Creative City_Connecting the Dots SM3138

SM3138: THE CREATIVE CITY

Class 10: Connecting the Dots….

The city creates and reproduces power

relations. The way people use space, is also a

political and social question.

HONG KONG: INVISIBLE & PARASITIC

• Ackbar Abbass and Hong Kong as a Parasitic city

MANY WAYS TO SEE THE CITY

Through the course we have been looking at the city

from various perspectives, sometimes even looking

at the same ‘space’ from different points of view.

“The Architecture of Density”

Photographer Michael Wolf

EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE CITY

• Psychogeographies of the places we have travelled.

• How are affective barriers as useful as ‘real’ barricades?

• Understanding difference and inequality

• How do different people experience the city differently and why?

• Part of what makes a city is our everyday practices, usages and experiences of a place.

SPACE HAS MANY USES

There are many informal ways we use space, break the rules, & find

ways of living that reflect who we are and what we value as a society,

culture, community.

COMMODITIES & LUXURY

The Commodity Fetish: The almost magical quality that a commodity

gains when it is given value. Value is a social relation, not entirely based

on the labour or materials made to create the commodity. Commodity

Fetishism “transforms the subjective, abstract aspects of economic value

into objective, real things that people believe have intrinsic value.”

• What does ‘Luxury’ really mean? How does it relate to inequality

through creating abstract value and new kinds of social relations?

MIGRANTS & LABOUR ISSUES

• What is the experience of a city when given unequal rights in a place?

• How do you form ties to home?Food, place, culture? Keeping links alive, finding

people who recognize you

• Ongoing hardships and injustice. Threats of deportation. Racialized and

Gendered. Two tiered systems of justice. Social Exclusion

WORK

• So much work remains invisible, yet vitally important to

the city. Much of the most important work is underpaid

and not respected in a modern society.

HIDDEN HISTORIES

• Who tells the story and what story do they tell? What are the

hidden histories of a city like Hong Kong?

• What does history have to tell us about the present? How is

history a shifting process?

JANET CARDIFF & GEORGE BURES MILLER

• These two artists play with ideas of history, memory, past and present in their works.

• Video and Audio walks bring direct experience to historic data, cinema and fiction.

ALTER BAHNHOF VIDEO WALK (2012)

“The Alter Bahnhof Video Walk was designed for the old train station in Kassel, Germany as part of dOCUMENTA (13). Participants are able to borrow an iPod and headphones from a check-out booth. They are then directed by Cardiff and Miller through the station. An alternate world opens up where reality and fiction meld in a disturbing and uncanny way that has been referred to as “physical cinema”. The participants watch things unfold on the small screen but feel the presence of those events deeply because of being situated in the exact location where the footage was shot. As they follow the moving images (and try to frame them as if they were the camera operator) a strange confusion of realities occurs. In this confusion, the past and present conflate and Cardiff and Miller guide us through a meditation on memory and reveal the poignant moments of being alive and present.”

YAEL BARTANA

History meets fiction in sometimes uncomfortable, irresistible ways

“Bartana’s films, Mary Koszmary (2007), Mur i wieża (2009) and Zamach (2011) revolve around

the activities of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP): a political group calling for

the return of Jews to the land of their forefathers. The films traverse a landscape scarred by the

histories of competing nationalisms and militarisms—overflowing with the narratives of the Israeli

settlement movement, Zionist dreams, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the Palestinian right of

return.” -eFlux

“Bartana’s films, Mary

Koszmary (2007), Mur i wieża

(2009) and Zamach (2011)

revolve around the activities of

the Jewish Renaissance

Movement in Poland (JRMiP):

a political group calling for the

return of Jews to the land of

their forefathers. The films

traverse a landscape scarred

by the histories of competing

nationalisms and militarisms—

overflowing with the narratives

of the Israeli settlement

movement, Zionist dreams,

anti-Semitism, the Holocaust

and the Palestinian right of

return.” -eFlux

TUNG PING CHAU ISLAND“THE ANTHROPOCENE”

• One of most remote islands in HK

• Unique geology, part of the Geo-Park

• Dates from Paleogene Period

• Special evidence of human impacts on the land

Cost: $90 return we will subsidize 50%

Leave from Ma Liu Shui Ferry Pier, near University MTR

Return 5:15pm

Bring Lunch, or $$