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CUCR Occasional paper series

S t r e e t S i g n s
Margarita ARAGON Michael STONE
Brown Youth, Black Fashion and a White Riot, 2007 Social Housing in the UK and US: Evolution, Issues and
Progress
Brian W. ALLEYNE William (Lez)HENRY
Personal Narrative and Activism: a bio-ethnography of Projecting the 'Natural': Language and Citizenship in
"Life Experience with Britain" Outernational Culture

Mette ANDERSSON
The Situated Politics of Recognition: Ethnic Minority,
Colin KING
Play the White Man:The Theatre of Racialised
Centre for Urban and Community Research
Youth and Indentity Work. Performance in the Institutions of Soccer

Les BACK,Tim CRABBE, John SOLOMOS Larry LOHMANN

Lions, Black Skins and Reggae Gyals Ethnic Discrimination in "Global" Conservation

Andrew BARRY Ben LOOKER

Motor ecology: the political chemistry of urban air Exhibiting Imperial London: Empire and City in late
Victorian and Edwardian guidebooks
Zygmunt BAUMAN
City of Fears, City of Hopes Hiroki OGASAWARA
Performing Sectarianism:Terror, Spectacle and Urban
Vikki BELL Myth in Glasgow Football Cultures
Show and tell: passing, narrative and Tony Morrison's Jazz
Garry ROBSON
Eva BERGLUND Class, criminality and embodied consciousness:
Legacies of Empire and Spatial Divides: new and old Charlie Richardson and a South East London Habitus
challanges for Environmentalists in the UK
Flemming RØGILDS
Tine BLOM Charlie Nielsen's Journey:Wandering through Multi-
Dostoyevsky's Inquisitor:The Question of Evil, Suffering cultural Landscapes
and Freedom of Will in Totalitarian Regimes
Fran TONKISS
Bridget BYRNE The 'marketisation' of urban government: private finance
How English am I? and urban policy

Ben CARRINGTON Danielle TURNEY

Race,Representation and the Sporting Body The language of anti-racism in social work: towards a
deconstructuve reading
Stephen DOBSON
The Urban Pedagogy of Walter Benjamin: lessons for Gordon WALKER and Karen BICKERSTAFF
the 21st Century Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 Polluting the poor: an emerging environmental justice
agenda for the UK?
Ben GIDLEY
The proletarian other: Charles Booth and the politics of Louisa THOMSON
representation The Respect Drive: the Politics of Young People and
Community
Paul GILROY
The status of difference: from epidermalisation to nano- please refer to www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr
Spring 2009
politics for downloads and further information.

Centre For Urban and Commun i t y R e s e a rc h

Goldsmiths College Phone: +44 (0) 20 7919 7390
University of London Fax: +44 (0) 20 7919 7383
New Cross Email: cucr@gold.ac .uk
London Website: www.gold.ac .uk
SE146NW www.goldsmiths.ac .uk/cucr
FINAL_Cover_january2009.qxd 9/12/08 17:30 Page 3
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION by Caroline Knowles
The Political economy of the monument by Aida Sánchez
Religion in Inner City Oslo by Mette Andersson
Kettering Road by Sayed Hasan
Sueno de despierto en un mundo que se desvanece... by Karla Berrens
Open-Up photogrpahic project by Gonzalo Osmos
Borderlands by Caroline Knowles and Sylvia Meichsner
Romans,Trains and Star Trek by Michael Edema Leary
Street Photography and Social Research: Brick Lane Re-Visited
by Charlotte Bates, Adrian Harris, Isaac Marrero Guillamon,
Jo Sanderson-Mann, Craig Owen, Lisa Mckenzie
and Sireita Mullings-Lawrence
Why is it so easy to place art and regeneration in the same sentence
by Sophie Risner
In hiding, on display by Helena Holgersson
Home Sweet Home (Not) by Emma Jackson
Tourism, Inbetweeness and Teotihuacán by Jeremy Clouser
What is British? by Michael Wayne Plant
Environment: urbanisation and biodiversity by Peter Coles
Work/Space: a visual exploration by Yael Gerson Ugalde
Strandline: beachcombing on the Greenwich Peninsula by Melissa Bliss
Balkanising Taxonomy by Nela Milic
Signs of the City by Alison Rooke
Signs of the City: Photogrpahic Workshop by Campbellworks
Landmarks of cut, gaze and fiction for a Distant Landscape
by Soledad Garcia on the photographs of Sanchiyo Nishimura
The Invisible man,The Invisible City Exhibition by Kimberly Keith
REVIEWS
The Politics of Hope by Will Davis
Too Far South Exhibition review by Paul Halliday
Seeing the Invisible Noir: Dirty Pretty Things by Michael Edema Leary
Vital Signs conference by Alex Rhys-Taylor and Charlotte Bates
This Is Not A Gateway Festival (TINAG) by David Kendall
Urban Edge Workshops at CUCR
edited by Caroline Knowles
Emma Jackson
Britt Hatzius
Ben Gidley
photograph on front cover by Britt Hatzius
MA IN CULTURE, GLOBALISATION AND THE CITY
The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR)
The Urban Globe?
Our world is moving from being a global village to an Multiculture, Hybridity and Racism and the Spatial Politics
urban globe. One of the big challenges of the 21st of Gender and Sexuality. A multi-disciplinary approach is
Century is how to understand the social organisation of applied that draws on Sociology, Cultural Geography,
contemporary urban life. The MA in Culture, Cultural Studies, Politics and Social Policy. The MA is
page 1 Globalisation and the City gives you the theoretical and dedicated to turning students into active researchers,
page 2 practical tools to make sense of cities like London, Los critics and writers.
Angeles, Nairobi or Tokyo.
page 5 The programme consists of 3 core courses, dissertation
page 8 The course examines a range of issues from the and a choice of options. It can be followed either full-time
page 10 economics of the global city to the politics of graffiti or part-time. ESRC funding for one UK resident is
writing. These include analysing Urban Youth Cultures, currently under review and may not be available next year.
page 11 Literary and Political Milieux, the Political Economy of the Next available entry point: October 2009.
page 12 City, Science and the Technology of Urban Life, Urban
page 14
MA IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND URBAN CULTURES
The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR)
page 16 Introducing the MA Structure
The MA in Photography and Urban Cultures has been A combination of written and practical work to include a
page 20 developed in response to the increasing interests in urban research dissertation and a portfolio of photographs and
page 22 theory and the visual representation and investigation of final exhibition. It can be followed either full-time or part-
urban life and the physical environments of the city. time. Next available entry point: October 2009.
page 23
page 24 Who is it for? The MA is run by the Centre for Urban and Community
Photographers, visual artists and media practitioners, as Research (CUCR), a national and international leader in
page 26 research on urban and community life. CUCR is multi-
well as those with a background in social sciences,
page 28 interested in exploring the creative interplay between disciplinary and focuses on issues such as citizenship and
page 30 cultural research, urban studies and photographic practice. cosmopolitanism; social exclusion and cultures of racism;
page 32 You should have a degree or equivalent in a relevant area. sport, popular culture and music; regeneration and wealth
page 33 creation; issues of crime and community safety; technology
and new patterns of digital culture.
page 34
page 36
page 38 MPhil / PhD in Visual Sociology
page 39 Goldsmiths, University of London
Our programme offers you the opportunity to combine media components of the thesis will form an integrated
written sociological argument with film, sound, or whole.The use of multimedia will enhance and evidence
page 40
photographic material.We provide researchers the space in your analysis, interpretation and understanding of social
page 40 which to re-think both the conduct and form of phenomena.The written component of the thesis will
page 41 contemporary social research, in a college environment engage with multi-media components and be set within a
page 42 animated by visual arts and design.The Visual Sociology substantive research topic and its wider social context.
page 44 programme builds on the success of our MA in Your practice will be supported by a programme of audio-
Photography and Urban Cultures and contributes to visual training workshops as well as expert superision in
page 46
Goldsmiths’ leading position internationally in visual your chosen area of resaerch.
page 47 research and analysis
You will carry out research in an area that interests you To find out more, contact:
and prepare a written thesis in combination with a video, a Professor Caroline Knowles, c.knowles@gold.ac.uk
soundpiece or a series of photographs.Written and multi- or Bridget Ward (secretary), b.ward@gold.ac.uk
Further information and how to apply: UK and EU students: Admissions Office, telephone 020 7919 7060 (direct line), fax
020 7717 2240 or e-mail admissions@gold.ac.uk; Overseas (non EU) students: International Office, telephone 020 7919
7700 (direct line), fax 020 7919 7704 or e-mail international-office@gold.ac.uk;
For further information about the Centre: Please call 020 7919 7390; e-mail cucr@gold.ac.uk or visit www.gold.ac.uk/cucr/
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street signs : spring 2009
Introduction by Caroline Knowles, Professor of
Sociology, Head of Centre, CUCR
Like the rest of the country CUCR lives in interesting
times. Established in 1994 it has had just one head of centre,
Professor Michael Keith. Michael has just moved to Oxford
to become head of the ESRC COMPASS Centre for the study
of migration. Congratulations to Michael. We all wish you
well in your new job. Michael's relentless energy and ideas
have made the centre what it is today: a place of high quality
urban scholarship with grassroots impact through local
government, community and activist intervention. Michael is
a passionate urbanist whose scholarship and enthusiasm for
London, and more recently Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing,
rubs-off on those around him. Whether he is leading
students along Brick Lane at 6am or showing them the view
from Canary Wharf, his intellectual and political passion for
East London is infectious. He set up the Rich Mix Centre in
Shoreditch and for a time ran Tower Hamlets council, all the
while teaching, supervising his PhD students and running
the Centre. Few academics make such a difference in
people's lives. He's a hard act to follow and we will miss
him. CUCR has become a 'soft' research and specialist
postgraduate teaching centre within the Sociology
Department at Goldsmiths. Old autonomies offer new
collaboration.There are new and exciting developments are
underway at CUCR as well as a shift in focus. We are
developing our research in the constitution and
(dis)organisation of city life, the built and the social fabric of
cities, with a stronger lean towards the cultural and the
visual. Core intellectual concerns are: circulations of people
and objects; non-cities; activist and other urban
interventions from Deptford to Jakarta; communities,
difference and social inequalities; and the relationship
between art, activist intervention and urban theory.
September saw the inauguration of the CUCR gallery when
the first of a series of urban photography exhibitions was
hung in the stairwell of Laurie Grove Baths. Santiago
Escobar's Invisible Man: The Invisible City was curated by
Kimberly Keith. Santiago is a Colombian architect and
former soldier. He plays with scale to create new urban
space.The result is a visual version of Italo Calvino's Invisible
Cities. Kimberly is a talented curator as well as a CUCR-
based PhD student. We plan to further capitalise on the
wealth of photographic talent drawn by our MA in
Photography and Urban Culture by holding further
exhibitions throughout 2009 and 2010. Drop in to Laurie
Grove Baths if you are in the Deptford area. We hold
'coffee morning discussions' every other Monday at 10am.
We are in the process of launching Urban Edge our new
workshop series. This is aimed at urban scholars,
photographers and filmmakers who want to develop new
visual and other analytic skills and inventive methods of
urban investigation. Current workshops include Peter
Coles' Islands and Corridors: The Urban Biosphere (28th
February and March 1st) and Santiago Escobar's One-to-
page 1
Seventy-Two (23rd and 24th January 2009), see the website,
booking essential and places are limited. Future workshops
include collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery led by
Alison Rooke The Art of Social Practice: a Dialogue and
AbduMaliq Simone's Urban Intervention: Exploratory Work with
Community Residents in Kinshasa and Jakarta. Further
workshops will be announced throughout 2009 and 2010.
We continue our collaboration with Deptford.TV, an on-
line open source archive of collaborative film-making which
documents urban change in Deptford, South London. This
Autumn D.TV's Adnan Hadzi and CUCR's Ben Gidley
worked with Goldsmiths MA Screen Documentary
students to make three short films on the area's black
history (featuring Les Back and Lez Henry). These were
premiered in Deptford Town Hall as part of Black History
Month, sponsored by CUCR with the Goldsmiths Media
Department and the Centre for the study of Global Media
and Democracy.They were followed by a screening of Small
Fry Films' Shelf Life, a short film made by CUCR graduate
Glen Mottishead and then a Talkaoke event hosted by The
People Speak. We have a long-term commitment to
developing research strategies for the arts to demonstrate
their value in social regeneration. Our innovative arts/social
science collaborative projects, such as the Sci-Dentity
project, the Beyond The Numbers Game project and the Signs
of the City project, using digital photography to allow young
Europeans to engage with urbanism, are all part of this
commitment.The Creative Impact project, developed by Ben
Gidley and Alison Rooke in partnership with dance and
music conservatoire Trinity Laban, focuses on the role of
performing arts in urban regeneration. December 2008 saw
the launch at Laban of our research report. The Creative
Impact project has led to new collaboration with the
London Thames Gateway Dance Partnership. Alison Rooke
and Ben Gidley are also working with the Serpentine
Gallery on the Skills Exchange project, looking at how artists
can work with communities - in this case, older London
residents. Artists involved in this project are Markus
Miessen,Tom Hunter, Marcus Coates and Barby Asante.
Following last year’s successful Urban Encounters
Conference we are pleased to announce a second one day
international conference, planned for mid June. This will
involve collaboration between CUCR, Photofusion and Tate
Britain. Again, watch the website for developments.
Welcome to visiting scholars. Helena Holgersson is visiting
from the University of Gothenburg, Carle Andre Espeland
from the University of Bergen, Aida Sanchez de Serdio
Martin from the University of Barcelona, Gabrielle
Bendiner-Viani from New York, Santiago Escobar from
Colombia and, more locally, Simon Rowe who is developing
new projects in the Deptford area and beyond. Finally, I
would like to say how delighted I am to be CUCR's new
director. Difficult times provide new challenge for us all and
I look forward to our collective future and new areas of
collaboration. Happy 2009!
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The political economy of the monument:

history, memory, neutralisation
Aida Sánchez de Serdio Martín
(Barcelona. Primavera Sound music festival. May, 2008) These are questions seldom asked, but very materially
Grabbing my beer firmly, I stood for a while looking at answered in every urban regeneration project.
the ground for clues. There should be a slab
somewhere. People walked past me on their way to Thus the city as it appears in tourist guides is sprinkled
the next concert. I could hear as much French and with buildings by Gaudí (along with trendy clothes
English spoken as Spanish or Catalan around me. My shops, and chic restaurants decorated with second
visual field had a clear limit drawn by the areas covered hand or cutting edge design furniture). There is a
by the floodlights. Beyond that, it was dark night. Stages politics of public memory materialised in urban space
and tents blocked other references within this lit area, that selects which buildings deserve to be listed and
and of course, there was the incessant flow of the promoted as heritage and which have fallen into
multitude that eventually swept me away to the stage ‘functional obsolescence’. The material past of the
where Lightspeed Champion were playing the first bourgeoisie is easily preserved in the form of
notes. OK, I thought, maybe next year. internationally well-known Art Nouveau buildings such
* * * as La Pedrera, La Sagrada Familia or the Casa Batlló. But
the working classes find it more difficult to make their
When Barcelona was elected in 1986 to host the way into the lists of heritage. Not only do their
Olympic Games of 1992 the local government had ‘monuments’ fall out of the city centre and of tourist
already realised that the city must turn to culture and tours, but they are also more likely to be diagnosed as
tourism in order to survive the crisis of its productive obsolete, and so they are erased unless transformed
economy (Balibrea, 2001). After the international into sanitised receptacles for culture or archaeological
staging of a city (and a country) completely props emptied of history and conflict (Balibrea 2001,
modernised and democratic during the Olympics, Delgado 2007).
Barcelona found itself in a complex situation within the
marketing of global cities, since it didn't achieve any
relevant position as a financial centre and the industrial
economy was being dismantled at a pace. But it quickly
managed to become one of the most popular
destinations for tourism through the refurbishment of
the city centre; thanks to a heritage, cultural scene and
life-style that the Olympics helped promote
internationally. This cultural turn is a common dynamic
in other European cities with a rich historical past
(both cultural and industrial) that need to position
themselves in the global market of urban identities in a
post-industrial scenario (Balibrea 2004, Kwon 1997).

In this immaterial economy of symbolic values, material

pasts play a key role. The built environment becomes
both a backdrop for urban life and an investment in
terms of the tourist economy. But at the same time it
This selective memory is not a malfunction of the
must be considered an ideological battlefield in which
‘proper’ way memory should work. Rather the
opposing visions of meaning and history clash. As
opposite. In order for a place of memory to exist,
Balibrea (2007) says, “the built environment is a
there needs to be a massive production of oblivion.
historical creature. […] The conditions for survival of
Delgado pairs both terms arguing that they are
all and every one of these built environments depend
inseparable: “Memory is also a colossal forgetting
on their being considered productive in the present”.
machine, an extraordinary amnesic device that erases
Whose memory gets to be preserved and whose
all the elements that could be considered superfluous,
doesn't? And at the service of who is it preserved?
dysfunctional or contradictory in relation to the given

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ideological goals” (2007: 123). Moreover, the
production of a common narrative in terms of
historical memory is a totalising device whereby public
memory is domesticised and unified, neutralising the
conflict inherent in all historical processes.
Perhaps one of the clearest examples of
memorialisation of public space is the monument.This
is also a profoundly ambivalent political object. In the
context of a country that lived under a dictatorship for
almost 40 years (1939-1975), and in which the revision
of the democratic transition and issues of historical
memory are right now the centre of a heated political
and legal debate, monuments are just the tip of the
iceberg - but a very significant tip indeed. After years
of silencing certain groups and fights, a new impulse for
their being written back into history has come from
political, cultural and academic fronts. Monuments then
mean the possibility of making publicly visible and
acknowledging a sometimes haunting past. Citizens
might now have the opportunity to get to know and
celebrate (or meditate on) events and people that
were erased or forgotten in history, for social or
political reasons. But at the same time the monument
freezes and unifies memory. Citing Delgado again:
“Rather than something that remembers the past, the
monument is something that allows us to cancel it,
deny it, annihilate it. [...] The monument is neither
synchronic nor diachronic, but purely anachronic, as it
represents a-historicity itself” (Ibid: 94). What's more,
the erecting of monuments usually goes along with the
disappearance of the actual object of the monument
itself.
One specific area of Barcelona where these processes
are notorious is El Poble Nou. Situated in the south-
east of the city, it has a long history as a working-class
neighbourhood in which numerous fights took place
during the 19th and 20th centuries. From the late
1980's it has undergone a profound social, urban and
economic transformation that hasn't always been
respectful of the memory of the place nor, perhaps
more importantly, its present inhabitants (Gdaniec
2000, Marrero 2003).
Two examples of monumentalisation emerge in this
context. The first one is related to the industrial
heritage of the area. Can Ricart was a 19th century
industrial complex still in use in which some small
industrial businesses and arts organisations co-existed.
By 2004 Can Ricart was facing a dramatic
transformation or even total demolition due to the
implementation of the Plan 22@, whose aim is the
transformation or relocation of industries working in
the area to give way to new ‘clean’ cultural and
technological industries. This opened a wide debate as
to what was to be done with the industrial buildings. A
diverse group of agents had different visions about its
future: owners of small industries who were forced to
move, their employees, neighbours, artists, academics,
architects and cultural activists had irreducible
differences among themselves. The variety of nuances
of this discussion was great but, for the sake of a
synthesis, two of them may be seen as fundamental: on
the one hand there was a defence of the actual diversity
of uses (both industrial and cultural), and on the other
the argument was for the preservation of the building
as an example of working-class heritage. For a moment
there was even talk about the possibility of its being
transformed into a museum of labour - a turn of the
events, which given the circumstances, couldn't have
been more ironic. Now Can Ricart is an enormous ruin
and in the future will probably host a museum of
languages.
The second example of monumentalisation is
connected with the memory of the Civil War and
immediate post-war period. The Forum Park that was
built for that invention called Universal Forum of Cultures
2004 stands just over the waste ground known as Camp
de la Bota where 1,704 political prisoners or detainees
were shot between 1939 and 1952 as a result of the
Francoist repression. The urban transformation of the
site for the Forum started without any consideration of
this fact, and some civic pressure was necessary in
order to get the spot marked by a monument
remembering those murdered in that place. It remains
to be seen whether this was the best way of honouring
their memory in the middle of an area used mainly for
cultural events, fairs and festivals. More critical ways of
confronting this historic event have been attempted by
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the arts field by constructing an ongoing public archive
of those murdered, and reactivating the memory of
their living relatives by bringing them to talk about
their experience of political repression.
* * *
(Barcelona. Forum Park. August, 2008) I had already
walked around the Forum Building twice and still
couldn't figure out where it could be. This time the
sunlight flattened everything into a blinding pale
yellowish grey, except for the Forum Building, which
outstood as blue, incongruous and nonnegotiable as
ever. I ventured a little farther, beyond the place where
the fences had enclosed and signalled the limit of the
Primavera Sound Festival last spring. This was terra
incognita. Nothing other than concerts had ever drawn
me to this bleak park. On a Sunday morning it was
deserted but for a few families with children scattered
in the playground or having lunch sitting on the
concrete benches. I spotted the unmistakable sign: a
bronze monolith standing in the middle of the cement
surface. I walked towards it with my camera ready. I
took a couple of pictures that showed the whole
monument. I got closer. A little girl rode her bicycle
over a flat lump on the ground next to the monolith.
That must be it. I reached the base and looked down:
the bronze plaque read in Catalan:
To all the people who were shot in this place, and to all the
victims of the Civil War and the post-war period
(1936-1952):
Let the joy be resumed in my years
without erasing any scar of my soul.
Oh Father of the night, the sea and the silence,
I want peace but I do not want oblivion.
(Màrius Torres, 1942)
Camp de la Bota, 1992
I took the pictures I needed for the lecture and walked
away thinking about the subtle readjustments of
history operated by monument inscriptions: a little
imprecision as to the number of the dead, a little
generalisation of the object, a little poetisation of the
event - plus a huge tombstone of concrete and a
deserted park around it. But maybe general neglect is
better than being an object of a new tourist-bus route
on post-war nostalgia.
page 4
References:
Balibrea, Mari Paz (2001) Urbanism, Culture and the Post-
industrial City: Challenging the 'Barcelona Model'. Journal of
Spanish Cultural Studies. 2:2 (p.187-210.)
Balibrea, Mari Paz (2004) Barcelona: del modelo a la marca.
Desacuerdos. Sobre arte, políticas y esfera pública en el
Estado Español [Online]
http://www.arteleku.net/desacuerdos/index.jsp?PAR=p&ID=1193
Balibrea, Mari Paz (2007) Strategies of Remembrance:
Branding the new Barcelona.Tourisic urbanism - Between
local and global. Holcim Forum For Sustainable
Construction. (p. 1-10)
<http://www.holcimfoundation.org/Portals/1/docs/F07/WK-
Tour/F07-WK-Tour-allpapers01.pdf>
Delgado, Manuel (2007) La ciudad mentirosa. Fraude y
miseria del “modelo Barcelona”. Madrid: Los libros de la
catarata.
Gdaniec, Cordula (2000) Cultural industries, Information
Technology and the Regeneration of Post-industrial Urban
Landscapes. Poblenou in Barcelona - A virtual city?
GeoJournal, nº 50 (p. 378-387)
Kwon, Miwon (1997) Public Art and Urban Identities.
European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policy [Online]
<http://www.eipcp.net/diskurs/d07/text/kwon_prepublic_en.html>
Marrero, Isaac (2003) ¿Del Manchester catalán al Soho
barcelonés? La renovación del barrio del Poblenou en
Barcelona y la cuestión de la vivienda. Scripta Nova. Revista
electrónica de geografía y ciencias sociales. Vol. VII, núm.
146(137), Universidad de Barcelona. [Online]
<http://www.ub.es/geocrit/sn/sn-146(137).htm>
Marrero, Isaac (2008) Fragmentos de una fábrica en
desmontaje.Terciarización, lucha social y patrimonio en Can
Ricart, Barcelona. PhD dissertation. University of Barcelona.
Marrero, Isaac; Guillermo Beluzo and Roberto Garcia (2007)
Fragmentos de una fábrica en desmontaje (DVD).
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street signs : spring 2009

Religion in Inner City Oslo

Mette Anderson

The Norwegian team in the NORFACE-funded project

The Architecture of Contemporary Religious Transmission
have interviewed young Muslims, Christians and non-
believers in the Grønland area of Oslo about their
relationship to faith. Grønland is located in inner-city
Oslo East. From the mid 1800s the area was central in
the industrialisation of the city, being an entrance port
to Oslo for new workers from the countryside. From
the late 1960s the area has been an entrance port for
immigrants and refugees to Oslo and to Norway.
Grønland is located close to the main railway station
in Oslo, a hot spot for traffic as well as for drug dealing.
For this, and for other reasons, the area has for long
been rumoured to be a ‘dangerous place’.The area also
houses the Oslo police headquarters and a large
prison.
Islamic Cultural Centre
Until the mid 1990s when gentrification increasingly
took hold, Grønland was (in line with its history from
the 1800s) one of the cheapest places to live in central
Oslo, and therefore attractive to immigrants and
refugees. Today, the area is commonly seen as the
multiethnic area of central Oslo, located as it is close
to the central railway station and the main street in the
city centre. 44% of the inhabitants are first or second
generation immigrants, and white Norwegian children
are a small minority group in most primary schools.
Earlier, names like ‘little Karachi’ and ‘little Pakistan’
were frequently used to identify the area. Whereas
Pakistanis tended to dominate until recently, Somalis
are now the dominant group. The criminal image of
the area has increasingly been associated with
immigration, and a central association is ethnic World Islamic Mission, Central Jam-e Mosque
minority drug import and ‘immigrant youth gangs’.The
last, and the most relevant association in regard to our
project, relates to religion, and especially to the
visibility of religion in the area.

Visible religion
Grønland is the place for purpose-built mosques in
Norway: Among many mosques in warehouses and
ordinary buildings, the area houses three purpose-built
mosques: One from the 1990s, one from 2006 and one
about to be opened in December 2008.

World Islamic Mission, Central Jamaat-E-Ahl-E-Sunnat Mosque

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Other signs of Muslim presence in the area are Muslim
clothing in the streets, halal-signs in restaurants and
shops, and a newly built shopping centre, owned by
one of Oslo's white building-moguls. The shopping
centre is called Grønland Bazar and is built in traditional
Arabic architectural style. Although most Pakistanis
nowadays have moved out of Grønland to eastern
suburbs, Pakistanis are dominant in the boards of the
purpose-built mosques in the area. Two of these are
associated with the Pakistani Barelwi-tradition, and
one with the Deobandi tradition. In Norway religious
organisations are supported by the Norwegian state
according to the number of members, creating a
situation of competition for new members. In a
religion not associated with formal membership, the
state support per member system makes mosques (as
well as other religious congregations) creative when it
comes to member recruitment. In one of the Oslo
mosques, for example, free funeral services seemed to
be a means to attract potential members to this
Mosque. Another interesting finding is how the
mosques lived up to the Norwegian State requirement
that religious organisations should be open to
everyone, and not restricted to particular ethnic
groups. In the largest Oslo Mosque, the Central
Jamaat-E-Ahl-E-Sunnat, which also is the biggest
mosque in Scandinavia, ornaments, carpets and
furniture was collected from most Islamic core-
countries in the world. Thus, the architecture of this
mosque - apart from referring to the globality of the
Islamic Ummah - also reflects the Norwegian policy to
include everyone in civil society organisations,
including religious ones.
Grønland also houses two Protestant churches, one
Catholic church and several smaller congregations
related to Pentacostalism and evangelism. The main
Protestant church is rather large and visible in the
main street of the area, while the Catholic Church is
smaller and located away from the main street. When
our informants (aged 18-25) are shown images of the
Protestant church, many associate it with times passed,
elderly church-goers, and with loneliness. Such images
come up among Muslims and non-believers, as well as
among some Christians. Interviews with clerics from
this church confirm this finding, pointing to few
church-goers in ordinary services and to the need to
create special services in order to attract the young.
page 6
The image of the Catholic Church is less well known by
the majority of informants. Among Catholic informants
the church was associated with many people, with
(too) few ornaments (as compared to another Catholic
church in Oslo) and with people of many different
ethnic origins. In Oslo, Poles are now the major
churchgoing group, but Vietnamese, Singhalese, Tamil
and people with Latin and South American backgrounds
are also among the major users. On Sundays the church
arranges several services in different languages. Thus,
whereas both Catholic churches and Mosques are
associated with liveliness and crowds, Protestant
churches are, especially among Muslims and the non-
religious, associated with loneliness and few members.
Religious change and transmission
Although a large majority of Norwegians are members
of the Protestant state church, Norway is among the
most secularised countries in Europe. Only 5,5% of the
population go regularly to church, and the country
hosts a large member-based Humanist association
offering alternative ceremonies for baptising (name-
day), confirmation and funerals. The young non-
believers in our sample give valuable information about
the image of different religions in the large non-believer
segment of the Norwegian population. A dominant
image in this group is that faith had gradually vanished
with their grandparents' generation, and that their own
parents largely held secular values. This informant
group (most of them with relatively high cultural
capital) seem to be more generously attuned to religion
when the religion in question is a minority religion in
Norway. Their attitudes towards mainstream
Protestantism thus, are typically more negative than
their attitudes toward Islam and Catholicism. In spite of
their criticism of practises often associated with Islam,
such as forced marriages and female circumscription,
they hold nuanced views of the relationship between
patriarchy, culture and religion, and are trained in
avoiding easy, essentialist, interpretations of Islam.
The interviews with Muslims and Christians reflect a
trend noted in other literature about religious change,
namely an increasing tendency for young people to
switch prayer house and religious communities. Among
the young Muslims, quite a few argue that they go to
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the Mosque their friends go to, and some of our
Christian informants have been members of many
different congregations in the course of the last few
years. For many in this group, moving into Oslo was a
major point of change when it came to congregational
switching. A second trend in the Oslo material is the
tendency for some young Christians and Muslims to
see each other as in a common situation vis-à-vis
secular society. Such a trend is facilitated and upheld by
the various interfaith group initiatives developed in
Norway, and specifically in this area. Other findings
from these interviews is that some second generation
Muslims see Islam's position as having moved from
‘Islam in Norway’ towards ‘Norwegian Islam’.They are
concerned with providing good Norwegian Muslim
role models who could appeal to youth in their own
generation.
In regard to religious transmission both informant
groups reveal that their parents have been most
important in teaching them about religion. Most are
brought up in religious families and have learnt about
faith and religion from childhood onwards. In some
cases faith was revitalized as a consequence of serious
illness and death in close family. For young Muslims the
ideal of being a ‘practising Muslim’ following the five
pillars of Islam is strong. We find some evidence of a
complex relation between ethnicity and religion in the
area in spite of everyone's insistence that “our mosque
is open to everyone”.There are also tendencies to an
individualised approach to Islam where a personal faith
relationship between believer and God prevails.
Whereas the young Muslims seem confident in their
faith and in their identity as Muslims, several young
Christians seem more reluctant to show off their
religious identity in public space. In a secular society
like Norway, the chance to being exposed as a
‘personal Christian’ is a potential risk in interaction
with others outside of religious arenas. For the
Muslims, however, religious identity is not associated
with risk in the same sense. They are concerned with
not being seeing as terrorists or Islamists, and are
aware that their religious identity seems to be ‘read
off’ their non-whiteness in inter-ethnic as well as intra-
ethnic interaction. Used to being seen as Others,
‘immigrants, ‘Pakistanis’ or ‘Somalis’, their religious
identity seem to be associated with a positive
difference that for many carries a responsibility to be
good role models of Norwegian Islam.
One of our informants, a young woman raised in a small
place in Southern Norway by Pakistani parents, tells of
her ‘journey through herself’ as she moves through
Oslo. Walking through the main street from the Royal
Castle towards the Central Railway Station she feels
completely Norwegian. Passing the Railway station and
entering the area of Grønland she feels her Pakistani
and Muslim identity. To her, and to other informants,
Grønland has a specific standing as the ethnic and
religious minority symbolic space in Norway. This
symbolic space is to some associated with the
increased status of Islam in Norway.To others, it brings
associations to violence and criminality and the need to
bring young people back to religion. And to a third
group, most notably white secular Norwegians with
leftist sympathies, Grønland is seen as an interesting
place where religion and urban multiculture meets a
traditional working class culture creating a vibrant
glocal space.
The Architecture of Contemporary Religious Transmission research
project was conducted in three different cities: London (Finsbury
Park), Hamburg (St.Georg) and Oslo (Grønland) by three different
teams:
CUCR, Goldsmiths University (Dr. Roger Hewitt, Dr. Caroline
Knowles,Vicky Skitftou, Britt Hatzius);
Institute for Comparative and Multicultural Studies, University of
Hamburg (Prof. Ingrid Gogolin, Ben Hintze, Johannes Bucher;
IMER, University of Bergen (Dr. Mette Andersson, Anders
Vassenden).
For further information please refer to:
www.relemerge.org/project_02
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Kettering Road
Sayed Hasan

Kettering Road means something to me because I've

worked there for several years. I have become part
of a cast of everyday characters who perform their
daily routines in and around the street: continuously
shifting between states of voyeurism and
participation. My gaze is camouflaged by my
everyday disguise enabling me to watch the world
undisturbed in a state of reverie, while
simultaneously plotting multiple courses of action
needed to navigate corporeal space. I can tell you
that the post man will pull up in his van at one o'
clock with a cigarillo in his mouth. In the afternoon
Saff the dog will run up and down the opposing
green, chasing after a ball her owner hurls from a
red catapult. When I buy a paper or bottle of water
from the news agents I slowly exit the shop allowing
room for the usual small talk, on weather or trade.
On the street I recognise a passer by, we smile, say
hello, shake hands. A car beeps as it goes past. I
react with an outstretched arm, sometimes the
wrong person waves, but absorbs the error in their
stride. Time and circumstance has allowed me to
identify certain patterns in human activity along
Kettering Road, but the unpredictability of everyday
life is another aspect that characterises the street.
The unfamiliar takes different forms, in the shape of
unknown stranger/s, to aleatory situations that
reveal unexpected qualities in the people you
presume to know. The Kettering Road I belong to
skips to the transient beat of human traffic, which
moves in all directions. Repetitious cycles of daily,
weekly , monthly activity, one way journeys; it all
seem ephemeral as time dissipates the illusion of
permanence. Carrying my camera and background
on to Kettering Road, I pitched up a make shift
street studio and waited for people to walk by. ”Can
I take your photo?” was the usual and most direct
approach. Some people stopped, others chose to
walk on. A photographic interpretation of life on
Kettering Road was always going to be limited, the
absence and inclusivity of the portraiture reflects
the imperfection of my everyday experiences.

The Kettering Road Project was funded by Arts

Council England.

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Wendy Courtney

Mathew Adriana and girls

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SUEÑO DESPIERTO EN UN MUNDO QUE SE DESVANECE…
Karla Berrens
Lost in the city, looking for inspiration... trying to
escape from the surrounding blocks, tall uniform
block... making my life a grey reality, same grey as the
buildings walls...
The words get lost in the labyrinth buildings create.
Cosmopolitan cities seem to forget that some of
their inner architectural characteristics are not
thought to eliminate ghettoisation. In London there
are massive constructions of council estates that give
birth to a sub-city. The latter have their own rules,
their social structure, their own business
organisation and development. These architectures
create ghettos of people, maybe oppressed, maybe
trapped. Often regarded as 'pariahs', never classified
as such. their feeling in the city is more than
complex. Nevertheless those constructions are
frequently a creative nest of alternative ways of
expressing this felt disregard, this alienation.
www.myspace.com/noglobalmc
page 10
Hip-hop has, for a long time already, been putting
rhythm to the daily routine of some of the people
living in those conurbations.
Noglobal hip-hop songs talk about feeling trapped in
a world that is unreal, created in between fiction
happiness and freedom and an asphalt hard reality.
Their songs reflect upon the struggle of the working
class and the conflict between the urban landscape
and property speculation. They talk about their city,
Madrid, but also about many other cities such as L.A.,
London, and Tijuana where they find patterns of
labyrinth, block constructions where it seems as if
people were left to their own fate, from the hoodies
to the concert halls, their hip-hop gives a strong and
informed insight to some areas of the city that
remains unknown to most.Through their songs they
depict their reality, finding familiar areas in Madrid,
but also in unknown cities as they have a strange
sensation of recognition of the articulation of certain
areas, hip-hop might be disregarded by some but it
provides its listener with a surprising analysis of the
urban landscape.
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Open-Up photographic project
Gonzalo Osmos
I engage in acts of dérive and detourments following in
the fashion of the French Situationist International. I
engage in performances of situations by engaging
l´étranger of the periphery to participate in my
photographic project.
Open Up is characterized by the encounter, interplay
and co-presence of both the photographer and the
sitter. In other words, one can argue that my portraits
stand as documents or ‘proof’ of my empathic
performance as a photographer and inter-subjective
encounters with strangers. For example, the strangers
I am encountering do not have time to verify the
integrity and honesty of my photographic project.Thus,
my credibility mainly relies on my own performance,
expressive repertoire, and my capacity to establish
empathy with people in a short period of time. Erving
Goffman referenced this progression from disbelief -
to - belief. From the initial cynicism towards the
capacity to establish trust. Thus securing an adequate
level of rapport is important in a short span is crucial.
Gestures of spontaneity in my own performance with
people, help to 'open up' and reveal some facts and
‘something true’ about their inner-self (e.g. what is the
happiest memory of your life?). For instance, the
openness of Johnny is articulated when he states that
the happiest memory of his life was when he won the
first amateur boxing. Or the drama student - Lincoln -
when he states that he found out that Jesus is alive and
that he loves him or for liberal physicist Andreas when
he realised that there is no god.
My photographic project aims to reveal the ephemeral
private identities of the stranger, the complex textures
of social distinctions of travellers in a public place. I
would like to think that my portraits capture the dualist
essential inner quality of the subject against their
objective living body. I see my project as an effort
towards capturing matter (flesh and bones) and spirit
(feelings and mind). To paraphrase the photographer
Robert Frank, I just want to capture the strange
humanity of the moment.
www.olmosphoto.com
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Borderlands
Caroline Knowles and Sylvia Meichsner
Borderlands, the strips of territory where nation
states intersect, are often side-lined in urban studies in
favour of more stylish cities with signature buildings
designed by leading architects like Dubai, Shanghai and
Barcelona. And yet borderlands are crucial corridors
of activity, reflecting and composing life on both sides
and providing information about how the world is
organised. Disjunctions between states are sometimes
radical and sometimes less obvious. The border
between Zimbabwe and Botswana, for example, is hard
to distinguish. It is not heavily fortified and at a cursory
glance the scenery looks the same on both sides.
Botswana looks prosperous; Zimbabwe is visibly
ground into the dirt. In places the border is simply
marked by increased movement, as refugees pour out
of Zimbabwe. Other borderlands generate more social
and political tension. Compare the US-Canada border,
for example, to the US-Mexico border. The US
approach to its affluent Northern neighbour is more
page 12
relaxed, even post 9-11, than to its poorer neighbour to
the South.
The US-Mexico border is almost 2,000 miles long. It
stretches from the Pacific border town of Tijuana to
the Gulf of Mexico. Between 1950 and 1980 it was one
of the fastest growing urban areas on the continent. It
is now a 'border metropolis' supporting ten million US
and Mexican citizens for whom it is a sphere of daily
urban/non-urban interaction (Herzog, 1990). A mix of
cities and non-city spaces, towns and open country, the
US-Mexico borderland is composed in the activities
and things that circulate it; circuits of goods and people,
shifted in particular geopolitical circumstances. The
borderland is literally fabricated in these activities:
trodden by the feet and tyre marks of those who pass
back and forth across the border with their bundles; by
the haulage trucks loaded with goods that straddle it
from the special manufacturing zones under the
regulatory gaze of NAFTA.
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This particular borderland is more than a place of
intersection between neighbouring nation states. It is a
global fault-line between North and South.This border
sustains a $26,000 gap in GDP - $30,000 in the US and
$4,000 in Mexico. Perhaps one of the biggest income
differentials of any border, it acts like a magnet drawing
Mexicans and other Central Americans from places like
El Salvador who see Mexico as a bridge to a new life in
the US. This differential between incomes and the
lifestyles they support generates the activities of this
borderland between worlds.
The US-Mexico borderland is a staging post in the
circularities of North South migration.There are guest
houses, provisions stores, brothels, orphanages and
'travel guides' who generate and navigate a shifting
matrix of routes North: at a price. Each year between
4000,000 and one million undocumented Mexican
migrants slip over the border. In 2005 alone 1.2 million
were apprehended by the US border patrol, which
estimates that it catches perhaps one in five would-be
migrants en-route to a new life in the US (1). Migrants
are successful in crossing the border: six to twelve
million undocumented migrants live in the US, the
majority of them Mexican (2). At night fall Mexicans can
be seen running for the border, carrying only water
bottles and toothbrushes, in places where security is
considered weaker than others. In 2007 alone 383
people died trying to migrate to the US: mostly they
died of thirst or hypothermia as well as more lethal
applications of US border security (3). But still Mexicans
make it to the other side on trains, in the trunks of cars
and trucks, through tunnels, over walls and on foot.
The US response is a new geography of national
defences that adds a layer of activity to the borderland.
These involve checkpoints and barriers, strengthened
border patrols, night vision goggles, land cruisers, foot
patrols, motion sensors, stadium lighting. Would be
migrants caught by the authorities are digitally
photographed and finger printed. Where state action
weakens local vigilantes organise their own patrols: a
militarization of citizenship. Texas and California now
have 80 miles of federally enforced barriers and fences
at strategic points along the border. Operation
Gatekeeper sealed the border around San Diego with
14 miles of fencing and stadium lighting. The Chairman
of the House Armed Services Committee proposed
two parallel steel and wire fences from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Pacific coast. It would cost $2 billion to
fence the entire border in concrete (4). This
militarization of borderlands resonates with other
spheres of US global influence in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in
the hidden processes in which US agents observe, and
maybe even direct, torture in Saudi, Moroccan and
Syrian prisons: all (flexible) extensions of US borders.
The US-Mexico border is less well fortified than the
wall separating Israel and Palestine; but only just.
Technologies of separation are ever-evolving.
Migrant response to this militarised matrix of control
is inventive. Since 9-11 forty tunnels have been
discovered in the San Diego-Tijuana area alone. Some
were as much as half a mile long and sixty to eight feet
deep. There are tunnels with concrete floors that are
wired with electricity: testament to an 'impossible
politics of separation’ (Weizman, 2007), ingenuity and
enterprise.
‘Migration is a huge business.The same countries that expel
are also accomplices in the network of human trafficking. It
is the human trafficking network that becomes rich
particularly in the expelling countries; they become rich at
the cost of crossing people. They are so corrupt the
migration officers, the army, the bodies of security….It is a
network of complicities that take advantage of the
situation….Its terrible what they charge them, four
thousand dollars, three thousand dollars for crossing them.
So if they cross fifty within one month you can imagine how
much…And there are very good traffickers who tell the
person “You give me five thousand dollars and you'll be in
the states tomorrow” and so it is.
[Anonymous View from the South: an employee in a
religious orphanage near Tijuana].
Borderlands, particularly this one, are densely rich sites
for urban exploration. What kinds of security and
defence are practiced? Who crosses them and on what
terms? By what means do they cross? What risks are
taken? What rewards are possible? What circumstances
generate their circulation back and forth? What forms
of business do borderlands sustain? What forms of
architecture are possible? What kinds of urban planning
and regulation? And whom do they serve?
References:
Herzog, Lawrence A. (1990) Where North Meets South. City
Space and Politics on the US-Mexico Border, University of
Texas Press.
Weizman, Eyal (2007) Hollow Land, Israel's Architecture of
Occupation, London :Verso p144,161
(1) Global Security.Org 'Homeland Security' 2008 'The Great Wall
of Mexico'
(2) Time.Com 'Special Report 'The New Frontier' Terry McCartney
'The Coyote's Game' Narco, Arizona.
(3) Time.Com 'Special Report 'The New Frontier' Terry McCartney
'The Coyote's Game' Narco, Arizona
(4) Global Security.Org 'Homeland Security' 2008 'The Great Wall
of Mexico'.This website is linked with the Israel Security Fence.
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Romans, Trains and Star Trek:

Contesting the Production of Castlefield Space
Michael Edema Leary
“There should be no cause for surprise when a space-
related issue spurs collaboration (often denounced on that
basis by party politicians) between very different kinds of
people, between those who 'react'… and 'liberals' or
'radicals'… Such coalitions around some particular
counter-project or counter plan, promoting a counter-space
in opposition to the one embedded in the strategies of
power, occur all over the world…”
(Lefebvre 1991: 380)

A public inquiry into a proposal by Peel Holdings

(owner of the Trafford Centre and the Manchester
Ship Canal) for a 117 unit apartment complex at
Jackson's Wharf in the Castlefield conservation area
was held in November 2008.Thousands of Mancunians 1980s Roman Gate - inventing heritage
oppose the plans as do several local councillors and
web campaigns such as the one by Pride of Manchester.
Given Manchester's reputation as an iconic
entrepreneurial city (Leary 2008) it is no surprise that
this was the first scheme in the city centre to be
rejected by the council's planners in 5 years. The
scheme by Manchester architect Ian Simpson, of Urbis
fame, has been dubbed by Manchester wags the Star
Trek development because of its futuristic design
(Linton 2008). The outcome is awaited eagerly. In 1999
Castlefield was placed on the UK's tentative list for
UNESCO World Heritage Site status. Castlefield is the
site of a Roman fort dating from 79AD. Castlefield is
the area in Manchester, the world's first modern
industrial city, where the industrial revolution started.
Barge and the Viaduct - Canal heritage and leisure
It was here that Britain's first true canal terminated:
the Bridgewater canal opened in 1763, bringing coal
from the 3rd Duke's mines in Worsley to the
burgeoning cotton mills of Ancoats and Chorlton-on-
Medlock, an area castigated for its degrading squalor
by Engels in his 1845 The Condition of the Working Class
in England. The world's first intercity passenger railway
followed in 1830 locating its terminus at Liverpool
Road Station in Castlefield. Having carried out PhD
research focused on Castlefield for the last four years
it is evident that the contestation of space regarding
the Jackson Wharf housing proposal is similar to that
which happened in the 1970s when the city council
wanted to redevelop Castlefield for housing and in the
1980/90s when the Central Manchester Development
Corporation wanted to do the same.

The Rocket Simulacrum Symbol of 1980s Heritage Dominance

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In the 1970 and 80s reimagining Castlefield as a heritage
space was a Lefebvrian counter-project championed by
amenity societies in alliance with the Greater
Manchester Council (Leary forthcoming) in opposition
to the embedded power of the Manchester City
Council and British Rail (a major Castlefield
landowner). Heritage representations of Castlefield
space triumphed in 1983 when the hugely successful
Museum of Science and Industry open in the converted
Liverpool Road Station buildings in 1983. By then the
heritage industry as a vehicle for post industrial city
reimaging was in full swing (Lowenthal 1998 and Wright
2003). The heritage dominated understanding of
Castlefield went largely unchallenged in the 1990s
(Degen 2008), exemplified by this breathless Lonely
Planet eulogy:
“Castlefield has now been redeveloped into an Urban
Heritage Park.Aside from the huge science museum, the big
draw here is the Castlefield Basin. The Bridgewater Canal
runs through it; in summertime thousands of people amble
about the place and patronise its fine pubs and trendy
restaurants.”
(Lonely Planet 2007 www.lonelyplanet.com/)
But now the struggle to impose a new meaning and
future for Castlefield has resurfaced as it did in the
1970s. Today the heritage representation of Castlefield
space is under threat precisely because it became too
narrowly focused on Romans, canals, railways and
warehouses: ignoring crucial aspects of the area's
complex histories. The area has a much richer history
including: elegant Georgian housing, working class
housing, gritty industry (the abattoir) and a rather
exuberant but riotous and short lived 19th century
annual fair. This was reinvented for a brief time in the
1980s with the popular Castlefield funfair, street
markets and festivals: local Lefebvrian spaces of
representation. But the most important part of
Castlefield's history is the link with the Transatlantic
Trade in West African peoples. Manchester textiles
were traded for abducted West African peoples who
were later enslaved. The Liverpool and Manchester
Railway Company was funded partly from the proceeds
of the Transatlantic Trade (Williams 1944).The statue in
Lincoln Square with its inscription of thanks from
Abraham Lincoln for the support of Manchester
workers during the 1860s cotton famine is just about
the only recognition in the city of the links between
Castlefield and European colonial enslavement spatial
practices. The silence on this aspect of Castlefield's
past is deafening.
If the building is approved it will end Castlefield's
tentative status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Peel Holdings, a Manchester company founded in 1920
by the descendents of Sir Robert Peel, made
enormous profits in the last property boom. Hopefully,
it will not get through the appeal, but even if it does it
is unlikely to go ahead in the present financial climate.
When funding is available things will have moved on. In
the meantime the site should be donated to the city as
public open space with a maintenance trust fund
attached. If the building is approved it should be
subject to a legal planning agreement for the
maintenance in perpetuity of the significant public
spaces of Castlefield. If long silenced Castlefield
histories are to be heard, and its heritage revalorised
for the 21st century, a political coalition of difference
will be required, first to defeat the wholly
inappropriate Jackson's Wharf scheme, then to
embrace the area with the arms of heritage inclusivity.
If you want to follow the struggle for Castlefield or join in,
see the websites of Pride of Manchester, Eye Witness in
Manchester and Manchester Confidential.
References:
Degen, M. 2008, Sensing Cities: Regenerating Public Life in
Barcelona and Manchester, Routledge, London.
Leary, M.E. (forthcoming) "Of Potato, Shrine and Vendetta,
Liverpool Road Station and the Production of Castlefield,
Manchester: Applying Henri Lefebvre's Spatial Triad"
Leary, M.E. 2008, "Gin and Tonic or Oil and Water: The
Entrepreneurial City and Sustainable Managerial
Regeneration in Manchester", Local Economy, vol. 23, no. 3,
pp. 222-233.
Lefebvre, H. 1991, The Production of Space, Blackwell,
Oxford (first published in 1974 as La production de
l'espace).
Linton, D. 2008 (5 June), "'Star Trek' flats go to appeal",
Manchester Evening News.
Williams, E. 1994 [1944], Capitalism and Slavery, The
University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Wright, P. 2003 (13 September), "Restoration tragedy: The
heritage industry is now so powerful that it is impossible to
criticise, let alone demolish, old buildings".
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Street Photography and Social Research:
Brick Lane Re-Visited
Charlotte Bates
On 29 June 2008 fourteen postgraduate students met
in Brick Lane, East London. The group came from
universities across the UK and brought together
students from a variety of disciplines, all with an
interest in the visual. Paying homage to the About the
Streets project conducted by staff and students at
Goldsmiths, University of London and Croydon
College in 2001, we set up two 4x5 large format
cameras in the midst of the market in Brick Lane and
invited people to have their portrait taken while doing
their Sunday shopping. Individuals took their turn
before the lens and the ensuing photographs created a
visual narrative of metropolitan life. The day offered a
valuable opportunity to both create and engage in a
sociological event.The spectacle of the large Victorian
cameras on the streets and the intricate process of
setting up for a portrait became an enactment of doing
research, through which we were able to discuss how
photographs can be made instead of taken, and how
the act of making them can reveal stories and reflect
the changing urban landscape.
Here, some of the participants offer glimpses of the
day, showing what they brought to the workshop and
what they took from it, and telling how cameras and
portraits were negotiated and stories unfolded,
questioning the spectacle that we created and
commenting on the culture of Brick Lane.
Thanks to the British Sociological Association for their
financial support, and to Les Back, Paul Halliday, Caroline
Knowles, Antonio Genco, Simon Rowe, Manuel Vazquez
and Jane Offerman for their involvement and support
without which this workshop would not have been possible.
page 16
Reflections by Adrian Harris
Working with the Medium Format Camera was harder
than I imagined simply because many people seemed
reluctant to be involved. Several factors contributed to
this. Because we'd set up at the less 'trendy' end of the
street, there were mostly locals going about their
business, many of whom had English as a second
language. We also chose to be on a side street, so
weren't as noticeable to passers-by. While we achieved
our intention to minimize obstructive disruption and
be more in the community, this made interaction
harder. We always had to go out and invite people,
rather than them being drawn by curiosity to us. The
time it took to make a photograph had some
advantages in that it gave us time to interact but we did
lose people who were waiting for their turn. I
occasionally felt a hint of impatience from our portrait
subjects as light levels were measured, lens cocked, light
re-checked, and then the whole process repeated as we
made a second exposure to be sure we had a good
image.
Wandering the street asking people more casually if I
could ‘take a photograph’ with my digital camera was
much easier. The immediacy of the encounter meant I
didn't need to interact so much as with the medium
format equipment, but the option was always there and
occasionally I took the opportunity to chat. I used my
usual documentary photographer approach: Ask if it's
ok, chat a bit, then back off to make the image, though
I'd take one shot straight away if they were posing.
Usually I'd sit back for a while until, half forgotten, I
could make a more 'natural' image. After a few shots of
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street signs : spring 2009

random people I found 'interesting' I felt the need to

I think, however, that we lacked the time to engage in a
structure my approach more, so decided to photograph
true collaboration between the photographers and the
stallholders. This felt more satisfying as I began to see
photographed. In fact, I would have liked the distinction
patterns and relationships between the layout of the
between the former and the latter to be irrelevant. I
stalls, the goods they sold and the stallholders
would have liked to agree upon the camera's location
themselves.
and framing, maybe give the shutter to the
photographee. In my opinion, engaging in a more
Notes from Behind the Scenes by extensive process of cooperation would be relevant
both for making street portraits and producing images
Isaac Marrero Guillamón with a larger potential for research. If we were able to
truly alter our perspective and expectations in the
This sequence attempts to 'bring into the picture' one process of negotiating a portrait I think we would be
of the things I found most interesting about the one step further towards images that represent the
workshop: the relationship between the in-frame and kind of encounter we were interested in.
the off-frame. The large format Polaroids provided by
themselves a very limited output of the dynamics
involved in their production. Putting one of them next
to a shot/counter-shot of the 'making of' was a simple Ghosts of Brick Lane
way of introducing various key issues.
by Jo Sanderson-Mann
First of all, the three-image sequence points at the
I have chosen this image because it shows passers by in
weight of the machinery and the labour needed to
Brick Lane, people moving, perhaps with a suitcase, it is
operate it.Taking a picture with a 4x5 camera is a fairly
not possible to see them clearly. My aim was to listen
complex procedure; it is far from immediate. Each task
to people's stories. I took photos, I talked to people,
(framing, focusing, light metering, loading film, shooting)
but I did not really get to know them - the encounters
requires a certain time and, most importantly, re-
were transitory. In fact I was a tourist in Brick Lane. To
inscribes the technology involved in the process.
attend the workshop, me, my husband and my son
What's been, to a great extent, effaced by digital
travelled down to London and stayed overnight, and
photography the large format camera brings back. We
we saw the sights on Saturday. On Sunday while I was
somehow rediscovered the intricacies of measuring an
in Brick Lane my husband and son carried on sight
ever changing light, framing and focusing an upside-
seeing. I felt that there was a parallel between what
down and not so clear image, and using Polaroid film.
they were doing and what I was doing in Brick Lane. It
was perhaps not a coincidence that I was drawn to
For all that to happen a number of agreements had to
photograph people who were also tourists, people
be reached: On the one hand, the collaboration
who did not live there. Brick Lane was a spectacle,
between us went further than sharing the technical
something strange and unfamiliar, and my presence
tasks: first of all we had to decide about location (this
there was a one-off, perhaps theirs was too. The
or that side of the street?), framing (full, American?),
photos I took were of people who were there for
depth of field (maximum, minimum?) and who we
pleasure, there was a strong sense of having a ‘day out’,
wanted to photograph (a certain 'kind', everyone who
and each time I took a photo it was an encounter with
wants to be photographed?). These decisions shaped
two foreigners, them and me.
the basic structure of the pictures and represented, to
a certain degree at least, our intentions as
photographers. On the other hand, we had to negotiate
with the people to be photographed: we had to tell
them about the project, they had to give us consent and
sign a form.

Once there was someone before the camera, ready to

have her or his portrait taken, the situation became a
sort of social event.The old, big, heavy camera sat on a
tripod surrounded by a team of photographers
produced interest and expectation among passers by.
Conversations emerged.The taking of photographs was
starting to become making.

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What I learnt from my team mates
and from my mistakes
by Craig Owen
Beccy seemed to have a skill for weaving in and out of
the rush of human traffic filtering up, down and across
Brick Lane. She skipped from one side of the street to
another in order to investigate and photograph
someone or something that interested her. I saw
Beccy talk to and subsequently photograph a smart
looking old man who was standing in a doorway
smoking roll ups. I also listened to Beccy engage in
cheeky banter with two self identifying 'Del Boys' who
proudly proclaimed they had been selling carpets from
the same stall on Brick Lane for 15 years. Introducing
the purpose of our project, showing these people the
LCD screen to allow them to view the photos and
inviting them to talk about their experiences of Brick
Lane, Beccy was able to develop positive relationships
that enabled us to later return with the Victorian
camera and photograph these men again. I was
thoroughly impressed with how social and fun Beccy
had made urban photography appear.
Polaroid Portraits
page 18
In comparison, my experiences were rather dire.When
passed the digital SLR camera my first concerns were:
“How do I wear the camera strap, how do I hold the
camera, what do I do with all these buttons and how do
I possibly get comfortable?” Seeing the exasperated
look on face my other team mate Charlotte came over
and provided some much needed assistance. With
encouragement I approached two young men who
were sat casually on their Jamie Oliver style mopeds.
Dressed in ultra trendy clothes and flaunting highly
styled haircuts I was sure they would make good
subjects for a photo. I introduced myself and almost
immediately dropped into the conversation a
disclaimer about my lack of skill with the camera.
The lesson I have drawn from these experiences is that
the skill and experience the researcher has with
particular methods has significant implications for their
identity as a researcher and for the processes through
which the research is crafted. Finally, visiting Brick Lane
has shown me that if I wish to improve my skills as an
urban ethnographer I must continue to learn in
practice and by practice.
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Small Stories
by Lisa Mckenzie
The first two guys we met were Billy and his friend
Mick who were sat on a doorstep. As soon as I saw
them I knew I wanted to chat with them. Mick was
probably in his sixties and was looking dapper wearing
a cream safari suit, cravat, and matching hat, with a pair
of good leather oxford brogues which he told me he'd
bought from an old shoe shop round the corner called
Blackmans, one of the few shops still on Brick Lane
from the 1960's. Mick was proud that he was a real
'Eastender' and had been coming to Brick Lane market
every Sunday since he was a kid. His friend Billy was
from Glasgow and was wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt
and bright red plastic glasses. They were both hanging
out on the market and lived in a hostel close by.When
we took the picture Billy really posed and enjoyed the
attention, whilst Mick sat unassuming on the step 'in his
finest'.
There was a wonderful woman called Dorothy who
told us she was 76. When we asked if we could take
her picture she was delighted. She wanted to show off
her earrings which were purple flowered diamantes,
and she told us that she had matched her whole outfit
around those earrings. She was wearing a lovely purple
flowered dress and matching necklace, and was off to a
tea dance. Dorothy told us that she went to tea dances
every Sunday on the bus and had always liked to dance
- 'in her younger days' she had danced at the Lyceum,
Astoria, and Café de Paris, but they had all closed now.
She said that people had often asked to take her picture
at the tea dances but had rarely sent them on to her as
they promised.
These stories may seem unimportant even trivial to
some, but these are the typical small stories that were
recounted to us that day, they were literal snapshots of
life, lives that few are interested in, unless as
researchers we are studying the effects of poverty, or
family breakdown, or how gender and culture
interrelates, or some other wider and important issue
we need everyday people's interpretation of. How
often do we just talk to people without wanting to
make some inferences on the bigger picture? What I
took from that day is how important small stories are.
I agree with Les Back in his book The Art of Listening that
urban sociology is about getting out, meeting people,
and engaging in everyday life.
Who is the photographer?
by Sireita Mullings - Lawrence
There is something interesting about the multiple
authorship of a photograph. Indecisive as to its
importance, the question of who is the photographer
became apparent whilst a participant of the Street
Photography and Social Research workshop held in
Brick Lane. Having formed our groups, one digital
camera per group with the exception of a few people
who brought their own cameras we set off to
document life in Brick Lane.The way our group worked
to compose, capture and create the images was as
though we were a team who had worked previously
for an extended period of time. Each person fell into
roll, sharing methods and ideas. Ensuring each
suggestion was considered and each member given the
chance to exchange positions experiencing what
another would do to assist in image creation.There are
some key silent sounds in the orchestration of an
image.When we read the final product we often don't
hear the verbal making of the picture.
“Excuse me do you mind if we take a quick picture of you?”
“Look at the look on his face…we need to get a shot!”
“Do you mind if we stand over here so that the sun is behind
us?”
“Those cookies look nice.”…“More like artificial, lets take a
photo!”
“Could you stand right there so we could just take your
picture?”
“What about them do you think they will mind?”
“Yea you can take my photo if you want…will social services
see my face?”
“I'm gonna grab that bloke with the strange hat?”
“Ahh aint that sweet, let's grab that couple over there and
ask them if they will have us take their photo?!?”
Nuances of creatorship can be heard amongst the
utterances of the photography team on the pursuit for
interesting life in Brick Lane. In a non specific order we
would often use the walk, look, listen and shoot tools,
collectively making suggestions about interesting
people or situations. In many instances subjects helped
to construct the photograph as they offered
themselves for photographing or made reference to
things they too found interesting. The act of
photographing seems to present, reinforce and
question; interests, personalities, the obscure, the
familiar, the other, the sadness, the painfulness, the likes
and dislikes. Seen through a collection of viewpoints
and various frames of reference leaving the images to
capture our gaze whilst making an enquiry into, “who
is the photographer?”
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Why is it so easy to place art and
regeneration in the same sentence?
Sophie Risner
The Gorbals district on the south bank of the river
Clyde is an area of mixed Irish Catholic Jewish decent.
Predominantly working class, it has long had a
reputation for being a slum area. It has suffered several
different attempts at clearance, with the most notable
happening in 1866 by the City Improvement Trust.This
was then overshadowed by a 1960s rebuild, which, like
many enclaves of urban regeneration, saw the tried and
tested mark of modernism scalding the Gorbals
district with concrete high rises designed by Sir Basil
Spence. In its wake an area feverish with crime and
keen for re-management emerged. The Spence tower
blocks were removed in 1993 with further demolitions
arriving in 1994. Any remaining high rises were either
re-clad or refurbished with most of the surviving
victorian terraces reconfigured and surrounded with
new builds. Art has found a place in amongst this last
phase of regeneration as a signifier of the new dawn of
city re-management. More and more art in the public
realm is becoming inextricably linked to the reality of
contemporary regeneration, something that
governmental procedure is not totally unaware of.
Most London local authorities have a by-line on art in
the public realm within their unitary development plan
(Local Area Framework) and with new strategies such
as Percent for Art becoming popular schemes for city
management. Between developers and local authorities
it has now become very clear that art is part and
parcel of the formation of new space from the old.
From 1999 to 2005, The Artworks Programme
commissioned 20 artists to produce work within the
Gorbals district, leaning on the pre-existing Spence
architecture as well as taking inspiration from its
history and previously demolished buildings. Like the
MUF art strategy currently being played out on the
Greenwich Peninsula, The Artworks Programme used a
moment of urban change to surface art production.
Pioneered by artist collective Heisenberg consisting of
artists Matt Baker and Dan Dubowitz The Artworks
Programme's website alone extensively understands the
all-encompassing approach needed for such an
integrated relationship to be built between artists,
community, building, developer and council. It isn't an
easy relationship, and often finds confusion over
cohesion. The debate is how can art remain truly
autonomous when shifted into the spectrum of
regeneration? Within the Gorbals strategy is the
page 20
project of Amanada Currie. Inspired by the 1975
mayoral project of Ravio Puusemp in which the artist
managed to become successfully elected as mayor of
Rosendale, New York, a small town of 1,500 Puusemp
implemented radical water supply and sewage changes
as well as uniting the community through collective
participation. He eventually resigned on completion of
the project - a move which saw the community upset,
yet impressed, with his work. Puusemp's tale is not one
of few. Many times before has art come into play with
bureaucratic change. Currie on the other hand had no
qualms about admitting her incentive. Her interests in
The Artworks Programme website are listed as ‘viewing
public art as an ideal platform’, simply a way to
communicate ideas stretching beyond the usual gallery
protocol. The use of the word public in any shape is
always problematic. Currie’s work presupposes a
public and the realms with which she determines her
art interactions into a community setting. Curries
project looked at building an orchard or allotment with
the community of Gorbals. Unlike some of the more
aesthetic interventions that found their way into The
Artworks Programme, the allotment project by Currie
looked at crafting something more indelible - the
cohesion of community through a collaborative effort.
Working with the community from design, to final
completion and then to nurture and growth, Currie
looked at how she can truly be useful to this particular
moment of regeneration. This could be seen as a
curious move, the alignment of artistic practice against
social practice has, since the minimalist understanding
of institutional critique become a very well trodden
path.What is truly at stake when comprehending such
a close connection between practice and community?
In her 2006 take on Claes Oldenburgs I am for an art,
the artist Carey Young mimicks Oldenburgs sentiments
with her own understanding of her practice
“I am for an art that does not aspire to be a cure for
alienated humanity...”
I am for an art...(after Claes Oldenburg)
(Carey Young 2006)
By placing Young's stance on her own art production
next to the Currie allotment project a very
contemporary idiom begins to shine through - that of
arts awkward relationship with societal concerns.
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Young's stance would not have her helping a community
to build a thriving allotment, yet Currie’s decision to
manifest a discipline from this involvement loosens art’s
own ability to form an active critique and remain
completely autonomous. The tricky objective is that
Currie actively sought to place arts position as social
healer, as almost a social worker. Her project is not
strictly functional in terms of defining an objective
reality on the process of regeneration under way in the
Gorbals district, yet it serves to function as a coming
together of the community. In essence art by-passes
critique and finds itself as a state of mending and
repairing. By seeking to distance herself from the
information that her practice concerns,Young attempts
to form a more thorough discussion with what it is
exactl, that comes from building a social relationship or
social practice. This is not to discredit Currie. In
context both ideas are interesting as they shift the role
of art into a new dimension and make for a different
attack on the understanding of social space.
To bring this to a more current relevance it can be seen
that the recent regeneration of the Greenwich
Peninsula finds a community-centric art involvement in
place from the outset. Dancing on the Peninsula which
was held on July the 10th this year, looked to combine
choreography from Temujin Gill, a local dancer in
residence, and over fifty local children from the
Millennium and Halstow Primary Schools. This work
boasts site specificity and explores current themes of
sustainability, regeneration and the natural and built
environment. In a bid to re-surface this through Currie’s
exploration, there is a tried and tested navigation of
understanding site, collaboration with local people and
discussion on the very terms at play. Art in this case has
come to serve as signifier for regeneration. Whilst
Rachel Whiteread’s House, 1993/94 was criticized for
aesthetically being too close-to-the-bone in terms of
art being a signifier of regeneration. A mere 14 years
later and art (found in the public realm) has become
almost only about regeneration .
This has changed art’s place within the spectrum of the
public sphere and made for a different approach to
practice; collaboration here becomes key to defining
the local area. Consultation and obvious relationship
building between artist, site and community tragically
become all too important when crafting projects
outside of the institutional framework. Risk thus
becomes shredded in time. Does an outside project
have to baer resemblance to the outside space it
inhabits or can a different pattern arise, re-defining
how art negotiates the tricky terms of regeneration?
What can be justified from these various integrated
practices is that art as a moment of critical practice of
the concept of urban regeneration is still an incisive
product with which to develop a discourse on the very
subject of regeneration.
'In the end, I contend that conflict, far from the ruin of
democratic public space, is the condition of its existence'
(Rosalyn Deutsche Evictions: Art and Spacial Politics
1996)
Both Currie and Young look towards establishing
modes of operation with democratic public space.The
very nature of democratic space makes for both a
physical and theoretical realm that looks more and
more towards art as a negotiator of critical best
practice. This can only be a good thing in terms of
relinquishing art from the bowels of institutional
production. Whilst it comprehends art’s growing
importance within the public realm, it also clarifies it as
one of the more challenging ways with which to
vocalize the conflict that arises when going about the
problem of regeneration in the public sector.
Deutsche goes on to look at how this is beneficial,
while legitimating urban conditions as inevitable. Less
does art find itself the demon of the public realm but
more the public realm demonizes itself. A critical shift
that sits positively for art’s future inclusion in such a
fruitful debate.
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In hiding, on display
Helena Holgersson
And there we were, on bar stools in the display
window of his favourite café inside Nordstan, a
shopping centre in Göteborg, the second largest city in
Sweden, laughing. Looking back I realize that when I had
called him on his mobile phone the week before to ask
him if he wanted to take a walk with me at a place of
his choice, I was expecting him to bring me to some
part of Bergjön, the neighbourhood were he had been
staying during the year when he had been at risk of
being deported. In the interview that I did with him
back then, in a small room at a local voluntary
organisation, he had told me that he would rather not
leave this area. In the map that he drew of ‘his
Göteborg’ on this occation ‘hem’ [home] was the
central node.
Despite this he regularly travelled throughout large
parts of Göteborg. In order to raise money for the rent
he collected empty tins along the tramlines together
with his parents and his younger sister. “I think I'd
rather not be seen”, he told me, “but I have to”. Most
of the places he included in his map are tram stops.The
exceptions are ‘kyrkan’ [the church], ‘biblioteket’ [the
library] and ‘Ica’ [a grocery store], which are all located
at a walking-distance from the family's apartment.
A few weeks before our meeting at the café I had
page 22
received a joyful text message from him simply saying
“HI! WE'VE GOT OUR RESIDENCE PERMIT!”.
Consequently, when I contacted him about the walk I
was very curious about how he would relate to
Bergsjön now that he did not have to hide from the
police anymore. In my PhD thesis I look at how non-
citizenship is articulated in urban space. However, he
immediately suggested that we would meet up at
Drottingtorget, a square right next to the central
station, and then go somewhere for a coffee.
When I arrived he was already there, waiting at the
newsstand. I spotted him from a long distance away.As
I came closer I noticed that he was wearing new
glasses. Chatting, we started to walk towards what he
described as his favourite café, which turned out to be
located well into Nordstan. He preferred the seats in
the display window he told me,“so that you can watch
the people passing by”, and we sat down there, doing
just that. Soon we found ourselves just smiling though.
How could we not? The symbolism of it all was
overwhelming.
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‘Home Sweet Home (Not)’
Emma Jackson
[From a project looking at place and belonging in the
lives of young homeless people.]
We sit in a circle on the floor around the map that has
been backed on white paper. The map is of London,
'Eastenders!' is the first reaction of a few of the young
people. They seem unsure about what they are
supposed to do. Me saying “Draw a map of your
London”, doesn't seem to be helping. I explain that first
we are going to draw our own maps, especially thinking
about safety and danger and then plot those personal
maps on the big communal map. Kirsty takes a post-it
note, writes 'Swag' on it and sticks it on Clapham
Common. More silence. I start to worry, but then
people begin drawing.
Marcos scribbles North,West, East, South on his paper
and writes 'Crackheads' on East, 'Over gangster' on
West, 'Dickheads' on North. But then he starts to write
on the big map 'Smoking spot' in Regents Park, he
marks a hostel he used to live in. Nicola also draws
North, East, South and West on the edges of her paper
but carefully. She then fills it in. NW1 is her 'adopted
home' the first place she came to when she moved to
London. In the middle is central (Soho and Oxford
Street) at the bottom is Victoria and a picture of a
house with a chimney and smoke coming out of it
'where I live'. East London is marked 'Weave' (she used
to get her hair done there). Kelly says she can't draw
and that this exercise is making her feel 'disabled'. She
removes herself from the group. I think she has
abandoned the task but actually she sits away from the
group with another worker and draws a neat map of
the bus route that goes from her house to the youth
centre. She names all the tube stops, Holloway Prison
and churches. She lines the route with trees and bins
(“because you always get bins next to bus stops don't
you?”). She is keen to take home 'the original' but
allows me to take a copy. She won't even let me take
the map to the photocopier on my own, 'It's my work.
I'm an artist.' Marie also takes herself away from the
group and comes back with a map of Victoria. Copying
her map onto the big map, she labels Victoria 'a peaceful
place' and adds “I got lost [the first time] I tried to find
Victoria”. She draws in the Channel 4 building, shops
and churches naming 'Costcutters', 'Tesco', 'Pizza' and
'Greggs'. She also draws buses naming them by their
number and destination.
Kirsty's map points out places from her past, relating
to drugs and the arrests of her friends, she elaborates
on the post-it note comment, Clapham Common is
'Swag Endz - bad experiences happn'd there'. Saba says
she is too new in London to do the exercise, I say she
should just put down the places that she knows. She
draws a very faint map of her hostel, Euston and the
youth centre. Between the hostel and youth centre is
a figure, signifying that she walks between the two.
These tentative markings of a newcomer are drawn so
faintly that someone writes over them by accident.
Nicola on the other hand, draws all over the big map
pointing out a good Portuguese café here and a place
to get cheap piercings there. Others recall stories that
happened in places. “On Notting Hill Carnival Day me
and Kirsty had to stop at the toilets at Liverpool street
coz I had a bad tummy”. Kelly comments that she hates
Camden because she once saw a man with horns
there. She adds to the map “I hate Camden coz of men
with horns”.Those who draw all over the map contrast
with Michael who takes great care in finding 4 points in
South London. He marks them with stars and then
joins them up. When asked what it means he replies
'my territory'.
The maps when put together rub each other up the
wrong way. Someone has scribbled over the Arsenal
ground 'Lidl' which is corrected by John who proclaims
it 'the best football team in Britain'. There is much
consternation over the labelling of East London,
especially Hackney. The map only extends so far and
arrows have to be written off to the side to other
places, Rochester prison, Kent, Enfield. Both fun and
painful experiences are marked on the map and the
difficult relationship between feelings of territory and
dislocation is summed up in someone's comment, an
arrow pointing to somewhere in East London reading
'Home Sweet Home (not)!'
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Tourism, Inbetweeness and Teotihuacán
Jeremy Clouser
The desire to explore and have new experiences is a
prime motivation for traveling to new countries and
immersing oneself in a different culture. Being a tourist,
places one in an in-between situation. As our world
becomes more and more homogenized we are told to
seek out the 'real' of a particular place. This is amply
demonstrated by TV shows like No Reservations by
Anthony Bourdain, where eating how the locals eat
allows you to identify yourself as a local(1). However,
without truly understanding the language or being
aware of unspoken cultural indicators, a two week
holiday somewhere, will always leave one floating in
limbo between wanting to be a genuine member of a
particular culture, and the impossibility of full
page 24
acceptance.This inbetweeness can often lead to absurd
situations and a rather tragicomedy exocitization of
the 'other', as is aptly shown in the 'Dani' photographic
project by Susan Meiselas (2).
For me, this inbetween feeling is heightened when
visiting a designated tourist destination, especially
ancient ruins. To truly say that you've been to Rome, it
is assumed that you will have paid the obligatory visit
to the Coliseum. What would your friends say if you
went to Athens and you didn't visit the Parthenon? The
layers of the palimpsest at these destinations can be
overwhelming and visiting these sites does help one
get a sense of history and to put that history into a
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present-day context. But doesn't an almost blind visit to
these sites only enhance that nagging feeling of
inbetweenness?
Like Greece and Italy, Mexico is a country with a
plethora of ancient sites, with many of them once
playing host to thriving metropolises. Alas, today, these
once mighty cities have been reduced to (or built up to
be) carefully preserved ruins and primarily tourist
attractions or places of archaeological research. An
example one such place is the ancient Aztec city of
Teotihuacán. Teotihuacán, along with the Zócalo
(Mexico City's central Plaza), and Frida Kahlo's Casa
Azul, are all obligatory tourist destinations for visitors
(3). After visiting these destinations 2 or 3 times whilst
playing host I start to ask my self questions.What role
does the ancient play in contemporary society? What
does it mean to visit these spaces? How am I to behave
in a place as old as this? What can I learn from being
here?
Like most things in life, one's answers are based on an
individual perspective shaped by lifelong formal and
informal learning. I try to find answers to these
questions by allowing myself to be transported back in
time and imagining people going about their daily
business; cooking, praying or, perhaps, procreating.
However, my envisioning of the past is continually
influenced by the way that I'm reading the space (4). It
is extremely difficult for me to get past my recognition
that the place where I find myself standing was once an
urban center that could resemble a contemporary city
in complexity, yet it is has taken on a completely
different form, exuding a cemetery-like calm that which
makes me feel hushed and reverent for times past and
the people who had their hearts ripped out while alive
to appease various gods.
As to figuring out how to behave, like most social
situations, the guesswork is taken care of by observing
others in close proximity and following their lead
(Goffman, 1990). One is rarely alone in these spaces,
there are always other tourists, hawkers of souvenirs
and park officials.We are given plenty of opportunity to
gather clues to combine with our knowledge of
previous experiences in order to act appropriately.
One's behavior is further modified by signs and
strategically places barriers guiding movements and
actions. The message is; stay on the path and enjoy
yourself responsibility. By being aware of these things,
modernity keeps creeping into my imaginings of times
past. It is in this constant mixing of history and the
contemporary from which this series of photos
emerges.
In the photographic images I made, my focus was
drawn time and again to a modern necessity, the
rubbish bin. The fact that no matter where we are, we
are continually producing waste (and waste that will be
around for generations to come) is something that is a
striking contrast with an ancient society whose
'lifestyle' (and waste) was essentially 'organic'. This
dichotomy is where the inbetweeness of travel and
tourism lies and it lends itself perfectly to
photography's ability to record and memorialize the
'real' of a particular time and place.
As an Australian/U.S. citizen who has now been living
in Mexico City for over three years, this inbetweeness
has become internalized and is something that I deal
with on a daily basis. But above all, perhaps the most
important thing I've learned is that after seeing the
juxtaposition of grand pyramids and seemingly
inconsequential rubbish bins our contemporary
society needs to create societal remnants that will be
as celebrated as those left behind by the Aztecs and
other ancient civilizations.
References:
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Penguin Books: New York, 1990.
(1) In each episode, the former chef, Anthony Bourdain, chooses a
country that he thinks would be interesting to visit. In the
beginning, he seemingly knows little about these countries, and he
proceeds to explore the culture through the food of the 'common'
person and in the process gaining an understanding of what that
country is 'really' like.
www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdain
(2) “In this subjective, fragmentary history, Meiselas draws from the
experiences of missionaries, colonists, anthropologists and
modern-day ecotourists, all of whom have come to the Dani's
Baliem Valley [Papua New Guinea] and transformed the conditions
under which they live.The ambiguous relations between power and
representation - whether in the form of Dutch colonial patrol
notes from the 1930s, the sensationalized media accounts of the
survivors of a downed U.S. army plane in "Shangri-La" from the
1940s or a tourist's snapshots from the 1990s - become visible in
Meiselas's book, through both the contradictions and unexpected
continuities of the gathered materials.” Quote taken from the
book's synoposis.
store.magnumphotos.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&pr
oducts_id=2029
(3) This is evidenced by the number of photos of visiting
performers, celebrities, dignitaries and/or politicians that are taken
in these places and that appear in the social pages of the local
newspapers.
(4) This could be put another way, “through the prism of my
Goldsmiths education”.
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What is British?
Michael Wayne Plant

The What is British? Project arose out of a desire to
explore identities found and encountered within a
limited urban area. From a sociological point of view I
wanted to explore in photographs notions of British
identity. However to do this on a scale that is
economically feasible and practical would not be
possible within that time frame and financial resources
that were available to me. I decided that by limiting
the area to within approximately one mile of the
Rotherhithe tunnel in the East End of London, this
would give me an area that was both economically,
culturally and ethnically diverse enough that it would
allow me to make a start in examining contemporary
British identities.
While notions of identity have far ranging
consequences for the individual, recent postmodern
conceptions of identity have implications for all
members of societies globally. Post-modern
interpretations of how the ‘other’ is seen within
societies (Sardar, 1998) and boundaries that are
created and maintained, all affect how differing
identities are perceived. London is a city that has
undergone rapid change from an industrial city at the
centre of a global empire in the nineteenth century, to
the current global city as defined by Sassen (Sassen,
2001) which de-industrialised while becoming a global
hub for the finance and banking industries. The East
End of London has been at the centre of this change;
developments have dramatically altered the area’s
urban environment.
Using photography to study various identities can help
define who has access to the many varieties of urban
space available within an area.While some people get
to choose their identity, others have their identities
forced on them by their circumstances (Bauman,
2004:38) We live in a society where community has
been under threat by a process of individualization
(Beck/ Beck-Bernsheim, 2001) leading us to assert our
own individual identities. This renders our common
sense of community redundant. With identities
becoming surrogates of community (Bauman,
2001:151), the possibility of overcoming communal or
social misfortune gets negated as individual trouble or
strife. Photography, by its nature, looks at the
particular, a specific person, event or place. As an
artist, I work using photography to explore the social
landscape using a documentary style that explores
notions of identity. By creating imagery that retains
the person within the landscape and social setting, it is
possible to understand more of the sociological
context within which the subject lives. Supplying visual
clues to their identities are not only what they are
wearing, their accessories, or hairstyles but also their
ethnicity and their physiognomy. This then makes it
possible to use these outward signifiers to allow us to
make assumptions about identities.
My photographs are influenced by the work of Robert
Frank, Gary Winogrand, William Eggleston and Paul
Graham, photographers who chose to use
photography as a means of personal exploration of
their social milieu.
The project What is British? is currently ongoing.There will
be an exhibition in April 2009 at Departure Gallery
(http://www.depart.in/).
References:
Sardar, Ziauddin (1998) Postmodernism and the other.
London: Pluto Press.
Sassen, Saskia (2001) The global city; New York, London,
Tokyo. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bauman, Zygmunt (2004: 38) Identity. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Beck, Ulrich & Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth (2001)
Individualization. London: Sage
Bauman, Zygmunt (2001: 151) The individualised society.
Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Worlds apart

Outside Lehman Bros

How to walk though a street

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Environment: urbanisation and biodiversity

Bringing a hotspot in from the cold
Peter Coles

Cape Town explores new ways to conserve its unique floral
heritage in the face of exploding poverty and urban sprawl
Behind the romantic names of some of Cape Town's
'townships' (suburbs for non-white populations under
apartheid) poverty and violent crime are rife. Soft-
sounding Lavender Hill is not somewhere a white
Capetonian is likely to set foot - and certainly not a
place he or she would want to get lost at night.Yet, a
few hundred metres away, down a surprisingly quiet,
tidy street is the Rondevlei Nature Reserve. Once
inside the gate, a haven of tranquil beauty opens up. A
kingfisher dives off a tall reed; pelicans, spoonbills and
pink flamingos mass on the banks of a vlei (lake), and,
as night falls, a couple of hippos rise like submarines to
wallow and graze. “I'd come here with my granny for
the weekend,” says my guide.
Cape Town has become a city of sharp contrasts like
this, where 'urban' and 'natural' worlds often coincide
- or collide. Table Mountain, the spiritual and physical
heart of the city, is slap in the middle of business and
up-market residential areas. Yet it is home to Fynbos
(pronounced fain-boss), a unique vegetation, and the
main component of the Cape Floristic Kingdom - the
world's richest, and geographically smallest, floral
kingdom (plants confined to a geographical area).
Some 9600 species can be found in an area the size of
Portugal, 70% of them endemic (found nowhere else),
while 1406 are listed in the World Conservation
Union's (IUCN) Red Data book of endangered
species. The mountain's 57 km2 alone boasts about
1500 species. Just for comparison, one of the five
other floral kingdoms - the Boreal Kingdom -
comprises the whole of the northern hemisphere.
confined to townships on the urban edge. Since the
late 1980s, though, almost a million (mostly Xhosa
people) have settled on the city's outskirts, many in
the township of Khayelitsha. These vast slums of tiny
houses and tin shacks stretch as far as the eye can see,
across the fragile dunes and seasonal wetlands of
Cape Flats. In some areas, over half the adults are
unemployed, while more than 35% are infected with
HIV/AIDS.
But the Cape Flats is also part of the Cape Floristic
Kingdom, and has a rare, lowland kind of Fynbos, with
perhaps the world's highest concentration of
endangered plants.Yet, to the new arrivals, it looks like
'scrubland' - an ideal place to put up a makeshift
home. “How do you look after biodiversity in a
context of extreme poverty, where local communities
have little history of involvement in conservation?”
asks Tanya Goldman, Project Manager of Cape Flats
Nature, a partnership project between the City of
Cape Town, the National Botanical Institute, the Table
Mountain Fund, and the Botanical Society of South
Africa. “This was the challenge for our project.”
One response, she explains, is the City of Cape Town's
Integrated Metropolitan Environment Policy (IMEP),
adopted in 2001, according to which “there doesn't
have to be a choice between environment or people.
You can protect the environment in a way that
supports peoples' needs.” At the heart of the IMEP is
a Biodiversity Strategy, implemented through a
network of 261 areas that should preserve a minimum

The proximity of what some claim is the world's

hottest plant biodiversity 'hotspot' to an urban area
poses obvious conservation problems, especially given
Cape Town's open access policy to its national park -
which means no fences and few pay points. But these
'urban nature' conservation challenges are multiplied
many times over by an explosion of economic
migrants from the rural Eastern Cape in search of
jobs, arriving at a rate of about 45,000 every three
months. Under apartheid, black Africans were not
allowed to live in central Cape Town and were
Khayaletscha

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of Cape Town's unique biodiversity. These sites range
in size from traffic islands a few metres square, to
whole stretches of coastal dunes - many are on the
Cape Flats. For the moment, Cape Flats Nature is
concentrating on four experimental sites among these.
One of them, the 37-hectare Edith Stephens Wetland
Park, surrounded by poor townships, is a modest start,
but a success all the same.“The City has started to get
the message that they won't find support for
conservation in the Cape Flats by fencing people out,”
says Tanya Goldman. “Sustainable conservation
management has to win the hearts, involvement and
understanding of the surrounding communities.” Two of
the other three pilot sites are more of a challenge,
though. Both the Wolfgat Nature Reserve and Macassar
Dunes are isolated no-go areas, sandwiched between
Khayelitsha and deserted beaches. Spectacularly
beautiful, and studded with arum lilies, they are also
where gangsters dump their victims, and are being
encroached on relentlessly.
While Cape Flats Nature is working with traditional
healers at Macassar Dunes to grow medicinal plants
between the shacks and the dunes - to act as a buffer
against further sprawl, Brett Myrdal, Manager of Table
Mountain National Park has a more controversial
proposition - housing. He wants to see “a middle class
community from the townships overlooking the
coastal area, and thus providing protection through
line-of-sight.” But he says,“environmentalists don't see
housing as part of a conservation solution.They see it
as a threat.” In the end, though, both may be right.
Across on the north side of the city, luxury houses
costing up to 3 million Rand ($400,000) jostle for an
unspoiled view over the beautiful coast and dunes
around the Blaauwberg Conservation Area (BCA).The
City planning department forecasts that 500,000
people, of all income brackets, will be living around the
BCA in the next 20 years or so.

Isoetes' last stand

The Edith Stephens Wetland Park, just outside Cape Town, is a humble 37-hectare patch of land bounded on
two sides by roads, and a township bursting at the seams, on the third.At the heart of the park is a 3.7 hectare
patch of seasonal wetland, donated to the city's Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens by an eccentric patron in the
1950's. It is the only surviving habitat on the planet for a kind of fern, Isoetes capensis. “The first response by
conservationists,” says Zwai Peter, the Park's communication officer, “was to fence it off to keep people out.
But fencing is ideal material for informal housing. It wouldn't have lasted two days.” Rather than keep local
people out, he explains, they looked for ways to get them involved in conservation in ways that were meaningful
to them.“We turned the question round,” he says,“asking: what are the social challenges that we can relate to
biodiversity?”

Employment was an obvious starting place. So, after painstaking consultation with local people, the project
recruited youth from the surrounding townships to clear the park of alien invasive species. An old farmhouse
was turned into an environmental education centre. A bird-watching hide was built, and children encouraged
to help monitor the birds, rather than hunt them. A medicinal garden has been planted with help from
traditional healers, featuring plants that can be found locally.There's even a picnic site, although alcohol is not
allowed.

“This used to be a dump site, and a place gangs would meet,” says Zwai Peter.“Now it is a place of tranquillity
and recreation. Local people realise they don't have to spend money to go to Table Mountain to see nature.”
With 300 visitors a week,” he says, “we're winning the battle; but we should be getting more.”

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Work/Space: a visual exploration
Yael Gerson Ugalde
It is perhaps not rare for anyone writing to experience
what is called 'writers block', which our 'trusted'
Wikipedia defines as a 'phenomenon involving
temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing,
usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity'. As a
PhD student in the process of 'writing up', this is an
ever present phenomenon. Recently, I announced such
a 'block' via Facebook, and got all sorts of helpful
advise: go for a run, have a cup of tea, get some fresh
air, and so on. All of them involved me tearing myself
away from my desk. But how could I? I should at least
pretend that I was working, even though I was secretly
procrastinating [on Facebook], catching up on the
latest episodes of Gossip Girl (it's all research), and
emailing other equally bored people stuck at work in
their offices. In fact, the architecture of 'my' office,
allows me to give the appearance of hard work-not
least because of the piles of books and papers I have
all around me (oh yes, the symbol of the academic),
but also because Warmington Tower, which houses the
Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College, used to
be a residential building (halls of residence to be
precise) which now, as offices, have become a series of
isolated boxes connected by a small hallway. It
resembles the 'traditional' corridor offices. But the
great thing about WT is its view. And in the midst of
my writers block, unable to watch Gossip Girl for fear
of being caught by Hannah (my office-mate), I looked
out the window.
In an email conversation with a friend, I asked him
about his workplace. Seeing as he has a rather
confidential job, I imagined work spaces where these
secretive and very important tasks would take place.
As it turns out, it was not a Bond film. But this got me
thinking about the intersection of work and space;
about the ways in which we construct our workplace
(through objects, photographs, plants) and how the
office space creates a working experience (through its
architecture). I remember walking along the South
Bank in London where many of the offices at street
are very 'open plan'. Here, it is no longer open plan
just within the office, but to the rest of London.Their
walls are made of glass, and as I gleefully pass those
offices, I smile to myself. It's not me in there…
working, but I see myself in many of those office
page 30
spaces. In a sense then, as Joe Moran describes, the
office describes both a building and a particular work
culture.
So how do people live those workspaces in their
everyday? What kinds of relationships do we have
with them? As I sit and write these lines from my
office in Warmington Tower - the tallest building in
Goldsmiths College - the howling wind distracts me. I
feel quite lucky for having one of the best views from
'the tower'. I can see most of the London landmarks,
from the emerging 'cheese grater' to Battersea Power
Station. But I could also tell you that from my window
I have the best view of Sainsbury's, Currys and Tops
Tiles by New Cross Gate Station. Do I look at the
distance because of some romanticized idea of
inspiration, or is it a work/space that I have
constructed? Henri Lefebvre holds that ‘social space is
a social product - the space produced in a certain
manner serves as a tool of thought and action. It is not
only a means of production but also a means of
control, and hence of domination/power’ and that
every society produces its own space. We are
constantly (re)defining our spaces and laying out our
spatial politics through the mundane su/objects of
daily life. As we become more interconnected, both
as subjects with objects, but also globally, workspace
throughout the world has become increasingly
standardized; it is subsumed into a global corporate
culture thereby creating a tension between globalised
sameness and local inequality.
Is there a way in which we can read this tension? In
sharing similar office spaces (physical and cultural) do
we create a different space through our everyday
practices? I wanted to see how people understand
and construct their work/space. For this, I sent an
email to some friends, asking them to send me a
picture of their work/space: the framing was open to
them; and they could add any comments about the
kind of work they do, their workplace and so on.The
idea was to collate images from different kinds of
work/space and see whether we could map a
homogenous office that becomes (or is becoming)
through our everyday presence resulting in an
appropriation of that space.
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The first response arrived 35 minutes after sending
the original email. Somehow, I don't know the person
who sent me this picture. Yes, I emailed J, and yes, I
must have had at some point some correspondence
with J (we are at least on the same mailing list), but I
didn't know who J was.This may sound irrelevant, but
upon reading the caption to his image, I wasn't sure
whether J was being sarcastic or honest. Here are his
picture and caption:
note, whilst I am very grateful to all who took time out
and sent me their pictures, I couldn't help but feel a
sense of idleness which this project interrupted.
“The everyday exists as a kind of 'residual deposit' that
lags behind the more glamorous,accelerated experiences of
contemporary society”
-Henri Lefebvre.

Tom y Al, Graphico, Designo, Notting Hill

“This is view from my desk.Top floor in Clerkenwell EC1. I

work for one of the worlds largest branding consultancies
and open space and outdoor light is essential within the
creative business, gives you ability to think freely!” -James

As you can see from the image, although the office

space fits into to the 'open plan' design, it doesn't
seem to me to be an 'open space', nor does it seem
to let in much 'outdoor light'. I don't know J, but from Martin’s office
reading his words and seeing his workspace, I have
begun to create an image of the kind of work/space in
creative consultancy in London. There is a MacBook
('creative'), Mr.T and a red Double Decker bus, a
dataroller, an 'ideas board', empty cups and classes, and
even some Marmite.This office space has slowly been
occupied by the mundane and bit by bit we make the
office 'ours'.

Here are a few more images for you. I have kept the
images as they were sent. Rather than translating their
spaces, I felt it best to show their framing and their
work/space as they constructed them. On a personal
And last but not least: my office!

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Strandline - beachcombing on the Greenwich Peninsula
Melissa Bliss
On 27 September 2008 people came down to the
foreshore on Greenwich Peninsula to beachcomb
after the high autumn tides. They arranged their finds
on the sands - by colour, shape or to create a picture:
This was Strandline, my collaborative art project.
From the high tide at noon until 6pm we encouraged
people onto the foreshore to beachcomb. There was
plenty of debris washed up onto the shore from the
high autumn tides.We created displays of our findings
in marked-out areas on the sand which would last for
the day then be carried away on the evening tide. We
found glass, pottery, bones, plastic, plants and wood,
some recent, some centuries old, and as we collected
we talked. Most people lived locally. Some had been
onto the foreshore before, some not.The foreshore is
an inbetween area - people are often unsure if they are
allowed onto it. At the Strandline site there is a waist
high railing but gaps at either end.The sands are often
used by people to walk dogs or look out over the
river. Lydia, a young girl, and her family made a face
with an aerosol can for a nose, chalk pebbles for eyes
and vegetation for hair. Sophie arranges objects in
rows by colour - a pantone chart of debris. Jes creates
glasshenge, an array of glass fragments standing upright
in the sand. Earlier in the week Jol, a local man, had
created a sculpture on the sands nearby, from debris
washed up on the shore. Looking like a marlin, the
curved back of the fish echoeds that of the Dome in
the distance.
My land or your land
Strandline's site is a microcosm of the complex
relations along the Thames. The riverbed and
foreshore to the high water mark is owned by the
Port of London Authority [PLA] which was given it in
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1857 by the Crown after a long-running dispute with
the City of London over the tidal river. The riverside
walkway - part of the Thames Path national trail - is
owned by English Partnerships, a regeneration public
body - which acquired 120 hectares of the peninsula
in 1997. The shore from the high water mark to the
riverside walkway has uncertain ownership but has
been claimed by Greenwich Yacht Club.
Ownership and rights over the foreshore in Britain
have long been fought over.The Crown owns the sea
bed up to the high water mark, with a few historical
exceptions. People have some common law rights to
access and to collect bait and fish but this is often
disputed by private landowners. On the peninsula,
English Partnership's redevelopment led to the
creation of a riverside path for pedestrians and
cyclists around the whole peninsula from Greenwich
in the west to the Thames Barrier. The riverside
walkway is well managed, with landscaping and
benches.You can walk past large sculptures by Richard
Wilson and Anthony Gormley. Public access to the
foreshore itself, however, has been denied, except of
the slipway accesible by vehicles on the west side. On
my last visit a group of Romanian men were filling a
van with scrap metal washed up by the tide.
Otherwise, it is all fenced off.
Strandline was part of Art in the Open - four artists creating new work
outdoors on the Greenwich Peninsula, commissioned by Stream
(formerly known as Independent Photography). It was part of Stream's
response to the Cultural Olympiad, the 2012 Olympics' four year arts
programme. Stream produces public and collaborative arts, working
with artists to create projects which are location specific and respond
to the characteristics of a place. Stream has its roots in the community
media movement of the 1970s and has been through several name
changes and relaunches since then. It is based on the Greenwich
Peninsula and works across the borough of Greenwich.. Melissa Bliss
(livingcinema.org); streamarts.org.uk; artintheopen.wordpress.com.
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Balkanising Taxonomy
Nela Milic
'Memories, whether individual or collective, are not static and frozen in time, but
are alive, rooted in the present as much as in the past, and linked to aspirations
as much as social experience.'
N. Sadig Al-Ali (2007), Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present

Context
This symposium/exhibition aimed to interrogate notions of Balkan identity, and
trouble the impulse to create a stable taxonomic account of the Eastern European
subject. Through the construction of protective preservation chambers (light-safe
boxes sewn out of black felt), fetishized Balkans can only be encountered through a
small peephole.Also, photographs of Balkan people are placed in glass jars, to ensure
that they are not physically handled by the viewing public. The voyeuristic impulse
hidden behind the project of preservation is exposed, where the boxes and jars
claim to protect the objects from light and decay, but instead contribute to widening
the gap between the (Western) self and (Balkan) other. The labels which
accompanied the garments and photographs contain a mixture of factual and
imagined information, once more calling into question the taxonomic urge, and
highlighting the problematic process at work behind studying and representing the
other. Through the methods of conservation employed in this project, which
intensify the relationship between the merging of scientific and absurd classification
practices, the curators hoped to contribute visually to the already vast field of study
which questions the space from which the Balkan subject is formed.

Exhibition narrative
This exhibition poses many questions in relation to the impulse to collect Balkan
artefacts.The collector subject is mediating the relationship between East and West
by manipulating the framework within which the textiles are presented, and hence
directs the dialogue and tension between two worlds. In this dichotomy, however,
the curator can expose the paradigm s/he works from as a positionality, but also as
a fragile space within which the objects are captured.

Her/his narrative is formed by grouping, and by creating an identity of Balkanness,

recognisable nowadays by conflicts. The impulse to taxonomize is justified by
questioning the impulsiveness of others and is constructed as a binary - archiving
against chaotic existence. In this argument, wild Balkan objects play the role of the
other. If the audience is led through the understanding of this via labelling, division
and distance, they are not engaging with the objects in an active and creative way.
Curators are interpreting the objects as violated by navigation and want to put their
perception on an equal footing with the choosers and the viewers, so the
misconceptions of the Balkans do not continue.

They believe that the desire of the collector to protect against decay is often
wrapped up in the fear of the other and s/he expresses that by trying to contain, to
tame the objects, but that disables her/himself from understanding them. The
process of classification, however comforting, cannot last.The nature of objects on
show is inherent. They live through the cultures they were formed in, and as that
society progresses, transforming itself into various shapes, they start to slip out
from the domestic environment into the public realm. If classified, they become
invisible and the slippage incomprehensible, but if left to live as they are, they might
provide more than data: a snippet of history.

www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/balkanising-taxonomy

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Signs of the City: Young People's Photographic
Imaginary of the European Metropolis
Alison Rooke
London Conference Report
The Signs of the City conference took place at the
Goethe Institute, in Kensington, London on the 4th
October 2008. This one day event organised by
CUCR in partnership with urban dialogues bought
together students, educationalists, artists,
practitioners and academics working in the area of
cultural education, media and pedagogy, visual arts,
urban studies, languages and European studies to
explore a cross-disciplinary perspective on
participatory arts practice with a particular focus on
young people's urban culture. The conference,
together with an exhibition at Watermans arts
centre in West London marked the end of the
eighteen month long London Signs of the City project.
It was part of a month long series of conferences and
exhibitions in four participating cities: Berlin, London,
Sofia and Barcelona.
After introductions by Karl Pfeiffer (Goethe Institute
London) and Uta Staiger (urban dialogues) Michael
Keith (CUCR) opened up the conference with a
keynote address which set the scene for the day.
Michael’s paper discussed how cities are changing so
rapidly in a global process of re-invention that the
city can become a stranger to itself. In this context
photography offers the possibility of mediating the
relationship between urban practices of visioning and
re-invention and the ways in which we inhabit cities
at the level of everyday routine praxis. Multi- media
participatory arts projects such as Signs of the City
use this possibility of photography to investigate the
ways young people inhabit and imagine their place in
cities today. This in turn tells us about young peoples
sense of, place, of neighbourhood and their 'right to
the city. Michael discussed how the project works
to disrupt the deceptively simple stories of young
people, identity and contemporary urbanism
circulating today. At its best the project displays the
sort of Relational Aesthetics identified with Bourriaud,
a theorist who, in foregrounding the interplay of
urbanism, curation and aesthetics has opened up arts
practice in the last decade.
page 34
The first panel of the day on Young People, Cities and
Citizenship included a paper by Ben Gidley from
CUCR entitled Young citizens: local inflections of the
global. This paper, based on a series of research
projects conducted at CUCR, some of which used
visual and media-based methods, explored emerging
forms of multiculture among young people in urban
South London. Ben discussed how these forms are
shaped by global cultural corporate culture while at
the same time being intensely local, rooted in
neighbourhoods - they are simultaneously hybrid and
creole. Graham Jeffrey from the School of Media,
Languages and Music at the University of the West of
Scotland's paper offered some reflections on his
extensive work on the discourses of learning and
inclusion in informal performing arts projects with
young people. Graham set out many of the strengths
of participatory arts, the ways that they are
profoundly social and often validating to young
people and placing their voices in a wider social
context. Graham's paper was followed by a
presentation by Mónica Segura Márquez, a Berlin-
based artist who ran several workshops in Berlin as
part of the Signs of the City Project. Monica presented
a short film which illustrated some of the central
motifs in her work which aims to offer a process
whereby young people learn to see the city through
fresh eyes, discover aspects of the city that they pass
over in their daily routines.
After lunch the discussion turned to visualising
contemporary urbanism. In a session chaired by
Rudolf Netzelmann (from Zukunftsbau/urban
dialogues, Berlin), Gillian Rose, a leading theorist in
visual methodologies, gave a paper entitled
Photographs of/as Urban Identity which questioned
some of the assumptions about photograph’s
creators that are often employed by social scientists.
Fiona Fieber, from Space media in Hackney, London,
reflected on her experience as Head of
Collaborations at Space media which was founded in
May 1968. Fiona reflected on the organisation’s
development and its current place in the in the
changing cultural landscape of collaborative and
participatory arts, and the spatial changes to
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Hackney as an Olympic borough. Alison Rooke from
CUCR discussed the challenges presented by
Evaluating the Signs of the City project, reflecting on
the ways in which the process of engagement is as
significant as the images produced and the projects
legacy, the Citipix web platform. She then discussed
the photographs produced in the project and the
ways in which the images are understood as
semiotics, art and sociological statements.
The final session focused on participative arts
practice. The session was chaired by Britt Hatzius
an artists and member of CUCR. The first paper was
by Aida Sanchez from the University of Barcelona
entitled The Politics of Collaboration in Signs of the City
- the challenge is the asset. It examined some of the
relational and organisational aspects of collaborative
arts project such as Signs of the City.This paper placed
the project in the broader context of cultural
policies aimed at the creation of concensus and
symbolic identification with notions of 'citizenship'
or 'community'. Aida examined some of the
negotiations, debates and tensions that characterise
collaborative projects. Rather than see these as
flaws, she discussed the ways that these are at the
core of such projects and therefore need to be part
of the way such projects are represented and
evaluated. Douglas Nicholson, one of the artists who
ran one of the Signs of the City workshops in
Hackney, London gave a paper Participatory
Photographic Methods. He discussed the diverse
settings he has carried out such work in and the
ways that photography can be used in areas as varied
as health, heritage and community development.
Melissa Bliss, also a London artist, presented her
work which uses mobile devices in youth arts
projects such as Signs of the City, BBC Blast and
FreqOut .
Considered together the mix of panellists, their
different disciplinary approaches together, with
engaging questions from the floor led to a stimulating
day where artists, academics and educationalists
together considered some of the dilemmas and
opportunities raised by participative and
collaborative arts practice and the social and political
contexts in which this kind of work takes place.
These discussions included the extent to which
projects are participative or collaborative and the
balance of power in deciding where participation
begins and ends. Also, the requirements of funders
and the social contexts in which such practices are
currently being commissioned and the ways in which
participatory photography connects matters of
aesthetics, lived experience and social processes.
The conference was a welcome opportunity to
come together to discuss the ethical, political,
pedagogical and aesthetic dimensions of socially
engaged photographic practice across a variety of
sites.
To conclude, engaging projects such as Signs of the
City speak to our understanding of young peoples
conditions of inhabiting the contemporary
metropolis in language mediated by the visual
practises and performances of the photographic. In
Berlin, Barcelona, London and Sofia artists worked
with young people through the medium of the
photograph and in many ways curated both their
neighbourhoods and representations of the city at
large.The signs of the city they produced are more
complex than those found in simplistic geographical
tropes of the city as a playground, a site of danger
or governmentality. In this way the project provided
powerful axes through which the research project
intervened in urban form, identity and space
mediated by very different experiments in
photographic practice. Conventional tropes of the
four cities were reconfigured by these alternative
curations; the hidden disclosed, the visible
reconfigured.
Thanks to Michael Keith for his input into this article.
The conference has received generous support from the
Delegation to the United Kingdom of the Government of
Catalonia and the Institute Ramon Llull. It has also been
supported by the Catalan Institute for the Cultural
Industries (ICIC) in London, and the Spanish Embassy
London.
Signs of the City was initiated by Berlin-based youth art
organization urban dialogues (www.urbandialogues.de). It
has been carried out with the support of the Culture
Programme of the European Union, the Capital Cultural
Fund Berlin, the Institute of Culture of the City of
Barcelona, the British Council Berlin, the Spanish Embassy
in Berlin, and SONY. It works in collaboration with the
Goethe-Institutes in Sofia, Barcelona and London.
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Signs of the City: Photographic Workshop

Campbell works
Campbell Works is the collaboration between artists Neil Taylor
and Harriet Murray. Since 1997 Taylor and Murray's practice
has extended to include curating an exhibition program at their
artist run gallery and project space in East London, initiating
new participatory art projects and creating collaborations with
artists, scientists, local authorities, and other organization.They
encompass an eclectic attitude to cross-disciplinary
approaches, placing value on the experience, process and risk
taking involved in collaborative projects. For Signs of the City
they ran a workshop at the Wilhelm-Von-Turk-Schule (School)
for children with varying degrees of hearing and speaking
impairment in Potsdam near Berlin in April 2008.
(www.campbellworks.org)
The project kicked off at the Arts and Education Lab
(AEL) in autumn 2007 at the House of Cultures of
the World (HKW) in Berlin. It was an exciting three
days with a packed programme of presentations,
open debate, speed dating and intellectual duelling.
The emphasis was for all participating artists,
technicians, directors and facilitators to meet and get
to know each other through developing key issues
involved within the project. Many hours were spent
discussing different aspects of the project from
ethical and international legal issues to the projects
technical implementation. We collectively explored
the function of the public website (www.citipix.net)
and its usability for the young photographers. The
question hanging was how, in a relatively short
period of time, could you maximise the creative
output of a group of individuals that you have never
met before, while at the same time ensuring that the
experience be meaningful and not just an exercise in
speed teaching and photo extraction.
We discussed the possibility with the initiators of the
project Urban Dialogues of including deaf
participants, intrigued by the idea of working with a
group that may potentially have a very different
relationship or unique experience with the city
environment. Following on from research
undertaken for a previous Campbell Works project
titled MindMine, (2006), we wanted to explore how
perceptions can vary for the hearing impaired, and
which if any of the other senses are enhanced to take
on the role of the missing sensory input. Hearing is
part of our communication system along with sight,
so, do deaf people see the world differently? And
what in the urban landscape attracts their attention?
Do they see details and notice more incidental
moments that get missed through the audio clutter
of our cities?
Our methodology
Our approach was to try and explore the possibility
of communicating largely through pictures and
actions. With the projects focus on photography we
were interested in creating an approach that would
allow the participants a rewind from digital
technologies back to the birth of photography, the
aim being to inform their thinking by creating a
dialogue between the photographer and the
instrument of image capture. In order to retain
mobility we developed a portable darkroom that can
be transported and erected almost anywhere, and
used to develop large format black and white images
in the 'field'.

We were given the opportunity to determine our

own framework for delivery and through the A&E lab
we developed the embryo of an idea. By exploring
the inherent core values within the project that lay
beyond the pictorial surface of the website, we asked
what was the inner heart of the project that excited
us? Assuming that one of the aims of Signs of the City
was to take a snapshot of city life seen through the
eyes of Europe's youth, then, as many different
representatives should be included as possible. The
range of participating countries was as good as the
finance would allow and the groups seemed fairly
diverse in their catchments. But none included young
people with a recognised disability.

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The Workshop
The 15 students were very quick on the uptake and
eager to engage in the project. Using fundamental
analogue principles, they constructed large format
pinhole cameras from found cardboard boxes. With
a digital camera in one hand and their pinhole
camera in the other they set out to explore their
surroundings. As they began returning to the
darkroom 'base camp' they learnt how to develop
and fix their images. In the glowing red darkness of
the developing tent, the pinhole negatives were
transformed into positive composite images. The
students began overlaying cut paper stencils onto
their negatives, immediately creating new signage and
narratives. We were also able to create a wonderful
juxtaposition of technologies by attaching a GPS
device to the cardboard cameras to log and map the
'globally positioned situations' of the pinhole
exposures.
Examining their results they assessed the pros and
cons of 150 years of technological advancement as
they struggled with long exposure times and
cardboard camera shake. It quickly became apparent
that their focus was largely on portraiture,
photographing each other within familiar
surroundings.We realised that for them, and perhaps
all teenagers, the most immediate and interesting
subjects are friends. There was also an element of
hesitation. To walk around the city or stand in a
public space next to a strange cardboard box and
not feel self-conscious is hard. You have to be very
keen or oblivious not to be mildly embarrassed, and
for a group of young people who do not generally
want to draw attention to themselves there were
issues for some, about the spectacle of an often
extremely long exposure and being seen carrying the
cardboard cameras.
The participating photographers were as mixed in
their creative interests and skills as any group of 15
teenagers. But, the emotional perceptions and speed
at which the students gathered information from
their surroundings seemed significantly faster than
those of us who rely on our ears, and their ability to
assimilate learning was impressive. Many of our
projects involve the creation of disorientating
environments, and during these workshops the
students' reliance on their visual communication
systems was severely hampered when they worked
within the darkroom tent. This loss of
communication systems, both verbal and visual,
strangely created an atmosphere of calm, a kind of
'lost at sea' feeling for all involved. As artists we were
working within a communicative environment that
was alien to us, and now, the participants were
experiencing it too. By removing the ability to
communicate through conventional channels, they
were forced to learn from each other's actions and
encouraged to take risks even if it meant making
mistakes. By dissolving the conversational
communication systems, including signing, the
framework allowed for the creation of new imagery
within an experimental platform, where practical
activity became the form of communication. The
imagery the photographers produced is beautiful,
compelling and ethereal, and their upload selection
will remain as a legacy to the project, and easily
speak for itself, but we hope a deeper legacy is left in
the students ability to question, learn from and act
on their actions and imaginations, as they did during
the five days we had the pleasure to be with them.
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Landmarks of cut, gaze and fiction for a Distant

Landscape: On the photographs of Sachiyo Nishimura
Soledad García

Selecting three different city sceneries within distant
vision and condensed through a breadth of natural
landscape, Sachiyo Nishimura seems to portray the
apparent uniform and familiar urban topography. At
first glance, the photographs evidently contain
references to the city features; nevertheless the
recognition of the specific locations remains partial.
Time becomes essential not only for the identification
of the diverse pieces, but also for the detection of
repetition, the condition of iteration and the spatial
activation through discreet measurements and
continual extensions.
In a panoramic view, the nine photograph pieces of
Sachiyo Nishimura reveal the constant and exact
interruption visibly in its intercalate format, exposing
the first explicit traces of her cutting system. The
second and implicit trace regards the several
horizontal, vertical and oblique grids acting as
landmarks that indicate the complex construction of
the entire landscape. Both outside and inner
cuttingsconform to the logic of multiple manipulations
based on a meticulous programme of reconstruction.
Under the processes of overlapping, addition and the
effects of mirror image, the initial unification of the
photographs are displaced as fragments, the scales are
altered, and the surfaces retouched in maximum grey
saturation, leaving the impression of an excessive flat
city un-inhabited.

If London City Airport, Ventanas and Docklands, the

One of the crucial elements explored in the series of
three initial photographs of this Distant Landscape have
photographs regards the sources of tension: the layers
something in common, it is the archetype of non-
of intersections and the reiterative oppositions. Yet
places. As the anthropologist Marc Augé once
more than a system of coordinates, the different
described, “the space of non-place creates neither
landmarks - grids, signs and urban structures subtly
singular identity nor relations; only solitude, and
emphasized not a real mapping, but the construction
similitude”(Augé, 1995). Addressing states of
of fiction. Some questions arise. Why persist with the
impersonality and sameness, the complete nine pieces
effects of illusion? Is it the only residue of non-places´
puzzle organized by Nishimura seem to reinforce the
spaces? What kind of game might appear on the
notion of non-places to gloomy excess. Nevertheless,
interference between pieces of non-places and its
while signs and urban structures are replicated,
construction towards fiction? Rather than a simple
juxtaposed and extended to an overabundance of
tautology, Distant Landscape keeps an ambivalent
miniature forms and shapes, the sober natural
position; a puzzle that still can be prolonged in an
landscape draws our ubiquitous concentration.
unlimited projection.
Mediated by the attraction of the punctum the
photographs reveal the play of motion between the
Augé, Marc (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthology of
close and distant gaze; the parallel differences and the Supermodernity, Pubilshed by Verso.
decisive fictional territory suspended on the purity of Sachiyo Nishimura Photography: www.snishimura.com
its surroundings.

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The Invisible Man, The Invisible City
On the photographs of Santiago Escobar
Kimberly Keith
The reflection in my photos is the invisible layer that divides
the real from the unreal, war from peace. Is the reflection
in the mirror, in the image and in the question: which is the
image? Who is the subject? Where is the hope?...
Santiago Escobar
Reflection has multiple meanings and interpretations -
an image thrown back, as if from a mirror that is either
literal or metaphorical; a correspondence to
something because of its influence, such as a rise in
consciousness resulting from the contemplation of
injustice, perhaps symbolically depicted through
photography; or a deep thought, and the ideas and
expressions that spring forth from it. The work of
Santiago Escobar encompasses each aspect of
reflection described above.
The photographs selected for The Invisible Man, The
Invisible City exhibition come from a body of work that
has been evolving over a five year period. Escobar has
spent time in reflection upon the circumstances of his
native Colombia, the state of affairs in the cities and in
the countryside, and the nature of space and place in
his adopted city of London. Each image on display
contains symbols which create metaphors about the
condition of the city and its, often unintended,
inhabitants. The toy soldiers represent guerrillas,
paramilitary groups and army forces that have caused
the displacement of millions from rural areas of
Colombia into the cities; for the displaced person, they
are a symbol of power and aggression as well as a
Move-on, Lond-on
potent reminder of all that was lost in their enforced
flight to the metropolis. Plastic toy soldiers evoke
notions of play and present an allusion to the idea that
war, whether based in the cocaine fields of Colombia
or in the desert of Iraq, is just a game to those who
move the pieces around the board. The miniature
army assembles on an escalator in a tube station to
symbolize the violence inherent in the daily waves of
chaos contained within that very station. A reflection
on these symbols gives way to an exploration of the
uncanny, whereby familiar and unfamiliar elements of
the metaphor cause discomfort on the part of the
viewer; yet rather than rejecting the object, the viewer
is encouraged to engage with the material on a deeper
level. This is due to Escobar's literal use of reflection
on the surface of his photographs - which are so
glossy that the viewer becomes an element within the
image - and due to his minimalist distillation of the
figurative elements of each composition, which both
accentuates what is present and enhances the negative
space in each photograph.
Provocative imagery encourages the viewer to make
meaning from the object based on their own
subjectivity and has the potential to create change
within the individual. The uncanny, in concert with
literal and figurative reflection, compels the viewer to
decipher the layers of meaning inherent in Escobar's
work. An exploration for which they will be richly
rewarded.
Abajo del Mar encima el Amor
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REVIEWS
The Politics of Hope
Will Davis
“Not summer's bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar
night of icy darkness and hardness”. So concluded Max
Weber in his famous lecture, Politics as a Vocation, given in
Munich in 1918. Weber harboured political ambitions, but
with slogans like that it is perhaps unsurprising that they
were somewhat under-fulfilled.
“While we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with
cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we
will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit
of a people: yes we can”. So concluded a very different
speech in Chicago, ninety years later, from a rather more
successful politician.
How should sociology respond to the phenomenon of
hope, especially where it manifests itself politically? This was
the question posed at a Friday evening seminar at
Goldsmiths with Ruth Levitas and Les Back, The Politics of
Hope. Whether it was the fortunate coincidence of the
seminar occurring days after Obama's victory, or the
intriguingly expansive title (quite aside from the venerable
speakers!), the event drew an impressively large and
engaged audience.
The Obama victory was never far from either speaker's
presentation or the discussion that followed. It transpired
that they had been planning such an event for some time,
and it was never intended as a response to the American
elections.And yet that now-iconic image of Obama's face in
red, blue and cream, above the letters HOPE, inevitably
flashed up on the screen more than once.
Ruth Levitas contends that sociology has allowed its
political and moral agenda to become submerged, and it
needs to be brought to the surface once more. It is
inadequate to leave hope as some metaphysical or
psychological entity, free of content or political reason.
What do we hope for, she asks? Sociology must rediscover
its political agenda. For Levitas, at least, this involves the
resuscitation of socialist utopian politics (New Labour came
off particularly badly from her presentation). The alliance
between sociology and utopian politics is a comfortable one
as far as Levitas is concerned. Both share common traits - a
holistic social vision, a normative programme and
institutional specificity.
page 40
Les Back's concerns are somewhat different. He talked
about the possibility for an 'ethnography of hope' to
uncover the practices and objects that carry hope in the
present. Back introduced the all-important distinction
between hope and optimism, whereby hope is cognisant of
the damaged nature of the world, while optimism operates
blindly. He referenced Gramsci here, for whom hope
transcended the opposition between optimism and
pessimism. My mind is pessimistic but my will is optimistic,
wrote Gramsci.
What neither speaker seemed to accept was the form of
hope that we are familiar with from the Frankfurt School,
who in turn were mindful of Weber's “polar night of icy
darkness and hardness”. Adorno and Horkheimer's famous
proclamation “the task to be accomplished is not the
conservation of the past, but the redemption of the hopes
of the past” is a deeply pessimistic one, but still a hopeful
one. Enlightenment (a word, incidentally, that was not used
once during the seminar) lies both very far behind us and
very far ahead of us. For Back especially, an ethnography of
hope would aim to challenge this tragic historicity, and root
utopia firmly in the present and everyday. The Obama
victory is real and it is now, and represents a challenge to
sociological fatalism.
But what struck me, as the discussion was unfolding, was
that the temporality of Obama's hope bears some
resemblance to the dialectical 'hopeless hope' of the
Frankfurt School. Was it not the hopes of America's
founders that Obama was pledging to honour? But when?
The riddle of America - Enlightenment's 'practical
experiment' - is that the distinction between hope and
optimism becomes invisible. Are the moon-landings a cause
for hope or for optimism? Perhaps Obama's genius, like the
best Presidents before him, is to fuse the two concepts
together. But it would take a particularly pragmatist variant
of European sociology to follow him down this path.
Collapsing hope into technological optimism will not do, but
nor will allowing it to become divorced from politics
altogether. The challenge posed by The Politics of Hope
seminar is to conceive of hope that is neither pragmatist
nor tragic, but political and critical. For Levitas this would
involve greater clarity of political demands. For Back, it
requires more sensitivity to the everyday practices and
materiality of lived hope. “Not summer's bloom lies ahead
of us”, but there is every reason for sociologists to take
hope seriously nevertheless.
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Too Far South Exhibition Review

Paul Halliday

For the last four years graduating students on the MA imaginations; and for our former head of CUCR Michael
Photography and Urban Cultures have insisted on having a Keith whom we lose to Oxford University. Of Michael, it is
collective exhibition, based on a theme and a venue of their no exaggeration to say that had he not run the extra mile
choice. This year, the group returned to the APT Gallery in (or marathon) over the development, validation and
Deptford, an engaging space with a history of supporting resourcing of this programme; conversations between
local, international and emerging artists. When I use the artists, photographers and urbanists, may have still been
term 'insisted', I use it in the sense that the momentum for ongoing in London cafes about just how wonderful it would
the show always comes from within the student body itself, be to set up an interdisciplinary programme in photography
rather than Goldsmiths academics. We were and are, of and urban cultures. Instead, thanks in large measure to the
course, delighted to support the show and consider the vision and engagement of some key urban researchers and
event to be an important rite of passage and defining theorists, we have the real thing.
moment within the student experience of studying urban
photography at the college. The exhibition is not assessed
as a constituent part of the MA, but rather reflects how
course members work collectively in the pursuit of extra-
curricular curatorial experience, public engagement, and the
imperative that flows in the blood of many artists - the need
to 'put stuff out there' - in order to receive critical feedback
and increase awareness of their work. Around 400 people
attended the opening, and over 1000 people came to see
the exhibition.

It is an understatement to observe that colleagues at CUCR

have provided a level of intellectual and practical support
that directly contributed to the programme being
developed and established as a global first. The course is
certainly not an 'easy option' for any graduate
photographer, artist or social scientist to undertake,
combining as it does, urban and social theory,
interdisciplinary studies and the possibility of immersive
visual practice. What we can now reflect on, seven years
down the line since the course started, is that many of our
graduates have gone on to win major international visual
arts prizes including The Jerwood, Bloomberg (this year's
recipient is Manual Vasquez) and Saatchi awards. Other
graduates have progressed onto doctoral programmes at
Goldsmiths and other leading universities, or are now
running BA photography programmes in the UK or in their
countries of origin. Some follow entirely unexpected routes
that draw on their programme experiences. In other words,
the programme is making an impact and raising key
questions about how interdisciplinary programmes might
best work.

I would like to thank all of the exhibition participants for

having been such a positive and hard-working group this
year; for the Goldsmiths MFA Curating team for their
creativity, vision and perseverance; my departmental Curator Wiebke Gronemeyer and Paul Halliday at the Too Far South
colleagues for their sociological and administrative exhibition seminar. Photo Credit: Manuel Vasquez

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Seeing the Invisible Noir:
Dirty Pretty Things
Michael Edema Leary
Three disparate yet related things happened in November
2008 that suggest it is apposite to revisit a film that was
controversial when released but which provides a
sophisticated reading of London in the early 21st century.
First, Dirty Pretty Things (Frears 2002) was aired on Channel
4. Second, ID cards started to be issued to overseas
nationals and airport workers. Third, London Mayor Boris
Johnson called for an amnesty for all British migrants
working illegally. Soon after the film was released the
frenzied moral panic about asylum seekers was peaking,
until knocked off the tabloid agenda by the Iraq war. The
film was controversial when released and still provokes
strong positive and negative reactions. It weaves together
with great aplomb complex elements of the material,
imagined, live, surveiled and (immigration) policed city. The
inner London location filming adds credibility which
counters the somewhat implausible, though tense and
engaging plot. Cinema has long influenced our perception of
the modern city even to the extent of producing the city
(Clarke 1997 and Shiels & Fitzmaurice 2001). Many reviews
of Dirty Pretty Things have been written but I want to
concentrate, first on some misconceptions and then on its
neo noir (Schwartz 2005) credentials, which affect the
manner in which it portrays divergent yet proximate
aspects of the city big condition in a globalised neo liberal
political economy.
Many reviewers (including some who should know better,
e.g. Bradshaw 2002) talk of the main characters (the
moralistic Nigerian Okwe and his friend/girlfriend Turkish
pretty virginal Senay) in derogatory terms as 'illegal
immigrants'. They are not and even if they are, the term
'undocumented migrant' is less loaded and does not pander
so much to prejudice. They are both refugees seeking
political asylum under the Geneva Convention and Okwe
the Nigerian doctor in particular, clearly has a good case. If
his story is to be believed, and his integrity is at times
overpowering, he faces mortal danger if repatriated. A
moral point of the whole plot points to the injustice of
those seeking asylum not being allowed to work whilst their
case is under consideration. It's the material need for food
and shelter which drags them into the sordid and dangerous
underbelly of London. The fictitious Baltic Hotel is not
seedy, as some reviewers state. It is clearly, even for viewers
who not know London, in a smart district and is an elegant,
plush place with a Ritz lookalike (Russian) doorman. For
those who know London it could be one of the many
upmarket hotels in Westminster, Kensington or Chelsea.
The hotel is in fact in the vicinity of Whitehall (photo).The
plush upmarket quality of the hotel combined with the flash
Mercedes driving affluence of Señor Juan, a shift manager, is
page 42
juxtaposed with the poverty, desperation and squalor in
other city districts. Its subdued relaxing lighting (the hotel
reception area is actually Wandsworth town hall) contrasts
jarringly with the over lit shops, hospital pharmacy and the
ghostly dimness of the mortuary.
Some reviewers are confused by the film's title or think it
relates simply to Okwe and his Turkish friend/girlfriend - the
pretty - counterpoised against the obnoxious crooked and
dirty Señor Juan. It certainly refers to the comment by Juan
that, “They come to hotels in the night to do dirty things.
And in the morning, it's our job to make things look pretty
again”. Historians of the city will note the 21st century
visual aesthetic twist of the 19th century modernist
imperative to scrub the dirty city clean. The dark dirty
timbre of the film is lifted skilfully by Frears and scriptwriter
Steven Knight's periodic insertion of humour, as when after
one harrowing incident Juliet jokes,“What a pair! The virgin
and the whore.” A macabre visual joke has Juan carrying an
organ transport case that is revealed to contain exquisite
expensive truffles.
Far from being saintly or innocent, Stephen Frears and
Steven Knight along with superb performances by Chiwetel
Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo (Juliet, the
pretty exuberant sex worker) and Sergi López (of Señor
Juan) imbue a noir good/bad ambivalence in all the main
characters. Okwe sinks to the depraved level Señor Juan,
who runs a, human organs for sale racket, when he finally
performs an operation in the hotel. Juan, though grotesquely
contemptible, does after all provide access to employment
for distressed people in genuine need.The title then is a play
on the traditional noir dark/light, good/evil motif inherent in
the same character/city (Naremore 2008). The film is not
full of the dominant noir elements: chiaroscuro lighting,
heavy black shadow, especially across faces, reflection,
Venetian blinds and naturalistic night filming. Nor does the
film contain a true femme fatal, although the leading female
characters, sex worker and refugee, are far from passive
victims. That said, one of the defining moments of the film,
when Okwe agrees to do the operation, has his face half
drenched in heavy black shadow that could be straight out
of the 1940s. The moment captures all the anxious
ambivalence of a character tortured by the knowledge of
his ultimate moral compromise, it captures too the
ambivalence of the city that coerces the fall from grace of
even the morally strong: a fall that results not just from the
insidious temptations of Juan but also the necessity to
protect Senay. Dirty Pretty Things is in the mould of such neo
noir classics as Chinatown and more recently Sin City which
reveal the all pervading corruption of the city and how
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street signs : spring 2009
those trapped there survive ultimately through moral and
bodily compromise.
The multicultural London of Dirty Pretty Things is located in
an environmentally degraded London of: street markets
(Ridley Road market in Dalston E8), high rise social housing
blocks, overcrowded NHS hospitals, decrepit malfunctioning
bedsits, incredibly brightly lit all night shops, textile
sweatshops and Chinatown, where “the immigration police
dare not go”.These locales provide relatively safe haven for
all kinds of overseas newcomers trapped by a political
economy that squeezes them between paranoid state
bureaucracy and exploitative markets and individuals. The
'no work rule' means that Senay is hounded continually by
the ‘immigration police’ - the sinister Immigration
Enforcement Directive. Frears is too good a director to depict
the immigration ramifications in an overly sentimental or
one sided way. There is active resistance, self help and
mutual support within the unlikely networks of newcomer
and Londoner but society's prejudice comes to the aid of
the characters too. Okwe knows and navigates the city with
ease. His intimate knowledge of the city resembles that of
the classic noir detectives (e.g. in The Big Sleep and Kiss Me
Deadly). His street knowledge is due to his day time taxi
driving (the office is a real taxi cab office in Southwark
Street SE1). At crucial moments, like the noir detective,
Okwe is rendered invisible or simply acceptable, by the
preconceptions of mainstream society. In a hospital scene
he must acquire drugs for the unfortunate victim of botched
surgery. He does so through the simple devise of donning a
green overall, accessing the hospital pharmacy with ease,
mop in hand: i.e. Blacks are cleaners.
Another preoccupation of film noir surfaces in Dirty Pretty
Things: entering and leaving the city, most noticeable in: The
Maltese Falcon and Out of the Past, the neo noir A Rage in
Harlem and sci noir Blade Runner.The big noir city corrupts
the newcomer inexorably, often fatally. If the protagonist is
lucky the magnet that attracts, also repels before complete
disaster entails.The tragedy for the refugee is that they can't
leave the city, it provides for their basic needs. To leave is
often to invite rural danger and deprivation, most shockingly
evident in the recent Morecombe Bay cockle pickers'
drowning. That Okwe and Senay manage to leave the city,
tearing apart their nascent love affair is tragic, that their
leaving is resourced by their capitulation to the forces of
evil, resisted at first, speaks to the power of the city. Dirty
Pretty Things achieves what all good cinematic city flicks
should. It confirms the audience's city knowledges, allowing
us some comfort in the cinema seat, but simultaneously it
has us squirming by challenges our preconceptions, making
visible that which is unseen or ignored. Dirty Pretty Things is
powerful, tragi/comic and compelling city story telling: not
as unremittingly grim and humourless as Eastern Promises,
where the despicable lurks behind the elegant Georgian
façade, nor as seamlessly complex as Crash (2004).That film
ends with the release from a white van of a group of pitiful
Chinese workers trafficked into Los Angeles; mirroring the
rhetorical question put by Okwe's friend, the intelligent
sardonic British Chinese mortuary assistant. Referring to an
unidentified Chinese male corpse he wonders, “maybe he's
from the back of a truck?” ID cards for 'foreign' nationals
signal the British state's simplistic understanding about
where danger lies in the city. Johnson's call for an amnesty
reflects the London's appetite for cheap manual labour;
resistance within the Conservative Party highlights the
political dilemma. Dirty Pretty Things continues the cinematic
city compulsion to the see the intricacies of the material
imagined city.
References
Bradshaw, P. 2002 (13 December), "Dirty Pretty Things", The
Guardian
Clarke, D. (ed) 1997,The Cinematic City, Routledge, London.
Naremore, J. 2008, More than night: film noir in its contexts,
University of California Press, Berkeley.
Schwartz, R. 2005, Neo-Noir: From Psycho to Collateral,
Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD.
Shiel, M. & Fitzmaurice,A. (eds) 2001, Cinema and the City: film and
urban societies in a global context, Blackwell, Oxford.
page 43
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street signs : spring 2009
An impromptu review of the Vital Signs conference
Alex Rhys-Taylor and Charlotte Bates
The context: Alex and Charlotte attended the Vital Signs:
Researching Real Life conference in Manchester where
they both presented papers on their current work. The
following review of the conference is a conversation
recorded while sat on a train, waiting for it to depart from
Manchester back to London. Given that they had already
missed the train they were supposed to get, and that the
next train got cancelled (leaving two trains worth of people
crammed onto one) the conversation was recorded by two
weary sociologists in a cramped environment surrounded
by irritable people.The effects of these conditions, however,
were to a degree mitigated by ready mixed cans of gin and
tonic.
Charlotte: So, Vital Signs!
Alex: Vital Signs.
Charlotte: Do you want to talk about things?
Alex: Things were a really big part of this conference,
weren't they?
Charlotte:Yes, there were a lot of things.
Alex: Tim Ingold's Things. Tim gave the first plenary
paper and it was based around a shift in his thinking
from 'objects' to 'things...' 'things' being a coming
together and 'meshwork' of other 'things'. Tim talked
about the etymology of the word 'thing,' which he said
was originally, in Scandinavian languages, conceived of
as a gathering, or a 'happening.' Then he related 'things'
to his re-working of the Deleuzian concept, A Body
Without Organs (BWO) which he had reformed as The
Environment Without Objects (EWO). He drew a big
spider diagram to represent it on a white board. It was
magnificent, but it would have been better if he'd got
the black board he apparently requested. But it was
still fantastic; it was really good to hear him talk about
relatively novel concepts in such an old-school fashion.
I also very much liked Carol Smart's Reflections on
methods: Contemporary challenges for sociological
approaches. I respond very well to calls to do more
thick description and her call to make the data do the
talking, because its something I feel comfortable doing.
Its good to hear someone asking for more of that,
especially because its something I think I can do.
page 44
Charlotte:What was the reference she made?
Alex: She quoted a long excerpt from Young & Wilmot,
Kinship and Family in East London. It was the very first
sociological monograph I ever read, when I was doing
my A-Level in sociology, and it was all about Bethnal
Green. Then maybe 5 or 6 years after I read that, I
moved to Bethnal Green, and now I'm doing an
ethnography in the same streets, and in the thick
descriptive style that was being commended. So that
resonated a lot with me.
Charlotte:There was definitely resonance.
Alex: I was resonating so hard I thought I might
shatter. Anita Wilson, she might have been my
favourite presenter in the entire conference, with “Is
that Escape your wearing miss? A synaesthetic approach
to researching everyday prison life.”
Charlotte: I think you'd better tell us about the Radox
and the toothpaste.
Alex: Well Anita's research, it seems to be a lifelong
project actually, is conducted in prisons, and the
research she was presenting at the conference was a
result of observations she had made about the way
prisoners scent their cells upon arrival in prison, to
de-prisonify their cell. One of the methods they use is
to fill a basin with hot water and Radox and paste it all
over the walls, another guy got loads of tubs of Daz
washing detergent and placed them all around his
room, and someone else put magic scented trees on
his hot water pipes. Now, what I think is interesting, is
that she said it was to create a homely space and to
remind people of home, but quite often they used
products that they would never use at home. It was a
very uniform technique that they used across different
prisons, and the products the prisoners used
depended on the availability and affordability of certain
products within prisons. So in a sense, the prisoners
were creating a new institutional smell.
Charlotte:Yes, she also said that different prisons had
different scents, for example she could recognise
which prison a letter had been sent from by sniffing it.
Alex:What else?
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street signs : spring 2009
Charlotte: I was quite impressed to see so many
examples of research projects being produced as
installations, there's maybe a new movement towards
installations as a research output. Dawn Lyon
produced an exhibition within the space of the site she
had researched, and Tahera Aziz is making an
interactive sound piece of the Stephen Lawrence case.
Alex:Yeah, why do you think that is? And what are the
benefits of doing that are over writing a paper? Why
do an installation?
Charlotte:Well, I don't think that it's a case of benefits
over writing. But I think the use of sensory methods
naturally leads to different forms of representation.
Alex: Or presentation? There's something there about
not simply representing, but trying to create
something new.
Charlotte:Yes, definitely.
Alex:There was also lots of stuff about literary writing,
it was great to hear so many people talking about that
and caring about that. I think Les [Back] summed up
the relationship between literary styles and sociology
well when he said that he thinks of himself as a writer
first and foremost.
Charlotte: Yes, we just have to be careful not to
contribute to that big pile of books and journals that
never get read and aren't written to be loved.
Alex:What else did you like?
Charlotte: I liked Therese Richardson's Lives lived with
the dead, re-thinking the meaning of vital signs and real
lives. Her presentation was about how a husband or
wife keeps the memory of their partner alive after
their death. I really liked the way that she was able to
identify the ways that non-physical things are
embodied in everyday practices. I think there is a lot
to be said for the characterisation of objects and
materiality more generally, and in way too I liked the
simplicity of the idea, it's a really basic human thing
that people live with. I also particularly enjoyed
Mariam Fraser's presentation in the same session.
Alex:Yes, that was really good, and I'm still thinking it
through… What about your session? What happened?
Charlotte:Well, my session was called Visual knowledge,
visual ethics. Jon Prosser raised some very salient and
pragmatic points about the ethics of visual research,
which really apply to all research I think, not just the
visual. Its funny, people get really scared of visual
methods, but in fact their reactions point out the
inherent flaws in our attitude and approach to
anonymity in research more generally, its just that the
visual makes what we do a bit more obvious. We had
a really nice discussion about the traces of identity
that are always left, no matter what measures of
anonymity you take, and also about some of the
techniques currently out there, for example pixilation
and black out bars, that are used to hide peoples
identities in photographs, and how they can be
incredibly criminalising and disturbing. In fact, bodies
can be far more identifiable and personal than faces,
and these techniques can be quite harmful I think.
What happened in your session?
Alex: Ok, I'll tell you about Katherine Davis', Knocking
on doors: Recruitment and enrichment in a qualitative
interview based study. She was talking about how she
went around knocking on people's doors to recruit
people for her Resemblances project. First of all, we
shared something in common in that we both really
enjoy our ethnography. I personally feel guilty about it
but she doesn't feel guilty at all, but anyway… the
smell of cut grass was really prevalent in the middle
class areas, while the smell of tarmac and the lack of
grass was really prevalent in other areas. She got a
really good sense of the demographic she was working
with and the different types of people, just through the
sensoria in which her respondents lived. She probably
has a far richer idea of her sample than you would
ever get from picking someone out of an electoral
register or out of a phone book. It's weird that this
type of knowledge about study participants is a
novelty, it shouldn't be a novelty. We could do with
that degree of connection with our respondents in
social science in general I think.
Charlotte: So those were a few tiny highlights from the
programme. How was the experience?
Alex: Experience. Somebody mentioned the
etymology of experience at the beginning of the
conference didn't they? And Mariam followed it up...
What does it mean again? Outside trial, trial outside? I
can't remember. But it was really good. I found it
edifying, and enriching, and motivating, and also very
reassuring, in that there's lots of other people out
their tackling the same 'things,' as I am. In a way, that
makes me feel less special than before, but I think that
there is something to be said for the new solidarity I
have found. Have you finished that G&T?
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street signs : spring 2009
This Is Not A Gateway Festival, October 2008
David Kendall
Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield established This is
Not A Gateway in 2007. Their aim in the words of the
founders is to address “the urgent and identified needs
confronting current and future cities- namely the need
to generate and elevate knowledge about cities from
'the ground up', from emerging practitioners and those
often outside of urban circuits”.
TINAG is developing an online archive of work
created by emerging Architects, Artists, Curators,
Designers, Filmmakers, Researchers, and Writers. The
organisation holds bi-monthly salons, produces
publications, and an annual festival. The first TINAG
Festival was held on the 24th, 25th, and 26th October
2008 in Dalston, East London. I attended and
participated in this event, as part of A Line is There to be
Broken, an exhibition of photographic work with
Tristan Fennell and Gesche Würfel and was present at
exhibitions, seminars, and workshops over the
weekend.
Highlights of the festival include Micro Finance and the
City. A discussion with Fair Finance, an organisation
operating in London working with people excluded
from the banking system. This organisation wants
challenge existing attitudes towards debt and is
exploring how to reintroduce people into the financial
system in a socially responsible way. Working with
clients to start for example new businesses by offering
flexibility, a debt advice service, and practical financial
solutions. Hilary Powell's Salon De Refuses Olympique
continued debates that surround the development of
the 2012 Olympics and their influence on the
regeneration of East London. I listened to panelists
Emma Dwyer, Public Works, Jim Thorp, and Gesche
Würfel discuss and present photographic,
archeological, and curatorial projects exploring and
influencing the process of change in the east of the
city. I also enjoyed and was impressed by Hilary's and
Dan Edelstyn's Optimistic Immigrants, which attracted a
large, crowd on Sunday night and provided young
immigrants-filmmakers a platform to screen their
work to new audiences. Alex Haw brought together a
group of panelists to discuss the ethics and use of
CCTV in cities. The symposium Surveying Surveillance
put forward arguments for and against the use of
video surveillance. It was refreshing to hear voices in
favor of CCTV state why they consider it a positive
page 46
aspect of contemporary life. This discussion was
informative and educational, asking critical questions,
exploring codes of practice, and how these rules affect
social and spatial implications of this technology.
Dalston is another part of London that is undergoing
structural change. Redevelopment of the area by
Transport for London and Hackney Council will
dramatically alter the visual appearance of the area.
Winston Whitters film Save our Heritage, documents
how people in Dalston grouped together to oppose
Hackney Council's and Transport for London's plans
to demolish buildings that local people wanted to
retain and reuse within the area. The film follows the
successes and failures of activists to influence and
change council planning decisions and documents the
refusal of the authorities to acknowledge the
viewpoints of residents. Collaborating with the
organisation, OPEN Dalston.Whitter's film provides a
visual record of an ongoing process of redevelopment
and conflict in the area. Illustrating that 'regeneration'
may not always produce a dialogue for positive change.
The reconstruction of urban landscapes is a procedure
that should be questioned and always open to critical
debate.
The programme also contained a number of DIY
discussions around the themes of the 'legalities of
organising', publishing ideas and the 'art of making
space' (which considered how creative professionals
have established their practices and constructed or
reused workspaces in cities). These workshops
attracted an international audience of creative
practitioners, many living and working in London. I was
impressed by the enthusiasm of those who attended
to share experiences and knowledge. Each of these
discussions provided a practical platform, for
conversation and debate, allowing individuals and
groups in London to engage and meet other
practitioners outside of academic networks. I look
forward to ongoing dialogue and the development and
success of next year's festival.There were many other
events discussing artistic, social, theoretical, and ethical
issues included the festival. Links to all projects,
exhibitions, workshops and publications can be found
at:
www.thisisnotagateway.net
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street signs : spring 2009

For all news, events, seminars and conferences organized by the CUCR please refer to
webiste: www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr/html/news.html

page 47
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street signs : spring 2009

List of contributors to this issue, spring 2009:

Anderson, Mette Professor of Sociology, Bergen University

Bates,Charlotte PhD student, Visual Sociology
Berrens, Karla PhD student, Visual Sociology
Campbell Works Neil Taylor and Harriet Murray, artists
Clouser, Jeremy Graduate MA Photography and Urban Cultures, CUCR
Coles, Peter Visiting Research Fellow, CUCR
Davies,Will PhD student Sociology, CUCR
Escobar, Santiago Graduate MA Photography and Urban Cultures
Garcia, Soledad MFA Curating, Goldsmiths University
Gerson,Yael PhD Sociology
Gidley, Ben Researcher and lecturer at CUCR
Halliday, Paul Course convenor of MA Photography and Urban Cultures
Harris, Adrian PhD Theology and Religious Studies, University of Winchester
Hasan, Sayed MA Photography and Urban Cultures, CUCR
Holgersson, Helena PhD Sociology, Gothenburg University
Jackson, Emma PhD Sociology, CUCR
Jones, Rachel PhD Visual Sociology
Kendall, David MA Photography and Urban Cultures, CUCR
Keith, Kimberly PhD Sociology, CUCR
Knowles, Caroline Professor of Sociology, Head of CUCR
Leary, Michael Edema PhD student at CUCR, Lecturer at London Southbank University
Marrero Guillamón, Isaac PhD Social and Cultural Anthropology, Universitat de Barcelona
McKenzie, Lisa PhD Sociology, University of Nottingham
Meichsner, Sylvia PhD Sociology
Milic, Nela PhD Visual Sociology
Mullings-Lawrence, Sireita PhD Visual Sociology
Olmo, Gonzalo Graduate MA Photography and Urban Cultures, CUCR
Owen, Craig PhD Social Psychology, University of Bath
Rhys-Taylor, Alex PhD Sociology, CUCR
Risner, Sophie MFA Curating, Goldsmiths University
Rooke, Alison Researcher and lecturer at CUCR
Sánchez de Serdio Martín, Aida University of Barcelona currently research fellow at CUCR
Sanderson-Mann, Jo PhD Health and Social Care,The Open University

page 48
FINAL_Cover_january2009.qxd 9/12/08 17:30 Page 3
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION by Caroline Knowles
The Political economy of the monument by Aida Sánchez
Religion in Inner City Oslo by Mette Andersson
Kettering Road by Sayed Hasan
Sueno de despierto en un mundo que se desvanece... by Karla Berrens
Open-Up photogrpahic project by Gonzalo Osmos
Borderlands by Caroline Knowles and Sylvia Meichsner
Romans,Trains and Star Trek by Michael Edema Leary
Street Photography and Social Research: Brick Lane Re-Visited
by Charlotte Bates, Adrian Harris, Isaac Marrero Guillamon,
Jo Sanderson-Mann, Craig Owen, Lisa Mckenzie
and Sireita Mullings-Lawrence
Why is it so easy to place art and regeneration in the same sentence
by Sophie Risner
In hiding, on display by Helena Holgersson
Home Sweet Home (Not) by Emma Jackson
Tourism, Inbetweeness and Teotihuacán by Jeremy Clouser
What is British? by Michael Wayne Plant
Environment: urbanisation and biodiversity by Peter Coles
Work/Space: a visual exploration by Yael Gerson Ugalde
Strandline: beachcombing on the Greenwich Peninsula by Melissa Bliss
Balkanising Taxonomy by Nela Milic
Signs of the City by Alison Rooke
Signs of the City: Photogrpahic Workshop by Campbellworks
Landmarks of cut, gaze and fiction for a Distant Landscape
by Soledad Garcia on the photographs of Sanchiyo Nishimura
The Invisible man,The Invisible City Exhibition by Kimberly Keith
REVIEWS
The Politics of Hope by Will Davis
Too Far South Exhibition review by Paul Halliday
Seeing the Invisible Noir: Dirty Pretty Things by Michael Edema Leary
Vital Signs conference by Alex Rhys-Taylor and Charlotte Bates
This Is Not A Gateway Festival (TINAG) by David Kendall
Urban Edge Workshops at CUCR
edited by Caroline Knowles
Emma Jackson
Britt Hatzius
Ben Gidley
photograph on front cover by Britt Hatzius
MA IN CULTURE, GLOBALISATION AND THE CITY
The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR)
The Urban Globe?
Our world is moving from being a global village to an Multiculture, Hybridity and Racism and the Spatial Politics
urban globe. One of the big challenges of the 21st of Gender and Sexuality. A multi-disciplinary approach is
Century is how to understand the social organisation of applied that draws on Sociology, Cultural Geography,
contemporary urban life. The MA in Culture, Cultural Studies, Politics and Social Policy. The MA is
page 1 Globalisation and the City gives you the theoretical and dedicated to turning students into active researchers,
page 2 practical tools to make sense of cities like London, Los critics and writers.
Angeles, Nairobi or Tokyo.
page 5 The programme consists of 3 core courses, dissertation
page 8 The course examines a range of issues from the and a choice of options. It can be followed either full-time
page 10 economics of the global city to the politics of graffiti or part-time. ESRC funding for one UK resident is
writing. These include analysing Urban Youth Cultures, currently under review and may not be available next year.
page 11 Literary and Political Milieux, the Political Economy of the Next available entry point: October 2009.
page 12 City, Science and the Technology of Urban Life, Urban
page 14
MA IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND URBAN CULTURES
The Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR)
page 16 Introducing the MA Structure
The MA in Photography and Urban Cultures has been A combination of written and practical work to include a
page 20 developed in response to the increasing interests in urban research dissertation and a portfolio of photographs and
page 22 theory and the visual representation and investigation of final exhibition. It can be followed either full-time or part-
urban life and the physical environments of the city. time. Next available entry point: October 2009.
page 23
page 24 Who is it for? The MA is run by the Centre for Urban and Community
Photographers, visual artists and media practitioners, as Research (CUCR), a national and international leader in
page 26 research on urban and community life. CUCR is multi-
well as those with a background in social sciences,
page 28 interested in exploring the creative interplay between disciplinary and focuses on issues such as citizenship and
page 30 cultural research, urban studies and photographic practice. cosmopolitanism; social exclusion and cultures of racism;
page 32 You should have a degree or equivalent in a relevant area. sport, popular culture and music; regeneration and wealth
page 33 creation; issues of crime and community safety; technology
and new patterns of digital culture.
page 34
page 36
page 38 MPhil / PhD in Visual Sociology
page 39 Goldsmiths, University of London
Our programme offers you the opportunity to combine media components of the thesis will form an integrated
written sociological argument with film, sound, or whole.The use of multimedia will enhance and evidence
page 40
photographic material.We provide researchers the space in your analysis, interpretation and understanding of social
page 40 which to re-think both the conduct and form of phenomena.The written component of the thesis will
page 41 contemporary social research, in a college environment engage with multi-media components and be set within a
page 42 animated by visual arts and design.The Visual Sociology substantive research topic and its wider social context.
page 44 programme builds on the success of our MA in Your practice will be supported by a programme of audio-
Photography and Urban Cultures and contributes to visual training workshops as well as expert superision in
page 46
Goldsmiths’ leading position internationally in visual your chosen area of resaerch.
page 47 research and analysis
You will carry out research in an area that interests you To find out more, contact:
and prepare a written thesis in combination with a video, a Professor Caroline Knowles, c.knowles@gold.ac.uk
soundpiece or a series of photographs.Written and multi- or Bridget Ward (secretary), b.ward@gold.ac.uk
Further information and how to apply: UK and EU students: Admissions Office, telephone 020 7919 7060 (direct line), fax
020 7717 2240 or e-mail admissions@gold.ac.uk; Overseas (non EU) students: International Office, telephone 020 7919
7700 (direct line), fax 020 7919 7704 or e-mail international-office@gold.ac.uk;
For further information about the Centre: Please call 020 7919 7390; e-mail cucr@gold.ac.uk or visit www.gold.ac.uk/cucr/
FINAL_Cover_january2009.qxd 9/12/08 17:30 Page 1

CUCR Occasional paper series

S t r e e t S i g n s
Margarita ARAGON Michael STONE
Brown Youth, Black Fashion and a White Riot, 2007 Social Housing in the UK and US: Evolution, Issues and
Progress
Brian W. ALLEYNE William (Lez)HENRY
Personal Narrative and Activism: a bio-ethnography of Projecting the 'Natural': Language and Citizenship in
"Life Experience with Britain" Outernational Culture

Mette ANDERSSON
The Situated Politics of Recognition: Ethnic Minority,
Colin KING
Play the White Man:The Theatre of Racialised
Centre for Urban and Community Research
Youth and Indentity Work. Performance in the Institutions of Soccer

Les BACK,Tim CRABBE, John SOLOMOS Larry LOHMANN

Lions, Black Skins and Reggae Gyals Ethnic Discrimination in "Global" Conservation

Andrew BARRY Ben LOOKER

Motor ecology: the political chemistry of urban air Exhibiting Imperial London: Empire and City in late
Victorian and Edwardian guidebooks
Zygmunt BAUMAN
City of Fears, City of Hopes Hiroki OGASAWARA
Performing Sectarianism:Terror, Spectacle and Urban
Vikki BELL Myth in Glasgow Football Cultures
Show and tell: passing, narrative and Tony Morrison's Jazz
Garry ROBSON
Eva BERGLUND Class, criminality and embodied consciousness:
Legacies of Empire and Spatial Divides: new and old Charlie Richardson and a South East London Habitus
challanges for Environmentalists in the UK
Flemming RØGILDS
Tine BLOM Charlie Nielsen's Journey:Wandering through Multi-
Dostoyevsky's Inquisitor:The Question of Evil, Suffering cultural Landscapes
and Freedom of Will in Totalitarian Regimes
Fran TONKISS
Bridget BYRNE The 'marketisation' of urban government: private finance
How English am I? and urban policy

Ben CARRINGTON Danielle TURNEY

Race,Representation and the Sporting Body The language of anti-racism in social work: towards a
deconstructuve reading
Stephen DOBSON
The Urban Pedagogy of Walter Benjamin: lessons for Gordon WALKER and Karen BICKERSTAFF
the 21st Century Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 Polluting the poor: an emerging environmental justice
agenda for the UK?
Ben GIDLEY
The proletarian other: Charles Booth and the politics of Louisa THOMSON
representation The Respect Drive: the Politics of Young People and
Community
Paul GILROY
The status of difference: from epidermalisation to nano- please refer to www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr
Spring 2009
politics for downloads and further information.

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