S t r e e t S i g n s Centre for Urban and Community Research

2012 / 13 CONTENTS Beijing Edge Lands: Beijing Edge Lands: Staying Ahead of the Bulldozers 1 Caroline Knowles Staying Ahead of the Bulldozers Caminando entre Narcos: Walking among Narcos 4 Christian von Wissel Caroline Knowles Welcome to Paradise 8 Sara Faridamin Around Hiroshima: Between the A-Bomb and the Everyday 10 Mark Rainey The latest official estimates put the population of Beijing at ‘village’ – just off Yuanmingyuan West Road, the busy 3 20 million. With its rising population the city is constantly lane highway that cuts the ‘village’ in two. The West side is The Marks of Stone and Living Statues 14 extending, its frayed edges inching inexorably outwards. being demolished – it lies in piles of rubble – the East Side, Claude St. Arroman Beijing is navigated through reference to its concentric ring not yet slated for demolition, is a lively dense residential- Inventory of an Aftermath 16 roads, with the first encircling the city’s centre and the fifth commercial scene where I was led by the local Party Sam Bailey being the point where the city pauses, where a gap appears Officer, a young woman in sparkly leggings and a leather which may be closed by the time you read this, as clusters jacket, whose permission I needed to do the research. I Mind the Social 17 of high rise apartment blocks take up the beat, extending want to know who lives here and why, what bigger journeys Erlend Hovdkinn the city’s edges still further. Is Greater Beijing really the brought them to this particular part of Beijing. With what Olympic Catalyst 19 same size as Belgium? If not is soon will be. implicit knowledge and skills do people migrate? Alexandra Baixinho To feel the rhythm of the edge lands beyond the fifth ring Beijing rents and real estate prices are as rampant at the Deptford High Street 20 road I am researching a Beijing-microcosm, a small block city itself. Property speculation and development have their Annita Strasser of two-storey concrete and brick housing and shops in own logics of accumulation. This means that young people, “Silence in the Train?” 23 the Xiao Jiahe Area – still sometimes referred to as a often graduates exploring Beijing’s opportunities – known Karla Berrens List Operator: An Account of a Public Space in Transition 24 Therese Henningsen The Dialectics of Deracinated Localism: Some Notes from the North 26 Steve Hanson Deluge: Regarding Obsolescence 30 Paul Halliday Deluge: Disembowelling Black Boxes 32 Francisco Calafate Farial

Found Person: An experiment in Biography 34 Peter Coles Engaging Tactis: Experiments in Social Science’s Engagement 36 Christian von Wissel Creative Evaluation as Participatory Practice 39 David Kendall A Utopian City in the Sand 41 Victor Bedo and Katalin Halasz Not ‘the same old same old’: Beyond Bingo and the Blitz 42 Alison Rooke Extending Creative Practice: A European Encounter 46 Claire Levy List of Controbutors 48 edited by Alex Rhys-Taylor / Britt Hatzius / Caroline Knowles photograph on front cover by Asia Deri (p.41) photo credit: Lijie Zhang

streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 1 as ‘ants’ - live in dormitories in the underpinning of tall Three things strike me about the migrants living in the of potential styles a customer might choose – it is also between rising rents and what her customers can pay for buildings or in subdivided apartments. The pressure of tiny capsule I investigated in Xiao Jiahe. They live in highly her living space. Our discussion about how she spends her hairdressing. The woman who ran the public bath told a new arrivals from rural areas, towns and cities with fewer compressed spaces, they are open and flexible about time confirms this – there is work and sleep – the salon similar story of the importance of keeping ahead of the opportunities than Beijing, presses on the edge lands. Xiao how they make a living and they are highly mobile. Sun Yi is open until midnight when she rolls out her fold-up bed. bulldozers. Life for poorer migrants in Beijing demands Jiahe was a village with fields and duck ponds in the 1980s is a good example of all three. A glamorous 50 year-old Kitchen and cooking utensils are integrated into the fabric high levels of mobility. before it was swallowed by the city. When I ask the party hairdresser with her own business she chats as she colours of the salon. Chairs for customers serve a double function official how many live there now she says 4,000. When I a middle-aged man’s graying hair back to black. in providing a place to rest. The TV is on all day. Like Sun Yi the other migrants I spoke to had come to question her further she tells me there are also 40,000 Xiao Jiahe because it was cheaper than other parts of the migrants. She points to an important distinction, between Sun Yi is a farmer from Wuhu village in Anhui Province, who This is Sun Yi’s fourth hairdressing salon. She first lived in city. The cheapest place to live in Beijing is the next place ‘residents’ who have Beijing residence permits and the moved to Beijing once her children had grown up. While she the Xidan area of Beijing from where she worked as a maid. to be demolished. Like her, many of them had moved from entitlements to health care and education this brings moved with her husband, he isn’t very flexible in embracing When that area was demolished and she had reviewed her other, more central parts of the city as their housing and and migrants who do not. The official apparatus of the city life in Beijing and soon moves back to the village where prospects in the city, she took a hairdressing course along shops were demolished: staying one jump ahead of the state struggles with the waves of migrants that arrive daily she visits him infrequently. I am intrigued by her move with her son and then opened her first salon in the Haidian bulldozers is a way of living more cheaply in the city. Cities putting pressure on living and commercial space and raising from farming to hairdressing – what gave here the idea to area. When Haidian was demolished she moved her salon are always being made. As Beijing extends so it extends the rents. Locals, the original villagers who own the land, rent make such an abrupt move? She is nonchalant – she says to Baitasi. When that was demolished she moved to Yi lives, skills, ingenuity, opportunities and living costs of its out their apartments subdivided into single rooms in which it’s a much easier skill to learn than others, than machine Heyuan, which was also later demolished to make way for migrant-citizens. a couple or an entire family may live and rent tiny live-in sewing for example. As I look around the salon it becomes a new subway line causing her to move once more, with commercial premises to migrants. clear that although it is very much a salon – hairdryers, 100 other migrant households to Xiao Jiahe. She expects basins for washing hair, combs, hair colour, photographs this will be demolished soon too. Her rent has already risen from 1000 Yuan a month to 1400. She is squeezed

photo credit: Lijie Zhang photo credit: Lijie Zhang

page 2 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 3 Caminando entre Narcos Walking among Narcos

Christian von Wissel

The invitation was to participate at a social sciences are fortifying their borderline north of the city, for the start with how to honour the dead and reach all the way demands is not to look away but to construct a public seminar on The Making of Cities from the Perspective of inhabitants of Monterrey this frontier between the ‘first’ down to the need to re-assess the safety issues that alter discourse – and this public discourse must also be a visual the Street in Monterrey. An industrial metropolis of four and the ‘third world’ has long felt to be somewhere south ones possibilities to do fieldwork and to live ones life. You one – capable to counter the power of the narco images. million inhabitants in the northeast of Mexico – and a city of their city: more or less at the height of the desert town need time to come to turns with these irruptions of narco On our way to and from the seminar venue we pass several whose streets have witnessed a thunderstorm of violence of Matehuala, at about two hours distance. Now, with reality and the research process suddenly acquires almost of the more recent sites of narco activity. The traces are devastating its public life and self-esteem. the narco take-over of Monterrey and of Monterrey’s self- psychoanalytic qualities (2). subtle and one has to know what to look for… “Do you esteem, a subliminal discussion is dividing the city’s civil see the little holes in the wall to your right? That was Within the last few years, the city has been overrun by society regarding who they are and why such a narco This process of ‘coming to turns’ with the violence is last week when they gunned down one of them right the narcos, by competing and extremely violent groups of invasion was able to infiltrate the wealthy, firmly catholic multiple and, in any case, it is not at all easy. But people here outside the bar. We used to go a lot to this place Mexican/international organised crime. It has also become and, supposedly, morally stable citizenry and political do arrange themselves and their lives within the new but not anymore.” – “Over there, do you see the banner one of the country’s worst battlegrounds in the “war on system so quickly and so comprehensively. circumstances. They walk on, because they have to. One asking about what has happened to Juanito? Well, Juanito drugs” and this war – conceived by the Mexican president way of doing so is by changing the standards by which to was one of the street artists who always performed here. Calderón administration as the best and supposedly only This take-over can be felt also in the seminar. Researchers assess what is a ‘normal’ walk of life. “I don’t go out in the He was one of these silver robots. Two weeks ago he was answer – has further deteriorated the inhabitant’s quality from four local universities have worked over the past evenings anymore because it is too dangerous.” Sure, this disappeared.” of life. As the result, the city and its public sphere have been three years on topics such as the use of the sidewalk, street works for some time but how many things are left behind taken hostage by a multi-front urban warfare between the markets and mobile street vending, driving, the image and on such route to city/self-abandonment? What city, and With a tone of voice that signals adaptation – yet not at all military, the police and the different mafia cartels. imaginaries of the streetscape, the use of streets by political what society, will be left if this would be the only answer? indifference – my host (and unintentional tour guide) points and social movements and the persistence of collective Without doubt, the quantity, ‘quality’ and immediacy of the me to the multiplicity of front lines of this urban war. Both The narco condition has infiltrated every dimension of life: memory in the street layout of Monterrey. As broad as events and images that haunt the inhabitants of Monterrey the narcos and the military have their reasons for making People are afraid of leaving their houses in the evenings these research interests can possibly be, the analysis and are abysmal. Corpses abound in the last two years. They people disappear. And both have sophisticated means to do so that once lively streets are now deserted after nightfall findings of these studies nevertheless all bear witness to are found barefoot and with hands and feet tied up once a so, which they learned well from military policing tactics and many nightclubs and restaurants have closed. The city the practice of doing research. The possible topics people week alongside some train tracks (3). At other times, they that Latin-American dictators and their armed forces council has passed an amendment to the law that confers on the street come to talk about and the ways to frame ‘simply’ hang in pairs of two or three with their heads cut developed with such skill during recent decades. Whether school children the right to stay at home in case of narco a ‘perspective on the city from the street’ have changed off from the city’s main bridge crossing the river. Under servicemen of the regular army or members of paramilitary shootings and narco chases taking place in their local area. under the influence of exploding narco violence. these circumstances, what else can you do other than get groups, whether trained by the US (or the Israelis or the And a dry humour – still timid though – has evolved as used to looking away? – First of all, away from the sight French) or struggling against ‘US imperialism’, whether the only weapon left to civil society to deal with this Most revealingly one learns about how the police sirens and of chopped-off heads but then, very likely, away also from fighting for ‘a cause’, for ‘the people’ or for money… the apocalyptic transformation of their hometown. There is the noise of the helicopters chasing fugitive narcos alters the problem… To be honest, who would not close her/his continent is full of memories – past and recent – from this undertone of horror mixed with a self-defensive pride not only the street talk but takes hostage of the interview eyes in order to try to rescue one’s state of mind in such which to copy the basic techniques. For example in the attached to the way by which locales talk about the violent recording itself which turned out to be inaudible (1). The situation? case of the Zetas, one of the most brutal mafia groups incidents; and after the seminar, my colleagues invite me to personal tone and engaged style of the text expresses this currently fighting for control over the constant flow of what might be called a “narco sight-seeing tour” through “being taken hostage” in a sincere and affecting manner. Following this ‘trend’, newspapers in Mexico have started drugs into the US, it is well-known that they are constituted the streets of Monterrey. There are only few occasions like this one where you can to censor themselves in regard to what images they publish. by foreign-trained deserters of the Mexican special forces, feel the researcher’s heartbeat in academic writing. In a In part, they do so in order not to become complicit in the former police officers and ex-Kaibiles, special counter- Being a proud city, firmly holding up the myth of its self- second essay, the participants of the seminar describe how messages send by one mafia group to another by means insurrection forces from Guatemala who lost their ‘job’ invention through hard work as well as the belief to be methods are reassessed in response to the occurrences of these pictures. In another part, they do so in order to once the Guatemalan conflict was officially ended. Anyway, something better than the rest of the country – frequently in a pedestrian street in the city’s historic centre. If the protect their journalists. In part, also, they do so trying to they all know how to play dirty and thus people in their drawing on arguments that mobilise pure racism – today research started out with an ethnographic fieldwork based free themselves of the vicious circle of an increasing – and way or people with information – or simply people who the city’s inhabitants are divided into two groups I am told: on participatory observation it is first suspended and then devastating – culture of violence, in another part, they do are believed or denounced to have information – disappear. those who are speechless about how it could possibly exchanged for in-depth yet off-site interviews due to a so because people want to sleep at night. Mexican writer And with them disappears the last confidence in the have happened that this prosperous and safe city is now young woman being shot almost under the researchers’ Juan Villoro is right when he accuses the mediasphere to authorities. For years, the public’s level of trust in the living – sometimes in the truest sense of the word – ‘under eyes. The narco encounter that took the woman’s life as have turned into “the duty-free zone of the drug cartels, the Mexican police is near zero. Now, the working relationship siege’; and those who call the speechless cowards because ‘collateral damage’ also takes all public life possibly to arena where the assaults committed in reality become the between the federal police, local police forces and the army with their misery they prove not to be fit enough to live be observed away from the street. Instead, it leaves the ‘infommercials’ of terror” (4). Yet hiding away information is likewise contaminated by disbelief and suspicion. Nobody in a besieged Monterrey. In any case, if the United States researchers in silence to a new set of urging questions that in order to be able to sleep is no solution. What Villoro trusts nobody and a new ‘pastime’ of the municipal police

page 4 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 5 is “demonstrating the federal, state and local authorities” of the mafia when it comes to traffic regulation has been is happening. He is not understating the situation when Acknowledgment: that the official number of the constabulary’s officers to erect temporary road barriers. These narco barriers he draws on Hannah Arendt’s famous claim expressed in This text has been made possible thanks to Diana Alonso and Luis and weapons coincides with reality: a calculation to be have left deep traces in the inhabitants’ imagination of light of the “ordinariness” of Nazi terror, that is: not to Fernando García who shared with me their anecdotes and insightful demonstrated in person and outside the police station with Monterrey. Authorities and the public live with a reality in normalise the view and not to fall into the banalities of knowledge about what it means to walk among narcos; who have also officers standing in line to be publically counted. The police which a hand full of pistoleros can stalemate the entire city evil (8). reviewed this text and have been important dialogue partners during chief responsible for giving this material evidence brings for several hours, forcing drivers to abandon their cars in the process of its writing. Furthermore, I would like to thank all the it to the point in the local newspaper covering the event: the middle of the inner-city highway. Today, Monterrey witnesses the birth of young and creative participants of the seminar “El Estudio de la ciudad desde la calle” for “We do not have people that are counted twice, we do not collectives that try to make a point against fear and the sharing with me their research findings and commentaries during and have people that do not come to earn their pay. In Spanish: These narco barriers (narcobloqueos) are also the most normalisation of fear. They stand up against the atomisation after the sessions. In particular, I would like to thank Lydia Espinosa from (let them see) that we do not have virtual staff [aviators] prominent example of the ‘narco-what-ever-it-is-this- of society into individuals afraid of each other. They speak the National Institute for Anthropology and History INAH and and Lylia and the agents that are armed are carrying precisely the time’ linguistic constructions that are employed to explain up together with Javier Sicilia (2011): “estamos hasta la Palacios from the Autonomous University of Nuevo León UANL for the weapon that corresponds to them by Law” (5). the events. Another exponent of this creative drive is madre” [we are fed up] with both criminals and politicians invitation and the enriching discussions during my stay in Monterrey. the expression “narco mass grave” (narco-fosa). The prefix (9). Last but not least, I would like to thank all the enthusiastic inhabitants of But still, confidence does not really rise: On the next page narco helps people to put in place – and somehow keep Monterrey I was so fortunate to meet and who with their civil courage of the same paper one can read that the director of a at a distance – the horrors they have to live with. And the The concerns of these activist groups circle primarily and everyday resistance to the circumstances have inspired this text. special task force which has been set up to examine the military uses these same constructions to point without around ecological issues, alternative mobilities and social Translations from Spanish have been made by the author. integrity of the municipal police estimates that less than further investigation to the usual suspects and hence to solidarity. Yet addressing these concerns and addressing 50% of all active police officers in Monterrey are believed cover up and justify their equally dirty job – “The narcos them together and with joy is the best cure against narco to be trustworthy (6). Sure, since the army moved in and don’t put so much effort in digging a hole for seventy or depression and against war-on-drugs paralysis. Open air took control from the police in fighting the mafias, the more bodies. They just dump them along the road… I don’t concerts and theatre, alternative congresses, a people’s conflict has become less visible – now, people disappear know who is doing this, but I doubt that all the graves are library, “free meals instead of bombs” and weekly collective instead of being hanged from the bridge – but who wants only the work of the narcos.” bicycle tours throughout town all set an example of how to count this a real or lasting improvement of the situation? the city can be changed by changing its public sphere “from As a consequence, dealing with all these armed people What is for sure is that in this bloodthirsty war all the perspective of the street” (e.g. the courageous and (1) Palacios, forthcoming. running around town has become a true nerve test. In the participating parties are causing a lot of ‘collateral damage’. untiring cyclists’ collective pueblobicicletero.org). (2) Farfán, García & Fernández, forthcoming. evening, we drive up to Monterrey’s natural viewing point, The narco (armed) encounters fought in the streets and (3) El Norte. 2011a. ‘Amarran pies y manos a hombre para matarlo: Hallan the inner city mountain El Cerro del Obispado. Lucky for neighbourhoods always involve those that happen to be at Claiming the streets, they make their point through the pure cuerpo tirado a un lado de vías de tren en Juárez’. El Norte, October 26. us – and for the city we think – we are not alone: there the wrong place at the wrong time. If they are lucky, they presence of their bodies: They step out of their defences (4) Villoro, Juan. 2008. ‘La alfombra roja del terror narco’. November are still a few couples coming up here to accompany the get away with a traumatic experience: like the kids caught and confront the situation from the standpoint of their Retrieved October 28, 2011 (http://edant.revistaenie.clarin.com/ scenery and massive Mexican flag with passionate kisses. on the floor of their classrooms for more than three hours own vulnerability. “There are people that make themselves notas/2008/11/29/_-01811480.htm). But some minutes later, three military pick-ups arrive, each while military forces and narcos had an extended shooting believe hearing firecrackers instead of hearing the firing (5) El Norte. 2011b. ‘Ponen lupa a todos los policías de Guadalupe’. El loaded with soldiers in heavy fighting armour, and soon outside their school. If they are unlucky, they die: as with of a gun… People hide from reality because they want to Norte, October 26. everybody opts for leaving. “You have to be careful. Either Lucy, a 21-year-old visual arts student who fell in the fire of live without fear or because they are ‘tired’ of all this narco (6) García, José. (2011) ‘Pasará 50% de policías al Mando Único’. El Norte, they exceed their legal authority and you end up having one gang chasing another in October 2010 in a pedestrian stuff moving in on them.” But hiding from reality, from the October 26. to pay a bribe so they don’t take you to prison because street in plain city centre. street, is a form of accepting the war as a solid institution. (7) Tapia, Jonathán, and Lorenzo Encinas. 2010. ‘Despiden a Lucila con of smoking some dope or they are like walking targets On the contrary, if you want to change the situation you la sombra de impotencia’. Milenio Edición Monterrey, October 9, online and you wouldn’t want to be close if the show gets going. Lucy’s death marked a crucial fissure in the imagination of a have to find those means that do not augment the violence Retrieved October 28, 2011. We had two bomb alerts up here within the last months. city under siege. If the conflict, even withnarcobloqueos and but that have the power to break its power. Care and (8) Arendt, Hannah. 1994. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Bringing down the flag would be a perfect symbol for daily narco news filling the papers could still be believed to courage is what these young people recover for their city. Evil [first edition: 1963]. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. the narcos.” Anticipating the worst, the car park has been be a war between drug cartels and the state security forces Step by step they show themselves and their hometown (9) Sicilia, Javier. 2011. ‘Estamos hasta la madre... (carta abierta a los closed. Lucky enough, so far nothing has happened on top only – that is to say between “them,” not involving “us” – the the possibility of an alternative story to be told. This story políticos y a los criminales)’. Proceso, April 3 Retrieved March 24, 2012 of Monterrey’s emblematic city mountain. However, there young girl’s death made many inhabitants finally realise that is about not giving up walking in public, even though this (http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=266990). have been bombs in other parts of town. To locals, the the narco world has left its parallel universe and stepped walking has to be done among narcos. only difference between bomb and gunfight is the scale of up right in the middle of their lives. In the narratives of the destruction – and the level of noise of course: “Some days people I meet, Lucy’s death figures as a kind of last straw ago, in the early morning hours, a few blocks down the that broke the silence. The very first day after the fatality, road, there was this massive explosion… I woke up and people gathered with candles in the street and started said to my self: ‘well, now they are using car bombs, that is marching and when the mourners accompanied Lucy on new.’ Then I turned around and got back to sleep.” her last journey through the city, “the large contingent was received by the courtesy of other drivers, who would give Controlling the streets is part of a bloody competition way as soon as they realised that it was the dead girl’s to be Lord of the city. Because many of the encounters funeral march” (7). between narcos and state authority end up in car chases, the city has seen the proliferation of enormous speed So there is an encouraging story to be told about Monterrey bumps: “a perfect kind of anti-narco street design, so nobody too: A growing number of the city’s inhabitants try to can escape at high speed anymore.” The counter-tactic take to heart Villiro’s call to resist getting used to what

page 6 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 7 Welcome to Paradise

Sara Faridamin

“Welcome to paradise. But where are you? Is this a new science fiction novel from Margaret Atwood, the sequel to Blade Runner or Donald Trump tripping on acid? No, it is the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai in 2010. After Shanghai (current population 15 million), Dubai (current population 1.5 million) is the world’s biggest building site - an emerging dreamworld of conspicuous consumption and what locals dub ‘supreme lifestyles’.” (1)

This series of photographs was taken of Dubai’s cityscapes in April 2012. I was interested in exploring and experiencing the effects of the fast urban growth that this city has been through in the recent decades.

(1) Davis M. (2005) ‘Evil Paradise: An Artist’s Vision of Dubai in the Future’, Socialist Review. September http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article. php?articlenumber=9509. Accessed on 25/06/2012.

page 8 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 9 Around Hiroshima: Between the A-Bomb and the Everyday Mark Rainey

as a backdrop for a night-time drive. The mundane activity a sort of balance. Enough of the structure remains to Trams and Subways / Driving and Flying of a city drive becomes an aesthetic experience as it is reflect its former status, while at the same time expressing The Former Army Clothing Depot projected and multiplied on a series of 64 screens stacked the destruction of 6 August, 1945. It remains in stasis, Hiroshima is a city traversed by tram. After the war 8 x 8. Hiroshima is important precisely because it is the perpetually caught between destruction and construction. Off the normal visitor routes and located within the most Japanese cities dismantled their tram systems, ‘any city’ from which this backdrop may be taken (1). In Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, repair work only Minami residential district, the Former Army Clothing however Hiroshima had its system reinstated with disused their controversial installation Making the Sky of Hiroshima prevents it from naturally crumbling, but never goes so Depot is a massive redbrick structure with a size that trams arriving from cities across the country. The tram “Pika!” the collective ChimPom inscribe the word ‘Pika’ far as to move beyond the damage of that day. The dome is striking against the housing it sits alongside. Long system, it was thought, would help bring a sense of ____ above the Atomic Bomb Dome using an airplane. itself, with its barbed iron cap, sits as a sort of crown of abandoned, its buckled iron shutters are testament to the familiarity and normality to the annihilated city. Today it Pika means ‘flash-bang’ in Japanese and is a euphemism thorns above the ruin. force of the atomic blast. However, the derelict building brings a sense of identity. The tram system is distinctly often used to describe the atomic detonation (2). is also a reminder of Hiroshima’s militaristic past (9). Hiroshima, embedded in the city’s geography. A typical Spectres Hiroshima was once home to the 5th Army and the city Hiroshima scene is the tram running along the Aioi Bridge, Atomic Bomb Dome was bound to the colonial project of Japan. The 5th Army foregrounded by the ruin of the Atomic Bomb Dome So what about the ghosts which are not to be simply dismissed was active in Japan’s colonial wars: both Sino-Japanese along the bank of the Motoyasu River, with the lights of You have seen nothing of Hiroshima [...] You know nothing of as fantastic, since they haunt us on account of their very wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War and the old Municipal Baseball Stadium high in the background. Hiroshima. (3) excessive unbearable, reality, like the Holocaust? [...] It the Asia-Pacific War (10). Like the Atomic Bomb Dome, the Each of these components: the tram, the Dome and the continues to haunt us as a spectral entity that cannot be fully Former Army Clothing Depot has a double history. It was stadium evoke the atomic bomb and recovery. At the These words appear as stone at the opening of Resnais’ ‘accounted for’, integrated into a social reality, even if we know once an imperial building that now serves to display the foot of the Aioi Bridge is the tram stop closest to both Hiroshima Mon Amour. Lui repeats them to his French lover (almost) all about it on the level of historical facts (7). effects of atomic war. the Atomic Bomb Dome; the representative surviving as she recites the facts, figures and statistics of the 6th of - Žižek structure and the hypocentre of the bomb’s detonation. August, 1945. The words represent the chasm between While walking the length of the old depot, I notice an As it approaches the stop, the tram has a distinctive and the experience of the atomic bomb and knowledge of The words of Lui are repeated again. The gap remains. Its elderly woman approach the building to inspect the thin sombre bell chime. The chime acts as a brief, reflective it, between the affliction and the representation. Yet, ‘excessive reality’ (8) is too close for comfort to be fully patch of dirt that separates the depot from the street. She and barely noticeable reminder of the atomic bomb. It’s a with the Atomic Bomb Dome, the past is not solemnly integrated into everyday life or simply represented as is checking her vegetables. As I continue to walk, I realise sort of positive psychogeography built into the commute cut off from the present. Commuters arrive and depart objective history. The surviving buildings, structures and that most of the dirt strip along the side of the building across the city. from the adjacent tram stop, workers and students cycle geographies of Hiroshima become points of interruption is used by residents as a space for makeshift flower and past, salarymen walk along the riverside path and two throughout the city, even as they form part of its daily fabric. vegetable gardens. While leaving, I watch a father and son Yet Hiroshima is also like any other Japanese city drunkards sit on a nearby bench putting the world to right. Hiroshima Anderson is a surviving structure incorporated practice baseball along the narrow residential street. Each with long pedestrian subways running underneath major In his study of Hiroshima’s dark tourism, Mick Broderick into the Hondori Shopping Arcade. Formerly a branch of swing of the back sees the ball crack against the Former thoroughfares. These subways contain shops, upmarket describes the heightened eclecticism around the Atomic the Nihon Bank, it is now the flagship store of the Danish Army Clothing Depot and rebound back onto the street boutiques, convenience stores, cafés, restaurants and any Bomb Dome and Peace Memorial Park as national elections inspired bakery chain. Outside the entrance a plaque of where the father picks it up and throws it again. other business that may fit the space. They are pedestrian and the anniversary of the detonation near: peace activists the Little Mermaid sits next to a plinth displaying an image oriented commercial spaces and create a strange relation and anti-nuclear protestors, monks chanting at the Dome, of the building days after the atomic bomb, with flattened Memorial Cathedral For World Peace to the city. Most extend out of transport hubs or central a performance artist ‘writhing in agony’, tourists, pilgrims streets surrounding it. The Fukuro-Machi Elementary department stores and delay the experience of the open and ‘right-wing, pro-military, yakuza associated thugs’ who School and former Bank of Japan are both surviving The Memorial Cathedral is an evocative space with a street. In Hiroshima, you can walk under the length of Aioi harass the mayor of Hiroshima and other councillors from buildings that provide museum and exhibition space in the modernist concrete interior and reminiscent of the rebuilt Street and make your approach to the Peace Memorial vans mounted with megaphones (4). The Dome stands as centre. And the former Hiroshima University building now Coventry Cathedral and Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church Park and Atomic Bomb Dome from below. With its trams a symbol of inhumanity and nuclear death while humanity, has an empty grandeur about it. It was in use until the in Berlin. All aim to be symbols of reconciliation and and its subways Hiroshima is at once a distinct city and a in its variations, swirls around it. This eclecticism shouldn’t recent relocation of the University to Higashi-Hiroshima. recovery. In the Memorial Cathedral there is a colourful typical city. It is located somewhere between the atomic be surprising. As Matthew Charles points out, there is As much as these sites, and many others like them, form mosaic bust of Christ above the altar with a bolt of light bomb and the everyday. a double history to the Atomic Bomb Dome (5). It was part of the cityscape, they are still the remainders and cutting through the figure. Stained glass windows high on formerly the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion reminders of an atomic past, creating a landscape and the walls cast more colour into the church. Geography and transport are not the only expressions Hall, designed by Czech architect Jan Letzl in 1915. In its social reality pock-marked by physical-historic disruption. of this. Art installations, for instance, have featured ‘pre-history’ the Dome was a local symbol of Japanese I assume I’m alone and soak in the space, but then hear the Hiroshima as both a ‘typical city’ and the city of the atomic modernity, colonialism and imperialism (6). It is now an quick footsteps of a woman as she hurries down the aisle bomb. In their work Delay, Rogue’s Gallery use Hiroshima emblem of peace. The Atomic Bomb Dome maintains in my direction. She stops fifteen feet away, waiting as I

page 10 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 11 finish my gaze across the ceiling. I turn to her and she says, of the Hiroshima Peace memorial City Construction ‘Come, come. Follow me.’ I follow her quickly back down Law by the central government in 1949, Hiroshima was the same aisle and realise that she is taking me to the to be rebuilt as the city of peace. Reconstruction began statue of Mary. ‘Now, kneel’ she says gently, but ecstatically. with the creation of the Peace Memorial Park in 1952 in ‘Look into the eyes’. I do, but my Protestant instincts have the annihilated Nakajima district of Hiroshima. It was a already kicked in. I will not be seeing a miracle today. national project and, as Lisa Yoneyama has pointed out, the After 5 minutes with her kneeling at my side I remark that substitution of the term ‘atomic bomb‘ for the word ‘peace‘ the statue is very life-like. She wants me to believe that it in reference to Hiroshima’s redevelopment satisfied both is alive. ‘Look into the eyes’. I stand up. She tells me that the national government and the American Occupation (15). the statue moves. Mary has been seen to step down from While the remnants of a former military hospital destroyed her plinth and unto the church floor. I say, ‘thank you’ and by the atomic bomb remain visible on the banks of the Ota, make a quick exit. As I leave, more and more people arrive other landscapes have been erased by the reconstruction. in the Cathedral. After the atomic bomb survivors who had lost their homes began building makeshift and illegal housing in available Miyuki Bridge spaces along the river. These pockets of housing became known as the A-Bomb Slum. The last of the slum district Pavement signage for the Atomic Bomb Dome in Former Hiroshima University building Miyuki Bridge spans the Kyobashi River, connecting the was cleared in the rebuilding of Motomachi and no physical Hondori Shopping Arcade city centre to the Minami district of Hiroshima and the or visible reminder remains. Recently, however, attention port beyond. Although cyclists and pedestrians cross the has returned to the slums through the popular manga bridge, it is mainly used by trams and traffic. The plinth at Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms written by the foot of the bridge is easily passed by. On the plinth is Fumiyo Kuono (16). The first half the graphic novel is set a photograph taken by Yoshito Matsushige who arrived in in the A-Bomb Slum as survivors cope with the lingering Minami, camera in hand, three hours after the detonation social and physical effects of the atomic bomb. In the of the atomic bomb. He took only five photographs that second half, an aging Tokyo resident returns to his home of attached the old stadium. But inside the Mazda stadium (1) Roppongi Crossing 2010: Can There Be Art? (2010) Tokyo: MORI Art day as his viewfinder became ‘clouded with tears’ amid Hiroshima and the sculpted green landscape of the Peace new sightlines open up. Throughout the game, at regular Museum, pp. 90-3 the unfolding aftermath of the atomic bomb (10). The Park becomes a visualised memoryscape of the A-bomb intervals, the bullet train skims across the horizon, its track (2) ibid. p.53 image displayed on the plinth is of stunned, burned and Slum. While Kuono may eulogise the slum, she also brings level with the top of the stadium and framed by the rising (3) Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) Alain Resnais (dir). desperate survivors gathering along the bridge. To the it momentarily back to life. These spaces are easily cleared concrete of the outfield stands. This is a Hiroshima sightline (4) Broderick, M. (2010) ‘Topographies of Trauma: Dark Tourism, World passerby, the image is a moment of interruption that and erased and so is their memory. Walking or cycling along without reference to the atomic bomb. Its components Heritage and Hiroshima’, Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the cannot settle into an objective piece of history. It is the Ota River, alongside the Motomachi district, it seems are redevelopment attached the contemporary city: a new Pacific, Issue 24, June 2010 disarming and haunting. In a different – but not irrelevant easy to make the mental leap from the destruction of the stadium and modern transport. (5) Charles, M. (2010) ‘Imaginative Mislocation: Hiroshima’s Genbaku – context, Jacques Derrida describes the ‘several times of atomic bomb to the reconstructed landscape. It is easy to Dome, Ground Zero of the Twentieth Century’ in Radical Philosophy, 162, the spectre’ in which ‘no one can be sure if by returning forget the A-Bomb Slum and the brief moment it occupied July/August 2010. p.19 it testifies to a living past or to a living future’ (11). In between the atomic bomb and Hiroshima today. (6) ibid. this sense, Matsushige’s photograph is disruptive not only (7) Žižek, S. (2000) The Fragile Absolute, London: Verso. p.63 because it presents the traumatic shock of a past event, Stadiums (8) ibid. but also because it presents a future possibility. It acts as (9) Hiroshima Architecture (2010) Hiroshima: Architecture Walk Hiroshima. both a reminder of the past and warns against the return It’s the bottom of the ninth on a balmy spring afternoon p.9. An online copy of this small booklet is available here: http://www. of such events. The image becomes a call to stand firm and the Hiroshima Carp and Chunichi Dragons are tied 2-2. oa-hiroshima.org/book/book_ver1.pdf. against nuclear proliferation. It becomes an imperative Kurihara steps up to the plate. He hits a double, sending (10) Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima (visited December 2010) (12). The imperative is extended to the city of Hiroshima home the runner on second base. The Carp have beaten (11) ibid. itself. Unlike other Japanese cities, its name is often the Dragons and the 30,000 strong crowd bursts into (12) Derrida, J. (1994) Spectres of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of written in Katakana, the phonetic script normally reserved celebration. A sea of red pours out of the stadium and into Mourning and the New International, Trans by Peggy Kamuf. London: for foreign words. The phrase ノーモタ ヒㇿㇱマ! (No the surrounding streets. Shops along the way to Hiroshima Routledge More Hiroshimas!) is future oriented. It is Hiroshima as Station blast out the Hiroshima Carp Fight Song from their (13) At the time of compiling these notes, workers at the stricken the a-bombed city, demanding the abolition of nuclear open doors. The yakitori stall sells its skewered chicken at Fukushima nuclear plant continued to battle against further meltdowns weapons and nuclear power half-price to celebrate the victory and inside the Fukuya and radiation leaks. Despite the end of the Cold War, events following department store purchases are wrapped in Hiroshima the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011 indicate that nuclear The A-Bomb Slum Carp paper. catastrophe remains a possibility. (14) Yoneyama, L. (1999) Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of The bank of the Ota River is a popular jogging and cycling The Mazda stadium, built in 2009 near Hiroshima station, Memory, University of California Press. p. 48 path that passes along the Motomachi district and into the is a new home for the Carp. The old Hiroshima Municipal (15) Town Planning Hiroshima (2004) Hiroshima: City Planning Bureau, City city centre and Peace Memorial Park. The high rises and Baseball Stadium now sits silent and empty in the centre of Hiroshima. p. 23 green spaces of Motomachi were completed in 1978 and of the city. It was once a powerful symbol of the city’s (16) Kuono, F. (2007) Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, according to planners, ‘marked the symbolic conclusion of post-bomb recovery, but now awaits demolition. Even Japan: Last Gasp Hiroshima’s postwar reconstruction’ (14). With the passing to the Hiroshima visitor, there is a sense of melancholy

page 12 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 13 In its material lifelessness, the stone statue prompts the rather than a chance possibility. They have indeed become invisible motion of emotion from its beholder, who will compulsory objects of attraction in assigned parts of The Marks of Stone need to stand still for any length of time in order to form the city such as London’s South Bank promenade. The that temporary bond. The beholder can also choose to fact they move, and come and go, seems to give them a pass the statue by and, in physical motion, will relate to particular status pertaining to the principle of life and, and Living Statues the statue from a peripheral perspective which may, or by apposition, the stone statue receives an attribute of Claude St Arroman may not, involve emotion. The stone statue is a landmark in lifelessness. The literal interpretation of life and lifelessness time and space, guiding physical and emotional movements is thus given over to optical movement, as opposed to and pauses across the city without dictating the terms phenomenological movement. of this relationship. It invites the possibility of a form of metamorphic projection which, if one bears in mind its Moreover, they mark out a revised map of the city which The human fascination for objects which appear to be followed by their direct counterparts, the automatons – prevalence during more objectivist Renaissance times, is conditional to particular times and spaces outside alive because they move is perhaps as primal as humanity clockwork devices cloaked as human beings or animals. contains a degree of paradox. the fluctuating continuity of urban time and context – a itself. If pets are happy to chase a ball on a string, young The former, imbued with life, imitate lifelessness whereas map of circulation rather than location, a tour rather children are mesmerised by mechanical toys despite the the latter, devoid of life, imitate life. Both operate on the Michaelangelo and his contemporaries revived antiquity’s than a route. They define locality in terms of immediate fact that, if their eyes record movement, the rest of their direct correlation made by language, between (visible) quest for perfection of the body, a body ‘frozen’ in desirability and ‘grey out’, by default, other localities and cognition does not perceive any of the signs of life – physical movement and life, and extract by default the the act of motion which, in its perfection, alludes to their own specificity. This was potently captioned by fluctuating smells, randomness, the imperceptible sounds element of invisible motion, which stretches beyond the divine principles but also to emotional states (movement Anthony Gormley’s Blind Light/Event Horizon (8), making and modulations of breathing – that characterise life in eye and even beyond the sensory world. expresses emotion). This idealisation of the human form reference to optical paradox, but also to the traditional action and in pause. Pause between movements is an was transferred, in the twentieth century, to the living spatial mapping of the city relative to fixed statues. In integral feature of life, but the eye alone is perplexed by The interface between living statues and automatons has human body which has thrived to become so athletic this instance, they were all identical, stripped of personal its stillness. To the eye, immobility is lifeless. resulted in a gradual interchange of roles. The Victorian (6) as to resemble the Apollo of ancient Greece. While identity – standing figures deprived of emotive expression story of Coppélia reveals that this is not a recent movement becomes increasingly subservient to statuesque or meaning, hermetically and distantly motionless and Paradoxically, humans can assign life to lifelessness through preoccupation. While today’s robots and virtual cyberborgs imagery (7), street dance choreographies make increasing inaccessible. The only specimen which could be observed the affects and effects of anthropomorphic projection. increasingly mimic humans, living statues and dancers are reference to the robot. It is interesting to observe how the at close range gazed in an unfathomable distance, as if lost, A small child will happily form an emotional bond with increasingly prone to imitating the machine. Nevertheless, principles above became amalgamated, but this hybridity to the landscape and to the spectator. It is no accident a pebble (1) which acquires life by virtue of being part of this transference retains the fundamental dynamics of conceals the fundamental issue of movement, pause and that it was sited at the cusp of two territories – the bright his life. This is not only an act of projection from self to ambiguity between movement-as-life and stillness-as-non- emotion which resides in the relationship itself. side of the leisurely river promenade and the dark side otherness. This is an empathic act of reciprocity between life, in a game of mirrors, reflections and refractions which of the chaotic world of Waterloo station – gazing blankly two entities, which activates the phenomenology of mutual are essentially designed to confuse a spectator, and which Stone statues are statues in themselves. Their existence upon the invisible boundary between commodified and understanding through metaphor and imagination (2). In evoke ontological uncertainties about the principles of life is not conditional to an audience, in time or space. Living inconsumable environments. his introduction to Microspherology (3), Peter Sloterdijk and death. Living statues and automatons, whether they statues on the other hand, whether they belong to the beautifully describes a child’s total involvement with are alive or not, are objects of the stage designed to be fleshy or mechanical sides of existence, are in a conditional soap bubbles which become ‘part’ of the experience and beheld by an audience of beholders. pact with a spectator. The spectator has to stand and themselves entities, despite the fact that they are not wait for the living statue, or its automated counterpart, inside each other or alive but, rather, overtly separate. Interestingly, this relationship contains the same ambiguities to perform and is thus suspended in stillness, in time and Yet theyt are interrelated. With a child’s eye, Sloterdijk if, perhaps, the other way around: it is often thought that place, waiting for the moment to ‘materialise’. This places perceives life bursting from the apparently discrete bubble the gaze objectifies the beheld entity and this is often both alternates in dual reciprocity outside of the wider and communing with the child. The space, which separates true of scientific observation, which requires that the spectrums of time and place, inside its own bubble of them is also the site of their relationship and unites the observed object should be still, if not dead altogether. But event. This also diminishes the potential of metaphoric two spheres into one temporary whole sphere in its own the act of beholding also requires that the observer be projection which might occur between a stone statue and right. The movement of emotion is here an invisible rapport still, whether or not the beheld entity is still or moving. a spectator, the anthropomorphic rapport between object (1) Hughes, S. ‘Bonting’, (1992) in The Big Alfie Out of Doors Storybook, The of motion between self and otherness. In fact, the Medusa myths suggest just that: it is not the and subject so dear to childhood – the moment is short Bodley Head Children’s Books. beheld Medusa who is turned into stone (objectified) by and short lived, a stepping stone to the thrill of the next (2) Lakoff, G. and Johnson, J. (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh – the Embodied Although this intimate relationship between physical and her beholder; it is the beholder who becomes petrified exhibit. Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books. emotional movements is tacitly incorporated in linguistics by what is beheld. Stephen Moffatt took the paradox a (3) Sloterdijk, P. (2001) Spheres, Volume I : Bubbles – Microspherology, (4), absence of movement can at once indicate life and step further when he created his Weeping Angels for a Dr There are very good cases for being cautious about stone translated by Wieland Hoban, MIT Press. lifelessness, and this is not a comfortable condition for Who episode: living ‘statues’ who/which can only move statues. However benign, they always carry intentional (4) Bruno, G. (2007), ‘motion’ and ‘e-motion’, The Atlas of Emotion – objectivist epistemology. It isn’t surprising therefore that when they are not being watched (5). In this case, the act and/or residual meaning; although they are open to Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film ,Verso Publications, 2002. the expression of this ambiguity should have enjoyed of watching is conditional to survival, and not watching interpretation and invite the guidance of imagination. (5) Blink, Dr Who, BBC1, 9 June 2007, 10th episode, third series renewed popularity in theatre traditions of the Renaissance de-objectifies the beheld object at the cost the beholder’s But the same could be said of all works of art, and I (6) Gilroy, P. (1997) ‘Exer(or)cising Power: Black Bodies in the Black – during the rise of objectivism. The tableau vivant became life (lifelessness). would argue that living statues and automatons are also Public Sphere’ from Dance in the City Edited by Helen Thomas, Palgrave a regular feature of European street theatre, with actors somewhat manipulative. They control the range and type Macmillan (September 15, 1997), posing silent and motionless to represent a scene of life as By comparison, the role of a straightforward stone statue of engagement through their position in time and space. (7) Thomas, H and Miller, N., ‘Ballroom Blitz’ by Helen Thomas and Nicola if it were a painting. These early ‘living statues’ were shortly representing a human being seems remarkably simple. Unlike stone statues, they come and go across the urban Miller, from Dance in the City, as above landscape and their appearance constitutes a staged event (8) Hayward Gallery/ Southbank Centre, 17 May - 19 August 2007

page 14 · streetsigns · spring 2011 streetsigns · spring 2011 · page 15 Inventory of an Aftermath Mind the Social Sam Bailey Erlend Hovdkinn

Warren Court, Tottenham Hale – Sunday 5th February pour three teas and go over to the window while they stew. almost all of Kings Cross, Islington, We do not want ‘our’ beloved hometowns to change, but 2012. It is almost exactly six months since the ‘riots’ of The smell of the tea soothes my hangover. Camden, Brixton, Hackney and Tower they do, all the time. It is in these moments of urban change August 2011 spectacularly focused the eyes of a nation on Hamlets, the next areas to be ‘regenerated’ that social injustice crystallises, because the ability to this oft-neglected corner of North-East London. But as The snow outside is still completely covering the grass and are south- and north-east London, which adjust to change is not equally distributed across society’s the post-‘riot’ finger-pointing (from the political right) and pavements outside the window. On the road it is starting means Peckham, New Cross, Deptford strata. Urban change means, according to David Harvey hand-wringing (from the political left) continues apace, the to melt slowly, but not many cars come down this way so and Tottenham. Tottenham seems to be (1), relocation of resources which creates what he calls banalities of everyday life have once again taken precedence remains relatively thick. Beyond the Hale Garden flats I lagging a bit behind Peckham and Deptford, ‘externality effects’. These will be positive to some, negative for the residents of the area. can see the Tottenham Hale Gyratory. It is busy as always, but ironically the recent ‘riots’ may end to others. A spectacular regeneration of a brown field with cars going south towards Stamford Hill and Hackney, up spurring this development on, as the industrial harbour is at first glance a beneficial resource It is 1.30pm, and I wake up in the front room of my friend East towards Walthamstow or North towards Enfield, Brixton riots of the 1980’s did for that area. for a city. It makes the city more competitive in the global Callum’s flat, groggy from last night’s activities. The flat Hertfordshire and Stansted Airport. Behind the gyratory is Further down the road from the posh new market, where the struggles for attracting tourist and actually belongs to both Callum and his partner Loren, but Tottenham Hale bus, train and tube station, which is not as UNITE flats is the bridge on which Mark business are closely connected to its economy. she is away for the weekend, along with their 2-year-old busy as usual, largely because of the bad weather, and the Duggan was murdered by armed police just daughter, Talia. Callum grew up in this flat with his Mum, but fact it is a Sunday. A few people are moving in and out of a few months ago. The ‘investigation’ into The new opera house constructed on Oslo’s old industrial she became ill last year and now lives in an assisted care the entrance to the tube, or smoking outside of it, sheltering his death continues, but the community in harbour offers an adequate example. The new developments home in nearby Enfield. under the awning of a shuttered-up caff. The sounds of Tottenham do not expect anything positive in and around this particular area are obviously a resource the passing traffic and trains going north to Stansted or to come from it. The relationship between for Oslo from the perspective of a competitive global The blinds are down but the early afternoon light is Hertfordshire are heavily muffled by the window and height the community and the police force here economy, but its consequences are not unilaterally positive. coming through them regardless. The room is covered in of the flat, but can still just about be made out. is at its lowest since the last Broadwater The regeneration of the harbour, for example, is exploited the detritus of our ‘cotch’ last night; Playstation games and Farm riots of the mid-1980s, if not lower; by every entrepreneur in the neighbouring boroughs, controllers, overflowing ashtrays, empty bottles of Appleton At the south-east end of the gyratory stands Tottenham Hale the high-visibility ‘community’ officer has resulting in a massive price rise across all spheres of the rum and stout beers. My laptop is still playing hip-hop but Retail Park, an indentikit space for mass consumption. The his work cut out. I return to the stewing urban economy. This particularly affects the traditional at a level so low that only the beat of the bass and kicks are huge car park is fairly empty, though a ‘Community Support’ teas and carry them with me back into working class neighbourhoods in the inner city east, within recognisable; a flat, soothing background sound. There is a police officer in a striking high-visibility vest, reflecting the dishevelled front room, where the which residents will face immense difficulties remaining strong smell of marijuana and stale smoke. The TV is silent brightly the light from the snow and shiny-wet tarmac, walks visual tropes of last August can once again where they grew up, while others from more affluent but static is flashing across the screen, which pains my head through on some sort of patrol. Police presence has been become invisible. positions will move into these former working class when I look at it. On the other sofa is Mikey, face buried in upped at the park since the August ‘riots’, when some of neighbourhoods. What is happening here is gentrification, the arm of the sofa, dead to the world around him. Callum the residents of Warren Court and other nearby blocks forcing the working class to leave the inner city for the must have moved to his own bed at some point - I don’t took the opportunity to loot the O2, Orange, JD Sports eastern satellite states of Oslo. This reurbanisation reverses bother struggling to remember. The box of brightly coloured and Carphone Warhouse stores which form part of the ring the former suburbanisation and reconstructs the city in the toys in the corner looks accusingly at the state of the room which surrounds the car park. image of the formerly suburban middle class. around it. Behind the station loom strikingly clean and new high-rise A paradigm shift in urban policy I move through to the kitchen. A drying rack full of baby flats, built by UNITE and opened in 2008 as student halls. clothes and Callum’s boxer-shorts gives off a faint whiff of Most the students there are from abroad, or are studying at Harbour-side dwellings were once part of a strategy for washing powder, one of the few fresh smells left in the flat. smaller institutions that might not have their own halls. Their housing the factory workers and other blue collars; part There is a slight scent of West African cooking from a nearby colourful blandness reminds me of the new developments of a welfare program aiming at giving shelter to people flat. In the silent kitchen, the sounds of people moving around you see dotted around DLR stations in the docklands area, who needed it most. The city itself needed it, dependent upstairs can be heard, with kids running about in short sharp though these are a bit more colourful – each floor has an as it was on industry, and thus the workers. Following steps and adults following in louder, dulled movements. I put orange or green stripe pattern running underneath the the deindustrialisation of the economy the working class the kettle on, which boils loudly for a long time without windows. They are one of the first and most visible signs of are not strictly needed in the inner city anymore. Today’s automatically stopping. To stop it from boiling forever, I have the forthcoming gentrification of Tottenham. Although you post-industrial economy, grounded in the principles of to move my arm through the steam to flick the switch off, could not easily tell from street level around Seven Sisters neoliberalism is notable for deregulations in the housing which burns my hand slightly. Bringing my hand to my face to station or on the High Road, the inevitable wave of ‘renewal’ market. This means that the inner-city housing policy is no blow on it, a strong smell of weed from my fingers hits me. I is soon to change this area forever. Having already subsumed longer developed according to need, but rather preferences.

page 16 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 17 Olympic Catalyst

Alexandra Baixinho

As a consequence working class dwellings are subjected to (1) Harvey, D. (2009) Social Justice and the City, Athens and London: The intense financial speculation, and renovations make large University of Georgia Press returns on the capital employed, with potential resale (2) Smith, N. (1987) ‘Gentrification and the Rent Gap’ in Annals of the values are much higher than the ground rents (2). With Association of American Geographers, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Sep., 1987), pp. 462-465 housing policy adapted to preferences and competition, it is (3) www.oslo.kommune.no, URL: http://www.bydel-grunerlokka.oslo. white collars who will prosper at the expense of blue. As I kommune.no/enhet_for_mangfold_og_integrering/oxlo/ (downloaded: read this situation, it can only be justified within a neoliberal 21.06.12) economic model. It cannot be justified socially. (4) Hall, T. and Hubbard, P. (1996) ’The Entrepreneurial City: New Urban Politics, New Urban Geographies?’ in Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 20, Mind the social No. 2, pp. 153-174

Urban authorities in today’s cities seem rather eager to celebrate diversity. In Oslo this is promoted by the municipality’s public awareness campaign OXLO with the slogan ‘Oslo Extra Large – a city for everyone’ (3). There is nothing wrong per se with such campaigns, which aim to elaborate tolerance for cultural, ethnic, and sexual minorities, but there are good reasons from a sociological perspective to question their efficacy when other policies do not seem to correspond with the alleged lust for urban diversity. In other words, social aspects should be included when we talk about sustainability, diversity and urban planning.

Cities provide their spectators with multiple impressions. Architecture, culture, informal economies, creativity, street life, youth culture, multiculture, transport, sounds, smells etc. Naturally, all these phenomena are represented in contemporary urban studies, often with fascination as a point of departure, which perhaps is inevitable for a proper engagement. However, in times of austerity and deregulation politics, it is the sociologists’ responsibility to elaborate the social as something to be taken seriously. For urban sociology, this means seeing the city for its people, Having a friend who lives in Stratford, my trajectories in (1) Roche, Maurice (1996) ‘Mega-events and Micro-modernization: On the not only its fascinating density of spectacular buildings and London include occasional trips to this northeast area sociology of the new urban tourism’ in Apostolopoulos, Yiorgos; Leivadi, other forms of human creativity. A guideline in this respect of the city. These images reflect my perspective as a Stella; Yiannakis, Andrew (Eds.) The sociology of tourism: theoretical and could be to acknowledge, like Tim Hall and Phil Hubbard, foreign flâneuse and train/Overground/DLR passenger. I’m empirical investigations, 315-347, London and New York: Routledge that the economy of urban signs and space is both a means interested in understanding how mega-events (1), such as (2) Fainstein, Susan (2008) ‘Mega-projects in New York, London and of ‘selling’ the city on the global market and a form of the Olympics, become mega-projects (2) that catapult city Amsterdam’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume social dominance that works in favour of certain collective expansion, transforming the urban landscape and enabling 32, Issue 4, 768-785 habituses at the expense of others (4). a ‘whole range of giant infrastructural projects that would (3) Fainstein, Susan (2008) ‘Mega-projects in New York, London and otherwise struggle to win support’(3). Amsterdam’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 32, Issue 4, 768-785

page 18 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 19 Deptford High Street

Anita Strasser

I come from a village in the Austrian Alps where I bump purpose, my photographic urge gives me the extra push unnoticed, thus allowing me to capture my impressions a huge effect on the seemingly strong community - into familiar faces wherever I go, where I buy from local to close the door behind me and dive into the world of an and consolidate the whole process. Therefore, the image many long-term shopkeepers reminisce about the past businesses and chat to people about issues concerning individual, initiate contact, and try the various products becomes a summary of the very personal experience and feel neglected by the council, there seem to be the village. I have lived in many different countries and services on offer. Repeated contact, encounters with between me and the person. no trade restrictions, the lack of quality products, the and I guess it is due to my background that I always different people, observing the happenings, taking in the betting shop aspect (there are currently seven on the long for contact with my new neighbourhood as well vibes, and making myself known to locals creates this When I moved to Deptford in autumn 2009, I immediately less than half-a-mile-long High Street), gangs and drugs, as an understanding of local history, and always try to feeling of slowly becoming a member of the community became aware of the strong sense of community here. and all the development going on around Deptford make myself at home by finding my place in the local and of feeling at home. This process of familiarisation Seeing the same faces again and again, groups of people threatening the survival of local businesses. Many people community. The desire to become familiar with my new and the collecting of stories also raises my awareness of chatting on street corners, shop owners addressing their embrace the imminent changes facing Deptford, but surroundings increases my natural curiosity about the problems in an area (often historical and political issues) customers by first names, shoppers actively supporting many feel frustrated and worried, and that their voices people, the shops and the products, the history, and which, in turn, helps me develop an understanding of local businesses and speaking of the good old days are unheard. whatever else a place has to offer, and photography is a a place, and it is this knowledge that directs many of made me realise that I had come to a special area. Many means of establishing contact as it allows me to address the questions I ask. I take the photos some time during conversations confirmed my first impressions, and I and Over the space of 18 months, I have collected what strangers and ask about their lives, their origins, and this investigatory period, some time when I feel that the many others believe that Deptford has something special people have told me - happy and sad stories, positive aspects of life in that particular area. Whilst I might shy presence of my camera is not perceived as intrusive, that no other place has. However, it is not all happy in and negative aspects of life here, embellished memories away from exploring a space if there is no particular resulting in an artificial image, but rather goes almost Deptford, and I soon discovered many issues that have of the past and worries about the future - all of which

page 20 · streetsigns · spring 2011 streetsigns · spring 2011 · page 21 “Silence in the train?”

Karla Berrens

This article is a short reflection on a train journey with From the advent of mobile phones, the realm of private my son, a very young toddler oblivious to the social telephone conversation has been moved from semi norms to which public/or shared private spaces abide. discrete spaces such as an office or home to anywhere. As such, journeys with him can be very revealing. The mobile phone, like the iPod, creates an individual bubble that overrides public space. The user seems to I recently got a peak time train, the First Capital become oblivious of the space and people surrounding Connect service from London Bridge to Brighton on him and might engage in extremely private conversations a Friday evening. The train was at its fullest and yet not very publicly. In this respect, these technological gadgets a word. People were totally absorbed in personalised produce paradoxical effects. On the one hand, they might technological bubbles. When Michael Bull (1) studied the encourage a person to have a private interchange in a iPod and its effects he talked about the disconnection public space, enveloping fellow passengers in an over- from the soundscape that its uses suffer, or profit, from. the-phone break-up. On the other, a peak time packed The iPod offers a new soundtrack to the city, one to train carriage can be completely silent, with almost every move along to and to find comfort in. The new swarms passenger captivated by their smartphone or personal of smart phones, PDAs, media players, e-books readers technological device. also provide the option to listen to music, but open up an additional dimension of experience that goes It was in fact, while witnessing a very dramatic ‘over- beyond that discussed by Bull. This is not only a matter the-phone’ romantic break up that I was caused to think indicate the different attitudes and opinions, the “People need to rediscover collective action that talks about things in a of sonically re-tracking an environment; it is virtually a about the changes that mobile phones had produced. I different cultural backgrounds, and the various ways community we all want to be in. There are too many isolated voices, and complete abstraction from ones physical environment. thought that doing it via mobile phone added a layer of people are affected by history, politics and change. My people disagree, and rather than entering a compromise, they don’t do anything. ” embarrassment to the drama that could have easily been work has given me a deeper understanding of Deptford’s The train was packed yet silent. However, upon careful avoided by using other means. However, it was not until attractions and downsides, and has allowed me to “There are more interracial marriages now, and gradually, generation by listening, one could hear the compulsive noise of I started travelling with my toddler that I became really form my own conclusions regarding those and local generation, communities will be more integrated.” technology: The sound of fingers pressing on Blackberry curious about the silences in trains and buses. My son communities in general. “Many people who were born here but have moved away to Sidcup, for keys, the muted sound of finger tips on glass screens is two. For him, smartphones are shiny items that can example, come back to Deptford to be buried here. It’s strange, but people and muffled music leaking through careful tucked-in often provide a bit of distraction. A train carriage full of come back to die, and at funerals I often meet people who I have known for headphones. Observing somebody immersed in the people invested in their devices is very appealing to him. “Deptford was completely self-sufficient in the 60s; you could earn a good a long time and whose family members we have buried.” universe that their smartphone is providing them is He breaks the silence, forcing people to interact with wage and live well. Education wasn’t so important because you knew you’d get a job here.” “There used to be restrictions – you weren’t able to sell the same stuff the quite an experience. First of all, the observer becomes him with the charisma only a two year old can deploy. shop next door sold, but now you can do what you want. There is no law and invisible as does everything outside the glass screen. He unilaterally decides that, in the carriage, everybody “I’m not so happy here anymore - business in Deptford used to be much order and a thousand and one hairdressers”. In the train there was this girl, probably in her early is a potential source of distraction and/or play, and they better, and there is a lot of fighting going on. There are many dangerous twenties. Her headphones were on, her gaze fixed respond with either captivation or annoyance. It then youngsters that come in gangs here.” “People who don’t complain about Deptford are people who are not from, don’t live here or are shop owners, they don’t know what it’s like, they don’t on a shiny smartphone screen. Her look suggested a strikes me that London – deafening in so many senses “The best thing about Deptford is the rapport and personal relationships I understand. The users of the marked are older people, the unemployed - mixture of excitement and intelligent amusement. There and having such as a rich variety in its soundscape as in have built up with customers and families over the years.” people with the least amount of money. That’s why pound shops and the was definitely something interesting happening in that inhabitants – is creating an increasingly silent space in its cheap shops sell here, people can’t afford anything else. There is such a interaction – typing a message, sending, waiting, receiving, train carriages, a space that is filled with tension when “The first murder solved by fingerprints happened down here; that was high percentage of unemployment here as well and the job centre closed – I revolutionary.” mean it’s unreal!” reacting, thinking, and the cycle starts again. What my son decides to offer a bright smile to one of the seemed particularly striking was the individualisation of passengers before singing his favourite song at the top ”The High Street really needs brightening up a bit, and a couple more big that very public action. She was not hiding her smile of his voice: Happy Birthday! businesses would attract more customers. We need a greater variety of upon the reception of, I guessed, an instant message. shops too.” The complete series with texts and a foreword by John Levett (Crossing Lines) is available in book form in The Waiting Room (cafe on 142 Deptford But the rest of the carriage, even if witnesses to her “Deptford is earthy, it’s real, and I feel far removed from the real world when High Street) or at www.anitastrasser.com. reactions, were not part of it. We were all uninvited (1) Bull M. (2007) Sound moves, iPod Culture and Urban Experience, I’m in a leafy neighbourhood.” parts of a publicly held private conversation. London: Routledge

page 22 · streetsigns · spring 2011 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 23 Lift Operator An Account of a Public Space in Transition

Therese Henningsen

A public character is anyone who is in frequent The lift is an intriguing space. The presence of the “I’ve been here 23 years. But I’m going to move now. I’ve been spaces that encourage rather than hinder. This is a call for contact with a wide circle of people and who is stranger is particularly pronounced. The bodily proximity here long enough. I’m going to move. To either Budapest or the purposeless spaces, the spaces whose actual functions sufficiently interested to make himself a public and narrowness of space makes mental distance only the New Zealand” cannot be measured purely by their intended use. A call character. (1) more visible. Cities are spaces in which strangers stay and for the spaces, and their human presence, that allow for Jane Jacobs move in close proximity to each other. The way in which They are familiar transitions. We greet self-service entering a lift with the sole intention of handing over 10 city residents go about cohabitation is a matter of choice. machines in supermarkets and CCTVs in airports and red sausages accompanied by advice on their premium The room is relatively small. There are four wooden walls Decision or default. Consciousness or custom. The users on the streets. Augé (2) describes these as postmodern cooking. Public spaces that allow this dwelling are vital; and one entrance. A distinct characteristic defines this enter the lift. Sometimes they silently stand. Sometimes; non-places; unrooted places marked by mobility and shared experience is inconceivable without shared space. room: it moves. This function allows it to escort people they talk. Encounters are inevitably ephemeral, yet it travel. And reasonably you may want to ask: is a button to and from a foot tunnel. Inside the room a man presses becomes clear that the room allows for conversation. pressing duty really necessary? Arguably this occupation (1) Jacobs, J. (1993) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New buttons. Up. Down. This is his job. He sits on a chair: next The operator is an anchor. is not essential to the running of the lift. Yet the fragments York: Modern Library to the chair; a newspaper, a radio, a cup of tea. presented indicate a different function. Jacobs’ notion of (2) Augé, M. (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Commuters greet familiarly. public characters seems appropriate in portraying this: a Supermodernity, Verso Books “Is that man just sitting there, all day!?” public character does not need special talents or wisdom “That’s what he does, that’s his job” “I know a lot of them, I tell you, quite a few are doctors, to fulfil his function. He just needs to be present; his main there’s a tea consultant, and we have a glass blower.” qualification is that he is public; that he talks to lots of He used to be a carer in an old people’s home. He once different people. owned an off license. He is from Germany, but has lived in First-timers hesitantly. England since he was twenty. Chance brought him across A man enters and hands the operator a package of ten this occupation. His face suggests satisfaction. “People often mistake the lift for something else. Because of red sausages. the cupola. Once a Chinese lady came in with all her luggage “It’s a very silly job. It’s the easiest job I ever had.” and handed me her ticket to the Eurostar train to Paris.” “There you go. For your dinner tonight.” “Ah, thanks so much, Bill” There are ten of them, he says, five here and five in Greenwich Foot Tunnel Refurbishment Plans account “I tell you what, 30 seconds in the microwave and these ones Woolwich. He doesn’t know the ones in Woolwich very for a space in transition. The foot tunnel is undergoing are perfect!” well, but the Greenwich team is good. The phone that upgrade work. Door, ceiling and handrails. CCTV, help hangs on the wall allows the two men at each end of the points and PA-system. The work is to be concluded in the A lift serves a function; it is a means of transportation. tunnel to communicate. To gossip. And to warn. Certain spring of 2011. A state of change is visible; the operator Movement implies time. One minute. Two minutes. rules apply to the tunnel. People will be made aware if is aware of fragments of this process. How this particular intersection of time and space is they have misunderstood these regulations. occupied is a matter of choice. In cities people can learn “Apparently we are getting glass doors.” to live with strangers, to enter into the experiences and “Can you get off your bike please, there’s no cycling in the interests of unfamiliar lives. the operator matters in tunnel. Before you came I had two boys racing through the He points at the door. And the wall. generating a public space for these forms of interaction. tunnel. I told them to go up the stairs” “This will stay; the wood will stay…” The gradual disapperance of public characters is symbolic of developments in contemporary London. This impacts The operator recalls: the first lifts opened in 1904. They He hesitates. His finger touches the buttons: the mental life of citizens; the dialectic between defense used to wear suits and ties and the door was manually “…This will go, and we will go.” and stimulation comes into question. Attention should be controlled. Over there was the harbor and over here paid to this; the existence of public characters might be lived the workers. Sixty years ago, thousands and He presses buttons, where buttons need not be pressed. considered crucial to the possibility for Levinas’ notion thousands of people coming through. Inarguably, technology offers advantageous alternatives. of the neighbourliness of strangers. It may be considered His job is coming to an end. He shakes his head and nostalgic to mourn the loss of “the lift operator”. What “We have one sign over there behind the wood, it says ‘No smiles. He likes his job, yet doesn’t mourn the loss of purpose, if any at all, could there possibly be in the silliest spitting’. I mean, in the 10’s, 20’s and 30’s tuberculosis was it. He strikes you as the kind of person who is naturally job he ever had? What seems necessary is to consider widely common. And tuberculosis is air born, isn’t it, so every content. the effect of these changes on the psychology of city time you spit, you affect the whole lot” dwellers bearing in mind how we may reconsider public

page 24 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 25 The Dialectics of Deracinated Localism: Some Notes from the North Steve Hanson

I am currently finishing fieldwork in a northwestern, point at which that worthiness puts itself under threat Taking his cue from the British National Party, who in here, is the contradictory nature of the discourses. post-industrial border town. What ‘unites’ communities from competition. This is the realpolitik of deracinated recent years attempted to elide their hard fascist roots, I want to argue that because of these contradictory here is their attempts to root themselves in an essentially localism, it is a localism that is fundamentally rootless, it our local neo-Nazi recently tried to make his image more discourses, a return to dialectical thinking, to Hegel’s rootless landscape. This is not a new observation, it is sits on a landscape of wider uprooting. ‘friendly’. But this led to him being expelled from his own ‘aufheben’, concepts which carry their opposites, which the core of Zygmunt Bauman’s work (1). Here, even the party, as his makeover involved bringing a female, eastern cannot be separated out in any neat, binary way, is most provincial inhabitant is now effectively a citizen of This talk of ‘roots’ is both appropriate and ironic: If this asian fascist to the town for a few days of canvassing. crucial to understanding what is happening. I am for ‘the global’, simply because the processes which make town is now known for anything in its post-industrial They chatted to a Pakistani market stallholder, and a version of dialectical thinking which up-fronts the and re-make the local every day are global. Many people form, it is for the local ‘green’ growing group who posted pictures of their day out online. He also posted contradictory and irrational nature of our worlds within have moved with these processes, but those who refused successfully projects itself through national and global photographs of himself and the asian fascist, posing with language, and against one which supposedly delivers to move with them are just as uprooted by those who media. Yet a notorious neo-Nazi recently pulled more guns, in front of swastika flags, pictures of Hitler, and some Hegelian Ultimate Truth. Zygmunt Bauman always moved, as those who moved. This is the macro aspect of votes than the Green Party in council elections here. reproductions of romantic landscapes in oil. A dictat was writes dialectically, but the thing he never writes about the contradictory processes which now animate small As I write, Anders Breivik is on trial in Oslo. The local then issued by Party Central, which expelled the local these days is dialectics (3). My project here has been towns such as these. neo-Nazi has posted what looks like correspondence fascist immediately, for mingling with the ‘gook public’. to explicitly inject dialectical thinking into community with Breivik on his blog, which he has attempted to All of this played out on cracked stone flags, against research and therefore sociology as a whole. As the functions of government are gradually sold off, caveat by arguing against some of Breivik’s ideas. It is the crumbling stone walls of a ruined farm, which looks public life continues to shift towards a deracinated form unclear whether these posts are genuine or not, but the more eighteenth century than twenty-first. What is still happening here is that faced with frightening, of localism. The Localism Bill is only the most recent wider point I want to make here is that there is nothing radical changes, people re-construct a patchwork, Janus-face covering these processes, presenting rhetoric exclusively local about localism any more. This point The local food growing group’s retrenchment into local cultural garment, as a form of protection. Rather than from nineteenth century co-operatives, it seeks to turn maps onto the global, media-savvy growers, and our borders is from the point of view of production, but their seeing this as a collage though, they see it as an ‘authentic’ their functions inside-out, into yet another form of local fascist, whose attempts to re-localise – mentally project holds some contradictions too. For instance, identity, competing with other, proclaimed, ‘authentic’ market economy on the one hand, and free labour on the – into smaller and smaller borders, this country, this they are reproducing the lexicon of choice on their sign identities, in order to agonistically vie with them for other. There is a blurring of the public and private here, county and this town, are actually underpinned by the boards, ‘strawberries, leeks’, etc. ‘This is what we do for space and resources. The big landscape, which sits under of capitalism and voluntarism, which cannot be neatly unfettered global circulation of rhetoric, eco rhetoric, you’, they say, ‘and this is the choice we provide’. If we the cultural one, and produces all the other questions, re-connected: The Localism Bill is Janus-faced, presenting and fascist rhetoric. then go to the local Morrisons, we can see a ‘Market is capitalism in crisis. Among these heritagised, defused one thing on the surface of its rhetoric, but another in Street’ reproduced in the vegetable section. This section relics, the new middle classes are tentatively trying to step practice. As Bob Colenutt pointed out (2) the aim of the The local neo-Nazi retrenches to his remote farm, is tricked out like a ‘real’ market. In the supposedly into the dark of the oncoming and uncertain landscape, bill is to devolve power and give locals more control, where he pictures himself with his hunting rifle and ‘authentic’ local growing project, we have a simulation by re-fashioning a new symbolic cloak, which actually but, he explains, ‘the politics behind these headlines swastika, before placing these images in global flows of of supermarketization, and in the supermarket we have fuses older fabrics and decorative figures together in are complex, combining hard-nosed political economy information. In this sense, there is nothing national about a simulation of the ‘authentic’. This example may seem particular ways. They have capital, cultural or otherwise, with conservative idealisations of the good society.’ nationalism either. This man accesses his information in like a poetic point: Each project is simply trying to use ego and nous, ingenium, wit, to do the doing. The middle Colenutt believes that contrary to the current rhetoric, the public library in town, provided for by the ‘liberals’ of the language of the other. But actually, the local ‘radical’ classes are re-calibrating their subjectivities, something the Localism Bill will create a very circumscribed set of the council he despises. Yet the provision of the library growing group are a Limited Company, selling produce which often involves taking on the mask of previous freedoms. Should, for instance, a local community group is under threat, and the library opening hours have been to nearby gastropubs, and Morrisons are engaged with forms of working class life, as the ‘traditional’ working claim that they can tidy and clear all the grass verges at reduced. This man sits, oblivious to the real threats to community work, via a project called ‘Let’s Grow’, which classes - who are in no way traditional in the sense one less cost than the current council provider, they would public life, inside one very large signifier of the way awards grants of £2000-£10,000 to allow schools to may get from reading E.P. Thompson - by and large get by have to go into a tendering process, at which point that public life is moving. He is literally in the instability, teach young people how to grow food. The term ‘market with what there is. Middle class, former HBOS banking they would potentially be vying with corporate outfits completely oblivious, as he communicates within global town’ has become shorthand for post-industrial small staff, who until recently worked at the headquarters in who have infrastructure and capital. In this sense, the flows which never cease, about the need to make things towns. But a dialectical reading can take us to a place nearby Halifax, are symbolically detoxifying themselves rhetoric about working for nothing – voluntarism – must stable, as he sees it, in particular ways. The way he ‘sees where the authenticity that ‘market town’ supposedly after the 2008 crash, which HBOS strongly contributed be viewed with its dialectical other side, privatisation it’ is also being constructed by these flows, he does designates slips into neoliberal, capitalist markets, and to, by moving into ‘localist’ organic food production. and wage repression. In fact, the very point at which not simply step into them to make contributions or vice versa. If there is any veracity on this landscape, it is a ‘worthy’ suggestion is raised is also potentially the interventions. a veracity of slippage: what is ‘true’, what is ‘authentic’ Part of this phenomenon is what Richard Sennett

page 26 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 27 called ‘destructive gemeinschaft’, negative community I spoke to men complaining that their girlfriends lived trauma, yet again, in a managerial role: The landlord (4). Nothing short of a moral re-calibration is being with their mothers, whilst they lived outside of the who originally sacked him was forced out by the Punch attempted here, which often involves ‘finding yourself’ familial unit, paying a price they couldn’t really afford Group, who own the pub, and so our ex-DVD pirate again. But Sennett was writing in order to critique in order to do so. Many were bitter about the lack was able to become a partner in the new management an emerging affluence, a post-LA bean bag culture of of access to their children - one was about to have a team. This particular, loaded location, the place of indulgence, rather than an emerging landscape of what solicitor he could barely afford send a letter out - and his arrest, then the place of his sacking, has become the coalition government call ‘austerity’. When the I spoke to women who were entrenched in work and the place he tries to tame, to make his own, to root psychological functions of narcissism Sennett tracks so looking after their young, bearing the largest brunt of himself in. When this is considered, the title ‘manager’ well are set loose on this landscape, there are bound to the costs, both economically and personally, convinced begins to take on different connotations. What is he be negative consequences. But green activists, or fascists, that the male species was fundamentally aberrant. I also attempting to manage here? This is tragic in a deeper, do not make up the large bulk of communities here, heard many ill-informed remarks about single parent almost literary sense. It has become his pathos. This man despite providing interesting counterpoints. This bulk, mothers being ‘the problem’. Of all lone parents the is trying to tame the very space of his trauma, and by demographically, is still the white working classes, but majority are female, 339 households out of 371, but 25% attempting to do so, he is trying to control the out-of- there are very real homologies between these groups: are in full-time employment and 28% in part-time. Single control nature of his own life. A week ago, the pub was What used to be the traditional white working classes mothers account for 2.2 per cent of the population here completely destroyed by flooding and Punch are now are also trying to root themselves in a landscape which and 53% are working, which makes roughly just over selling the shell of a building as a write-off. This man’s is rootless. This is not new though, they have been trying one per cent who are unemployed single mothers (5). ‘deracinated localism’ was perhaps the most extreme – to do this for several decades now. Their attempts to This did not stop the comments coming. Many of the the most uprooted, the most focussed on a single spot sink this taproot into permanent nourishment – security people proclaiming assumptions such as these shared – but it maps onto the deracinated localisms of all the – will very often lead to an uprooting. key symptoms: mis-directed anger, followed by a retreat others I encountered. In a way, those undertaking work to a clearly troubled acceptance, neither state being able in informal economies provide a negative mirror image I spoke to a middle-aged man who worked freelance to articulate what was happening to the whole psychic of the supposedly ‘respectable’ economies: They were for a single institution, just outside Halifax. He had line organism. They work, but their work often doesn’t work trying to make themselves respectable via this work, managers, as in a ‘traditional’ job, but none of the stability in the way they think it should. There was something which was impossible, but then so was everybody else. or security a traditional job brings. He explained how he of Beckett about waiting for work which works, in the If the supertanker of capitalism always tries to tame got all the down sides of working for a company, being older, traditional manner. I became very interested in space with approaches to temporality, those thrown dictated to, being treated ‘like I’m their property’, but the use of the phrase ‘on and off’, which arose again and overboard, just about bobbing above the waves in its none of the benefits, no personnel department to deal again. It alerted me to the precariousness of everyday life. wake, also attempt to do something similar. with tax or National Insurance, no regular hours and ‘How is work?’ ‘On and off’. Or, ‘I live with me girlfriend, zero job security. Often he turned up on the days he was she’s scouse, we’ve been at it eleven years, on and off’. ‘Localism’ is perhaps essential, as climate change bites supposed to work to find the people running the project Linguistically, the permanent was often couched in the and networks of provision are required to shrink. But were at another site, at which point he simply had to temporary, and vice versa. This highlights the deracinated how the retrenchment into smaller borders happens go home, unpaid, having spent just under ten pounds in nature of contemporary community. This phrase seems sociologically concerns me greatly. ‘The local’ is the transport costs. He felt that he had little real recourse to have simultaneously replaced and subsumed older unwritten space of utopia in one sense: the place we to complain, because of his precarious employment statements such as ‘up and down’. Both ‘up and down’ have no choice but to go, but of course a lot depends status. The few times he mentioned the problems they and ‘on and off’ map good and bad experiences, but ‘up on how that space gets written. If ‘the local’ could be were simply brushed off. There was a kind of stifled fury and down’ assumes a continuous experience, rather written without getting tangled in the language of racism, under his comments, all the more shocking because of than a fundamentally dis-continuous one. ‘On and off’ elitism, or provincialism, we could maybe call these its stifling. This is how lives are lived under deracinated designates a binary switch, but it also designates a single processes ‘utopian’. But I think we might better use the localism, the tendency to turn-inwards is strong. The state called ‘precarité’: again, dialectical thinking is crucial term ‘atopos’ here, meaning unplaced, or unbecoming. hidden injuries of class are becoming hard-wired into on these landscapes. the landscape. If there is something which is able to take root here, unfortunately it seems to be this. I heard In the last issue of Street Signs (6), I outlined the (1) See all of Bauman’s work after Liquid Modernity, Polity, 2000. similar stories from barmaids in a local pub who turned practices of a man working an informal economy. (2) Colenutt, B. (2011), ‘The Localism Bill – who benefits?’ in Red Pepper, up for shifts to be told to go back home again, having Just before that issue came out, this man was caught, January, 2011 spent bus fare to get there. The pub subsequently closed, arrested, investigated, only narrowly avoiding a custodial (3) I now read the term ‘liquid’ in Bauman’s work doubly. It is constantly before opening again under a new landlady. These girls sentence. During this process, he got a job in the pub re-stated throughout his later work and appears in most of his book were in their late teens and their expectations were where he was arrested, the primal scene of his trauma. titles. ‘Liquid’ refers to real, qualitative change, but also, for me, it means being formed by this cultural mean, it was becoming But when his final magistrates appearance was published ‘negating’: transforming, eroding and consuming. ‘Negating’ is a dialectical ‘natural’. in the local paper, he was sacked from this job. He term. Bauman also dialectically telescopes his last book into the next, then became obsessed with the pub, wanting to buy it without ever directly using Hegelian language. But I rarely heard a political analysis of the situation out, just after he was served with a £100,000 fine he (4) Sennett, R. (1977) The Fall of Public Man, Penguin from the subjects of research. I heard lots of stoical could never pay. There was a psychological attempt to (5) ONS, Office For National Statistics, Key figures for 2001, Census Area acceptance and antagonistic outbursts directed at the control the uncontrollable, which was heart breaking Statistics unemployed, much more than I heard the situation being to observe. None of this has finally run its course. This (6) Hanson, S. (2011) ‘Small Change: Some Notes on an Informal Economy’ blamed on the ethnic other, although I heard this too. man recently re-gained a job right at the heart of his Street Signs, Spring 2011 Issue

page 28 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 29 Deluge: Regarding Obsolescence

Paul Halliday

Ob-sol-escence - a word that points to a rich etymological cycle’. There are many variations on familiar and unfamiliar journey contained within the form itself. When I hear the themes here, and I will spare you some of the more word ‘obsolete’, its lilting, downward trajectory makes me eccentric versions, but one thing they all had in common think of an object that is coming to rest. Ob-so-lete. As if was the idea that the starting point for any product was those three syllables contain an implicit reference to its own the existence of a potential or pre-existing demand from imminent demise. A de-energising. Planned obsolescence, customers that could be linked to a commodity. The built into twenty-first century global capitalism, is the classical product life cycle has a shape like a bell-curve and intended eventual extinction and technological failure of includes sections that reflect the research, introduction, photo credit: Paul Halliday commodities. It is a concept practiced for the most part development, consolidation and eventual decline aspects of by the technology industry and promoted by an entire the thing’s journey through time and geography. based on a gradual, controlled fazing-out of wet darkroom the abandoned industrial carpets of Catford’s Block Buster machinery of marketing. services and that this sudden revitalisation of the market Video, tapes that local people had donated. Had this not The decline phase might be extended beyond ‘terminality’ had taken them completely by surprise. happened, the work might have been little more than a I recall attending marketing courses during the 1980s. through the judicious tweaking of an aspect of the product’s trickle, rather than the flood that it eventually became. I had been sent there by the Greater London Council design. Take digital cameras as an example. Ten years ago Almost as if the analogue had refused to be categorised as to learn how marketing techniques might be applied it would have been virtually unimaginable that presently, ‘redundant’ and had reclaimed a position within art practice Every week building up to Recycle Week, I visited the to the development of adult and community education twelve mega-pixel cameras would be available from low- that reflected a shift that was not just ‘different’ from abandoned shop with a team of dedicated helpers from programmes. ‘Educational marketing’, as it is now termed, cost consumer outlets for under £100. The fine-tuning of the domain of the digital, but also spoke to what Walter Platform-7 and Goldsmiths who became experts at was something that had only just entered into the lexicon mega-pixels from 5mp to 5.1mp was the norm, and then Benjamin called the ‘aura’ of uniqueness. Film, with its well- disassembling and reassembling the videotape cassettes. of post-compulsory education at the time. I remember suddenly, the expectations of consumers and retailers documented limitations, started to become ‘authentic’, We initially tried to pull the tape out manually with our sitting in a team meeting at the adult education centre in alike were challenged by what might be described as an fragile, relatively unpredictable and most importantly – hands, but we quickly realised that this would be an almost Greenwich where I was based at the time, and trying to evolutionary jump into the giddy heights of double and tactile: you can hold it, smell it even, hear it crackling as impossible task that would take forever, and would cut our explain that marketing was not, as one colleague liked to triple the amount of pixels, all marketed at the same price. you take it out of the negative holder, it is delicate and hands to shreds. John’s digits bled. Eventually gravity made its put it ‘selling crap stuff to those stupid enough to buy it’. Of course, the knock-on effect of this was the decreasing vulnerable. Most importantly to photographers and artists presence known to us, and this became our guiding force and On the contrary, there I was, an enthusiastic apostle of the use of film, as it became ‘old technology’, on the verge of, if alike, is that it has archival qualities that, rightly or wrongly, accepted modus operandi, combined with the application of new-found technology for rethinking how ‘products’ can not emblematic, of obsolescence. are thought to preserve our memories beyond the short Fordist working principles of workflow rationalisation and be developed to reflect the lifestyle aspirations of various life-span of volatile digital media such as memory cards, CDs task specialism. Sara discovered hitherto unknown skills in social groups. Around this time, Art and design departments started to and hard-drives. Paradoxically, the very thing-ness of film the unravelling of VHS tape, which required concentration notice that fewer students were using their wet darkroom that was identified within a discourse of obsolescence is and dedication to the task, for the tape not to become There were the As, Bs, C1s, C2s, Ds and Es; and they all resources, and believing that the customer is invariably right, now being revisited within an argument of ‘archival-ness’, of entangled and knotted. Nick discovered aptitudes in putting reflected a capacity to afford what the material cultures started selling off their old analogue printing enlargers, film structural longevity. In one hundred years time, my money the cassettes back together and collecting their discarded anthropologist Daniel Miller (2009) (1) describes as ‘stuff, cameras and processing tanks. Sometimes they didn’t even is on being there being technology that can still read film metallic and plastic inner-workings, which he categorised in his eminently readable book of the same title. Objects sell them off but simply scrapped them. Highly prized and through optical scanning, even if magnetic tape has become and piled neatly onto the floor. Amidst the flowing metallic that have meaning, that are perceived as life-enhancing, that very expensive equipment was now considered little more redundant. strands, we could imagine perhaps, the family wedding and are enmeshed into the material and social networks that than dust-catching remnants of an industrial archaeology. holiday videos, episodes of Friends, Richard Attenborough’s constitute our ideas of community, culture and belonging. But there’s the catch; not so long ago, a colleague who runs So how does this installation speak to and of obsolescence? Disappearing World, adolescent vampires from the 1990s Marketing for me, was something that could be liberating, a darkroom told me that he had noticed a significant spike How might we theorise videotape as a form of ‘stuff’? and 1980s disco-infernos, all woven together to make it could be used to develop educational courses and arts in students working with analogue photography. I was very Perhaps the work has a presence that speaks of two another kind of story, another kind of event, some other programmes that might be life-enhancing. I found myself interested in this as I had continued to work with film on domains, that of play, and that of nightmare. We have had reconstituted thing that was and is yet to be defined, gravitating to what was a rapidly expanding field of ‘social personal long-term photographic projects and had noticed children passing by, fascinated by the unravelling of the tape, that exists through reclamation beyond the domain of marketing’, that is, where the ‘product’ was something at around the same time, that my professional lab had been asking if they can come in to look and sometimes ‘swim’ in obsolescence, within the realm of a future imagination. perceived to have social value such as education, art struggling to turn around film processing and printing within the work. But we have also had people commenting that (1) Miller, D (2009) (Ed.) Anthropology and the Individual: a material culture development, charity services or NGOs. the 24 hours advertised. Indeed, they had been forced to they have been disturbed by the work - and it would be perspective. Oxford: Berg. extend turnaround to 48 hours due to an unprecedented true to say that there are times when it glistens in the dark, The models we were given have stayed with me until this and unpredicted rise in demand for analogue services. The moving gently through the air-conditioning, as if by a hidden Deluge, a moving art installation, wa commissioned by Platform-7 at Catford day, based as they were, on the notion of the ‘product life printer told me that the company’s business plan had been force. Six hundred VHS-tapes, uncoiled and spread across Block Busters as part of Lewisham Recycle Week.

page 30 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 31 by experts, do not criticize - you cannot understand how we don’t ask if that is a truthful narrative, whatthe cost it works. One of the most topical examples of a black is or who should benefit from the establishment of this Deluge: box, a contained system with which everyone interacts cycle. And that brings me to the third process that the but no one knows the functioning is the financial markets. videocassette shows. You put your money in the bank. Something happens in Disembowelling Black Boxes there so that they promise to give it back to you with Compression: Dematerialisation or an interest. When the machine breaks down – as in the Francisco Calafate Faria present financial crisis – a deluge of information starts Displacement? spilling out of the black box. The ideal of recycling, it seems to me, is that materials In recycling, the closest black box we have is the recycling disappear from our site to be disentangled and compressed In the beginning there was the motion picture film – a this piece is installed, are being replaced by online film bin. We input the empty packages of our lives in this before they re-appear again in an endless cycle. Going sequence of photographs with a sound track. The reels rental services that allow you to download films for a fee. container. It has a symbol that suggests that it makes back to our history of audiovisual media, we are liberated could be transported in containers – those round Paul Haliday’s piece is highly suggestive of crucial concepts things move in a circle. Then we see the same symbol in from materiality. We can film and not have to deal with the metal cans. But the package was not essential to the I am working within my research on recycling, concepts a packet in a shop and we believe that it is the output of cassettes. We can have a collection of films on a ‘cloud’ mechanism. Then, once you opened a can and pulled the thatrelate to processes thatare manifestations of wider what we have done. How it works inside… “that is not – when I was in Curitiba, I stored my films in Dropbox. film to attach it to the projector, you could actually see social phenomena. These processes are: containment, my problem”. I didn’t have to worry too much with the prospect of the sequence of still images that composed the movie. concealment and compression. loosing the hard drive where all of my data was being The projector would do just that: project those images Like a video cassette being slowly swallowed by the collected. As video-cassettes were shrinking, the number by passing a light through the film. Containment: Wrappings and Containers VCR, every week I seethe recycling containers outside of transistors that can go in a silicon chip have doubled my window being attached to the collection truck and every 2 years since the 60s (2). And the development of The videocassette represents a massive leap in the Most households in London have the experience of mechanically tipped over into the back of the truck. optic fibre networks has made it possible to transfer development of the audiovisual. Technologically it is a separating their waste for recycling. What goes into When the truck disappears at the end of the road, I am information at the speed of light. All of this makes it completely different object as is the process through the recycling containers? In the London borough of ready to buy new containers. I have recycled. The verb, possible for us to store large amounts of information which VCRs read information from the tape. One of the Lewisham, apart from newspaper and magazines the the symbol, they both suggest a process. Yet all I have without having to deal with any storage material. Yet the videocassette’s biggest innovations is that the information green bin is almost entirely filled every week with done was to introduce something in a black box – in this support hasn’t dematerialized. It has been displaced. We recorded on the material medium.is not composed by containers and packaging objects. Since last December, case a green box. What happens inside the box? What have a good example of the same process when we think images – if you look through the tape you cannot see the municipal services also takes old clothes, which can relations of production does recycling entail? How much that slavery and child labour were abolished in the 19th anything. Between the screen and us there is a mediator also be seen as wrappings for the body. It is evident that does the process contribute to a better environment? century. In fact they have been displaced. I bought these that has nothing to do with images or sound. There is a the amount of disposable containers on which we have Would there be alternative processes more just both trousers in M&S and in the following day BBC tells me translation process which most of us don’t understand. become dependent is now much higher than it has ever socially and environmentally? that children working in conditions of near slavery in Asia And we don’t need to. It is a black box. been. And this creates a big problem of excess material. might have manufactured them. Think about degradable Recycling appears to be a solution to this problem. But Curitiba, in south Brazil was one of the first cities in the plastic bags. All they do is break up in small particles that In engineering a black box is a device, the inner workings sometimes it is difficult to disentangle the materials world to institute a municipal system of recycling. Yet, are contaminating the Oceans. In many ways they are of which are opaque or can be disregarded. All that that compose the container – like in tetrapak plastic underneath the neat campaign and policy design, 90% of much more harmful for the environment than normal matters if that the device produces certain results (often for example – the juice cartons composed by sheets the recyclable waste is still collected by informal waste ones. predictable) in relation to the inputs (1). You put the of aluminium, paper and plastic. Other times it is the pickers. The self-promotion discourse of the city hides a cassette in the VCR, press rec, then rewind and play and container that cannot be separated from the contained, multitude of human realities and material networks that So when I look at Deluge I can also think about the the images are repeated on the TV screen. It doesn’t as when food gets absorbed in the package. Or as in do not fit it. day when someone will disembowel the earth and matter how it works inside. We can think of other videocassettes. the bottom of the oceans of obsolete cables used for examples, say the human brain for example. Or a piece of So, under the appearance of sustainable circularity, communication. I think about the need to open machines, closed source software. The computer itself. The human In my visit to Veolia’s Material Recycling Facility in recycling promises to contain our excess materials but it to resist believing in simple stories. It also makes me brain. Financial systems. A sociologist. Greenwich, which used to take Lewisham’s recyclable also conceals a number of social relations and inequities. think that the only form of recording that does away with waste, one of the contaminating objects about which Lewisham Council is a good example of positive effort materials is collective oral memory. But even collective [it is not a counter argument so removed ‘on the they mostly complained was exactly cassettes. When to convey information to residents and to find the memory is difficult to conceive without the aid of objects. otherhand] Since the invention of the videotape, the the machines break through the containers, the tape best contractors to deal with the materials the former material support has become even smaller, more contained gets entangled causing major breakdowns in the partly separate. Yet difficulties arise in the mediation between a and portable. Just think of the sequence: photographic automatic separation process. commercial logic on the one side and an environmental film reels, video tapes (from the first big ones until the one on the other. But most people know little about it. video8), DVDs, memory sticks and now ‘the cloud’. The Concealment: the Black Box Part of the recycling process as it has developed relies on compression of the technological support has been so this ability we have to trust in black boxes, in experts, in (1) MacKenzie, D (2010) Material Markets: How Economic Agents are successful that it has now apparently made materials Apart from generating waste, the use of containers in systems of which we don’t want to know the workings. Constructed, Oxford UP redundant altogether. We now can take pictures and our society has the effect of concealing. Containment In the case of waste this happens even more smoothly (2) “Oh, that’s near enough: Letting microchips make a few mistakes upload them straight to ‘Instagram’ and there’s no reason and concealment are concurrent forces that tend to because we are dealing with things from which we here and there could make them much faster and more energy- why we won’t replace the DVD (digital video disks) with separate people from the knowledge of what happens want to part. So if someone tells me that they take the efficient” in The Economist, Jun 2nd 2012 http://www.economist.com/ clouds. Certainly, places like Catford Blockbuster, where beyond the curtain. Do not cross, this will be dealt with package away and that they will bring it back to the shelf node/21556087

page 32 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 33 Found Person An experiment in biography

Peter Coles

June 4, 2011. On a corner of rue Ganneron, just above the a chic beach club at Ramutuelle. The next day, Bastille Day, avenue de Clichy, a pile of clothes lay slumped, like a dead it was Catherine’s 17th birthday. “I’ll never have such a beast. Sinister, sad. On top, a camel hair coat shredded by beautiful birthday again,” she wrote. The next two weeks moths, still in its dry cleaning bag, spread out, desperately were consumed with love, dancing, writing long poems, protecting what lay underneath. The heap clutched a few wondering. July turned to August. Other friends arrived. elegant handbags of leather and crocodile, now blue with More parties and time alone with Orville. Then, on 16 mould. Inert objects spilled onto the pavement – a dial August he left. “Every minute tore my heart. I knew he was telephone, a basket of hair curlers, a brush and comb. Under going further and further away from me.” It was the last the coat a busty nude beamed from the cover of a 1960s time she would mention him in her diary. photo magazine, a last decoy, attracting attention away from something more precious beneath. And there it was, deep Twelve years later, on 8 June 1971, a dark haired, handsome inside, still half hidden: a tiny green leather diary for 1959. It young American with sideburns, wearing a smart tailored belonged to a 16 year-old girl, called Catherine (1). jacket, spoke in impeccable French to a TV camera crew. He was in Paris to save the 19th century cast iron June 1959. Paul Anka’s hit Venus played from radios and Pavillons Baltard buildings of the old Les Halles market juke-boxes all over Paris. Hiroshima Mon Amour was in from demolition. When the market moved to the outskirts the cinemas. “Extraordinary film!” Catherine wrote in her of Paris in 1969, there was no use for Victor Baltard’s diary. Still in her mid-teens, she was already reading Sartre, elegant glass-roofed buildings. The area was scheduled Camus, Kafka, Joyce, Bertrand Russell. She saw Elvis Presley for redevelopment as a showcase for modern functional at the Folies Bergères on a lightning weekend trip to Paris architecture. Despite the young American’s efforts, and an from his military service in Germany. “My ‘El’” she wrote. ineffectual French protest, the buildings were destroyed in “Laughter, conversations, love at first sight… Elvis Presley, a crashing din of iron, cement and dust, stunningly captured so handsome…” She pasted a photo of him in GI uniform in a series of black and white photographs by Jean-Claude in the back of her diary. On his shoulder a platoon badge Gautrand. warned: “Hell on Wheels”. The vast site was scooped out and fenced off for a decade, Then, on 3 June, 20 year-old Orville Hertz arrived from until it was reborn at the end of the 1970s as Le Forum des New York with his parents. A few days later, he telephoned Halles, an underground shopping mall and transport hub, Catherine. Their parents were old friends. The following topped by arched atriums designed by Jean Willerval, an day they had dinner together, before she left to spend the ersatz memorial to the lost grace of the Pavillons Baltard. summer at her family’s summer home in Ramatuelle, on Lost, that is, except for one building – Pavillon 8, “Oeufs et the Côte d’Azur. Although Catherine was getting letters Volaille”, the eggs and poultry market. The American, a 32 and cards almost every other day from her boyfriend, Erik, year-old New York banker named Orville Hertz, and his US she couldn’t stop thinking about Orville. When, on 30 June, Commission for the Preservation of Les Halles, had managed Diary of the Modern Man he phoned to say he was coming down to St Tropez with to buy the building, have it dismantled and rebuilt in Nogent- his parents she felt a rush of joy, tinged with pain. A whole sur-Marne, a genteel suburb on the banks of the Marne I was jealous and I imagine that we have the right week to wait! river, to the east of Paris. Restored and opened in 1977, it to be jealous of what we possess. has been a venue for dancing, concerts and exhibitions ever The day after he arrived, she wrote, “he will be my holiday, since. Meanwhile, with poetic justice, just 30 years after the “So long as we desire, happiness is not so the object of my thoughts every minute of the day,” adding Forum des Halles opened, its prematurely dated Willerval important; we can expect that to come: if ominously, “perhaps also a beginning and an end?” 8 July: “It’s buildings are themselves now being flattened in a major happiness does not come, then hope persists too wonderful. It can’t last.” Thursday 9 July: “St Tropez with facelift. And there will be no rich American – or anyone else and the charm of the illusion lasts as long as the Orville. The two of us.” Same on Friday, Saturday, Sunday: “St – hurrying to rescue them. passion that causes it” ??? Rousseau Tropez with Orville. The two of us.” On Monday evening, 13 July, they went swimming and dancing at Les Murènes, To be continued…

(1) This is a true story, but the names have been changed

page 34 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 35 and an on-going examination of (historic and present) riots, presentations inside the corridors of Goldsmiths’ main their action, urgency, interpretation, remembrance and building. This third mobile intervention involved overlaying Engaging Tactics: oblivion all taking place at the same time. the wall of the college’s Richard Hoggart Building with super-imposed films and essays related to the academic’s Take two: talk-walking work, as well as David’s own interpretations regarding the Experiments in Social building and video clips of Hoggart’s educational ideals. The second line of tactics explored by the conference The result of the presentation was a discussion on access delved into the format of ‘talk-walks’, that is, of playful to education. The following day, this discussion was taken Scientific Engagement exploratory discussions on the move (6). This type of up by Vic Seidler in his public talk on “tactics of anger and Christian von Wissel presentation was set up to challenge the engaging potential resistance,” when pupils from a local school came into of the aesthetic (world-perceiving) and poetic (world- college to share and discuss their take on the riots and, with Engaging Tactics was a two-day symposium for new scholars making) – as well as social and material – practice of walking it, to relocate the university’s engagement with the ‘outside held at Goldsmiths’ Sociology Department in April-May 2012 Take one: site-specificity (7) in its combination with talking. Thanks to visual artist world’ by turning this relationship upside down. in collaboration with the British Sociological Association and Shaun O’Conner and his “walkabout” mobile projector Goldsmiths’ Method Lab. It was born out of the background In several locations inside and outside college, the conference (8), several speakers at the conference were able to move Take three: collaboration of recent cuts and riots, and the challenges they posed to exposed itself to the relationships between social analysis, through different situations overlapping the space, time and our sociological thinking. Following these incidents we found and the site of its intervention and critique. Drawing on content of their presentations. The third take on tactics of engagement explored ways of our discipline reflecting on its apparent incapacity to make Miwon Kwon’s writing on site-specificity in the arts, the first collaborating that set researchers, participants and publics its interventions become useful. The cuts demanded that we take on ‘engaging tactics’ involved canvassing the potentials The first stop was in the foot tunnel underneath New Cross in experimental relationships. Once again, in addition to find ways out of the trap of knowledge marketisation, while for engagement in the conference location, understood Station where Paolo Cardullo encouraged a conversation ‘just’ speaking about such collaborations, the aim was to the riots demanded finding ways in into the self-affirming as being both the tangible “actuality of a location”, as on the declarations of love written as graffiti on the actually practice them. In this sense, the talk-walks discussed (media) circuit of the hegemonic discourse. Either way, it this location’s “social conditions” and as the discursively walls of an Italian village. Paolo’s intervention aimed at above were conceived as collaborations between those became apparent that sociology had to explore how to step determined “field of knowledge” spanning across it (2). writing memory and affect into one location into affective who presented (the academics) and those who made these out of itself into its relational context. (Once again), social geographies of another. In a second presentation, Veronica presentations possible (the visualising artist). Likewise, sciences had to think about their multifaceted, diverse and For example, the heating plant room in the basement of Olivotto (with Eva Frapiccini) recast the language of street all site-specific presentations were addressed as a close (to a great extent) ambiguous engagement with the world. Goldsmith’s New Academic Building became the abstract performance. Her presentation drew attention to ways in working relationship between presenter and space – and The conference took up the endeavour of critically (re) recreation of a science laboratory in Tobie Kerridge’s which the subway was transformed into a lecture theatre as a team effort between the conference participants and evaluating the discipline’s ways of operating as a space of presentation (3). Drawing on artist Robert Smithson’s terms, by the ‘simple’ intervention of the conference participants’ the helpful staff at the college, community library, café and intellectual exploration of the social. However, the question the pipelines and boiler became a laboratory’s non-site bodies; an appropriation of the space’s function that project space facilitating each location. at the centre of Engaging Tactics was not how to make ‘real- (4); the abstract yet concrete mirror site of those spaces Veronica associated with the ways in which Dutch identity life’ situations and sociology become (formally) productive where most of natural science and technology research was ‘diverted’ by young migrants using break dance in her Furthermore, collaboration as an engaging tactic was put for each other, but rather how to collapse the boundaries happens concealed from public observation. The access to a research. through its paces in the shape of a variety of different between real-life and sociology – between life, analysis, laboratory-like spatial-material condition was key to Tobie’s presentation and discussion formats. These ranged from an findings and output. The objective was to move away from presentation: it allowed the participants of the conference In both cases, the intention behind these mobile presentation informal bar talk on curatorial tactics (with Sophie Hope, differing poles into overlapping gradients. This involved to perceive, with all their senses, the content of the talk. tactics was to employ a form of communication that would Noortje Marres and Alison Rooke, chaired by Nirmal Puwar), exploring the (informal) methods of engagement we have Experiencing the non-site’s indoor climate and ‘objectness’ resonate with the theoretical frameworks and methods to lunch presentations (one including the collaborative to hand for producing and sharing social knowledge through revealed the communicative relationship that spans back and of each research. However, such tactics also encountered preparation of a picnic with Michael Guggenheim, (10)) to the creation and upholding of meaningful relationships with forth between space’s presence and our, the sensing bodies’ limitations: first, even though the specific presentational “work in progress” sessions on the art of engagement. participants and publics. We deliberately addressed these exploring perception. This interplay of “things, people and form allowed for reflection on the local graffiti found Between the lines, these formats aimed at destabilising the means as ‘tactics’, drawing on Michel de Certeau’s notion surrounding constellations” has been conceptualised by in the tunnel, the limited brightness of the projector positions from which presenters/researchers and audience/ of a tactic as a way of operating that does not rely on a Gernot Böhme as atmosphere, that is as physical space’s hindered the ability to write the Italian love story onto public interacted. stable ‘proper’ (1). Doing so allowed us to place ourselves “sphere of presence” that resides in-between and in both the walls of New Cross. Second, the spatial arrangement within the quick sand that is social research, a flow that has the objects and the subjects by which space is constituted of the tunnel and the viewing pattern of building a semi- One panel invited visual and performing artist Allard van to be navigated rather than a place that can be claimed and (5). circle around the projection created a situation where the Hoorn to engage with the tactics of engagement brought defended. centre of our intervention (the film) and any additional forward from within the perspective of social science. Similar to Tobie’s intervention was the experience created audiences that potentially could have been engaged with This interdisciplinary communication exercise showed the Conference submissions included a variety of tactics for by Kata Halasz’s audio-visual piece on the nature of (the passer-bys) were not only physically separated but also potential to unpack the hidden frameworks that shape the engagement derived from the fields of sociology, design, contemporary thinking on race and racism. The visual acoustically interfered with each other. Discussing public views by which each discipline is looking onto the world. medicine, art and geography. The themes encompassed method of the research piece – asking viewers to comment topics in public, it was proved, requires of situations where However, the augmented complexity of perspectives also “design for debate”, “self and body as tactic”, “translating on footage of race riots – was reproduced in ‘atmospheric’ social and spatial openness has to be carefully created, made apparent how sociological listening – “A form of active sensory experiences”, “intervening narratives” and “engaging terms through confronting visitors with the piece’s maintained and continuously negotiated: while the subway listening that challenges the listener’s preconceptions and sites.” Through these themes the conference aimed to installation in the specific setting of a former detention cell showed its openness to “active use and manipulation” by position while at the same time engages critically with discuss each contribution in terms of the specific roles in Deptford’s Old Police Station, now a do-it-yourself art the conference participants, this very diversion from its the context of what is being said and heard” (11) – is played by space, collaboration and experiment. In order to centre. Engagement with the research was both relational intended use reduced the tunnel’s openness to “access”, challenged when sociology and art step out of their own walk this talk into action, the two days themselves involved and continuous: a sensory interplay of content, media, space “choice”, “expression” and “understanding” for others (9). grounds and into the (unstable) grounds of each other. exploring ‘engaging tactics’ in site and tactic specific ways. and the audience’s interaction with all of these elements Later on that day, David Kendall continued the walking Another panel, and key to the conference, was a workshop

page 36 · streetsigns · spring 2011 streetsigns · spring 2011 · page 37 organised by Claudia Mitchell exploring the ‘low-budget’ and down, opening and closing, filling-up and emptying-out (that is accessible to anyone and most cost-effective) with voyagers, the lift was explored as a living and lived-in visual method of storyboarding as an engaging tactic by site and metaphor of engagement: from flower exchange Creative Evaluation as which to respond to The Cuts (12). Here, drawing as a to three-dimensional notebook it became an interactive method for rapid response showed unexpected results: research space, research tactic and performance of research first, the ‘hands-on-paper’ approach was entertaining and its ‘traveling’ the shifting ground of sociology and its intimate Participatory Practice ‘draw-and-error’ character encouraged engaged discussions art of engagement. David Kendall among the participants. In a second stage, the results of this drawing exercise allowed the group to reach out with their (1) de Certeau, M. (1988) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University discussion to the wider community of students by leaving of California Press, xix. a visual trace of the conference in an ad-hoc exhibition (2) Kwon, M. (2002) One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational mounted in one of the showcases of Goldsmiths’ Kings Identity. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 26. Corridor. (3) Information on all the conference’s presentations at engagingtactics. Productivity and flexibility are core concepts in the act of free enterprise and innovation. Subjectivity and creative wordpress.com/participants/abstracts/ participation. To participate implies the development of mobility are valued commodities to be bought and sold. Up and down and on and on (4) Smithson, R. (1996) The Collected Writings. Edited by Jack Flam. situations based on notions of cohesion and commonality. Yet Creative professionals rely on the ability to be able to Documents of 20th century art. Berkeley: University of California Press, co-production can evolve from conflict as well as consensus. sustain interest in their skills through social communication, A second exhibition that subtly enacted the conference’s 152–3. If people become central in deciding and evaluating the innovation, collaboration and self-evaluation continuously to interest in site-specific, collaborative and experimental (5) Böhme, G. (1995) Atmosphäre: Essays zur neuen Ästhetik. 6th ed. outcome of services provided by government, institutional produce results (2). However I would argue that creative tactics of engagement was Nela Milic’s “Relocating Absence”. Suhrkamp Verlag, 1995, 33, 42. and third sector organisations, a creative practitioner’s input facilitation still requires critical thinking and assessment With her two-day intervention, Nela hijacked the elevator (6) Weisshaar and Atelier Latent. ‘Talk Walks’, applying the theory and becomes vital; producing social research and assessments from the professional to generate new forms of dialogue in Warmington Tower in order to rewrite its interior into a practice of Strollology in urban studies and their communication. See and providing a critical, reflective and flexible framework for and knowledge over time (3). walk-in realm of experience and material thinking (13). Doing Weisshaar, Bertram, and Atelier Latent. ‘Talk Walks’, n.d. http://www.atelier- creative engagement and evaluation. so, the lift space became both the method and object of latent.de/spaziergangsforschung/talk-walks. Productivity is a core concept in the act of participation: analysis, for questioning the place that quintessential yet (7) See Careri, F. (2004) Walkscapes: Walking as an Aesthetic Practice. How could the valuable experiences of these professionals without it, apathy and dissatisfaction can prevail. The short- often over-looked non-places (14) occupy within the building Barcelona Spain: Gustavo Gili, 2002 and Ingold, Tim. ‘Culture on the Ground: enhance or aid the development of new evaluation toolkits term nature of some participatory media projects can and the imagination of its users. Continuously moving up The World Perceived Through the Feet’. Journal of Material Culture 9, no. 3: for third sector organisations? How can information be often discourage co-operation and produces dissatisfaction, 315–340. utilised to sustain engagement and encourage, or strengthen, not only within the minds of participants, but also in the (8) O’Conner, S, .and PRICKIMAGE. ‘WALKABOUT Projection’. alternative social and spatial interactions between consultants ‘parachuted in’ to facilitate the creative and PRICKIMAGE.com, n.d. http://www.prickimage.com/extra. participants, facilitators and stakeholders? Creative self- technical production of a project (4). What often attracted php?p=WALKABOUT_Projection evaluation has become a vital and flexible component in my participants and facilitators to a project in the first instance, (9) Lynch, K. (1995) ‘The Openness of Open Space (1965)’, in City Sense and research practice. Many of the projects I have worked on is the time to develop new social skills (practical, creative, City Design: Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch, edited by Tridib Banerjee have focused on how artistic reflection interacts with the and technological). Lack of time, however, often constrains and Michael Southworth, 396–412. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 408–9. spatial, practical and technological relationships between productivity and progress, and in these moments, promises of (10) Audio recordings, texts and images of these events can be found at digital media and photographic production. Over the innovation and change can also become counter productive. http://engagingtactics.wordpress.com/documentation/ years I have evaluated the effects of both short and long- (11) Back, L. (2005) ‘Speaking of remarkable Things: The Scale of Global term strategies, the paradoxical outcomes of assignments, Many of the schemes with which I have been involved are Sociology (Inaugural Lecture)’. 19–41. London: Goldsmiths, University of and the spatial affects upon participants and their social devised by organisations as practical initiatives to help young London, 18. and collaborative relationships with partner organisations. people from outside communities integrate and spatially (12) Labacher, L. Claudia M., Naydene de Lange, Relebohile Moletsane, and Both short and long-term projects have advantages and interact within a defined geographical area. Policy-makers Marti-Mari Geldenhys. (2012) ‘What Can a Visual Researcher Do with a disadvantages but what is important throughout is that use ‘capacity building’ to develop technical skills through Storyboard?’ in Handbook of Participatory Video, edited by Elizabeth-Jane engagement and participation are sustained. technical support and training as a strategy for community Milne, Claudia Mitchell, and Naydene de Lange. Lanham, MD: Rowman & development, policy interventions and service provisions Littlefield Publishers, Inc., As a creative consultant I am often brought into projects aimed at tackling social exclusion. (13) Carter, P. (2004) Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of at short notice and have little time to prepare for what lies Creative Research. Carlton: Melbourne University Press ahead. Self-evaluation becomes a point of departure and If policy makers continue to promote the exploitation of (14) Augé, Marc. (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of asking questions is relevant at the beginning, as well as at creative capital, it makes perfect sense to create a culture Supermodernity. London, New York: Verso the end, of a project. Living in a culture of innovation and of retraining to enhance the creative labour force to be change has both positive and negative affects on creative integrated into this ethos. If one considers shortsighted professionals, ‘experience’ is devalued. A consultant’s ability attitudes within the employment market, it is not surprising Engaging tactics was organised by Anna Bull, Katharina Eist, Miranda to reinvent and engage in many quick tasks, moving from job that policy developments can lead to the development of Iossifidis and myself together with Brian McShane and José Borges. Special to job, fixing problems independently without engaging with these short term solutions. Policies that focus solely on thanks go to Christy Kulz, Miranda Weigler and Clovis Bergère who have others and the consequences of their actions (1), however, getting people jobs may help excluded individuals access helped starting this adventure and to all the participants and speakers who is valorised by governmental and business institutions, which the labour market, but they do not bring, as Taylor writes, have contributed with many more presentations and discussions than could appropriate, utilise and adjust the skills of the creative ‘power into excluded areas’ (5). The role of the’ outsider’ is be discussed here. For complete documentation see: professional-consultant to implement particular polices or often blamed for reinforcing these asymmetries of power(6). photo credit: Alexandra Baixinho engagingtactics.wordpress.com services. The freelance consultant is in fact the emblem of I would disagree; bringing in creative ‘outsiders’ acts as a

page 38 · streetsigns · spring 2011 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 39 catalyst for co-production. Evaluating my work experiences the environment. Involvement builds trust; creative mediation has taught me that the process of creative communication allows problems to be re-introduced as creative solutions. is often collaborative and that the overlapping of social Participatory visual methods can facilitate and assess this A Utopian City in the Sand networks has produced positive outcomes. Informality process, opening up new intersections between sociological provides the opportunity to meet and learn from people research and digital media while helping organisations and from diverse backgrounds, all sharing and evaluating active policy-makers to begin to understand how individuals and Viktor Bedo experience. groups move through different forms of participation in time Katalin Halasz and space. Taking a short-term outlook encourages defeat; there is a need to value the long-term potential of evaluating participatory media projects. The act of involvement has important spatial consequences beyond employability: (1) Sennett, R. (2006) Out with the Old, The Guardian, ‘Work’ supplement, The placement of bodies, images, memories, events, maps, ‘11th February 2006, p.3. walking, ‘play’ and performance are all valid devices which (2) Lazzarato, M. (1996) Immaterial Labour in Radical Thought in Italy, A can facilitate effective positive relationships and sustained Potential Politics, Virno, Paolo and Hardt Michael, eds. translated by Boscagli, political interest with space (7). Knowledge is not the only Maurizia, Casarino, Cesare, Coilli, Paul, Emory, Ed, Hardt, Michael, and Turits, outcome of participation; it is the how the participants see Michael, Theory out of bounds Vol. 7, Minneapolis & London: University of the world, which is important. Creative engagement means Minnesota Press, p. 137, 138. that participants and practitioners can become part of Negri, Antonio (1999) Value and Affect, Boundary 2, Summer 1999, p. 94. the process of policy-making and urban planning and not (3) Friere, P. (2007) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th Anniversary Edition) distance themselves from these initiatives, thereby offering Translated by Myra Berman Ramos, Introduction by Donald Macedo, New opportunities to redefine and re-visualise reality and turn York, London: Continuum, p. 63, 93. ‘matters of fact into matters of concern’ (8). Creative (4) Anastacio, Jean, Gidley, Ben, Lorraine, Hart, Keith, Michael, Mayo, facilitators are active participants in this process. Marjorie, Kowarzik, Ute (2000) Reflecting Realities, Participants’ perspectives on integrated communities and sustainable development, London: Joseph In my practice, making photographic images provides freedom Rowntree Foundation and the Policy Press, p.21, 33. of movement and appraisal. Constant mobility encourages (5) Taylor, Marilyn (2003) Public Policy in the Community, Basingstoke, sustained, effective engagement, evaluation and spatial Hampshire, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillian, p.19, 21, 34, 73, 74. photo credit: Asia Deri interaction between individuals and their surroundings. (6) Taylor, Marilyn (2003) Public Policy in the Community, Basingstoke, Photography introduces and mediates biographical and Hampshire, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillian, p.74. creative development of life skills. Short-term projects do (7) Holliday, Ruth (2004) Reflecting the Self in Picturing the Social Landscape: not encourage individuals to continue developing their visual methods in the sociological imagination. Knowles, Caroline and Sweetman. The Berlin based collective Invisible Playground took to the created strategies to build chains to transport happiness creative practice. Creativity may produce instant results Paul, eds. London, New York: Routledge, p. 238. Oerol Festival this year, a week long show of street theatre pebbles, hugged robots or decorated designated areas in but it is also something that needs to be cultivated in order (8) Latour, Bruno (2004) Why has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of acts, music performances, site-specific installations and the sand to earn more pebbles. In each performance the to produce realistic and lasting personal developments. Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry 30, p.232. performance art interventions on the Island of Terschelling, game developed in unforeseeable ways and new group Photographic images could be utilised to mobilise and Holland. At the intersection of site-specific theatre and dynamics emerged that prompted the team of Invisible capture this process and can provide an affective tool to transmedia gameplay Invisible Playground develops games, a Playground to intervene. To disrupt the collective goal of explore the complexities of social exclusion. Investing time set of rules, instructions and missions, using both analogue earning pebbles and to encourage new strategies, the team in transforming stereotyped ‘images’ through self-advocacy and digital technology to connect people, objects and introduced Optima Dollars which would make single players means that socially excluded people have the opportunity to places. rich. This created much tension and changed players’ move beyond their own preconceptions of what their world behaviour. But the wickedest player was the sea, which is and can begin to develop fresh perspectives of what their The challenge at Oerol was the building of Optima, a utopian upset patterns of interaction and group strategies with world could be. Long-term participatory media projects city, from the imagination of 200 players and against a a force that slowly washed away the streets constraining could, therefore, have a dual purpose. They can offer both sea rising 60m/h and washing away the city with every the movement of the 200 citizens. Pursuing happiness – training and technical skills, as well as creative development. incoming tide. Narrow streets and squares drawn in the collecting more pebbles – was waged against saving lives sand covered an area of 120mx60m. Four robots and two through developing push strategies in order to unblock Creative practitioners (myself included) have good intentions high-stands constituted the infrastructure of the city. Life jammed streets and to get citizens and their hardly earned and relish the opportunity to participate and engage the in Optima was governed by set rules handed out to players happiness pebbles to the safe ports of Optima. logistical development of projects. A lack of transparency during a short training before entering the city and during and policy knowledge can lead to ambiguity and confusion. the one hour game time. Divided into four families, the Urban structures and urban life was modelled in the city, Long-term goals need to be defined. If they are not, then task of the 200 players was to simply ‘collect happiness’ - built on sand. Simple interactions grew into complex attention is drawn away from the process of participation. counted and measured at the end of the game in the form dynamics within the framework of an abstract urban The abrupt end to many projects leads to dissatisfaction in of small blue happiness pebbles. architecture. During the game citizens of Optima emerged the minds of service providers, participants and facilitators. as creative team players, sneaky liars, lost loners and selfish Creativity is a tool to make choices, increase awareness (and Players constituted a complex system of interaction during or supportive family members. And at the end the utopia appreciation) of life situations, other individuals, groups and the game, blocked and pushed each other in the streets, of Optima was washed away by the sea.

page 40 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 41 in May 2012 employed digital story telling as a means of In these spaces of care, sociability and citizenship people bridging what is described in policy circles as the ‘Digital from different backgrounds and specialisations worked to Not ‘the same old same old’: Divide’. This project is discussed in this issue by CUCR generate imaginative exchanges that intervene into dominant researcher Clare Levy, a CUCR research associate who is definitions of people, services and the nature of social inter- also a trainer in the digital story telling method. connections within a context of demographic and urban Beyond Bingo and the Blitz change. Here older people, including active older people Alison Rooke The second project, Skills Exchange was initiated by the in their early sixties to more fragile and less mobile elderly, Projects area of Serpentine Gallery. The galleries project some of whom were suffering dementia had the change to work, challenges preconceived ideas of where art is take part in exchanges . Tom Hunter, working with CUCR experienced and by whom. These projects take place both Research Assistant Laura Cuch worked with participants in and outside the gallery and address processes of social of the Woodberry Down Estate, undergoing large scale We constantly hear news stories about older people and Discrimination against people on the basis of age, and the and political marginalization collaborative art and social regeneration responding to their desires to portray the the crisis in care: horrific stories of older people or being stereotyping of older people as passive, dependent and research project that took place between January 2007 rich social life of the last 50 years of the estate through taken advantage of or being neglected and abused by the intellectually disengaged, is damaging to older people’s and April 2012. CUCR were the research and evaluation the testimonies of residents who have lived there. Tom very people charged with looking after them. At the same sense of themselves (4). A social process of infantalisation is partners to the project. The research was led by myself and residents converged in their belief in the importance time, the lot of older people who are not in care often often the result of the misconception that older people are with the assistance of research assistants Cristina Garrido of social housing and felt that at a time when the estate seems to be a bad one: not knowing ones neighbours, living needy and less intelligent than other adults. At times this Sanchez, Ananda Furlauto, Laura Cuch, Mara Ferrari and was undergoing re-development and social housing was in isolation and fear, living on pensions. Our experience of attitude is expressed in well-meaning behavior. (Research Katey Tabner who worked ethnographically as part of the regularly being socially vilified. Barby Asante, with CUCR the places they live changes as they grow older. Our needs, amongst older people found that 54% of older people team of artists, agencies and participants as the projects Researcher Cristina Garrido Sanchez developed Trading experiences and ability to move around the city change believe people in late old age are treated like children (5)). unfolded. This five-year project culminated in a Carers Spaces, a project concerned with the ways older people profoundly as does our ability to partake in all that cities Negative attitudes to older people are also expressed in Congress in May. The Carers Congress brought together experience urban change and the significance of the social have to offer. Although the difficulties facing the elderly a preconception that older people are more conservative the organisations and individuals who took part to present space of the market for older people. The project brought today may seem far removed from some younger people’s about social attitudes than the younger generation. However, CUCR’s research report Modalities of Exchange and to together older people, market workers and traders at the day-to-day concerns, ageing matters and impacts on all of us. it is worth remembering that today’s 55-65 year olds would engage in discussions about the relationship between art InSpire Centre to find new ways of archiving the past and Over the past two centuries the global population has been have been in their 20s in the early 1970s. This cohort and care. recovering memories of the everyday social worlds which aging due to an on going decline in fertility and increasing includes those who witnessed and took part in tremendous are so often lost and quickly forgotten in future oriented longevity. It is predicted that in the developed regions of social and cultural change and urban transformations. CUCR’s work with older people seeks to address the ways regeneration processes. In Camden, North London, Marcus the world a third of the population will be aged 60 or over Clearly, this is not the older generation whose adult life in which older people are interpolated into a variety of Coates, accompanied by research assistant Ananda Ferlauto, by 2050 (1). was dominated by first-hand experiences of World War settings. Both Skills Exchange and Extending Creative Practice continued his dynamic art practice exploring the role of the Two (which is often one of the primary ways in which older work, albeit in different ways, to locate older people in artist as a vicarious agent for imagination and experience. The UK is getting older, as older people are living longer people’s memory becomes framed through reminiscence the present and the future. Both projects are concerned Marcus Coates worked with out-patients on issues around and people are having fewer children. This has led to an in the UK). Research shows that the older people of with relationship between the ways that older people are the emotional and imaginative in the context of St John’s increase in the percentage of the population aged 65 and tomorrow, (the ‘baby boom’ generation of today’s 45-55 represented and interpolated, as well as the impact of these Hospice, an independent hospice that provides palliative over and a declining proportion of those aged under 16. In year olds) will have cultural values which have been defined processes on older people and those who work with them. and end of life care. Here people are at the end of their the UK there are currently nearly 12 million people of state by individualism and liberalism, being: less deferential; more The Extending Creative Practice project produced a space lives, as their physical and spatial world shrinks. Through pension age, and about 650,000 people turn 65 each year. anti-establishment; less religious; more tolerant of illegal where older people could tell their stories. This was made considered dialogue, Marcus worked closely with several of There are now more people in the UK aged 60 and above drugs, and sex outside marriage; more gender neutral; more possible through a heartfelt exchange between themselves the Hospice’s residents and finally selected one collaborator than there are under 18 (2). These changes will impact on pro-European; and more concerned about the environment and a younger generation of trainers. In this process, and with whom to work. Beginning by asking ‘what can I do for the quality of life for those who are in their 20 and 30s (6). It is argued that, “one of the defining features of the through the mastery of ICT which was gained older people you’, he asked participants if there was something which today. In the next decade the care and wellbeing of the aging baby boomers is that they are arguably the most diverse are able to locate themselves firmly in the present and they would like to enact vicariously through Marcus, to population will be a significant challenge for policy makers, and divided generation to have reached this point in life” (7). project their stories into a digital future. explore their wishes, interests and dreams. Marcus did not as the demographic changes to the UK population will have imagine this as a simple act of service but an exchange in profound effects on all UK residents. The cost of care to For several years I have been involved in two research Skills Exchange: which he might learn something of what it is to be at the the national purse will gradually increase as the proportion projects at CUCR concerned with older people and the end of ones life, a secret and undiscussed knowledge in of the population who are elderly grow at the same time arts: Extending Creative Practice and Skills Exchange. These Skills Exchange took as its field of investigation the elderly broader society. Question: How could exchanges between as working-age taxpayers gradually becomes a smaller build on an earlier project I carried out with Gesche in the city, and specifically the civil spaces available for culture and care workers and residents result in tangible proportion of society. Simultaneously, in a late-capitalist Weurfel called Mobilizing Knowledge that invited older older people to participate in. Through five embedded change? economy which demands a mobile, flexible workforce that people and planners into a participatory research project multi-year residencies, Skills Exchange projects tested the can adapt to changes in the global employment market, examining how urban planners can work with and create idea that isolation and discrimination are best addressed Working with a very different constituency and approach, extended families will be more likely to live away from an urban space which is inclusive of older people. In quite if artists, older people, care-workers and others exchange the that project took place at Westmead Elderly Resource older relative and be less available to provide day to day different ways, each of these projects address the matters their skills on equal ground, altering roles, representations Centre and Care Home owned and run by Westminster familial care (3). While political pressures to provide cost of older people’s citizenship, their right to the city and the and well-rehearsed relations through processes of creative City Council. Westmead provides residential care for effective services, have led to older peoples care services public realm employing artistic production as a mode of exchange. These sites included two residential care homes, 42 older people, many of whom have dementia and being fragmented and privatised. intervention and investigation. Extending Creative Practice, Woodberry Down Housing Estate in Hackney, East Street experience few or no visits from outsiders. Two design which culminated in a European conference in Maribor Market, Southwark and St John’s Hospice in Westminster. teams collaborated with care home workers over a four

page 42 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 43 year period. The first was developed by Markus Miessen Joyce’s astute observation became the title of Beatrice (1) Bond, J. et al. (2007) Aging in Society: European Perspectives on Gerontology. in relation to architectural change. The second, related to Gibson’s moving film (8). At the heart of the Skills London: Sage social, programmatic and spatial design, emerged from the Exchange project was a critical understanding of the (2) Figures from http://policy.helptheaged.org.uk/_policy/default.htm collective Åbäke. CUCR research assistant Katey Tabner ways that dominant formulations of ‘care’ often place the (accessed July 2010). and researcher Alison Rooke worked on the research elderly in the role of the ‘serviced’ or ‘cared for’, as those (3) Never Too Late for Living. Inquiry into Services for Older People. The All component of the project and Activities Coordinator Phyllis ‘without’, or ‘after’ the peak moments of their lives. While Party Parliamentary Governmental Group (2008) Etukudo also played an important role. simultaneously the artists and those working with older (4) Jeunism is the discrimination against older people in favour of younger people are placed in a role of the ‘creative’ ‘skilled’ or the ones. This includes political candidacies, jobs, and cultural settings where Finally, In Camden, Beatrice Gibson worked with CUCR ‘carer’. Skills Exchange projects pushed at the notion that the supposed greater vitality and/or physical beauty of youth is more Assistant Mara Ferreri and care home residents to develop each of these actors might exchange their skills, and, in appreciated than the supposed greater moral and/or intellectual rigor a film script and to adopt a process similar to those used this process, alter reified roles and well-rehearsed relations of adulthood. Age UK-funded research shows that people aged over 70 in realist TV dramas such as Play for Today and B.S. Johnson’s through processes of creative exchange. are persistently seen as incapable and pitiable when compared to other 1971 experimental novel House Mother Normal to develop groups. The assumption that they do not have the same aspirations as conversations with those in the homes about their feelings Skills Exchange interrogated some of these attitudes younger people too often translates into the rationing of opportunities to about life and the future. Here, most of the elderly residents and recognised their intelligence, experience and agency. participate in processes of urban change, economic and community life. Age have different degrees of memory loss and often drifted in Rather than entertaining older people and filling time with UK’s research found that 54% of people over 65 in the UK believe that age and out of concentration. This was effectively addressed by ‘activities’ such as bingo or reminiscence about the past the discrimination exists in older people’s everyday lives. avoiding the familiar ‘reminiscing’ format of many art projects project created spaces where older people are respected (5) Agenda for Later Life, Our five-year ambition for public policy. Age UK 2010. involving elderly people. Beatrice and scriptwriter George for the way they would like to change the world. (6) Brook Lyndhurst Ltd. Sustainable cities and the ageing society: the role Clark presented images of the future by screening films of older people in an urban renaissance - final report (New Horizons). to trigger a dialogue about present, past and future issues Both Extending Creative Practice and Skills Exchange recognised Available Online: www.communities.gov.uk/documents/corporate/ and events, moving between temporalities, (for example participants’ active pasts and presents. Both projects were pdf/142763.pdf exploring how participants thought about the future in the conceived in a conviction that older people have a lot (7) Huber, J. and Skidmore, P. (2003) The New Old, Why baby boomers won’t past through the motif of the moon landing) half following, to give and exchange. Framing activities for older people be pensioned off, Demos, pg42. half guiding the meandering form of the conversations. The around reminiscence, working memory can interpolate (8) The Future’s Getting Old, Like the Rest of Us can be viewed at . http://www. shifting temporalities of the dialogic sessions were captured older people as located in the past, saturated in nostalgia ubu.com/film/gibson.html by a sound recorder and translated into a verbatim script for a time which has gone, and, crucially, resistant to or by George Clark, who also participated in the sessions. unable to adjust to the global multicultural postmodern city. This part of the project focussed on a negotiated exchange Older people can quickly be framed as subjects who are among the residents as well as between them and Beatrice. ‘living history’ rather than people living in the present who They shared political ambitions: have lived through history and have a stake in the future. Although the framing of older people through reminiscence “I was too busy planning the future in the communist party; we can offer some older people a comfortable position had two meetings a week. We were very active. We would discuss from which they can narrate their pasts, this can quickly what was going on in America, and what was going on in the become formulaic as national history merges with personal Soviet Union and we would fight for what we thought was right. narrative. When working with people who are older, it is There was lots of discussion, politically. I think it’s got worse. “ important to challenge our assumptions regarding the issues Elvira that may interest or concern them. We can do this through a spirit of openness to the issues that concern participants As well as more practical matters: themselves. Lets not limit our imaginations and change our perceptions about older people. They are not merely the “I don’t sleep at night, I have too many catnaps during the day, receivers of care, they also care for their community and so that anytime I nod off you should wake me up. I need to be their city and its future. alive in the situation, otherwise I nod off during the day and then I can’t sleep at night Tea tea, I’ve been making tea for the last 70 years, I’m bored of tea. “ Elvira The Skills exchange report “Modalities of Exchange” is available on the CUCR website http://www.gold.ac.uk/cucr/research/skillsexchange/ And those concerning the pending move: For more information on Extending Creative Practice go to http://www. “That’s the time and the future, we are going to build more and extendingcreativepractice.eu/ The final report of the project will be more. The future, it’s getting old, like the rest of us.” available in September. Joyce

page 44 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 45 Extending Creative Practice : A European Encounter

Claire Levy

In May I attended the Extending Creative Practice It seems significant that this man chose to die publicly As Bourdieu observes on participant testimony :’one of These participant testimonies created a sense of Conference in Maribor, Slovenia. It was the end of an – he shot himself outside the parliament building – the the stakes is the image they have of themselves, the image ‘technological assemblage’ (8): in MacGregor Wise’s 18 month project which aimed to teach and encourage fabric of the city bearing witness to his suffering. His that they wish to give, both to others and themselves.’ words this was ‘an articulation... the idea that different older people to engage with digital story-telling as a choice to die in this way reflects a desire to be seen (5) Heikke’s use of the well- known dramatic story- elements can be connected in order to create unities means to enhance their understanding and engagement and to be heard and to disrupt. His lasting ‘presentation telling device suggests an awareness of his situation and or identities’. Intergenerational co-operation’, was with computing. The method, developed by Joe Lambert of self’ to the world, an anti-social one (2). In Goffman’s a means of sharing it in therapeutic terms. The focus is pronounced an abiding experience by one participant, in US and spread in UK through BBC Wales producer reading, we present differing ‘social faces’ dependent on on the saxophone playing, not the disease. Identifying it while others spoke of ‘optimism’ as a lasting impression. Daniel Meadows in the late 90s (1), involves group work, the observer and it is this idea of this active process of as ‘Mr Parkinson’ hints at a distancing of the narrator Another ,aged 81, said she had never had a chance through the ‘story-circle’ to build trust and to develop composition of the self ‘out of many successive layers’ from his condition. The story-telling process has allowed to work with computers before and someone else ideas of telling personal stories. Games, writing exercises (3), which makes me curious to hear from participants a separation of the layers of his own persona. suggested a ‘golden age of creativity opening up’; and and most importantly sharing with the circle culminate and trainers – what they have discovered and what they it is through these relationships between old and young in the editing together of voice recordings and personal have shown. One Romanian participant, told us of her wedding, in using technology that this process is afforded. An archive images. Goldsmiths based Digi-Tales continued forced to take place in the aftermath of an earthquake intermingling of states of being: story-teller, editor, the development of the method as a means for working Latour indeed compares the self to a ‘layered digital in 1977. Her reluctance to marry and celebrate in the photographer, teacher, viewer; were found in all of us with people at the margins of society. The short digital image’ (4), suggesting a paring down through the digital midst of a tragedy is termed ‘the misadventure of my that day. In the words of Sarah Pink: stories produced, are a means of giving people a way process, what Lury terms a ‘flattening’ and indeed the life’. The images she shows us embed her story into the of expressing significant moments in their lives. As digital story-telling method allows that process to occur. backdrop of the ruined landscape, indeed much like the ‘It’s not simply the final film document that is important, a facilitator and trainer with Digi-Tales I’ve seen this The process encourages a distillation of culture, so that Athenian man’s death is intractably linked to the city but rather the collaborative processes by which it is process at work many times and never fail to be moved the participants are drawn to a particular story about a and its financial chaos. Her film bears witness to these produced.’ (9) by the journey participants go on – at the end sharing particular part of their life and thus presenting the self events and how the city looked before. Her testimony their stories with each other and with me. This is a in a particular way. and her images, like all the others is lent a sense of Claire Levy is a film-maker and visual researcher. She collaborative process where the telling and the listening importance through this telling. I am mindful of Sontag’s recently graduated with a Masters in Photography are of equal importance to the project’s outcomes. This year’s European Capital of Culture, Maribor was observation of our ‘promiscuous acceptance of the and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths College. She is keen to welcome us – the Mayor and a Home Office world’ through photography, which plays with the idea currently a Research Associate at the Centre for Urban Maribor, nestled not far from the Austrian border minister addressed the conference and were joined by of images shaping our perceptions; but this dislocation and Community Research. welcomes you from a train ride through the drama of the Head of British Council. Digi-Tales and the CUCR of the self, articulated by Turkle as ‘to give human the valleys south of Vienna, where the landscape flattens evaluation team from London joined participating groups, qualities to objects and … to treat each other as things’ out and you rumble along the River Drava until you from Romania, Finland and hosts Slovenia: all presented (6) perhaps allows a fresh re-telling of the self. If we are reach the town itself. In the midst of Europe’s economic their experiences, showing a selection of films produced as Thrift contends, a ‘shifting ensemble of states’ (7) what turmoil there was durability, an everlasting quality of the through their own interpretations of the method and digital technology affords us is a means to unpick that (1) Dyke, Julie (2010) DigiTales: A European Perspective, London: 2. landscape which prevailed; a sort of peace which seemed also introducing us to some of their participants who layering. (2) RT.com Site created by TV Nosti 2005 http://www.rt.com/news/ much removed from the hourly updates I listen to on had travelled to join us. Communication was at the heart greece-suicide-218/ Radio 4 detailing the latest bailout of Spain’s banks, and of the day with speeches made in English, Slovenian, Another participant told us the story of her mother, (3) Goffman, I. (1959) Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York. the sense of hopelessness amongst the Greek people. I Romanian and back again to make sure all followed what but used the first person tense, as though it were her Double Day Anchor Books, 6. remembered the story of the Greek pensioner who had was being discussed. own story, only revealing the real relationship with the (4) Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social Oxford. Oxford taken his own life in Syntgama Square in Athens only a subject at the end of the piece. She says the film is a University Press 2005, 207. month before. In his note, it seemed to me, a desire to The films focussed on the past and the present and many ‘display of love’. It gives a sense of the monumental : the (5) Bourdieu, P. et al. (1999) Weight of the World, Cambridge. Polity be heard brought him to his tragic conclusion: displayed a careful composition. One Finnish participant importance of what she had shown and told us came Press. , 615. told us about learning the saxophone, though his through the telling. There is a duality here : the use of (6) Turkle, S. (2011), Alone Together. New York. Basic Books, xiv. “And since I cannot find justice, I cannot find another means narrative arc revealed that he also had Parkinson’s the personal image archive forges a paring back to the (7) Thrift, N. (2008) ‘I Just Don’t Know What Got Into Me: Where Is to react besides putting a decent end [to my life], before I disease in that crucial 4th act. core of the story and yet her response was to subsume The Subject?’ In Subjectivity, vol 22 82-89 2008:85. start searching the garbage for food and become a burden herself within the events depicted. Her anticipated (8) MacGregor W. (2008) Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts, ed. Charles for my child.” (1) “I started to motivate other seniors to learn to play music, observation creates an alternative version of the self, so J. Stivale, 83. unfortunately I couldn’t find anyone except Mr Parkinson”. that an audience should engage with the mother’s story (9) Pink, S. (2007) Doing Visual Ethnography, London. Sage, 112 in a way which feels more immediate.

page 46 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 streetsigns · 2012 / 13 · page 47 MA in WORLD CITIES AND URBAN LIFE The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR)

Cities continuously provide new challenges for with others? Particularly, how do we draw upon the understanding what is to be done with human and experience of urban residents from across the world to non-human life. Cities have always demanded new ways rethink the conditions for effective and just urban lives? List of contributors to this issue 2012­ / 13: of thinking about the intersections of people, things, This programme emphasises how to bring together places, signs, feelings, and practices. Increasingly, no social analysis, design, activism, and inventive methods matter how we live, we live at the level of the world, for engaging various dimensions of urban work: from simultaneously within and beyond neighbourhoods, planning, policy making, research, cultural intervention, cultures, workplaces, identities and institutions. We to the management of social programs and institutions. know this ‘world’ primarily through the experience of living within and between cities. How do we understand this experience? What do we do with it in terms of This programme develops the core strengths of Goldsmiths making new forms of social life and new ways of living and its internationally recognised Department of Sociology. Bailey, Sam MA World Cities and Urban Life Baixinho, Alexandra PhD Visual Sociology MA in PHOTOGRAPHY AND URBAN CULTURES Bedo, Victor Artist, member of Invisible Playground The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR) Berrens, Karla PhD Visual Sociology Calafate Faria, Francisco PhD Sociology The MA in Photography and Urban Cultures has been offers those with a background in sociology, urban and developed in response to the increasing interests in urban cultural geography, cultural studies or anthropology the Coles, Peter Visiting Research Fellow at CUCR theory and the visual representation and investigation of opportunity to combine visual forms of representation Faridamin, Sara MA Photography and Urban Cultures urban life and the physical environments of the city. with standard forms of research techniques in investigating urban life and the physical environments of the city. Halasz, Katalin PhD Visual Sociology It is designed to encourage creative interplay between Halliday, Paul Convenor of MA Photography and Urban Cultures practice and theory. You will have the chance to consider Three core courses will introduce you to contemporary cutting-edge debates in cultural and social theory in a examples of photographic practice and city life. They Hanson, Steve PhD Sociology research setting that actively encourages the development cover a selection of key and historic texts of social theory, Henningsen, Therese Graduate MA Anthropology and Media of photographic practice. The programme offers working considering cities, spatiality and urban form and provide a photographers, visual artists and media practitioners historical overview of the different attempts at mapping Hovdkinn, Erlend MA World Cities and Urban Life space to reflect critically on their practice. It also and documenting urban life in London. Kendall, David Visiting Research Fellow at CUCR Knowles, Caroline Professor of Sociology, Levy Claire Graduate MA Photography and Urban Cultures MPhil/PhD in VISUAL SOCIOLOGY Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London Rainey, Mark PhD Cultural Studies Rooke, Alison Lecturer and researcher at CUCR The MPhil/PhD in Visual Sociology offers you the opportunity piece or a series of photographs. Written and multimedia St. Arroman, Claude PhD Design to combine written sociological argument with film, sound, components of the thesis will form an integrated whole. The or photographic material. We provide researchers the use of multimedia will enhance and evidence your analysis, Strasser, Anita Member of LIP (London Independent Photography) space in which to re-think both the conduct and form of interpretation and understanding of social phenomena. The von Wissel, Christian PhD Visual Sociology contemporary social research, in a college environment written component of the thesis will engage with multimedia animated by visual arts and design. The Visual Sociology components and be set within a substantive research topic Zhang, Lijie Photographer programme builds on the success of our MA in Photography and its wider social context. Your practice will be supported and Urban Cultures and contributes to Goldsmiths’ leading by a programme of audio-visual training workshops as well as position internationally in visual research and analysis. expert supervision in your chosen area of research.

You will carry out research in an area that interests you and To find out more, contact: prepare a written thesis in combination with a video, a sound Bridget Ward (secretary), [email protected]

Further information and how to apply: UK and EU students: Admissions Office, telephone 020 7919 7060 (direct line), fax 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]; For further information about the Centre: Please call 020 7919 7390; e-mail [email protected] or visit www.gold.ac.uk/cucr/ page 48 · streetsigns · 2012 / 13 CUCR Occasional paper series

Simon COLE, Maria DUMAS William (Lez)HENRY Shadowboxing with the ghost of Bourdieu Projecting the ‘Natural’: Language and Citizenship in Outernational Culture Mehul DOSHI Remittances, Transnational Practices and New Liminal Spaces Colin KING Play the White Man: The Theatre of Racialised Margarita ARAGON Performance in the Institutions of Soccer Brown Youth, Black Fashion and a White Riot Larry LOHMANN Mette ANDERSSON Ethnic Discrimination in ‘Global’ Conservation The Situated Politics of Recognition: Ethnic Minority, Youth and Identity Work Ben LOOKER Exhibiting Imperial London: Empire and City in Late Les BACK, Tim CRABBE, John SOLOMOS Victorian and Edwardian Guidebooks Lions, Black Skins and Reggae Gyals India MacWEENEY Andrew BARRY Imagining the Real: Chicano Youth, Hip Hop, Race, Space Motor Ecology: the Political Chemistry of Urban Air and Authenticity

Zygmunt BAUMAN Hiroki OGASAWARA City of Fears, City of Hopes Performing Sectarianism: Terror, Spectacle and Urban Myth in Glasgow Football Cultures Vikki BELL Show and Tell: Passing, Narrative and Tony Morrison’s Jazz Garry ROBSON Class, Criminality and Embodied Consciousness: Charlie Eva BERGLUND Richardson and a South East London Habitus Legacies of Empire and Spatial Divides: New and Old Challenges for Environmentalists in the UK Flemming RØGILDS Charlie Nielsen’s Journey: Wandering through Multi- Tine BLOM cultural Landscapes Dostoyevsky’s Inquisitor: The Question of Evil, Suffering and Freedom of Will in Totalitarian Regimes Michael STONE Social Housing in the UK and US: Evolution, Issues and Bridget BYRNE Progress How English am I? Louisa THOMSON Ben CARRINGTON The Respect Drive: the Politics of Young People and Race, Representation and the Sporting Body Community

Stephen DOBSON Fran TONKISS The Urban Pedagogy of Walter Benjamin: lessons for the The ‘Marketisation’ of Urban Government: Private Finance 21st Century Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and Urban Policy

Ben GIDLEY Danielle TURNEY The Proletarian Other: Charles Booth and the Politics of The Language of Anti-racism in Social Work: Towards a Representation Deconstructive Reading

Paul GILROY Gordon WALKER and Karen BICKERSTAFF The Status of Difference: from Epidermalisation to Polluting the Poor: an Emerging Environmental Justice Nano-politics Agenda for the UK?

please refer to www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr 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 ISSN 2043-0124