Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Bárbara Côrtes Loureiro
(Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP))
Lígia Ferro (University of Porto - Faculty of Arts and Humanities)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Urban Studies
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
Epistemological issues concerning uses of space arise in the city, from common sense to planned uses and academic analyses, especially in terms of architecture functions: which are the ways of using city spaces? How are spaces transformed into places? We propose to discuss unforeseen possibilities.
Long Abstract:
Urban architecture appears in anthropological and sociological debates sometimes like a presumed representation of barriers, limits or even the fascination for extraordinary heights, sizes and symbols of power. However, practical resignifications are constantly found in the uses and relationships established by city dwellers within spaces, configuring insurgent citizenships (Holston, 1996) or performing city-making (Agier, 2015).
City-making studies involve some sensitive look at the dynamics of corporealities and their expressions by what we usually call "urban practices". Activities such as Parkour, vertical dance, urban abseiling, skateboarding, graffiti, pixo, or just sitting or walking where isn't expected/planned, can deliberately or unconsciously transform the meaning of places carefully designed by urbanists. Here we'd like to discuss ways in which the body movement in those practices and the marks left in space can reframe the intended uses of urban space, and its implications.
Starting with a panel session to share ethnographic research and make contributions to the debate, this activity should evolve to a workshop where unforeseen possibilities of using the space can be proposed, in a way that makes everyone present able to experience new meanings of the place. To do this, it will only be needed the place where the accepted papers are to be presented, and some tolerance for noisy dislocations in the room: exploring new ways of being in a space can involve unexpected movements. Ideally, a final discussion of the experience can take place in order to come back to the initial presentations discussion.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
The objective of this paper is build on ethnographic narratives of Tangra, a Chinatown of, by and for the Indian Hakka Chinese community. Their narratives from memory is a classic case where their present decline in numbers can be traced from thier role in making and remaking their inhabited space.
Paper long abstract:
The Indian-Chinese are part of a large diasporic group called the'Overseas Chinese' which saw the influx of a large number of Hakka Chinese between the two world wars. They bought up waste land in the uninhabited marshes at the eastern limits of the city of Kolkata in India. The Hakkas set up tanneries and exported leather to an international clientele and this place came to be known as the Tangra Chinatown.
The Hakkas had been successfully running these tanneries when the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court of India issued a blanket ban on factory units within a three mile radius of the city. The options that the Hakka community had was to shut shop or set up their factory in a leather tanning complex called Bantala. While a few were able to abide by the instructions of the court most could not and either have left the city or have reinvented these tannery spaces into Indo-Chinese restaurants.
The paper makes a case for a diachronic study of the Hakka Chinese and their usage of the marshes to build a Chinatown out of it. It represents a classic case of 'city making' by a minority ethnic community. Now with a majority of them moving out and development of real estate my engagement with the space is to flesh out from memory a historical engagement with the Hakkas who made the locality their own in a time when reducing numbers may soon mean the end of India's only Chinatown.
Paper short abstract:
Festival of light reinvent the public space by implementing ephemeral artworks as part of a cultural program. But, what are the curatorial and artistic practices behind these events that make people enjoy those new places out of everyday life? An ethnographic case study in two Portuguese cities
Paper long abstract:
Municipalities are betting on light festivals as ways to celebrate urban space, as well as to satisfy the cultural and artistic appetite of residents. These festivals are characterized by implementing artistic works in the public space that are not aggressive, nor corrosive, to material heritage. Quite often their program is predominantly composed of videomappings and autonomous and independent light structures, which underline their soft impact on buildings and other pre-existing structures. Here we will review the discourses of creating ephemeral emotional spaces used by curators, as well as the main practices that artists adopt to appropriate public space, surfaces and objects in an effort to temporarily re-signify the ordinary and create places that invite the visitor to enjoy of the "new" place, thru temporal hyper-sensorial ambiences. This ethnographic study is based on the ethnographic work carried out in Cascais and Loulé (Portugal) between 2016 and 2019 by the author.
Paper short abstract:
The paper deals with the practice of the displaying people of non-European origin in Riga’s parks and gardens that took place in the 19th/20th century when the accessibility of city's environment was influenced by the invisible walls - ethnic and social belonging of the city dwellers.
Paper long abstract:
At the end of 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, following the policy of colonialism and spirit of the modernism many European societies were familiar with the phenomena of displaying Otherness. The aim of live human exhibitions (= the practice to exhibit non–European ethnic groups – mostly the representatives of the African, American and Australian people) was to demonstrate the diversity of people within their cultural and lifestyle objects and activities. The shows took place in variety places of urban environment – ZOO, circus, EXPO pavilions, etc.
Riga as the industrial city of that time Russian empire hosted ethnographic shows offered by German, British or other origin impresario displaying them in the parks and gardens. Symbolic borders among political and economic elite from the one side and native people inspired by national awakening movement from the other shaped Riga’s urban environment and affected the availability of certain entertainments.
The aim of the study is to get an answer to the question – does the exhibition space (ZOO, Expo pavilion, public elite entertainment venue) have an impact on the audience's perception of the exhibited ethnic group (savages, barbarians, poor people)?