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- Convenors:
-
Florian Grundmüller
(University of Göttingen)
Noa Miro (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Leipzig university)
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- Format:
- Workshop
Short Abstract:
Our workshop examines picture postcards as un/written canvases of a cityscape. Participants explore Aberdeen on foot, following postcard motifs. Without using smartphones, we will rely only on the city’s social surroundings and touristic hunches for orientation.
Description:
Picture postcards as touristic souvenirs and small courtesies from traveling friends show and tell mediated imaginaries of landscapes, cities, or events. Arguably, they are the perfect illusion of a place’s character and atmosphere. Postcards often omit elements of daily life or elevate the mundane, serving as tokens of an "authentic experience" (Stewart, 2012). Simultaneously, the written notes on postcards are hardly extraordinary. Senders write about food, weather, and activities, concluding with hopes for an early reunion.
In a palimpsest-like excursion, our workshop questions the touristic gaze of picture postcards as a biased imaginary of cityscapes and idealized construction of urban life. The workshop engages with the historic postcards of the city of Aberdeen to re/un/write touristic practices and affects. In small groups, workshop participants follow the streets of Aberdeen in search of the postcards’ motifs. This involves re-experiencing the spaces around these sites and retracing the paths leading to them. Participants are encouraged to focus on their affective experience of unfamiliar surroundings. This approach seeks to create a fuller sensory awareness (Stoller, 1997) of the spatial reality conveyed by the postcards.
Drawing inspiration from Georges Perec's experiments with “un/writing” in his collection of combinatorial postcards (Bonch-Osmolovskaya, 2018), we will ultimately experiment with “field-prompts” for generating AI picture postcards.
The first “Let’s Get Lost!” edition took place in 2023 in Brno at the 16th SIEF congress, receiving widespread support to be repeated in other locations.
Maximum participants: 15.
Please share 3–10 sentences describing your interests and motivation for participating.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
Would love to be a part of this workshop
Contribution long abstract:
I've heard about this great experience during SIEF 2023 in Brno, and I would love to join the group. I was a few times in Aberdeen, but very brief, and don't know the city aside of a few main landmarks such as main train station. I've spent 2.5 years in Edinburgh, and would like to check if any inner connection can be built between the place that I already know in Scotland and Aberdeen, when no use of a smartphone.
Contribution short abstract:
Drawing in from my previous work in "slow journalism", and my current romance with Urban Sketchers, I would like explore the ways in which 10-minute sketches go beyond the tourist postcards.
Contribution long abstract:
While walking 1,200 kms across north and northeast India on the 33,000-km "Out of Eden Walk" with Pulitzer-winning journalist Paul Salopek, I learnt to see India from the lens of a person walking, sweating while walking, and trying to stay alive in a world that has become accustomed to the car-brain. It allowed me to slow down, and thus see deeply: almost ethnographic.
Now, as I try to spend my Sundays in any city with the local chapter of Urban Sketchers -- sketching en plein air -- in a chosen location, I am trying to appreciate a location slowly, and see it deeply for a few hours: almost ethnographic.
At this workshop, I would like to combine both of these previous experiences, in sketching the "sketchy" -- AKA "non-touristy" -- corners of Aberdeen; the parts of the city that are alive even if their scenes do not make it to the tourist postcards. At the end of the workshop and the conference, I hope to have created at least three postcards, each distinct from each other, and yet (hopefully) reflecting everything that this city was and is.
Contribution short abstract:
I am eager to participate in this workshop to advance my research on spatial thinking through postcards and fieldwork in Aberdeen, a city new to me. With my experience in narrative construction and methodological strategies, I aim to contribute to and benefit from the workshop’s collaborative setup
Contribution long abstract:
My name is Nilsu Altunok, and I am an architect and design researcher with a master’s in architectural design from Istanbul Technical University. My 2023 master’s thesis, “A Spatial Conception Based on Walking” centered on architectural theory in the axis of critical theory, post-structuralist feminist theories, and architectural representation possibilities. In framing my methodology, I pursued a subjective, method and tactic-building structure. I have been influenced by Oulipians and Italo Calvino’s narrative construction process in “The Castle of Crossed Destinies.” My work has been presented and exhibited internationally in invited talks, curated exhibitions, and conferences. Currently, I am a PhD student in Architecture by Design at the University of Edinburgh. As I have a special interest in experiencing the space and the city by walking on my feet, and as I have often resorted to narrative construction with different tools while constructing methodological and tactical strategies in research, I was very interested in the set-up of this workshop. I am sure that it will contribute to my research on developing spatial thinking through postcards and becoming competent in fieldwork in Aberdeen, a city I have never visited yet. I also believe that I will contribute to the organisation and progress of the workshop with my previous experiences.
Contribution short abstract:
I am interested in thinking through Aberdeen's geography through postcards and psycho-geographic meanderings in the workshop. I am particularly interested in engaging with the imaginary of a port city. I also want to interface generative AI approaches and psycho-geography.
Contribution long abstract:
I am interested in thinking through Aberdeen's geography through postcards and psycho-geographic meanderings in the workshop. I am particularly interested in engaging with the imaginary of a port city. I also want to interface generative AI approaches and psychogeography.
Contribution short abstract:
Learning
Contribution long abstract:
My PhD project is focused on a maritime collection associated with Trinity House of Leith, Scotland. The eclectic collection includes a number of postcards from various historical periods and geographical locations, and involved in a wide range of social relationships. Taking part in the workshop would offer me the opportunity to learn about different approaches to engaging with postcards as primary sources to use them creatively to develop my thesis.
Contribution short abstract:
My intervention hopes to play with the form and dimensions of the platforms through which we imagine and experience the view of place, exploring how the platforms and tools that frame our view in the present also shape our wider vision of the world and our memories of where we have been.
Contribution long abstract:
My interest in this panel stems from a preoccupation with the shape and dimensions of platforms and we use to imagine and experience various views in our everyday lives. Whether via the traditional logocentric dimensions of a tourist destination postcard, the oblong screen views of a Tiktok or Instagram app, or the circular ocular mode of gazing through a pair of cheap binoculars or opera glasses — the tools that frame our vision shape our expectations and the eventual experiences we have of place. Using the real-time experience of various scenes of Aberdeen, I would like to explore how these forms and dimensions colour what we see, what we think we see, and what we remember after we’ve gone.