- Convenor:
-
Caterina Sartori
(Goldsmiths (University of London))
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel Discussion
- Start time:
- 21 March, 2021 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel calls for papers engaging with the loss of housing and with housing insecurity, and with the way researchers, artists, residents and activist mobilise audio-visual tools to make sense of this predicament.
Long Abstract:
This panel calls for papers engaging with the loss of housing and with housing insecurity, and with the way researchers, artists, residents and activist mobilise audio-visual tools to make sense of this predicament.
In a global context where housing is increasingly implicated in a financialised economy in the form of real estate, the home is ever more than before the space where every day domestic life intersects with economics and politics. Moreover, gendered and racialised dynamics strongly shape the way housing is organised and experienced, and the ways it is rendered insecure, unstable and precarious. As much as housing is about providing shelter and comfort, it can also entrap residents in domestic and economic webs of exploitation and insecurity. Whether though the effect of foreclosures, evictions or demolition, through displacement caused by regeneration, gentrification, environmental disasters, political turmoil or war, housing insecurity, housing loss or the threat of housing loss affects countless households globally.
We are inviting papers that engage with the way audio-visual tools are used to understand, research, make visible, and resist housing insecurity and the loss of housing. This can include material developed by residents and activist, as well as by researchers and artists, or by both working in collaboration. In particular we are interested in the way audio-visual materials can produce new narratives, engender collaborations, and create networks of solidarity and support across space and time.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Robert Deakin (Goldsmiths)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses a collaborative filmmaking project engaging with displacement, in a context marked by urban regeneration and gentrification. I show how the shared ‘sense-making’ that emerged through the project made displacement an object of collaborative, experimental and speculative enquiry.
Paper long abstract:
Displacement in contexts marked by urban regeneration and gentrification is an affective and psycho-social process as much as it is a question of physical dislocation (Davidson 2009; Elliot-Cooper, Hubbard and Lees 2019, 2020). While physical dislocation and affective displacement may go hand-in-hand, affective displacement can occur without an immediate threat of physical displacement. As Elliot-Cooper et al. argue, at the core of gentrification induced displacement is a “[rupturing] of the connection between people and place” (Elliot-Cooper, Hubbard and Lees 2019). This paper critically and speculatively engages with displacement, discussing a collaborative filmmaking project between myself (an anthropologist) and Jimmy - a resident of a social housing estate in Poplar, east London, currently undergoing comprehensive redevelopment. Through a series of filmed walks around his neighbourhood, poetry recital, and explorations of his personal archive, the film project considered Jimmy’s estrangement from his urban milieu. We worked iteratively: filming, watching back, filming again, and sometimes sharing the resulting short films on local history Facebook pages. The use of a camera, screens and social media platforms captured and remediated the affective force of Jimmy’s urban milieu, opening up a shared space where we tried to ‘make sense’ of his affective displacement. Drawing on recent calls for a multimodal “anthropology of invention” (Dattatreyan and Marrero-Guillamon 2019) and theoretical considerations of ‘affect’ (Gregg and Seigworth 2010), I show how the ‘sense-making’ that emerged through our collaboration went beyond a representational engagement with displacement and made displacement an object of collaborative, experimental and speculative enquiry.
Sydney Silverstein (Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation is a photo-ethnographic exploration of a temporary dwelling. Photographic practice explored patterns of daily life for people living with opioid addiction, as well as the objects and materials through which they created a sense of home and place in public spaces.
Paper long abstract:
This proposed presentation is a photo-ethnographic exploration of a temporary dwelling. It is both an essay, and also a diary, of an attempt to understand how public spaces are made intimate and familiar in the context of addiction and its resultant precarities. The space is a small, covered ledge underneath a bridge that crosses the Little Miami River as it runs through the downtown of Dayton, Ohio, an epicenter of industrial decline and opioid misuse. Digital photography is used as a method and practice for studying the space and attempting a more thorough ethnography of local people living with opioid addiction, a group that has formed the core of a broader public health research project undertaken by the author for the past three years. In this manner, this photographic project is an attempt to understand the utilization of common spaces as a means of complementing more standard forms of anthropological and public health research into the practices and experiences of people who use drugs. Longitudinal photographic practice lent new insights into the patterns of daily life for people living with opioid addiction, as well as the objects and materials through which they created a sense of home and place in public spaces.
Manal Massalha
Paper short abstract:
Whether it's Hackney, Stratford or occupied East Jerusalem, the paper reflects on my own practice as an urban ethnographer and documentary photographer working on visualising housing insecurities and their intersection with race, class, gender and coloniality.
Paper long abstract:
Whether it’s Focus E-15 housing campaign, the single, young mothers campaign against eviction and shipping them out of London to cities as far as Manchester and Hastings, demanding to stay in London and their right to decent housing, or Two Households: One Neighbourhood project about gentrification in Hackney, or the documentation of housing conditions and displacement in occupied East Jerusalem, the paper reflects on my own practice as an urban ethnographer and photographer working on visualising housing insecurities and their intersection with race, class, gender and coloniality. The paper covers both the intimacies of home and the publicability of housing activism.