Paper short abstract:

If remembering makes the past active in the present, what are the strategies contesting the hegemonic visions of it in order to make alternative multivocal urban futures? How futures are imagined in the contested Istrian urban towns where unconformable pasts influence the identity and cohabitation?

Paper long abstract:

The paper speaks about the bilingual Istrian towns in Slovenia, the population of which has almost entirely changed after WWII with the change of the national borders and the “exodus” of 90% of the urban inhabitants of (mostly) Italian ethnicity. The emptied places were resettled by migrants from Slovenia and other republics of former Yugoslavia. For the remaining Italian minority a wound that has never healed, for the newcomers new opportunities. However, half of the century latter, new wounds were inflicted with disintegration of Yugoslavia, which transformed the migrants from the once common state to new “others”, second class citizens.

The presentation discusses different alternative practices which contest the hegemonistic visions of past with the aim to influence the future. What kind of heritagisation practices are involved as a strategy to challenge the hegemonistic national visions of the past in order to give voice to the silenced? How the collision of the hegemonic and alternative visions of the past raise battles for the future historical truth of the region with so many different conflict memories? What everyday practices are involved by the presumably “uprooted” newcomers of the non-recognized minorities of former Yugoslavia for their empowerment, challenging in this way the hegemonistic discourse? How to negotiate a collective identity by contesting the national dominant discourse in the region, where even its name became problematic? What visions of the urban futures can be discerned through the candidature for the European Capital of Culture? How the uncomfortable pasts define the urban future?

Paper short abstract:

I explore how the future is claimed through the physical absence of materiality. Focusing on how two demolished urban elements are narrativized, I investigate how their absence provides a locus where the contested past and the impossible future are articulated through the affective register.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I explore how a future is claimed through

absence. I focus on two urban elements –a building and a staircase that

have been demolished– in the city of Latina. Latina was built on

reclaimed marshland by the fascist regime in 1932. After the end of the

regime in 1943, the city underwent important urban changes. Moreover, a

series of internal migrations have turned Latina into a multifarious

place of convergence. The social and spatial heterogeneity, and the

weight of the city’s contested past, contribute heavily to my

interlocutors’ sense of temporal uncertainty. Despite their physical

absence, the building and staircase (both belonging to fascist-era

architecture) are very present in my interlocutors’ narratives. Their

physical absence generates imaginations for alternative (yet impossible)

futures through the affective register and the re-elaboration of the

city’s contested past. The building and staircase become ‘phantom

places’ (Papadopoulou,2016), acquiring a phantomatic presence in my

interlocutors’ experiences of the city’s temporalities. I argue, thus,

that it is precisely their absence –and the affectivities it exudes–

that allows my interlocutors to reframe their sense of place by breaking

‘the rules of history’. I focus, therefore, on the affects exuded by a

place caught between its fascist past, its present urban form, and its

uncertain future. In doing so, I inquire into my interlocutors’ relation

to Latina, at the intersection between absences, affects, materialities,

and temporalities.

Paper short abstract:

Youth venues in Slovenia have recently gone through a transformation. Partly because new rules were set by the state, partly because youth entrepreneurship was introduced as a means to achieve a better future, and partly because youth acted creatively.

Paper long abstract:

Slovenia has a unique history of youth venues. In the 1980s and 1990s, under the influence of political and emancipatory youth movements, quite a few autonomously operating venues for self-expression of young people were established across the country. Initiated by young people themselves, they were rising in both urban and rural communities. In the 2000s, however, the state showed a renewed interest in youth and concern regarding their venues. Several rules were introduced, withdrawing principles of self-organization, diminishing autonomy, and ascribing new roles to such venues. In addition, municipalities too showed interest in their regulation, especially in urban settings. This was yet only one stream of their transformation. Namely, young people were also discovered as ideal subjects of the neoliberal economy. New kinds of youth venues were thus promoted to capitalize on youth’s drive, knowledge of new technologies, and conformity. Municipalities financed co-working hubs as a means to achieve a better local future because presumably, they help create an entrepreneurial environment. However, young people are creatively engaging in place-making activities and never fully follow the rules. This paper discusses the transformation of youth venues in modern-day urban Slovenia and how space is used for navigating the contrasting (self-)realization activities of young people.

Paper short abstract:

My paper uses the example of platform-based services to discuss how Berlins night is disruptive transformed by platform-driven digitisation and what social figures this new digitized night produces. It aims to understand the transformation of the urban night through the shift to the smart city.

Paper long abstract:

New technologies and business models are increasingly blurring binary frontiers between day-time and night-time. Digital technology fundamentally transforms the city and thus our urban public space. It also enables a fundamental transformation of the urban night through the expansion of technological infrastructures and the growing ubiquity of platform-based services. As a result, we are living with highly networked infrastructures, in augmented cities.

Cities are becoming brighter and brighter thanks to computer-aided LED lighting systems. ICT-Service labour is often outsourced across the globe, which is leading to a re-territorialization of temporalities and global inequalities of labour and time. Concrete digital infrastructures enable workers to extend their work activities into the night-time urban space. At the same time, platforms are emerging that expand consumption possibilities at night and people increasingly ask for services that other people have to work for at night. Thus, a new spatial configuration of the usage of the night is emerging.

My paper uses the example of platform-based services to discuss, firstly, how the Berlin night is transformed by platform-driven digitisation and, secondly, what social figures this new digitized night produces. It aims to understand the transformation of the urban night through the shift to the smart city.

I focus on a crowdwork platform, a food delivery platform and a mobility platform. Research questions are: How do platform workers interact with the urban night? What (technological) infrastructures are required for the platform labour of the night? To what extent does the digitalized night promote new practices of mobility?