(Dis)placed interventions: Spanningen tussen common en publieke ruimtes

Forum+ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
Elly Van Eeghem

Sinds 2012 richt kunstenaar Elly Van Eeghem haar blik en lens op hoe steden veranderen. In de voorbije zes jaar werkte ze in verschillende stadswijken in Parijs, Berlijn, Montreal en Gent. Ze gebruikte foto- en video-opnames, acties in de publieke ruimte en archiefbeelden om collectieve interventies met lokale buurtbewoners op gang te brengen. Momenteel werkt ze aan een boek en een documentaire podiumvoorstelling als slot van dit project. Voor de beeldkatern van FORUM+ maakte ze een selectie uit archiefbeelden, verzameld tijdens binnen- en buitenlandse residenties.Since 2012 the artist Elly Van Eeghem has directed her gaze and lens at the way towns change. During the past six years she has worked in various urban districts in Paris, Berlin, Montreal and Ghent. She uses photography and video, actions in the public space and archive images in order to kickstart collective interventions with local residents. At present she is working on a book and a documentary stage presentation as the crowning piece of this project. She has made a selection of archive images collected during her residences both in Belgium and abroad for the picture supplement of FORUM+.

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger

The relationship between law and religion in contemporary civil society has been a topic of increasing social interest and importance in Canada in the past many years. We have seen the practices and commitments of religious groups and individuals become highly salient on many issues of public policy, including the nature of the institution of marriage, the content of public education, and the uses of public space, to name just a few. As the vehicle for this discussion, I want to ask a straightforward question: When we listen to our public discourse, what is the story that we hear about the relationship between law and religion? How does this topic tend to be spoken about in law and politics – what is our idiom around this issue – and does this story serve us well? Though straightforward, this question has gone all but unanswered in our political and academic discussions. We take for granted our approach to speaking about – and, therefore, our way of thinking about – the relationship between law and religion. In my view, this is most unfortunate because this taken-for-grantedness is the source of our failure to properly understand the critically important relationship between law and religion.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Bruining

In this article, I aim to further thinking in the broadly ‘new materialist’ field by insisting it attends to some ubiquitous assumptions. More specifically, I critically interrogate what Sara Ahmed has termed ‘the founding gestures of the “new materialism”’. These founding rhetorical gestures revolve around a perceived neglect of the matter of materiality in ‘postmodernism’ and ‘poststructuralism’ and are meant to pave the way for new materialism’s own conception of matter-in/of-the-world. I argue in this article that an engagement with the postmodern critique of language as constitutive, as well as the poststructuralist critique of pure self-presence, does not warrant these founding gestures to be so uncritically rehearsed. Moreover, I demonstrate that texts which rely on these gestures, or at least the ones I discuss in this article, are not only founded on a misrepresentation of postmodern and poststructuralist thought, but are also guilty of repeating the perceived mistakes of which they are critical, such as upholding the language/matter dichotomy. I discuss a small selection of texts that make use of those popular rhetorical gestures to juxtapose the past that is invoked with a more nuanced reading of that past. My contention is that if ‘the founding gestures of the “new materialism”’ are not addressed, the complexity of the postmodern and poststructuralist positions continues to be obscured, with damaging consequences for the further development of the emerging field of new materialism, as well as our understanding of cultural theory’s past.


Author(s):  
Cristina Garrigós

Forgetting and remembering are as inevitably linked as lifeand death. Sometimes, forgetting is motivated by a biological disorder, brain damage, or it is the product of an unconscious desire derived from a traumatic event (psychological repression). But in some cases, we can motivate forgetting consciously (thought suppression). It is through the conscious repression of memories that we can find self-preservation and move forward, although this means that we create a fable of our lives, as Nietzsche says in his essay “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1997). In Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Purity (2015), forgetting is an active and conscious process by which the characters choose to forget certain episodes of their lives to be able to construct new identities. The erased memories include murder, economical privileges derived from illegal or unethical commercial processes, or dark sexual episodes. The obsession with forgetting the past links the lives of the main characters, and structures the narrative of the novel. The motivated erasure of memories becomes, thus, a way that the characters have to survive and face the present according to a (fake) narrative that they have constructed. But is motivated forgetting possible? Can one completely suppress facts in an active way? This paper analyses the role of forgetting in Franzen’s novel in relation to the need in our contemporary society to deny, hide, or erase uncomfortable data from our historical or personal archives; the need to make disappear stories which we do not want to accept, recognize, and much less make known to the public. This is related to how we manage information in the age of technology, the “selection” of what is to be the official story, and how we rewrite our own history


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Jaime Almansa Sánchez

While Archaeology started to take form as a professional discipline, Alternative Archaeologies grew in several ways. As the years went by, the image of Archaeology started being corrupted by misconceptions and a lot of imagination, and those professionals that were claiming to be scientists forgot one of their first responsibilities; the public. This lack of interest is one of the reasons why today, a vast majority of society believes in many clichés of the past that alternative archaeologists have used to build a fictitious History that is not innocent at all. From UFOs and the mysteries of great civilizations to the political interpretation of the past, the dangers of Alternative Archaeologies are clear and under our responsibility. This paper analyzes this situation in order to propose a strategy that may make us the main characters of the popular imagery in the mid-term. Since confrontation and communication do not seem to be effective approaches, we need a change in the paradigm based on Public Archaeology and the increase of our presence in everyday life.


Author(s):  
Tatiana Karoyeva

The article deals with practical activity of the workgroup created in order toadminister the Law of Ukraine «On condemnation of totalitarian regimes inUkraine and prohibition of propaganda of their insignia» within the town ofVinnytsia. The workgroup had to reveal objects containing communist andSoviet insignia that exists in the public urban area, to work out advice andpropositions as to replacing town toponyms containing insignia of communistthe totalitarian regime with new names.The article content is arranged in the following blocks: a) creation of theworkgroup; b) decision-making algorithm (from historians’ point of view);c) scientific grounds of historian group activity; d) selection of objects forfurther discussion; e) procedure of discussion of proposed new toponyms.Six historians residing in Vinnytsia were introduced into the workgroup.They belong to various generations and represent both governmental andpublic organizations. The following principles have been defined for organizingof the historian group activity: - toleration (provides for respectful attitude towards various canons ofhistoric memory except for Soviet-communist one);- historicism (due regard to be paid not only to the past but to currenttendencies and challenges of the future as well);- education (the activity has to promote dialogs between various socialgroups and formation of unified collective memory);- local topicality with a view to the formation of unified image/brand of thetown.Several approaches to practical activity on replacing of toponyms havebeen developed in order to ensure smooth work process. They were intendedto be used simultaneously or in sequence depending on the actual situation butevery proposal was concerned from the proposed standpoints in line with allthe following approaches:- historicity (provides for restoration of historical names of places andimplementation of historical and urban practical methods of representationof the town history in toponymy);- commemoration (this approach traditionally provides for drawing attentionto the formation of ethnic and national identity and cultural matrixof the nation, but in the course of solving of nation-wide problems Vinnytsiahistorian group strived to be oriented to the identity of local urbancommunity);- locality (conformity of toponyms to peculiarities of nature, history,economics and culture of Vinnytsia, Bratslavshchyna, and Podillia regions);- concreteness (provides for conformity of a toponym to its actual local(in line with toponym’s scale) circumstances (geographical, biological,industrial, cultural, religious, personological etc.);- actualization (due regard to be paid to the necessity of drawing attentionto certain events and persons that, as a rule, are not of the nationwidescale).Out of total 836 town place names, 147 toponyms (85 names) have beenreplaced with new ones and reasoning for 5 names (12 toponyms) has beenchanged. Thus decommunization encompassed 19% of the town toponymicalsystem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Accornero

“Certain sounds, even when they are loud or heard from close by, conjure small sources.” Small sounds, as Chion (2016) describes them in this quote, usually appear in intimate or contained settings, where their relatively low strength will not be spoiled by the masking effects of a noisy public sphere. What happens, however, when they are shared with an audience in a concert venue? Privileging a distributive understanding of agency, I explore the interactions of instruments, techniques, and processes through which the composer Clara Iannotta (b. 1983) brings small sounds to the public space of the concert hall in the first minute of her composition Intent on Resurrection – Spring or Some Such Thing (2014). By articulating the technological means harnessed to allow for the qualities of small sounds to emerge, I reveal the conditions that are required for sound to be recognized and experienced as intimate. Along the way, I draw connections between the amplification aesthetics of Iannotta’s work and Hyperrealist art, and theorize the concept of the “grain of the instrument” drawing on ideas from Roland Barthes, Pierre Schaeffer, and Brian Kane.


2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Esteve Palós

A partir de los microdatos de los censos mexicanos de 1970, 1990 y 2000, en este artículo se examina la homogeneidad de los matrimonios y uniones atendiendo al nivel de instrucción de los cónyuges en las últimas tres décadas, caracterizadas por una fuerte expansión de la escolaridad, por el incremento de los rendimientos de la educación y por la reducción progresiva de las diferencias de género en materia educativa. Tres conclusiones brotan del examen de los datos: el aumento significativo de la homogamia entre los más escolarizados, la consolidación de dos zonas extendidas de homogamia, y la reducción de las diferencias en torno a la manera en que los hombres y las mujeres incorporan la educación en la selección conyugal. AbstractOn the basis of microdata from Mexican censuses taken in 1970, 1990 and 2000, this article examines the homogeny of marriages and consensual marriages by level of spousal educational attainment over the past three decades, characterized by the enormous expansion of schooling, the increase in educational performance and the progressive reduction in gender differences in educational matters. Three conclusions emerge from the examina­tion of the data: the significant increase in homogamy among those with the highest levels of educational attainment, the consolidation of two extended zones of homogamy and the reduction of differences between the way men and women incorporate education in the selection of marriage partners.


Author(s):  
Thomais Kordonouri

‘Archive’ is a totality of records, layers and memories that are collected. A city is the archive that consists of the conscious selection of these layers and traces of the past and the present, looking towards the future. Metaxourgio is an area in the wider historic urban area of Keramikos in Athens that includes traces of various eras, beginning in the Antiquity and continuing all the way into the 21st century. Its archaeological space ‘Demosion Sema’ is mostly concealed under the ground level, waiting to be revealed. In this proposal, Metaxourgio is redesigned in light of archiving. Significant traces of the Antiquity, other ruins and buildings are studied, selected and incorporated in the new interventions. The area becomes the ‘open archive’ that leads towards its lost identity. The proposal aims not only to intensify the relationship of architecture with archaeology, but also to imbue the area’s identity with meanings that refer to the past, present and future.


Chapter One deals with several central issues with regard to understanding the role of religious motifs in contemporary art. Besides being a repetition of imagery from the past, religious motifs embedded in contemporary artworks become a means to problematise not only the way different periods in the history of art are delimited, but larger and seemingly more rigid distinctions as those between art and non-art images. Early religious images differ significantly from art images. The two types are regulated according to different sets of rules related to the conditions of their production, display, appreciation and the way images are invested with the status of being true or authentic instances of art or sacred images. Chapter One provides a discussion of the important motif of the image not made by an artist’s hand, or acheiropoietos, and its survival and transformation, including its traces in contemporary image-making practices. All images are the result of human making; they are fictions. The way the conditions of these fictions are negotiated, or the way the role of the maker is brought to visibility, or concealed, is a defining feature of the specific regime of representation. While the cult image concealed its maker in order to maintain its public significance, and the later art image celebrated the artist as a re-inventor of the old image, contemporary artists cite religious images in order to reflect on the very procedures that produce the public significance and status of images.


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