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Paper short abstract:

This research surveys urban activism and artistic practices in Berlin that have responded to the challenge to “delink” the city from its Soviet colonial legacy, which, in turn, recognizes Russia’s current neoimperial ambitions as constitutive and consequential of its Soviet colonial past.

Paper long abstract:

In February 2023, Café Moskau temporarily changed its name to Café Kyiv to commemorate the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As a socialist modernist landmark punctuated by a large model of a Sputnik satellite, the renaming marked a conspicuous moment concerning the affective afterlife of Berlin’s socialist heritage; however, this was not the first time Berlin was undergoing a reckoning with its memory landscape, defined by historical erasures, ruination, tracings, and reconstructions. Political debates following German re-unification contended with the intersecting histories of socialism in Germany and the Soviet Union, seeking to stabilize the past by renaming streets, and by memorializing the instruments of socialist state repression and political violence. The past seemed well contained, until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced scholars to recognize its neoimperial ambitions as constitutive and consequential of Soviet colonialism. Inspired by decolonial theory, I survey artistic practices of a collective of Central Asian artists; performances by a group resuscitating positive aspects of socialist realism, and an artist's book by a Kyiv-born, Berlin-based artist, to highlight how such interventions can delink both European and Soviet knowledge hierarchies from other ways of being in the world. These artistic practices involve renaming, interventionist art, and subversive affirmation, which have responded to the challenge to “delink” Berlin’s urban landscape from its colonial legacy. I also present my own artistic research, which uses watercolours—an ephemeral, transparent, and fragile medium—to paint cityscapes as a decolonial artistic practice.

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Paper short abstract:

An audio-visual accompaniment to walks around one of Bucharest's dormitory quarters built during the communist regime, questioning the role of happenstance intimacy between infrastructure and its inhabitants in the continuous transformations since the fall of the regime.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation draws on walking as multimodal ethnographic method to investigate occurrences of intimacy between the inhabitants and the infrastructure of one of Bucharest's dormitory quarters, initially built as part of the massive urban transformation demanded under the communist regime. As a work in progress, the presentation draws primarily on auto-ethnography and observations of public life inspired by the work of architects and urbanists such as Jan Gehl. Using audio-visual material, the presentation aims to explore the serendipity of ordinary life shaped under particular power regimes and to interrogate the notion of intimacy as a lens to understand public space and public life as they have been transforming under the communist regime and in the 34 years since its fall.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to present the problem of building intimate relationships with the non-site of memory undergoing transformation into the museum by discussing selected multisensory interventions with space from the last three years.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the transformation of urban infrastructure in the context of power relations related to commemoration of a traumatic past. Specifically, it focuses on KL Plaszow, a heritage site located within 20 minutes from the Old Town in Krakow. Eighty years ago, the site was the Plaszow labour and concentration camp, which was part of the German Holocaust policy. Around 35,000 prisoners, mostly Jews but also Poles and Roma, passed through it, and approximately 6,000 lost their lives there. Over time, the area has been transformed into a large green space in the middle of residential neighbourhoods.

Since 2016, Krakow institutions, notably the Krakow Museum, have been involved in the commemoration process. The memorial area is currently under the protection of the conservation officer and has the status of a war cemetery. In January 2021, the Plaszow KL Museum was established. This paper explores the theoretical framework of non-sites of memory and counter-heritage, focusing on the potential of these sites as multisensory, embodied spaces of everyday urban living. To what extent can they be inclusive of the daily practices of citizens? Can we commemorate the victims while walking our dogs? Can sightseeing revive the past in a performative way? Can artistic activism complement institutional commemoration? How do the unspoken rules of daily life interact with the regulations of cultural institutions?

The paper aims to present the problem of building intimate relationships with the non-site of memory undergoing transformation into the museum by discussing selected multisensory interventions with space from the last three years.

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This paper intends to present visually bottom-up practices of everyday urban living, focusing on an urban project which aims at the creation of a ‘green corridor’ interconnecting places that represent an integral part of the daily life of residents and students in an Italian neighborhood

Paper long abstract:

Italian neighborhoods are often heavily crossed, densely inhabited and with a significant multicultural setting. Although an increasing attention for bike paths, light mobility and green spaces is periodically declared by city administrators during the electoral period and in the times of the PNRR, reality travels in a parallel dimension made of concrete infrastructure and mobility on wheels. For this reason any alternative project intending to subtract a green area to cement and decay should be object of consideration and analysis. This paper focuses on a bottom-up urban project aiming at the creation of a ‘green corridor’, obtained from neglected and residual spaces, in order to interconnect schools, sports centers, church patronages, and stores that represent an integral part of the daily life of residents and students. We like to retrace the steps of this project through time introducing the actors involved, the methodology used, and the difficulties overcome. Re-appropriation, collective action, endurance, imagination are just some of the concept-words that will be appropriately used to describe it. Purpose of our visual presentation is also to reflect on an experience of active citizenship from two different disciplinary angles, represented by anthropology and urban planning. Ethnographic methods, focusing on specific contexts and providing a multifaceted account, are a prerequisite for any project design dealing with people and places (van Willigen et al. 2019). On the other hand, urban planning with an integrated approach is a must in regeneration processes of ecological transition in our contemporary cities and neighborhoods (Bekemans and Mazzocchin 2017)

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Paper short abstract:

Entanglements between recent arrivals to Lisboa and the cityscape are explored through a multimodal ethnography, uncovering how sensory-affective-embodied modes are implicated in the process of acclimation and the navigation of frictions and opportunities in a new lifeworld for migrants.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 2011 Troika intervention, Portugal has seen an influx of new residents spurred by a comparatively lax immigration policy, tax incentives and a low cost of living in comparison with the rest of Europe. Waves of new arrivals continue to flow in despite rising costs of living, shifting Portugal’s paradigm from a country of emigration to also an immigration destination. This research project delves into the everyday lives of new arrivals to Lisboa, uncovering the processes of sensory, embodied, and affective acclimation implicated in the development of senses of belonging and the creation of a new livelihood, and the frictions and tensions that newcomers traverse through at a bureaucratic, social, and cultural level. Grounded in a multimodal ethnography, the research follows a group of interlocutors over the course of a year and a half through a series of reflexive exercises to understand how sensory-affective modes, memory and embodiment play into their (re)negotiation of self, processes of becoming, and their mediated positionality in the place around them by delving into their entanglements with the city.

This presentation will reflect on and present a plurality of multimodal materials from the ethnography (including photography and audio), at once showing how this approach uncovers complications and opportunities between “local” and “global”, “us” and “them”, and “belonging” and “estrangement” in the lives of the interlocutors, the oscillations of intermittency and stability in their migratory experiences, and how agency is implicated in everyday engagements in their new place of living.

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Based on the mental-emotional cartographies of migrant domestic workers in HK, we explore how they relate to the city, the power (dis)continuities between the public and private spheres, and the role of both the physical/symbolic dimensions of the space in shaping their senso-spatial experiences.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1970s HK has been a primary destination for female Filipino labour migrants. The foreign domestic helpers (mainly Filipino and Indonesian) constitute the 4.5% of the HK population, even though they are largely exposed to very hard living and work conditions, often characterised by abuse and exploitation. These women are forced by law to live in their employer’s houses where they work between 12-18 hours a day and in most cases, they don’t have their own room or private space.

On their day off (Sunday) they all go out driving to an intensive occupation of the public space across the city. This is particularly striking in the central area of the island, comprising the financial district, the most expensive and luxurious area of HK. Through an origin-based (country/region) spatialisation, squares, sidewalks, parks, and walkways become full covered by camping tents, open umbrellas and cardboard boxes (often including self-made walls) which serve as a rug for picnicking –commensality having a key structuralising role – napping, singing karaoke or dancing, among many other activities.

Based on a six-months ethnography, which includes the development of mental-emotional cartographies through participatory inquiry, this presentation explores how the city is perceived and experienced by these women; the power (dis)continuities between the public and private spheres; and the notion of collective resistance in a context in which both, the physical and symbolic dimensions of the space(s) shape their sensorial experiences in a city which becomes itself intermitent.

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Paper short abstract:

Oral and visual storytelling are dynamic practices that influence how the urban landscape is perceived. These frequently help establishing a sense of community/communion whilst having the potential to transform. This paper will use performative research methodologies to enquire this relationship.

Paper long abstract:

Audiovisual Palimpsests will focus on the creative and performative properties of the voice (orality, aurality) and the moving picture and explore them as crucial elements that, by being in constant flux, help promoting the dynamic reshaping of our perception of space. Through the creative use of these elements the urban environment retains a sense of virtual memory that, with greater or lesser awareness, impacts our everyday lives. In contrast, voices and images can also become intimately subversive components and therefore able to create disruptions in the social fabric. This presentation aims to address the intersection between prosaic multi-sensorial creative practices and the continuous reshaping of the urban landscape.