices and objects that carry hope in the Munich in 1918. Weber harboured political ambitions, but present. Back introduced the all-important distinction with slogans like that it is perhaps unsurprising that they between hope and optimism, whereby hope is cognisant of were somewhat under-fulfilled. the damaged nature of the world, while optimism operates blindly. He referenced Gramsci here, for whom hope “While we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with transcended the opposition between optimism and cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we pessimism. My mind is pessimistic but my will is optimistic, will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit wrote Gramsci. of a people: yes we can”. So concluded a very different speech in Chicago, ninety years later, from a rather more What neither speaker seemed to accept was the form of successful politician. hope that we are familiar with from the Frankfurt School, who in turn were mindful of Weber's “polar night of icy How should sociology respond to the phenomenon of darkness and hardness”.Adorno and Horkheimer's famous hope, especially where it manifests itself politically? This was proclamation “the task to be accomplished is not the the question posed at a Friday evening seminar at conservation of the past, but the redemption of the hopes Goldsmiths with Ruth Levitas and Les Back, The Politics of of the past” is a deeply pessimistic one, but still a hopeful Hope. Whether it was the fortunate coincidence of the one. Enlightenment (a word, incidentally, that was not used seminar occurring days after Obama's victory, or the once during the seminar) lies both very far behind us and intriguingly expansive title (quite aside from the venerable very far ahead of us. For Back especially, an ethnography of speakers!), the event drew an impressively large and hope would aim to challenge this tragic historicity, and root engaged audience. utopia firmly in the present and everyday. The Obama victory is real and it is now, and represents a challenge to The Obama victory was never far from either speaker's sociological fatalism. presentation or the discussion that followed. It transpired that they had been planning such an event for some time, But what struck me, as the discussion was unfolding, was and it was never intended as a response to the American that the temporality of Obama's hope bears some elections.And yet that now-iconic image of Obama's face in resemblance to the dialectical 'hopeless hope' of the red, blue and cream, above the letters HOPE, inevitably Frankfurt School. Was it not the hopes of America's flashed up on the screen more than once. founders that Obama was pledging to honour? But when? The riddle of America - Enlightenment's 'practical Ruth Levitas contends that sociology has allowed its experiment' - is that the distinction between hope and political and moral agenda to become submerged, and it optimism becomes invisible.Are the moon-landings a cause needs to be brought to the surface once more. It is for hope or for optimism? Perhaps Obama's genius, like the inadequate to leave hope as some metaphysical or best Presidents before him, is to fuse the two concepts psychological entity, free of content or political reason. together. But it would take a particularly pragmatist variant What do we hope for, she asks? Sociology must rediscover of European sociology to follow him down this path. its political agenda. For Levitas, at least, this involves the resuscitation of socialist utopian politics (New Labour came Collapsing hope into technological optimism will not do, but off particularly badly from her presentation). The alliance nor will allowing it to become divorced from politics between sociology and utopian politics is a comfortable one altogether. The challenge posed by The Politics of Hope as far as Levitas is concerned. Both share common traits - a seminar is to conceive of hope that is neither pragmatist holistic social vision, a normative programme and nor tragic, but political and critical. For Levitas this would institutional specificity. involve greater clarity of political demands. For Back, it requires more sensitivity to the everyday practices and materiality of lived hope. “Not summer's bloom lies ahead of us”, but there is every reason for sociologists to take hope seriously nevertheless.
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Too Far South Exhibition Review Paul Halliday
For the last four years graduating students on the MA imaginations; and for our former head of CUCR Michael Photography and Urban Cultures have insisted on having a Keith whom we lose to Oxford University. Of Michael, it is collective exhibition, based on a theme and a venue of their no exaggeration to say that had he not run the extra mile choice. This year, the group returned to the APT Gallery in (or marathon) over the development, validation and Deptford, an engaging space with a history of supporting resourcing of this programme; conversations between local, international and emerging artists. When I use the artists, photographers and urbanists, may have still been term 'insisted', I use it in the sense that the momentum for ongoing in London cafes about just how wonderful it would the show always comes from within the student body itself, be to set up an interdisciplinary programme in photography rather than Goldsmiths academics. We were and are, of and urban cultures. Instead, thanks in large measure to the course, delighted to support the show and consider the vision and engagement of some key urban researchers and event to be an important rite of passage and defining theorists, we have the real thing. moment within the student experience of studying urban photography at the college. The exhibition is not assessed as a constituent part of the MA, but rather reflects how course members work collectively in the pursuit of extra- curricular curatorial experience, public engagement, and the imperative that flows in the blood of many artists - the need to 'put stuff out there' - in order to receive critical feedback and increase awareness of their work. Around 400 people attended the opening, and over 1000 people came to see the exhibition.
It is an understatement to observe that colleagues at CUCR have provided a level of intellectual and practical support that directly contributed to the programme being developed and established as a global first. The course is certainly not an 'easy option' for any graduate photographer, artist or social scientist to undertake, combining as it does, urban and social theory, interdisciplinary studies and the possibility of immersive visual practice. What we can now reflect on, seven years down the line since the course started, is that many of our graduates have gone on to win major international visual arts prizes including The Jerwood, Bloomberg (this year's recipient is Manual Vasquez) and Saatchi awards. Other graduates have progressed onto doctoral programmes at Goldsmiths and other leading universities, or are now running BA photography programmes in the UK or in their countries of origin. Some follow entirely unexpected routes that draw on their programme experiences. In other words, the programme is making an impact and raising key questions about how interdisciplinary programmes might best work.
I would like to thank all of the exhibition participants for having been such a positive and hard-working group this year; for the Goldsmiths MFA Curating team for their creativity, vision and perseverance; my departmental Curator Wiebke Gronemeyer and Paul Halliday at the Too Far South colleagues for their sociological and administrative exhibition seminar. Photo Credit: Manuel Vasquez
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Seeing the Invisible Noir: Dirty Pretty Things Michael Edema Leary
Three disparate yet related things happened in November juxtaposed with the poverty, desperation and squalor in 2008 that suggest it is apposite to revisit a film that was other city districts. Its subdued relaxing lighting (the hotel controversial when released but which provides a reception area is actually Wandsworth town hall) contrasts sophisticated reading of London in the early 21st century. jarringly with the over lit shops, hospital pharmacy and the First, Dirty Pretty Things (Frears 2002) was aired on Channel ghostly dimness of the mortuary. 4. Second, ID cards started to be issued to overseas nationals and airport workers. Third, London Mayor Boris Some reviewers are confused by the film's title or think it Johnson called for an amnesty for all British migrants relates simply to Okwe and his Turkish friend/girlfriend - the working illegally. Soon after the film was released the pretty - counterpoised against the obnoxious crooked and frenzied moral panic about asylum seekers was peaking, dirty Señor Juan. It certainly refers to the comment by Juan until knocked off the tabloid agenda by the Iraq war. The that, “They come to hotels in the night to do dirty things. film was controversial when released and still provokes And in the morning, it's our job to make things look pretty strong positive and negative reactions. It weaves together again”. Historians of the city will note the 21st century with great aplomb complex elements of the material, visual aesthetic twist of the 19th century modernist imagined, live, surveiled and (immigration) policed city.The imperative to scrub the dirty city clean. The dark dirty inner London location filming adds credibility which timbre of the film is lifted skilfully by Frears and scriptwriter counters the somewhat implausible, though tense and Steven Knight's periodic insertion of humour, as when after engaging plot. Cinema has long influenced our perception of one harrowing incident Juliet jokes,“What a pair! The virgin the modern city even to the extent of producing the city and the whore.” A macabre visual joke has Juan carrying an (Clarke 1997 and Shiels & Fitzmaurice 2001). Many reviews organ transport case that is revealed to contain exquisite of Dirty Pretty Things have been written but I want to expensive truffles. concentrate, first on some misconceptions and then on its neo noir (Schwartz 2005) credentials, which affect the Far from being saintly or innocent, Stephen Frears and manner in which it portrays divergent yet proximate Steven Knight along with superb performances by Chiwetel aspects of the city big condition in a globalised neo liberal Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo (Juliet, the political economy. pretty exuberant sex worker) and Sergi López (of Señor Juan) imbue a noir good/bad ambivalence in all the main Many reviewers (including some who should know better, characters. Okwe sinks to the depraved level Señor Juan, e.g. Bradshaw 2002) talk of the main characters (the who runs a, human organs for sale racket, when he finally moralistic Nigerian Okwe and his friend/girlfriend Turkish performs an operation in the hotel. Juan, though grotesquely pretty virginal Senay) in derogatory terms as 'illegal contemptible, does after all provide access to employment immigrants'. They are not and even if they are, the term for distressed people in genuine need.The title then is a play 'undocumented migrant' is less loaded and does not pander on the traditional noir dark/light, good/evil motif inherent in so much to prejudice. They are both refugees seeking the same character/city (Naremore 2008). The film is not political asylum under the Geneva Convention and Okwe full of the dominant noir elements: chiaroscuro lighting, the Nigerian doctor in particular, clearly has a good case. If heavy black shadow, especially across faces, reflection, his story is to be believed, and his integrity is at times Venetian blinds and naturalistic night filming. Nor does the overpowering, he faces mortal danger if repatriated. A film contain a true femme fatal, although the leading female moral point of the whole plot points to the injustice of characters, sex worker and refugee, are far from passive those seeking asylum not being allowed to work whilst their victims.That said, one of the defining moments of the film, case is under consideration. It's the material need for food when Okwe agrees to do the operation, has his face half and shelter which drags them into the sordid and dangerous drenched in heavy black shadow that could be straight out underbelly of London. The fictitious Baltic Hotel is not of the 1940s. The moment captures all the anxious seedy, as some reviewers state. It is clearly, even for viewers ambivalence of a character tortured by the knowledge of who not know London, in a smart district and is an elegant, his ultimate moral compromise, it captures too the plush place with a Ritz lookalike (Russian) doorman. For ambivalence of the city that coerces the fall from grace of those who know London it could be one of the many even the morally strong: a fall that results not just from the upmarket hotels in Westminster, Kensington or Chelsea. insidious temptations of Juan but also the necessity to The hotel is in fact in the vicinity of Whitehall (photo).The protect Senay. Dirty Pretty Things is in the mould of such neo plush upmarket quality of the hotel combined with the flash noir classics as Chinatown and more recently Sin City which Mercedes driving affluence of Señor Juan, a shift manager, is reveal the all pervading corruption of the city and how
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those trapped there survive ultimately through moral and lucky the magnet that attracts, also repels before complete bodily compromise. disaster entails.The tragedy for the refugee is that they can't leave the city, it provides for their basic needs. To leave is The multicultural London of Dirty Pretty Things is located in often to invite rural danger and deprivation, most shockingly an environmentally degraded London of: street markets evident in the recent Morecombe Bay cockle pickers' (Ridley Road market in Dalston E8), high rise social housing drowning. That Okwe and Senay manage to leave the city, blocks, overcrowded NHS hospitals, decrepit malfunctioning tearing apart their nascent love affair is tragic, that their bedsits, incredibly brightly lit all night shops, textile leaving is resourced by their capitulation to the forces of sweatshops and Chinatown, where “the immigration police evil, resisted at first, speaks to the power of the city. Dirty dare not go”.These locales provide relatively safe haven for Pretty Things achieves what all good cinematic city flicks all kinds of overseas newcomers trapped by a political should. It confirms the audience's city knowledges, allowing economy that squeezes them between paranoid state us some comfort in the cinema seat, but simultaneously it bureaucracy and exploitative markets and individuals. The has us squirming by challenges our preconceptions, making 'no work rule' means that Senay is hounded continually by visible that which is unseen or ignored. Dirty Pretty Things is the ‘immigration police’ - the sinister Immigration powerful, tragi/comic and compelling city story telling: not Enforcement Directive. Frears is too good a director to depict as unremittingly grim and humourless as Eastern Promises, the immigration ramifications in an overly sentimental or where the despicable lurks behind the elegant Georgian one sided way. There is active resistance, self help and façade, nor as seamlessly complex as Crash (2004).That film mutual support within the unlikely networks of newcomer ends with the release from a white van of a group of pitiful and Londoner but society's prejudice comes to the aid of Chinese workers trafficked into Los Angeles; mirroring the the characters too. Okwe knows and navigates the city with rhetorical question put by Okwe's friend, the intelligent ease. His intimate knowledge of the city resembles that of sardonic British Chinese mortuary assistant. Referring to an the classic noir detectives (e.g. in The Big Sleep and Kiss Me unidentified Chinese male corpse he wonders, “maybe he's Deadly). His street knowledge is due to his day time taxi from the back of a truck?” ID cards for 'foreign' nationals driving (the office is a real taxi cab office in Southwark signal the British state's simplistic understanding about Street SE1). At crucial moments, like the noir detective, where danger lies in the city. Johnson's call for an amnesty Okwe is rendered invisible or simply acceptable, by the reflects the London's appetite for cheap manual labour; preconceptions of mainstream society. In a hospital scene resistance within the Conservative Party highlights the he must acquire drugs for the unfortunate victim of botched political dilemma. Dirty Pretty Things continues the cinematic surgery. He does so through the simple devise of donning a city compulsion to the see the intricacies of the material green overall, accessing the hospital pharmacy with ease, imagined city. mop in hand: i.e. Blacks are cleaners. References Another preoccupation of film noir surfaces in Dirty Pretty Bradshaw, P. 2002 (13 December), "Dirty Pretty Things", The Things: entering and leaving the city, most noticeable in: The Guardian Maltese Falcon and Out of the Past, the neo noir A Rage in Clarke, D. (ed) 1997,The Cinematic City, Routledge, London. Naremore, J. 2008, More than night: film noir in its contexts, Harlem and sci noir Blade Runner.The big noir city corrupts University of California Press, Berkeley. the newcomer inexorably, often fatally. If the protagonist is Schwartz, R. 2005, Neo-Noir: From Psycho to Collateral, Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD. Shiel, M. & Fitzmaurice,A. (eds) 2001, Cinema and the City: film and urban societies in a global context, Blackwell, Oxford.
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An impromptu review of the Vital Signs conference Alex Rhys-Taylor and Charlotte Bates
The context: Alex and Charlotte attended the Vital Signs: Charlotte:What was the reference she made? Researching Real Life conference in Manchester where they both presented papers on their current work. The Alex: She quoted a long excerpt from Young & Wilmot, following review of the conference is a conversation Kinship and Family in East London. It was the very first recorded while sat on a train, waiting for it to depart from sociological monograph I ever read, when I was doing Manchester back to London. Given that they had already my A-Level in sociology, and it was all about Bethnal missed the train they were supposed to get, and that the Green. Then maybe 5 or 6 years after I read that, I next train got cancelled (leaving two trains worth of people moved to Bethnal Green, and now I'm doing an crammed onto one) the conversation was recorded by two ethnography in the same streets, and in the thick weary sociologists in a cramped environment surrounded descriptive style that was being commended. So that by irritable people.The effects of these conditions, however, resonated a lot with me. were to a degree mitigated by ready mixed cans of gin and tonic. Charlotte:There was definitely resonance.
Charlotte: So, Vital Signs! Alex: I was resonating so hard I thought I might shatter. Anita Wilson, she might have been my Alex: Vital Signs. favourite presenter in the entire conference, with “Is that Escape your wearing miss? A synaesthetic approach Charlotte: Do you want to talk about things? to researching everyday prison life.”
Alex:Things were a really big part of this conference, Charlotte: I think you'd better tell us about the Radox weren't they? and the toothpaste.
Charlotte:Yes, there were a lot of things. Alex: Well Anita's research, it seems to be a lifelong project actually, is conducted in prisons, and the Alex: Tim Ingold's Things. Tim gave the first plenary research she was presenting at the conference was a paper and it was based around a shift in his thinking result of observations she had made about the way from 'objects' to 'things...' 'things' being a coming prisoners scent their cells upon arrival in prison, to together and 'meshwork' of other 'things'. Tim talked de-prisonify their cell. One of the methods they use is about the etymology of the word 'thing,' which he said to fill a basin with hot water and Radox and paste it all was originally, in Scandinavian languages, conceived of over the walls, another guy got loads of tubs of Daz as a gathering, or a 'happening.' Then he related 'things' washing detergent and placed them all around his to his re-working of the Deleuzian concept, A Body room, and someone else put magic scented trees on Without Organs (BWO) which he had reformed as The his hot water pipes. Now, what I think is interesting, is Environment Without Objects (EWO). He drew a big that she said it was to create a homely space and to spider diagram to represent it on a white board. It was remind people of home, but quite often they used magnificent, but it would have been better if he'd got products that they would never use at home. It was a the black board he apparently requested. But it was very uniform technique that they used across different still fantastic; it was really good to hear him talk about prisons, and the products the prisoners used relatively novel concepts in such an old-school fashion. depended on the availability and affordability of certain products within prisons. So in a sense, the prisoners I also very much liked Carol Smart's Reflections on were creating a new institutional smell. methods: Contemporary challenges for sociological approaches. I respond very well to calls to do more Charlotte:Yes, she also said that different prisons had thick description and her call to make the data do the different scents, for example she could recognise talking, because its something I feel comfortable doing. which prison a letter had been sent from by sniffing it. Its good to hear someone asking for more of that, especially because its something I think I can do. Alex:What else?
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Charlotte: I was quite impressed to see so many which really apply to all research I think, not just the examples of research projects being produced as visual. Its funny, people get really scared of visual installations, there's maybe a new movement towards methods, but in fact their reactions point out the installations as a research output. Dawn Lyon inherent flaws in our attitude and approach to produced an exhibition within the space of the site she anonymity in research more generally, its just that the had researched, and Tahera Aziz is making an visual makes what we do a bit more obvious.We had interactive sound piece of the Stephen Lawrence case. a really nice discussion about the traces of identity that are always left, no matter what measures of Alex:Yeah,why do you think that is? And what are the anonymity you take, and also about some of the benefits of doing that are over writing a paper? Why techniques currently out there, for example pixilation do an installation? and black out bars, that are used to hide peoples identities in photographs, and how they can be Charlotte:Well, I don't think that it's a case of benefits incredibly criminalising and disturbing. In fact, bodies over writing. But I think the use of sensory methods can be far more identifiable and personal than faces, naturally leads to different forms of representation. and these techniques can be quite harmful I think. What happened in your session? Alex: Or presentation? There's something there about not simply representing, but trying to create Alex: Ok, I'll tell you about Katherine Davis', Knocking something new. on doors: Recruitment and enrichment in a qualitative interview based study. She was talking about how she Charlotte:Yes, definitely. went around knocking on people's doors to recruit people for her Resemblances project. First of all, we Alex:There was also lots of stuff about literary writing, shared something in common in that we both really it was great to hear so many people talking about that enjoy our ethnography. I personally feel guilty about it and caring about that. I think Les [Back] summed up but she doesn't feel guilty at all, but anyway… the the relationship between literary styles and sociology smell of cut grass was really prevalent in the middle well when he said that he thinks of himself as a writer class areas, while the smell of tarmac and the lack of first and foremost. grass was really prevalent in other areas. She got a really good sense of the demographic she was working Charlotte: Yes, we just have to be careful not to with and the different types of people, just through the contribute to that big pile of books and journals that sensoria in which her respondents lived. She probably never get read and aren't written to be loved. has a far richer idea of her sample than you would ever get from picking someone out of an electoral Alex:What else did you like? register or out of a phone book. It's weird that this type of knowledge about study participants is a Charlotte: I liked Therese Richardson's Lives lived with novelty, it shouldn't be a novelty. We could do with the dead, re-thinking the meaning of vital signs and real that degree of connection with our respondents in lives. Her presentation was about how a husband or social science in general I think. wife keeps the memory of their partner alive after their death. I really liked the way that she was able to Charlotte: So those were a few tiny highlights from the identify the ways that non-physical things are programme. How was the experience? embodied in everyday practices. I think there is a lot to be said for the characterisation of objects and Alex: Experience. Somebody mentioned the materiality more generally, and in way too I liked the etymology of experience at the beginning of the simplicity of the idea, it's a really basic human thing conference didn't they? And Mariam followed it up... that people live with. I also particularly enjoyed What does it mean again? Outside trial, trial outside? I Mariam Fraser's presentation in the same session. can't remember. But it was really good. I found it edifying, and enriching, and motivating, and also very Alex:Yes, that was really good, and I'm still thinking it reassuring, in that there's lots of other people out through… What about your session? What happened? their tackling the same 'things,' as I am. In a way, that makes me feel less special than before, but I think that Charlotte:Well,my session was called Visual knowledge, there is something to be said for the new solidarity I visual ethics. Jon Prosser raised some very salient and have found. Have you finished that G&T? pragmatic points about the ethics of visual research,
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This Is Not A Gateway Festival, October 2008 David Kendall
Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield established This is aspect of contemporary life. This discussion was Not A Gateway in 2007. Their aim in the words of the informative and educational, asking critical questions, founders is to address “the urgent and identified needs exploring codes of practice, and how these rules affect confronting current and future cities- namely the need social and spatial implications of this technology. to generate and elevate knowledge about cities from 'the ground up', from emerging practitioners and those Dalston is another part of London that is undergoing often outside of urban circuits”. structural change. Redevelopment of the area by Transport for London and Hackney Council will TINAG is developing an online archive of work dramatically alter the visual appearance of the area. created by emerging Architects, Artists, Curators, Winston Whitters film Save our Heritage, documents Designers, Filmmakers, Researchers, and Writers. The how people in Dalston grouped together to oppose organisation holds bi-monthly salons, produces Hackney Council's and Transport for London's plans publications, and an annual festival. The first TINAG to demolish buildings that local people wanted to Festival was held on the 24th, 25th, and 26th October retain and reuse within the area. The film follows the 2008 in Dalston, East London. I attended and successes and failures of activists to influence and participated in this event, as part of A Line is There to be change council planning decisions and documents the Broken, an exhibition of photographic work with refusal of the authorities to acknowledge the Tristan Fennell and Gesche Würfel and was present at viewpoints of residents. Collaborating with the exhibitions, seminars, and workshops over the organisation, OPEN Dalston.Whitter's film provides a weekend. visual record of an ongoing process of redevelopment and conflict in the area. Illustrating that 'regeneration' Highlights of the festival include Micro Finance and the may not always produce a dialogue for positive change. City. A discussion with Fair Finance, an organisation The reconstruction of urban landscapes is a procedure operating in London working with people excluded that should be questioned and always open to critical from the banking system. This organisation wants debate. challenge existing attitudes towards debt and is exploring how to reintroduce people into the financial The programme also contained a number of DIY system in a socially responsible way. Working with discussions around the themes of the 'legalities of clients to start for example new businesses by offering organising', publishing ideas and the 'art of making flexibility, a debt advice service, and practical financial space' (which considered how creative professionals solutions. Hilary Powell's Salon De Refuses Olympique have established their practices and constructed or continued debates that surround the development of reused workspaces in cities). These workshops the 2012 Olympics and their influence on the attracted an international audience of creative regeneration of East London. I listened to panelists practitioners, many living and working in London. I was Emma Dwyer, Public Works, Jim Thorp, and Gesche impressed by the enthusiasm of those who attended Würfel discuss and present photographic, to share experiences and knowledge. Each of these archeological, and curatorial projects exploring and discussions provided a practical platform, for influencing the process of change in the east of the conversation and debate, allowing individuals and city. I also enjoyed and was impressed by Hilary's and groups in London to engage and meet other Dan Edelstyn's Optimistic Immigrants, which attracted a practitioners outside of academic networks. I look large, crowd on Sunday night and provided young forward to ongoing dialogue and the development and immigrants-filmmakers a platform to screen their success of next year's festival.There were many other work to new audiences. Alex Haw brought together a events discussing artistic, social, theoretical, and ethical group of panelists to discuss the ethics and use of issues included the festival. Links to all projects, CCTV in cities. The symposium Surveying Surveillance exhibitions, workshops and publications can be found put forward arguments for and against the use of at: video surveillance. It was refreshing to hear voices in favor of CCTV state why they consider it a positive www.thisisnotagateway.net
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For all news, events, seminars and conferences organized by the CUCR please refer to webiste: www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr/html/news.html
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List of contributors to this issue, spring 2009:
Anderson, Mette Professor of Sociology, Bergen University Bates,Charlotte PhD student, Visual Sociology Berrens, Karla PhD student, Visual Sociology Campbell Works Neil Taylor and Harriet Murray, artists Clouser, Jeremy Graduate MA Photography and Urban Cultures, CUCR Coles, Peter Visiting Research Fellow, CUCR Davies,Will PhD student Sociology, CUCR Escobar, Santiago Graduate MA Photography and Urban Cultures Garcia, Soledad MFA Curating, Goldsmiths University Gerson,Yael PhD Sociology Gidley, Ben Researcher and lecturer at CUCR Halliday, Paul Course convenor of MA Photography and Urban Cultures Harris,Adrian PhD Theology and Religious Studies, University of Winchester Hasan, Sayed MA Photography and Urban Cultures, CUCR Holgersson, Helena PhD Sociology, Gothenburg University Jackson, Emma PhD Sociology, CUCR Jones, Rachel PhD Visual Sociology Kendall, David MA Photography and Urban Cultures, CUCR Keith, Kimberly PhD Sociology, CUCR Knowles, Caroline Professor of Sociology, Head of CUCR Leary, Michael Edema PhD student at CUCR, Lecturer at London Southbank University Marrero Guillamón, Isaac PhD Social and Cultural Anthropology, Universitat de Barcelona McKenzie, Lisa PhD Sociology, University of Nottingham Meichsner, Sylvia PhD Sociology Milic, Nela PhD Visual Sociology Mullings-Lawrence, Sireita PhD Visual Sociology Olmo, Gonzalo Graduate MA Photography and Urban Cultures, CUCR Owen, Craig PhD Social Psychology, University of Bath Rhys-Taylor,Alex PhD Sociology, CUCR Risner, Sophie MFA Curating, Goldsmiths University Rooke, Alison Researcher and lecturer at CUCR Sánchez de Serdio Martín,Aida University of Barcelona currently research fellow at CUCR Sanderson-Mann, Jo PhD Health and Social Care,The Open University
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MA IN CULTURE, GLOBALISATION AND THE CITY The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR) The Urban Globe? CONTENTS Our world is moving from being a global village to an Multiculture, Hybridity and Racism and the Spatial Politics urban globe. One of the big challenges of the 21st of Gender and Sexuality. A multi-disciplinary approach is Century is how to understand the social organisation of applied that draws on Sociology, Cultural Geography, contemporary urban life. The MA in Culture, Cultural Studies, Politics and Social Policy. The MA is INTRODUCTION by Caroline Knowles page 1 Globalisation and the City gives you the theoretical and dedicated to turning students into active researchers, The Political economy of the monument by Aida Sánchez page 2 practical tools to make sense of cities like London, Los critics and writers. Angeles, Nairobi or Tokyo. Religion in Inner City Oslo by Mette Andersson page 5 The programme consists of 3 core courses, dissertation Kettering Road by Sayed Hasan page 8 The course examines a range of issues from the and a choice of options. It can be followed either full-time Sueno de despierto en un mundo que se desvanece... by Karla Berrens page 10 economics of the global city to the politics of graffiti or part-time. ESRC funding for one UK resident is writing. These include analysing Urban Youth Cultures, currently under review and may not be available next year. Open-Up photogrpahic project by Gonzalo Osmos page 11 Literary and Political Milieux, the Political Economy of the Next available entry point: October 2009. Borderlands by Caroline Knowles and Sylvia Meichsner page 12 City, Science and the Technology of Urban Life, Urban Romans,Trains and Star Trek by Michael Edema Leary page 14 Street Photography and Social Research: Brick Lane Re-Visited by Charlotte Bates,Adrian Harris, Isaac Marrero Guillamon, MA IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND URBAN CULTURES Jo Sanderson-Mann, Craig Owen, Lisa Mckenzie The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR) and Sireita Mullings-Lawrence page 16 Introducing the MA Structure Why is it so easy to place art and regeneration in the same sentence The MA in Photography and Urban Cultures has been A combination of written and practical work to include a by Sophie Risner page 20 developed in response to the increasing interests in urban research dissertation and a portfolio of photographs and In hiding, on display by Helena Holgersson page 22 theory and the visual representation and investigation of final exhibition. It can be followed either full-time or part- urban life and the physical environments of the city. time. Next available entry point: October 2009. Home Sweet Home (Not) by Emma Jackson page 23 Tourism,Inbetweeness and Teotihuacán by Jeremy Clouser page 24 Who is it for? The MA is run by the Centre for Urban and Community What is British? by Michael Wayne Plant page 26 Photographers, visual artists and media practitioners, as Research (CUCR), a national and international leader in research on urban and community life. CUCR is multi- Environment: urbanisation and biodiversity by Peter Coles page 28 well as those with a background in social sciences, interested in exploring the creative interplay between disciplinary and focuses on issues such as citizenship and Work/Space: a visual exploration by Yael Gerson Ugalde page 30 cultural research, urban studies and photographic practice. cosmopolitanism; social exclusion and cultures of racism; Strandline: beachcombing on the Greenwich Peninsula by Melissa Bliss page 32 You should have a degree or equivalent in a relevant area. sport, popular culture and music; regeneration and wealth Balkanising Taxonomy by Nela Milic page 33 creation; issues of crime and community safety; technology Signs of the City by Alison Rooke page 34 and new patterns of digital culture. Signs of the City: Photogrpahic Workshop by Campbellworks page 36 Landmarks of cut, gaze and fiction for a Distant Landscape by Soledad Garcia on the photographs of Sanchiyo Nishimura page 38 MPhil / PhD in Visual Sociology The Invisible man,The Invisible City Exhibition by Kimberly Keith page 39 Goldsmiths, University of London Our programme offers you the opportunity to combine media components of the thesis will form an integrated REVIEWS page 40 written sociological argument with film, sound, or whole.The use of multimedia will enhance and evidence photographic material.We provide researchers the space in your analysis, interpretation and understanding of social The Politics of Hope by Will Davis page 40 which to re-think both the conduct and form of phenomena.The written component of the thesis will Too Far South Exhibition review by Paul Halliday page 41 contemporary social research, in a college environment engage with multi-media components and be set within a Seeing the Invisible Noir: Dirty Pretty Things by Michael Edema Leary page 42 animated by visual arts and design.The Visual Sociology substantive research topic and its wider social context. Vital Signs conference by Alex Rhys-Taylor and Charlotte Bates page 44 programme builds on the success of our MA in Your practice will be supported by a programme of audio- This Is Not A Gateway Festival (TINAG) by David Kendall page 46 Photography and Urban Cultures and contributes to visual training workshops as well as expert superision in Goldsmiths’ leading position internationally in visual your chosen area of resaerch. Urban Edge Workshops at CUCR page 47 research and analysis
You will carry out research in an area that interests you To find out more, contact: edited by Caroline Knowles and prepare a written thesis in combination with a video, a Professor Caroline Knowles, [email protected] soundpiece or a series of photographs.Written and multi- or Bridget Ward (secretary), [email protected] Emma Jackson Britt Hatzius Further information and how to apply: UK and EU students:Admissions Office, telephone 020 7919 7060 (direct line), fax Ben Gidley 020 7717 2240 or e-mail [email protected]; Overseas (non EU) students: International Office, telephone 020 7919 7700 (direct line), fax 020 7919 7704 or e-mail [email protected]; photograph on front cover by Britt Hatzius For further information about the Centre: Please call 020 7919 7390; e-mail [email protected] or visit www.gold.ac.uk/cucr/ FINAL_Cover_january2009.qxd 9/12/08 17:30 Page 1
CUCR Occasional paper series
Margarita ARAGON Michael STONE Brown Youth, Black Fashion and a White Riot, 2007 Social Housing in the UK and US: Evolution, Issues and Progress S t r e e t S i g n s Brian W.ALLEYNE William (Lez)HENRY Personal Narrative and Activism: a bio-ethnography of Projecting the 'Natural': Language and Citizenship in "Life Experience with Britain" Outernational Culture
Mette ANDERSSON Colin KING Centre for Urban and Community Research The Situated Politics of Recognition: Ethnic Minority, Play the White Man:The Theatre of Racialised Youth and Indentity Work. Performance in the Institutions of Soccer
Les BACK,Tim CRABBE, John SOLOMOS Larry LOHMANN Lions, Black Skins and Reggae Gyals Ethnic Discrimination in "Global" Conservation
Andrew BARRY Ben LOOKER Motor ecology: the political chemistry of urban air Exhibiting Imperial London: Empire and City in late Victorian and Edwardian guidebooks Zygmunt BAUMAN City of Fears, City of Hopes Hiroki OGASAWARA Performing Sectarianism:Terror, Spectacle and Urban Vikki BELL Myth in Glasgow Football Cultures Show and tell: passing, narrative and Tony Morrison's Jazz Garry ROBSON Eva BERGLUND Class, criminality and embodied consciousness: Legacies of Empire and Spatial Divides: new and old Charlie Richardson and a South East London Habitus challanges for Environmentalists in the UK Flemming RØGILDS Tine BLOM Charlie Nielsen's Journey:Wandering through Multi- Dostoyevsky's Inquisitor:The Question of Evil, Suffering cultural Landscapes and Freedom of Will in Totalitarian Regimes Fran TONKISS Bridget BYRNE The 'marketisation' of urban government: private finance How English am I? and urban policy
Ben CARRINGTON Danielle TURNEY Race,Representation and the Sporting Body The language of anti-racism in social work: towards a deconstructuve reading Stephen DOBSON The Urban Pedagogy of Walter Benjamin: lessons for Gordon WALKER and Karen BICKERSTAFF the 21st Century Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 Polluting the poor: an emerging environmental justice agenda for the UK? Ben GIDLEY The proletarian other: Charles Booth and the politics of Louisa THOMSON representation The Respect Drive: the Politics of Young People and Community Paul GILROY The status of difference: from epidermalisation to nano- please refer to www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr Spring 2009 politics for downloads and further information.
Centre For Urban and Community Research Goldsmiths College Phone: +44 (0) 20 7919 7390 University of London Fax: +44 (0) 20 7919 7383 New Cross Email: [email protected] London Website: www.gold.ac.uk SE146NW www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr