Paper short abstract:

Contemporary city with the high-speed transformations is similar to a multicultural pot, where dwellers create new meanings of the city by using alternative patterns of megapolis life. The paper focuses on re/constuction of meanings linked with East London places, creatated by new immigrants.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary city with the high-speed transformations is similar to a multicultural pot, where urban population break down the old images and create the new meanings of the city. This paper focuses on re/construction of meanings linked with East London places, creatated by new immigrants. The paper presents the fieldwork results conducted by the author in England in 2017-2019. We intend to explore the communication processes of small Lithuanian immigrants community in East London. The main questions asked are: How do immigrants construct and deconstruct their urban areas, public and private places? How do they create the new images and meanings of the city? How do they transform public places into recreation places for calendar festivals or other national feasts? How do they add new dimensions for abondoned and past recal places of the city? Why are the following abandoned places and urban areas with bad reputation revivified and gain advantage in the context of megapolis? In summary, East London, never considered an attractive part of the city, has become not only the most popular residential area of East European immigrants, but the place of their recreativity and spiritual life which unfolds by starting new religious movements. Immigrants enculturate some places of the megapolis such as public squares, markets and parks, as well as their private residential areas and transform them into small agricultural islands with alternative urban forms from DIY urbanism to a makeshift city.

Paper short abstract:

Paper analyses mixed city culture in Estonia, on example of cosplay and Asian cultural events. 2007 and 2018 student inquiries showed that Asian culture and languages are highly valued and important part of youth culture.

Paper long abstract:

The history of cosplay in Estonia is related to the AniMatsuri festival that started in Tartu 12 years ago. A characteristic of AniMatsuri is that it involves many different events related to Japanese culture, such as a tea ceremony, reading manga, a cosplay competition, karaoke, traditional Japanese games and videogames, minifairs and demonstrations of Japanese martial arts (kendo, aikido), etc. People between the ages 12-40 visit AniMatsuri, but similarly to Japan, the people participating in the cosplay competition are usually around 20 years of age. Due to the popularity of the event, there are also performance opportunities during festivals like JAFF(Japanese Animation Film Festival) in Tallinn and even PÖFF(Pimedate ööde filmifestival/ Dark Nighs Film Festival).

2007 and 2018 student inquiries (over 6000 students) showed that Asian culture and languages are highly valued and important part of youth culture. In ten years it is more visible in city environment that there has been an increase in interest in Asian culture.

As of late, Estonian cosplayers have also visited events such as Unicon in Latvia, Nyaaa! In Lithuania, Desucon in Finland, EuroCosplay in London and participated in events in Japan, etc.

Cosplay is considered to be an aesthetic practice and it has been studied as a performative activity (Lamerichs 2011). Researchers have also highlighted the creative performative and ritual behaviour of cosplayers (Jenkins 2010) as well as the notion of disguise that underlies cosplay. My presentation will compare cosplay events in different communities.

Paper short abstract:

Place and space in rap builds authenticity and authority that rappers use in performances. My research concentrates on Finnish rap and its Heimat feel seen through different performances such as interviews, lyrics and videos. What kind of heimat can be found between the local and global scenes?

Paper long abstract:

Place and space have been key elements in Hip Hop, particularily rap, since its beginning. New York is an iconic background for many of the first rappers’ performances and the neighbourhoods have been a way to talk about things such as personal history, social injustice and meaningful communities. Nowadays rap is a global cultural phenomenom and rap can be found all over the world in it’s localised forms.

The Finnish rap scene emerged in the 1980s and has grown into one of the most popular music genres in the country. Local scenes have been a big part of Finnish rap’s evolution. Many posses around Finland based parts of their performances on locality, local knowledge and local dialects. Local rappers were seen as local heroes and their success was considered as the success of a whole neighbourhood.

My research concentrates on heimat feel in Finnish rap, specially in the city of Espoo. I analyse different performances the rappers create focusing on place, space and heimat manifestations such as local lore and humour. Places are a crucial part of the way many of the rappers construct their authenticity as performers in the scene and places have become symbols of certain subgenres of Finnish rap. Interviews that I’ve conducted among the rappers give insight to their motivations and inspiration to rap about locality and Heimat feelings. What does it mean to be a rapper from a Finnish neighbourhood? What kind of heimat can be found between the local and global scenes?

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, the relationship between a national park in a postindustrial area of the US and its constituent museums is explored for how they represent an intersectional story of labor history and industrial heritage. Who tells this story and how? Whose stories are not represented and why?

Paper long abstract:

Founded in 1992, the Keweenaw National Historical Park (KNHP) centers on the industrial heritage of the remote “Copper Country” in northern Michigan, USA. An 1840s copper rush made the area among the world’s top copper producers for nearly a century. This rush also established a stable long-term local population representing indigenous, ethnic, and interethnic community. A protracted labor strike in 1913 resulted in workers being blacklisted, most notably Finns who nonetheless remain the region’s largest ethnic group. Abandonment of the region by mining corporations in the 1960s led to increased development of tourism. Unlike most US national parks, the KNHP is a partnership consisting of a federally-managed unit along with 21 cooperating heritage sites that are maintained by state government, universities, private business owners, and nonprofit organizations. These sites include archives, mining complexes, house and farm museums, churches, a military fort, and several local historical society museums. Each group, then, adds to the “Copper Story” based on its own interpretations of the artifacts and materials at hand and the history they represent. While this unique approach fosters wide community participation, it also depends on what dominant voices tell about labor, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, regionalism, and ultimately, the present. In this paper, I will explore narratives presented by the KNHP and heritage sites to reveal what the shared understandings and divergent tales of the “Copper Story” are, as well as the glaring silences that are present and how they affect what is known of this area’s industrial heritage.

Paper short abstract:

I focus on the construction of monuments with political and religious significance and how the local community is linked to the nation. This involves important intermediaries on the local level who communicate this to the local population, foster interpretations and sustain support.

Paper long abstract:

In my presentation, I focus on the construction of monuments and the place making in urban settings that allow for the construction of local communities and interlinkages to the nation. This involves communicative processes of translation into local “language”. This has been called vernacularization and fruitfully applied to the human rights context. Sally Engle Merry (2005: 221) was able to show how “human rights ideas are repackaged in culturally resonant wrappings.” She drew special attention to the role of intermediaries, who take an active role in this process. In a similar reading, I show how businesspeople, politicians, and clergymen at the local level are able to draw on ideas from the national level and translate them into the local context. For the concept of the vernacularization of politics, I draw on Michelutti (2008: 3), who describes this process in which local values and political practices “become entrenched in the consciousness of ordinary people.”

I have chosen the erection of a monument dedicated to Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich, the founder of the city of Vladimir (Russia). The initiative for the construction of the monument is rooted in local initiative. Nevertheless, the construction of the monument was incorporated in a national program, where similar monuments were erected all over Russia. This needed communication to sustain support from state and non-state institutions on the federal level. Moreover, it indicates a general trend in Russian politics of favouring Orthodoxy and helping the Russian Orthodox Church to reappear in the public sphere.