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- Convenors:
-
Paula Mota Santos
(Universidade Fernando Pessoa and Universidade de Lisboa, Centro de Administração de Políticas Públicas ISCSPuniversidade de Lisboa)
Albert Moncusí Ferré (Universitat de València)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-F220
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 15 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
The papers in this panel present an ethnographically-based analysis of particular neighbourhoods, buildings, planning initiatives and urban mobilizations, different cases that have in common heritage as field where an encounter between past in future is enacted and negotiated.
Long Abstract:
The neoliberal condition affects urban policies and the lives of city inhabitants and city usersall over the world. Renovation, regeneration or redevelopment projects bring about a redefinition of urban spaces that that can act as source of cooperation, conflict or resistance from different social groups related to those urban spaces. Heritage is often a central tool in these urban renewal projects. But because heritage is a construction of the past by the present with a view to a desired future, diverse stakeholder such as neighbors, experts, civil organizations, local authorities and corporate entities collide in their efforts to imagine a future through destroying, forgetting or hiding elements of the past.
The panel gathers papers that while presenting cases of heritage-based urban renewal projects, also discuss the several ripples that these projects create: the increasing opposition by some local inhabitants to tourism as an economic resource for cities economies; the heritagization of previously marginalized urban areas as a tool to imagine better futures away from economic recession and/or social tension and conflict; the role played by preservation of traditional and historical assets in the insertion of cities in globalized networks of symbolic economy; the ability heritage has in creating a sense of place - these are all topics to be addressed by the papers in the panel that have as common ground a take on heritage-led urban renewal and development projects that focuses on heritage as field where an encounter between past in future is enacted and negotiated.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 15 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines a 2015 performance art piece that occurred on a sidewalk in East Belfast. It examines the chalk rainbow created during that performance as a mediating object and action, one which literally draws together Belfast's multiplicity of contested pasts and futures.
Paper long abstract:
In August 2015, a performance artist enacted a work on the sidewalks of East Belfast's Lower Newtownards Road. Bent double and carrying a child's plastic tub of sidewalk chalk, the artist drew a rainbow, six continuous lines leading from the doors of the local Church of Ireland to a recently deconsecrated church nearby. In the process of performing this work, entitled Rainbow of Hope, the artist passed by and interacted with numerous symbols and indicators of Belfast's contested pasts and futures. In this paper, I argue that these multiple temporalities collide with one another in urban space, indicating a visual contest for the past, future, and ultimately the present of this divided city.
Furthermore, by traversing urban space in this extraordinary manner, I argue that Rainbow of Hope troubles simple distinctions between 'past' and 'future', literally drawing together multiple temporalities and multiple visions of the city within the seemingly simple image of the rainbow. This paper presents a detailed, ethnographically rich analysis of this event, examining the rainbow as a potent object and action used to mediate among and call into question the many available pasts and futures that inhabit and shape the urban pedestrian spaces of East Belfast. This analysis can, in turn, offer useful insights into the ways in which artists both participate in and contest competing urban temporalities at the level of the street and of the pedestrian.
Paper short abstract:
Based on historical and ethnographic research on past, present and future visions of the arts organization SPACE (a leading provider of artist studio buildings located mostly in former industrial wastelands of London) the paper discusses the moving atmosphere of ephemerality for urban regeneration.
Paper long abstract:
London, St. Katharines Docks, 1968: A group of visual artists around Peter Townsend, Peter Sedgley and Bridget Riley discovers and adopts the vast area of the industrial wasteland near the river Thames as producing, living, meeting and presentation space. They founded an association called SPACE, prepared a declaration and started a successful negotiation with the landlord for renting an empty warehouse temporarily. Two years later, in 1970, the artists had to move away to make place for thorough urban regeneration processes. To this day the area has emerged as exclusive urban location with offices, shops, marinas and restaurants. The artists settled down in another abandoned industrial building in East London and the organization SPACE started running a successful business in renting, renovating and reletting artist studios across London - and in delivering community projects addressing its local social neighborhood. Based on ethnographic and historical research on participatory art projects in the cities of London, Graz and Linz the paper analyses the interplay between hard facts (required space, construction level, lease costs, travel connections…) and liquid atmospheric components (ephemerality, abandonment...) for the development of creative urban settlements with focus on SPACE. It shows that these spatial and social processes result not only from pragmatic interests but from a complex interrelation between different time horizons with particular importance of ephemerality which attracts both artists and urban developers.
Paper short abstract:
The author analyses negotiations and tensions triggered by the co-existence of different layers in the city centre of Zagreb. She observes simultaneous tendencies to produce the imagery of a glorious urban past on the one hand, and to materialize a vision of 'the city of tomorrow' on the other.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines negotiations and tensions triggered by the co-existence of different architectural layers in the cityscape. It discusses the selection processes through which materiality of a certain period becomes visible and safeguarded as the city's historical heritage, whereas other strata remain hidden, forgotten or destroyed. The author approaches urban conservation strategies as mechanisms of the politics of remembrance, that is, as ways of constructing an adequate and representative past. She also observes recent interventions in historic zones, which add to the temporal multilayeredness of cities. Such transformations often bring tokens of modernity and the imagery of 'the city of tomorrow' to the foreground.
The author explores those issues on the example of the city centre of Zagreb, Croatia's capital. She focuses on revitalization policies and contemporary uses of the 19th-century architecture, which is treated as the core of the protected area of Zagreb Lower Town. She also analyses the current treatment and ambivalent attitudes towards the socialist legacy in the post-socialist city. The final stage of urban transformations in focus is connected to the 21st-century projects, based on cutting-edge architectural concepts and private investments. Such spatial reconfiguration and resemantization is intertwined with city branding that shapes, highlights and displays the cosmopolitan, open, Central European character of Zagreb and the state in general.
The paper is based on ethnographic research that has encompassed diverse agents involved in the production and construction of space, such as policy-makers, architects, cultural heritage experts, organizers of public events and citizens of Zagreb.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will investigate the mobilisation of the past through the European Capitals of Culture programme in the case of Valletta (Malta). It will consider the narratives presented in the candidacy and the current programme to emphasise Europeanness and a vision for the future focused on heritage.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will present an analysis on the heritage activities of one of the current European Capital of Culture 2018, Valletta, Malta. Not so long ago described as 'ambivalent Europeans' (Mitchell 2001), the Maltese have fully embraced this year's title, emphasising their Europeanness through a rich programme of cultural activities. This investigation will be based on an ethnographically-informed methodology that includes discourse analysis of key texts such as the European Capitals of Culture bid text, as well as participant observation and interviews, will reflect on the interplay of temporalities and the reframing of heritage narratives in the development of this programme (Hudson et al. 2017, Lähdesmäki 2014b). This analysis will consider the way in which the past wass mobilised in their original candidacy and their unfolding cultural programme this year. Perceived as a means of refashioning city identities (Sassatelli 2002) but also a powerful source of regeneration (Meekes, Buda and De Roo 2017), the paper will further reflect the hopes for the future that organisers and participants espouse. This analysis will also consider the integration or absence of migrant heritage in this vision for Malta's heritage future.
Paper short abstract:
The renovation of the former Turkish neighborhood in the Cypriot town of Pafos, on the occasion the European Capital of Culture, challenges the local perception of time. The chronological horizon shifts from the memories of the war to a future-oriented perspective of Pafos as a modern city.
Paper long abstract:
The paper analyzes the transformation of the Moutallos, a neighborhood of Pafos (Cyprus) on the occasion of the European Capital of Culture in 2017. It will focus on the restoration of the Xani tou Imbrahim, an abandoned caravanserai turned into a cultural center.
In Moutallos used to dwell the Turkish-Cypriot community that left the town after the war of 1974. Nowadays, the Greek-Cypriot refugees from the North live in those very same houses but the former inhabitants still maintain their legal property. This situation have prevented the evolution that have lately involved other parts of the city, both effectively and symbolically. The persistence to keep traces of the past by the Greek-Cypriot governments, in order of being ready to restore the pre-war situation, have had the side effect of putting the present between branches, in a permanent state of temporariness.
On the other hand, the rhetoric of Pafos2017 is dominated by the future vision of Pafos as a modern city. In this perspective, the city isn't just a space in which different temporalities coexist but the horizon from which modernity can rise.
The cultural-driven transformation of places is a way to achieve this goal. Renovating the old buildings of the center aims at reshaping the feeling of people about them, from monuments to new possibilities for the wish-to-be city. Being a city means to emerge from the anonymity of the global world, so the history entangled in places has to be turned from a burden into an asset to be exploited.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes different conceptions of past and future in a peripheral neighborhood and an old city neighborhood in Valencia (Spain). It sheds light on similarities or differences between both. The aim is to reflect on the role of conceptions of time in the building of urban places.
Paper long abstract:
Past and future meet in neighborhoods. By one side, personal and collective memories shape past. By the other side a future is planned for the neighborhood. In relation to past, memory is a social construction about reality that contributes to conform a place. Memory is related to expectations and intentions. Social memory implies remembering but also forgetting. Places are built through memories. It is important to underline that memories are plural and comfortable or uncomfortable. In relation to future, social organizations, individual neighbors and administration technicians and politicians plan a future neighborhood according to different guidelines and resources. Different conceptions and uses of time coexist. This paper analyzes conceptions of past and future in two neighborhoods in Valencia: the peripheral urban area of Els Orriols and the old city area of Velluters. "Comfortable memories" produce narratives of place that deny conflict. There is an historical connection to the rural surroundings in Els Orriols. Velluters had a role as the silk industry district and It is crystallized in the silk guild museum. But "Uncomfortable memories" are denied in the official history. Delict and drugs during the 70's in both neighborhoods and the current commemoration of a silk workers riot in Velluters. The paper will also analyze conceptions of future. Different values of prosperity and well-being come into play in every neighborhood and for diverse subjects. Diverse projects lay on the table in each neighborhood. Past and future are resources to build different senses of place, in the same city.
Paper short abstract:
Taking as a point of departure the attempts at, subsequently, forgetting, reconstructing, commercializing, and now gentrifying the old part of Manila (Intramuros), the chapter will discuss the politics of heritage in post-war Philippines.
Paper long abstract:
Taking as a point of departure the attempts at, subsequently, forgetting, reconstructing, commercializing, and now gentrifying the old part of Manila (Intramuros), the chapter will discuss the politics of heritage in post-war Philippines. An analysis of heritage revitalization projects and lack thereof will be presented, thus revealing the visions for Intramuros which are present in today's Manila, and how they have been shaped historically. Taken into account will be the points of view of different groups functioning together in the area - informal settlers, business owners, students, government employees, activists, and heritage experts - and their understandings of heritage, space, and the city. This will lead to the discussion of the wider questions of the relation to the past, history, and memory in the Philippines.
Paper short abstract:
1996: UNESCO classifies Porto's old city as a World Heritage Site; 2011: Portugal asks for a financial bail-out; 2017: Porto is the European city with the highest possibility of tourism revenue growth. The role of conservation in moving forward toward an increased modernity is analysed.
Paper long abstract:
In 1996 UNESCO classifies Porto's old city as a World Heritage Site. In 2011 Portugal asks for a financial bail-out in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. In 2012 and in 2014 Porto is voted 'Best European Destination'. In 2015 the low-cost carrier Easyjet installs an international hub in Porto's airport. In 2017, Porto is again 'Best European Destination'. A 2017 report by PwC highlights Porto as the European city with the highest possibility of tourism revenue growth. In 2018, 10 out of the 14 new hotels to be built in Portugal's northern region are in Porto. According to the National Association of Hotel Owners, this increase is not so much related to the country's tourism boom, but to the increase of urban rehabilitation in the old core whereby whole blocks are being turned into high-end hotels.
Moving beyond the classic classification of monumental and social time, the tourism boom in Porto and the role played by the preservation of traditional or historical assets (cuisine, buildings, handicrafts etc) in a process of moving away from economic downturn period will be presented. Heritage (as classified built environment subjected to regulations that preserve a specific point in time, and that is seen has inhabited by a traditional social world) and its role in the process of moving forward toward an ever increasing Modernity, translated into the participation of this mid-size city of a peripheral European country into ever wider networks of the symbolic economy, will be analysed.