Space & Culture

Béatrice Collignon - “From Igloos to Three Bedroom Houses: At the crossing of Architecture and Cultural Geography”
Tuesday February 5th, 2008, 12 noon
The “Pit”, School of Architecture, Carleton University, Ottawa

In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s the Canadian Inuit experienced an important shift in living patterns, moving from one multi-functional room igloos to houses brought North by public housing programs which were made up of several mono-functional rooms. The Inuit had to adapt to dwellings designed following Euro-Canadian’s norms and carrying values alien to their culture. In 1998, Dr. Collignon conducted and filmed interviews with elderly women belonging to an Inuit community living in the central western arctic, who had experienced this shift. Her research continued for the next ten years and revealed that adaptation had been more than difficult, but also that, if the Inuit culture is put at risk in southern-style dwellings, it is also inside of them that Inuit are creating efficient mediations between their culture in transition and the Western one. Dr. Collignon’s presentation, based on her video documentary, will focus on two issues: empirical - Inuit experiences of housing - and epistemological - combining architecture an cultural geography. The talk will therefore be of special interest to architects and cultural geographers.

See also:

Nunatsiaq News: Identity and survival carried in Inuit place-names
Siku News: A people and their land
Aboriginal Canada Portal: Housing and Infrastructure
Flickr Pool: Nunavut
Flickr Pool: Images of Canada’s North

- Anne

What do you think are the key theoretical texts and themes on space and culture of the last three years? What has been most influential in your work? We’re interested in hearing your take on what specific theory books, articles, journals, magazines, blogs, shows, places and other media are important for space and culture. And, what themes are, continue to be, or are becoming, important?

- Ondine

SUBCONSCIOUS CITY
February 8 to May 11, 2008
Public opening 7:30pm, Thursday, February 14, 2008 with performances by John K. Samson, Christine Fellows, and Freya Olafson.
Curated by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Adjunct Curators

Subconscious City examines the often hidden underpinnings of Winnipeg – its myths, its vacant lots, its forgotten communities, its hidden gems – and reveals a complicated picture of where we live and work. More than a tourist snapshot or glossy one-great-city image, this contemporary exhibition delves deeply into the nature of our urban social and physical landscape and its power to shape identity. An outstanding roster of 27 local artists, reflecting different media, different stages in their careers, and different points of view, will be featured in this artful expression of civic pride.

The exhibition explores interiors and exteriors of Winnipeg; our people; our neighbourhoods; our treatment of what we would prefer remains unseen; and our predilection for paving over what is deemed undesirable. Artists in Winnipeg have always been vocal about the complex and marvelous city that is Winnipeg, as well as what it could be. Through their activism and their art, they have asserted, inspired, and nuanced images of this place. This exhibition reflects this engaged relationship between artists and their home.

- Matthew

Mobile tech researcher Younghee Jung describes the extraordinary interaction design of Japanese love hotels:

The entrances of love hotels are characteristically discreet. It is impossible to see the inside of the lobby from outside. There are many entrances to the building. Once in the lobby, you see the big board with pictures of all rooms. The pictures with backlight on indicate that the rooms are available now. Any good love hotel would minimize or eliminate the need of human contact completely in the check-in/out process. This board with backlights usually spit out the room key when you press the button. This also marks your check-in time. There is a reception window but no one is visible behind it except a pair of hands.

A few rooms are equipped with an outdoor or a very large bath tub at the same room rate. But reservations are impossible at the love hoel so those rooms function as an effective lure for return customers fishing for better luck.

When you go up to the room, the flashing light on top of the room door once again indicates that it is an empty room to be checked-in. The door is lockable only from inside. There is basically no key to the door – i.e., guests are not expected to come out of the room during their ‘rest’ or ‘stay’. There are no common facilities outside the room such gym, restaurant, or lounge area, anyway.

See also: Fantasy Love Hotels, Soaplands and Love Hotels, Love Hotels book

- Anne

Lebbeus Woods, SLUMS: The problem (via Subtopia)

People with steady jobs and incomes, who are assured of having enough money to go to school, to the doctor or clinic; who can save some money, buy enough food and clothing to last a while; who can plan for the future; all too often coast along without thinking very much or having to fall back on their resourcefulness. But there is no coasting for the slum dweller. Everything is now, today, and each day is a new struggle for survival. The gains made yesterday were maybe enough, but they were consumed yesterday. Nothing carries over, except the needs. Slum dwellers share something with people caught in a war zone, where the infrastructure of society has been interrupted or destroyed. They have to scrounge and improvise, just to have the basics pf shelter, food, heat. To survive, they have to be inventive. But the people in the war zone can look forward to the end of war, the restoration of society and its services. The slum dwellers have no such prospect. For them the war, its brutalities and atmosphere of cruelty and indifference to human life, never ends.

[…]

There is much that is admirable in the way that slum dwellers struggle against overwhelming adversity, but admiration must be tempered by the realization that they do not struggle because they choose to, out of principle, or in the service of high social or political ideals, but because of their desperation at the brutal limits of survival. It is a mistake—and a grave disservice to them—to imagine that their ingenuity, resourcefulness, and capacities for self-organization can in any way serve as models for our present global society. To believe so would be to endorse the dog-eat-dog ethics that rule their lives and, all too often, those occupying society’s more economically advantaged classes.

See also: I cite: Why Agamben?

- Anne