Follow As part of the 8th Euroacademia International Conference
‘The European Union and the Politicization of Europe’
Ghent, Belgium, 25 – 26 October 2019
Deadline: 25th of September 2019
Urban image
construction is a reflection, expression and constitutive factor of local
identity formation and dynamics. Cities simultaneously localize identities and
connect them with wider global signs of utility, function and symbolic order.
Elasticity of the label identity accommodates everything that surrounds us as
presence or absence, persistence or change. As a theatrical scenery, cities
change after each act, sometimes with discrete adaptations, sometimes with
radical interventions. If the scenery is composed of streets, parks, roads,
museums, monuments, shopping malls and buildings connected through the
intricate network of the perpetual and cumulative actions of its inhabitants,
every adaptation and intervention affects its multi-dimensional identities.
Changes in urban visual identities unfold as a form of public art feeding from
the immense potential of social imaginary significations accommodated by a
time’s perception of stability, structure and continuity. Urban change is
itself a production of meaning, interpretation and identity making practices.
As the chaotic canvases of cities are being stretched over a framework of
identity, its further exploration seems more than appropriate. Amidst the
incredibly rapid urban growth crowding more than half of the world population
in towns and cities, the questions are only going to keep multiplying. How are
city identities made and re-made, used and abused, imagined and narrated,
politicised and communicated, expressed and projected, imposed and marketed?
And above all, how do they thrive within the dynamic interpolation of the nexus
of local-global, centre-periphery, urban – suburban, old and new. As out-dated
as these dichotomies may sound, in many places their daily life is far from
over. As old cities became new capitals and new capitals struggle for more
capital, the challenges of maintaining public-driven collective identities in
the face of cultural fragmentation and diversification, coupled with
consumer-attractiveness is turning them into urban palimpsests. Urban
environments reflect the human needs and values. In an increasingly globalized
world, the human beings are becoming more citizens of the world than citizens
of the cities. The increasing mobility of the new pilgrims of globalization
creates more of the same in the logic of universalized urban functionality.
Within this logic, the cities are now in the position to re-evaluate their
impact on the world and shape their future in a manner that assumes a wider
responsibility that evades a localized mentality. Urban local identities are
becoming increasingly thin and rely strongly on negotiating a local specificity
with universalized functionality and global responsibility. An increasing need for
uniqueness and distinctiveness foster site-specificity aimed at placing a
particular urban identity within a global economic hierarchy. Public art became
essential for affirming distinctive local urban identities in a universe of
serialization and commodification.
As the research on cultural identities of the city is becoming more abundant,
this panel aims at adopting a wide-lens inter-disciplinary approach, while
focusing on various processes affecting identities in the urban context in its
global-regional-national-local interplay.
Some example of topics may include (but are not limited to):
• Collective Memory, Identity and Urban Image
Construction
• Appropriation, Instrumentalisation and
Functualisation of Public Spaces
• Contemporary Nomadism and the City as a Common
Denominator for Collective Identities
• Architecture as ‘Politics with Bricks and Mortar’
• History, Heritage and Urban Change
• Urban Regeneration Projects, Landmark Buildings and
‘Starchitects’
• Non-Places and (Non)Identity
• Immigrants and the Cultural Identity of Cities
• City Marketing and City Branding
• Cities and Public Goods
• European Capitals of Culture and European Identity
• Cities and Sites of Memorialisation
• Identity Creation and the Cultural Offer of the
City
• Urban Cultural Heritage as Identity-Anchor
• Minor Places: Dominant Culture and Site-Specific
Urban Identities
• Creative Changes of the Cities
• Art and Industry in Urban Development
• Urban Aesthetics
• Urban Installations
• Critical Architecture
• Urbanism and Social Intervention: Inclusion of the
Marginalized
• Centre/Periphery Nexuses in Contemporary Urban
Development
• Cities and the Quality of Life
• Urban Landscapes and Sustainable Cities
• Contemporary Cities and Environmental
Responsibility
• Ugliness, Kitsch and Value in Shaping Contemporary
Urban Spaces
• Urban Sites of Identification
• Temporary Urban Interventions
• Architecture as Public Art
For complete information before applying see full details of the conference at:
http://euroacademia.eu/conference/8eupe/
You can apply on-line by completing the Application Form on the conference
website or by sending 300 words titled abstract together with the details of
contact and affiliation until 25th of September 2019 at application@euroacademia.org