Social spatialization is, following the same Tardean logic, a specific form of repetition, namely that of ‘imitation’. It is through imitation that spatiality becomes possible as existent. Imitation is easily observed in terms of materiality, which, for example through acts of building, planning and even architectural conceptualization, become necessary preconditions for a space to exist in the first place.

In the social sciences, the word reification has a bad resonance and is usually invoked to denounce some sort of conceptualization of process as ‘wrong’. However, it is at the core of what culture is: repetitions of practices which constitute a ‘becoming-real’, one might even say ‘realization’, of meaning. Realization, being at once ‘becoming real’ and ‘becoming aware’, is such a wonderful term exactly because it shows us the ‘in between’ (becoming) as a relational event. When reification is simply taken as another word for realization, then perhaps we can begin to let go of the negative connotations that this term has been burdened with.

http://www.wix.com/hci_msrp/empty_space

…. Joost

[photo credit: KANIEN’KEHAKA ONKWAWENNA RAOTITIOHKWA CULTURAL CENTER]

TAKE’s Space issue (May 2010) considers the spatialities of digital and lived environments. Videoconferencing collapses geography and shifts social spaces from offices to screens, making one more aware than ever before of the different layers and modalities of interaction which flatten and collapse, or expand and extrude space. TAKE covers original art work and poetry, interviews, municipal anti-panhandling regulations that push the poor into specific areas, life in and out of prison, space versus place, the performative creation of olympic space during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the mobile spatialization of aboriginal ironworkers who specialize in construction at extreme heights, theatrical versus cinematographic space, the space of the signature, and the Canadian-New Zealand experience of living next to more powerful states and being dwarfed by them, by landscape or by the sea. An appraisal of the 2010 American Association of Geographers Conference rounds out this issue.

TAKE has a ‘zine aesthetic but is in effect an academic journal. At its best it uses novel formats to present critical analysis couched in its contributors’ lived experience. Life as theory. Its format varies to suit its topics.

A new issue of this limited edition journal on the miniature (pdf) is already out. Previous issues have covered flora and fauna, chaos theory, DIY, love and beyond.  More information can be found here.

-Rob

Fiona Banner: Harrier and Jaguar 2010 Tate Britain Duveens Commission

Angular planes fragment the solidity of space…  Brought down to Earth, the jet becomes a discarded plaything, a child’s toy which nonetheless suggests something of the libido of technology and war.

- Rob

Salzburg

Eastern Europe’s cities are an education in different regimes of public space. Within the spatialisation Lefebvre describes as modernist, rationalized ‘Abstract Space’ public areas of cities are reduced to their function, utility and managed in terms of maximizing value within an overarching vision of land as a commodity to be bought and sold. Although utility is included in calculating its exchange value, this monetary abstraction – the price of land — ultimately over-rides even the use value of land and a necessary platform for economic activity. This tends to reduce city spaces to infrastructure which is understood in terms of needs such as transportation, costs of land and maintenance. Urban public space is a lost money-making opportunity if only because it is withdrawn from the real estate market. Elements such as sidewalks are thus reduced to the minimum required by social uses and safety standards.

In the late 20^th century, under what Lefebvre understood as a statist mode of production and accumulation, urban space is not just infrastructure but managed more consciously as a means of social control and as a way of facilitating commerce and trade. This implies policing the minutiae of uses of these areas, moving on loiterers and banning unproductive uses of space. Legitimated, tax-paying businesses are favoured by banning or limiting street traders and peddlers.  Traveling between Ukraine and Austria highlighted this for me on a recent trip.

Salzburg, Austria

Like many Western cities, the touristic ancient squares of Salzburg provide a good example of such management – a widespread approach, not something unique to Salzburg. Impeccably swept by street-cleaning equipment, stalls vending (usually gourmet) food simulate historical uses of the Platz and Markt and long-established cafes have the right to put out tables for patrons within carefully bounded,, but unmarked, areas. The invisibility of these boundaries of areas of entitlement undergird the simulacrum. The squares are thus vastly empty apart from specifically placed activities such as taxis queued for customers, tourists and tour groups headed one way or another, clustered around a fountain or jockeying for the ‘Kodak spot’ from which to take cliched snapshots as personal souvenirs of Salzburg. Missing in this sketch, and perhaps detectable only via tourists’ weary feet, is the genera absence of public seating and benches in these squares. The only available seating is in cafes for paying customers. Needless to say, itinerant peddlers and beggars have been systematically moved on by police.

These squares are amongst the most visited tourist sites, globally. The tourist experience is impeccably organized and planned in time and space in ways which reduce pilgrimage to historical and popular cultural sites to a series of commodity transactions. Alas, there is no outdoor music in this city of Mozart and The Sound of Music. Buskers are absent in favour of performances in the formal concert halls of the Salzburg Festivals where seats generally cost USD200 or more, marking it as an exclusive event for the global rich.

As Lefebvre noted, Abstract Space favours the visual at the expense of other senses. This is one reason why it is difficult to work out or back from Lefebvre’s separate ‘Spaces’. These are correctly cut off as analytical objects — but as he also argues contain previous spatialities within them. He divides each historical regime of space according to a corresponding historical dialectical mode of production. While he goes to great lengths to construct an ‘open text’ and avoid closure in his narrative subsequent deployment of his ideas tends to reify each ‘Space’ and hypostatize his argument. ‘Space’ becomes a thing, rather than a social process of spacing and ’spatializing’. Spatialisation is thus my preferred term and represents a step beyond Lefebvre.

It is true that benches appear to be a nineteenth century addition to cities (and one wonders at the history of public seating).  If there is one site where benches do appear in Salzburg, it is in parks and gardens. But in the vast majority of its urban public space, the human body is accommodated only in erect posture as a mobile pedestrian. These prevent non-residents from temporarily inhabiting a space unless paying for a seat. A specific form of exhausted meandering results, what Tiessen calls a ‘Meanderthal’ tourist mobility, which is unpredictable, distracted and slow paced. This distinct mobility is one of the more annoying aspects of tourism for more intent and directed locals whether on foot or in cars. It is directed from sight to sight in gross form but aimless from moment to moment until attracted by the allure and affect of visual objects – commodities, bargains, souvenirs in so-called ‘tourist traps’ or images of appetizing dishes or the site of food. The best haunts of locals are often more hidden and sometimes identified through the odour of cooking, rather than by visual cues.

L’viv, Ukraine

By contrast, L’viv, Ukraine (Lvov) is a historical city unfrequented by mass tourism. The birthplace of Sacher-Masoch, significant site of both the Holocaust and Holodimir, home of a famous Opera, and one of the few baroque cities untouched by the Second World War, like Salzburg the entire city-centre of L’viv is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some of its squares have been developed for tourists in preparation for the 2012 European Football Championship. For example, the Toller Place is partly occupied by outdoor cafes (more expensive than the surrounding restaurants that also spill out onto the cobbled square). An ongoing effort moves unlicensed peddlers selling pastries off the square at least into alleys and entrance hallways of buildings. However an outdoor stage and seating hosts free entertainment and benches with bronze plaques discreetly advertising the local Lvivski beer are provided. Buskers offer competing renditions of Western and world music. There is thus a more complex visual and auditory touristic experience and clues to a fundamentally different regime of public space in contrast with the Abstract Space of Salzburg. Again, Lefebvre had a term for these environments whcih are the dialectical alter thesis of Abstract Space: ‘Differential Space’, a space characterized more by the rich co-presence of different uses rather than planned homogeneity and the result of myriad additions and subtractions. This square in the throes of revitalization in L’viv demonstrates how the two – Abstract and ‘Differential’ — are performatively interlaced and can be rebalanced in a more inclusive manner.

What really distinguishes L’viv from the cities of Western Europe is its extensive greenery, parks and promenades. Like Salzburg there are distinct seasons with less clement weather yet, lined with benches, L’viv’s public spaces support an active and inclusive public life which seems to include all ages, abilities, genders and social groups. Families with children occupy benches or stroll by elderly men playing chess in impromptu games on the benches. Strollers practice a now rare, genuine flaneurie – strolling in the heart of the city ‘to see and perhaps be seen’ — of the sort hosted by promenades such as Barcelona’s Ramblas. This is a way of participating in the life of the city and bringing these places alive. Nor is it simply a scene of pedestrian mobility. Rather than seeking what Perniola calls the ‘tranject’ — a simulated cinematic tracking shot as the visual synthesis of what a city is, people stroll and meander (perhaps more energetically than tourists), children trace complex racing zigzags, toy electric cars are available for rent for a few minutes, photographers pose tourists with life-sized plush animal, hawkers display Ukrainian memorabilia on some benches. Monuments to local personages and nationalist heros such as Taras Shevchenko overshadow the space. They underscore the importance of past events such as the historical tragedy of the Ukrainian famine and the pre-capitalist spatialisation of peasant serfdom which lasted into the twentieth century in Ukraine.

In L’viv’s public spaces, at times such as the early evening, ‘the city’ is much more obviously its occupants than its buildings and infrastructure. If Lefebvre refers to this as ‘lived spatiality’, let’s dub this ‘L’viv-ed space’. All-comers participate and are subject to the regulatory gaze of not only the police but the crowd, which provides a normative critical mass. While this public space is abstractly designed, it departs from the Abstract Space of the modernist city in a way which is dialectical on multiple levels – not just spatially but temporally in the way history is injected into the present.

A critical memory is unavoidable (even if it is as selective as Salzburg’s, for pogroms, genocides and the memory of the L’viv ghetto are generally repressed — the historical presence of a East European Hassidic Jewish population is difficult to imagine given the scant remaining population that has not emigrated).  Before and before this successive waves of invasion and violence have swept through the region.  As ‘Differential Space’, this is a spatialisation in which absence and presence intermix while abstract rationality and state nationalism are well alive.  Given the violence of the past, it is thus a historical irony that, if Salzburg provides a model for organized mass urban tourism, present-day L’viv provides an object demonstration in how to make lively, ‘L’vivly’, self-organizing public spaces in cities.  I don’t think either city boasts a ‘clean’ past – that is why they are such sites of historical significance – yet they boast different presents in the way they relate to the past temporally and spatially as tourist destinations.

- Rob

]]> http://www.spaceandculture.org/2010/11/07/livelylived-space-salzburg-and-lvivly-space/feed/ 4 http://www.spaceandculture.org/2010/08/12/book-review-a-construcao-do-lugar-pela-arte-contemporanea/ http://www.spaceandculture.org/2010/08/12/book-review-a-construcao-do-lugar-pela-arte-contemporanea/#comments Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:43:50 +0000 Anne Galloway http://www.spaceandculture.org/?p=1347 Marta Traquino, A Construção do Lugar pela Arte Contemporânea [The Construction of Place in Contemporary Art]. 2010. Ribeirão, Portugal: Húmus Editions. 172 pp. ISBN: 9789898139320

Reviewed by Andrea Mubi Brighenti, Department of Sociology, University of Trento (IT)

“Marching Piece” performance by George Maciunas. Flux Snow Event, New Marlborough (Massachusetts), 1977.

Contemporary artworks have addressed space in a variety of ways, often subtly and thought-provokingly, yet these important interconnections between art and spatial conceptions have not always been adequately recognised or explored in depth. As both an art critic and an art practitioner, Marta Traquino advances an original reflection on the construction, use and meaning of space in contemporary art. Indeed, Ms Traquino’s book illuminates a series of significant visible and invisible similarities between, on the one hand, a series of geographic and social theoretical conceptions of space and place and, on the other, a series of artworks belonging to the traditions of installation, performance, site-specific artworks and what is commonly, although vaguely, referred to as ‘public art’. In this context, the notion of ‘public’ plays a crucial role. Examining quite a few art exhibitions and events, one notices in them a complex co-presence of a ‘space of the public’, i.e. the space occupied by the audience (which includes how the artwork ‘reaches out’ the audience, and how the latter relates or reacts to the artwork), and a ‘public space’, i.e. the heterogeneous, visible and living space that hosts the art event, in which the artwork locates itself and upon which it seeks to act.

In order to explore the interweaving of art and space, Marta Traquino brings together a scholarly genealogy of spatial theorists and some of the most important art movements of the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century. By doing so, she reveals how a fruitful dialogue between these two streams of thought and practice might be developed. In the first part of the book, she draws on the spatial theories of Henri Lefèbvre, Marc Augé, Anthony Giddens, Yi-Fu Tuan, David Harvey and John Urry, stressing how the elements of ‘excess’, ‘compression’ and ‘mobility’ transform contemporary spatio-temporal experience. However, these same characteristics also seem to confirm the centrality of experience in the definition of social spaces and places. From this point of view, art and experience form a well-established couple. Yet while theoretically this intimate connection had been already noticed by pragmatists philosophers, it is in art movements such as Fluxus that the integration of the spectator into the process of creation of the artwork itself reaches its logical end-point.

The experiential perspective thus enables us to observe the inherent dynamism in the constitution of social space. A series of artworks from the late 1950s through the 1960s, which include for instance Allan Krapow’s ‘environments’ (1957-58), Dan Graham’s Homes for America (1966), Douglas Huebler’s Location Piece #2 (1969) and Vito Acconci’s Following Piece (1969), are discussed in details by the author, who notices that these artists reflexively highlighted how space is performatively produced and discursively represented. Other recent artists who have critically worked on what Lefèbvre used to call ‘spaces of representation’, specifically through large-scale artworks, are also reviewed: these include for instance Lawrence Weiner (Smashed to Pieces, 1991), Krzysztof Wodiczko (The Tijuana Projection, 2001), Susan Hiller (The J-Street Project, 2002-05) and Beat Streuli (with his late 1990s and early 2000s series of huge photographs of ‘strangers’ in public places).

One of Traquino’s central claims in her book is that place corresponds to an inhabited and lived type of space where the body represents the measure of an emplaced subjectivity always imbued with memory. A range of artists have elaborated on such an insight, focusing on either the body at a small scale, like Bruce Nauman in Square Dance (1967-8), or outdoor interventions on a larger scale, like Ian Hamilton Finlay at his Little Sparta garden (1966) and Gordon Matta-Clark with his famous house cuts (Splitting: Four Corners, 1974). According to Traquino, the Fluxus movement in particular has set an ‘open path’ in contemporary art as regards the reflection on the experience of emplacement. Fluxus’ motifs of ‘globalism’, ‘experimentalism’, ‘humour’, ‘simplicity’, ‘specificity’ and ‘presence’ all seem to revolve around a relational and phenomenological take on the artistic event. In particular, Fluxus artists such as George Maciunas, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, George Brecht, Mieko Shiomi and Ay-O instantiate the search for new types of ‘relations in public’ – to employ Goffman’s category – which question official and institutional definitions. This way, Fluxus art was designed to operate inside ‘social interstices’ which would challenge the common – and, mostly, taken for granted – ordering of space.

Contemporary artists such as the Istanbul-based Oda Projesi collective and the Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk inherit many of the Fluxus’ early insights and resolutely proceed along a trajectory Traquino describes as ‘from public space to lived places’. But the institutional context in which contemporary artists operate and the public funding of site-specific artworks, installations and performances also give rise to contentious actions, in some cases even self-defeating ones. In the last sections of the book, Traquino critically reviews a series of cases in which some more or less pronounced ‘detachment between theoretical presuppositions and actual practice’ became visible. The case of Lisbon’s Expo ’98 is extensively discussed. In this as well as other cases, the limits of contemporary public art’s self-legitimation can be ascertained. As the artist Krzysztof Wodiczko acutely put it: ‘To attempt to “enrich” this powerful, dynamic art gallery (the city public domain) with “artistic art” collections or commissions – all in the public’s name – is to decorate the city with a pseudo-creativity irrelevant to urban space and experience alike; it is also to contaminate this space and experience with the most pretentious and patronizing bureaucratic-aesthetic environmental pollution’.

About the author as critic:
História da Arte: Marta Traquino
Da Construção do Lugar pela Arte Contemporânea I
Da Construção do Lugar pela Arte Contemporânea II – Do espaço ao lugar: Fluxus
Da Construção do Lugar pela Arte Contemporânea III – A arte como um estado de encontro

About the author as artist:
Que cor tem agora o céu?
Guest Artist – Marta Traquino
What colour has the sky got now?

Eli’s PhD project comprises an anthropological analysis of university culture, and he’s also looking at the socialisation of graduate students. I remember being told as a Master’s student that it was not entirely acceptable to study “our own,” and since I always thought that was bullshit I was really excited by Eli’s commitment to study academia. Anyone interested in institutional space and culture can check out an overview of the project, or read the full proposal (pdf).

I’m especially taken by his observations on fieldwork in French philosophy departments, and this fascinating post on reading as an ethnographic tactic.

Hidden Landscapes by Chris Thompson

Geographical Methodology as Spatialization and Topology (Part of “Theorizing Place: Interdisciplinary Trajectories” A Panel Discussion at the Canadian Association of Geographers Meeting, Carleton University, May 27, 2009):

This presentation focuses on the virtuality of place, an object of study which resists specification in material or topographic terms. In effect, place exceeds the boundaries of topography. It cannot be adequately mapped. This raises a methodological conundrum for geography which has only be solved via interdisciplinary innovation, leading geographers into the study of social and cultural categorization, and statistical analysis of spatial data. What is a geographer to do? A relational approach to ‘place’ foregrounds the tissue of geographical space and the multiple flows and passages through it. Multiple passages suggests that geography explore a multiple, n-dimensional topology as a paradigmatic shift out of Cartesian space.

Maybe geographical information systems already work in n-space, but my sense is no, and geographers think of cartography as a 3d and 2d endeavour.   Any thoughts?  This is a step toward a paper on topology as method for social science in the 21st century, part of my belief that at university level we should teach methodology as something evolving, to think past mastering a particular program and ask ourselves what is it for?  And, how do our chosen methods guide how and what we see in our studies?

How could one avoid being just a technical end-user and late-adopter of Geographical Information Systems – that’s geodata or spatial data in other lingo : Does anyone have truly theoretical and methodological innovations in areas such as GIS for visualization of local and of community issues, locative and mobile media applications, GIS-amateur sketch map interfaces and cognitive mapping methods, or use of maps in a range of disciplines.

One example is Proboscis artist group’s  mapping – or is that unmapping? – of community issues.  The way they transform radio-controlled cars and other toys into ‘feral  robots’ equipped with eg. air quality sensors to allow schoolchildren to playfully gather data which is then posted up on interactive maps of their community.

Are we at at the beginning of a paradigm-shift in the use of GIS because these technologies have come off of the desktop onto portable devices.  Consider GPS devices, smart phones – almost ubiquitous in some industries.  What is the research agenda?

This is uniquely urban but the spill-over into touristic areas is already evident (take a drive through the Loire Valley with  a GPS enabled smart phone).

Are there examples of revitalizing old geodata (geodata for Edmonton goes back to 1963 but is in inaccessible formats) by making it available in museums, in exhibits or to the public for use in the form of downloadable and /or interactive maps?  Are their other projects such as Andre Lemos, Marilei Fiorelli and my locative art of drawing on Google Maps with a GPS logger?

How do we get from desktop/supercomputer style GIS to the scampering world of geotagging, geocaching and interactivedata accessed on the go (Google Earth on my mobile)?

-Rob

The government of Iceland promised to repay Icelandic depositors in the island country’s failed banks. They did not extend the guarantee to non-Icelandic depositors. Partly they simply didn’t have the cash, but partly the view has been that taking care of one’s own takes priority. Countries do not want to bail out foreigners, and different governments do not want to assume the liabilities of other nations. The nature of political solutions is always that politicians respond to their own constituencies, not to people who can’t vote for them (www.stratfor.com)

The result was that other, nationalized, Icelandic banks such as Kaupthing’s funds were frozen in the UK under emergency measures contained in recent Anti-Terrorism legislation and assets immediately sold off to the Danish bank ING. While individuals were protected, up to 20 UK councils and numerous charities could lose millions.

This is where the blood flows: Disappointed that European and western allies failed to provide support, and that it had been made a scapegoat by UK politicians Iceland accepted a loan from Russia of about 4 Billion Euros. In effect, the lack of clarity and guarantees were used as a excuse to push the Icelandic financial sector and the economy into ruin.

However the spectacle of an overleaveraged Icelandic krona against a small island economy and population of only about 313000 suggests to some that other nations might be similarly overleaveraged. In an online discussion, a user ‘Truth Conquers’ speculated,

Actually, we might be just as broke as Iceland is. No one knows how big the CDS “House of Cards” really is. But I have seen estimates of at least 5 trillion. And estimates usually under guess these sort of things. And that does not include foreign banks, credit card debt, car loan debt, companies needing short term loans and FDIC coverage of banks. You get the idea.

Via such rumours, no country is immune from appearing virtually bankrupt, regardless of the actual state of its economy.  Here I mean the virtual in a bookish, philosopher’s sense of not an imagined abstraction but a real thing that nevertheless can’t be seen or touched, for example a brand, nation or community.  Trust may be a real ‘thing’ but it is intangible and can be manipulated. Historically one important way of controlling such real-but-intangibles or ‘virtualities’ is through ritual – think witch hunts, sacrifice and scapegoating. These are the ultimate terror.  Indeed, John Raulston Saul commented that this is a worry for Canada as an supplier of ‘dirty oil’ facing the United States and Europe who may want to rebuild their financial relationship and power. Iceland was sacrificed.  It was made a virtual scapegoat regardless of the actual nature of Iceland and of actual cost to British local taxpayers and its implication for UK urban infrastructure, volunteer services and agencies.

This is a geopolitical coup for Russia and (despite chaos in its markets) a reversal of its position: 20 years ago it was in economic collapse. Wall Street Journal’s online ‘Marketwatch’ said ‘The world has gone upside down’. In a sense, we need to turn our globes upside down too.  What does it mean to say that iceland is at the centre of the financial crisis this week?  This is a metaphor for the way that a new geopolitics – and a whole re-spatialisation of where we assume the centre of our maps – is an outcome of the current financial crisis, which as of today is widely being called a ‘crash’.

In the 20^th century, the significance of Iceland was in relation to fish and Atlantic sea lanes – and this continues, perhaps in relation to the ability to monitor submarine tracks? In the 21^st century the significance is its relation to oil, gas and Arctic sea lanes which will emerge as polar ice melts. In effect, Russia moves towards enhancing its position amongst nations involved in the Arctic.  Iceland may offer a point from which power can be projectied into what is becoming open ocean north of Iceland and Greenland.

-Rob