The IMAGES Project 2013 Conference
IMAGES (III) – Images of the City
Austrian Cultural Forum, Istanbul, 31 October - 01 November 2013
Programme (update: 30 September 2013)
Day 1 (31 October 2013)
08.45-09.00: Welcome Coffee
08.45-09.15: Registration
Welcome and Opening (09.00-09.20)
09.00-09.10: Welcome by Doris Danler, Head of Austrian Cultural Forum Istanbul
09.10-09.20: Welcome by Veronika Bernard, IMAGES project director
Session (1): The relativity of urbanity (09.20-10.20)
Chair: Veronika Bernard
09.20-09.50: Nerma Cridge (Architectural Association London, London/ UK): images of the city – where else::every where
09.50-10.20: Nicolas Marque (University of Toulouse, Toulouse/ France): Putting the town outside the town – the redefinition of urbanity
Session (2): Psychology of feeling urban/ rural (10.20-11.50)
Chair: Megan MacDonald
10.20-10.50: Z. Nilüfer Nahya (Erciyes University, Kayseri/ Turkey)/ Fulya Anılır (Yeni Yüzyil University, Istanbul/ Turkey): The nature and the city – The Image of Nature in Istanbul
10.50-11.20: Kunal Rakshit (Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India): The changing spatial image of the city
11.20-11.50: Parama Ghosh Roy (Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India): Cultural identity and image of the city – Kolkata case study
11.50-12.35: Lunch Break
Session (3): Cityscapes as Statements (12.35-15.35)
Chair: Peter Volgger
12.35-13.05: Ayse N. Erek (Humboldt University, Berlin/ Germany and Yeditepe University, Istanbul/ Turkey): Contemporary art and urban image
13.05-13.35: Giovanni Comoglio (Polytechnic University of Turin, Turin/ Italy): Metamorphosis and multiplication of an imaginaire – Mutations in concepts of urban habitat, town/countryside distinction and image of city in contemporary Shanghai
13.35-14.05: Sandra C. S. Marques (CRIA-IUL, Lisbon/ Portugal): Kolkatascapes: Images of an Indian City
14.05-14.35: Stefan Peychev (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign/ USA): Lost Sofia – Ottoman Cultural Heritage and the Construction of Modern Urban Identity
14.35-15.05: Shaida Ghomashchi (artist and researcher, Tehran/ Iran)/ Farzaneh Bahrami (EPFL ENAC INTER LAC, Lausanne/ Switzerland): Horror Vacui
15.05-15.35: Mladen Stilinovic (architect, Brussels/ Belgium)/ Bieke Cattoor (KU Leuven, Leuven/ Belgium)/ Bruno De Meulder (TU Eindhoven, Eindhoven/ NL and KU Leuven, Leuven/ Belgium): Being there, yet not being on the map - The representation of the military in the urban imagery
15.35-15.50: Coffee Break
Session (4): Images of the city/ urbanity as an issue of a developed civil society (15.50-17.20)
Chair: Anna Notaro
15.50-16.20: Agnieszka Bielewska (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wrocław/ Poland): Migrants and urban space – the question of local and global character of Wrocław
16.20-16.50: Magdalena Łukasiuk (University of Warsaw, Warsaw/ Poland): The Image of Contemporary Warsaw in Context of Migration Processes and Local Discourse
16.50-17.20: Avishek Shovakar (artist, Vienna/ Austria) and Nadine Shovakar (art manager, Vienna/ Austria): Chakra
Session (5): The City as Space of Political encounters (17.20-17.50)
Chair: Anna Notaro
17.20-17.50: Ipek Tureli (McGill University, Montreal/ Canada): Panoramic Urbanism: Visualizing Urban History in Istanbul
Session (6): Images of the City as seen by photographers (17.50-18.20)
Chair: Anna Notaro
17.50-18.20: Burcu Böcekler (Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul/ Turkey): Istanbul’s Past and Present: Reading Istanbul’s Transformation Through Panoramic Photographs
Session (7/1): Images of the city/ urbanity in literature (18.20-18.40)
Chair: Anna Notaro
18.20-18.40: Gönül Bakay (Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul/ Turkey): The Industrial city in Dickens’ Hard Times and Gaskell’s Mary Barton
(Will be read by Övgü Tüzün)
Day 2 (01 November 2013)
Session (7/2): Images of the city/ urbanity in literature (09.00-12.00)
Chair: Gonul Ucele
09.00-09.30: Burcu Alkan (Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul/ Turkey): Writing Istanbul – A Diachronic Narrative 2 (As Construct of Romantic Imagination)
09.30-10.00: Lisa Maria Teichmann (University of Leiden, Leiden/ NL): Reflecting on Istanbul in Turkish Literature – A Comparative Approach to the Issue of Urban Change in Turkish Novels from the Republican Period and the 1930s
10.00-10.30: Hatice Övgü Tüzün (Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul/ Turkey): Celebrating Multiculturalism: London in Zadie Smith’s white teeth
10.30-11.00: Megan MacDonald (Koç University, Istanbul/ Turkey): Alternative Cartographies – Displacing Paris with Leila Sebbar, Abdelwahab Meddeb, and Abdellah Taia
11.00-11.30: Souad Baghli Berbar (Tlemcen University, Tlemcen/ Algeria): From Reality to Myth – the City of Alexandria in Lawrence Durrell’s Justine (1957)
11.30-12.00: Luigi Andrea Berto (Western Michigan University, USA): Images and Definitions of Urban Centers in Early Medieval Venice
12.00-12.45: Lunch Break
Session (8): Images of the city/ urbanity in feature films (12.45-13.15)
Chair: Megan MacDonald
12.45-13.15: Massimiliano Gaudiosi (University Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples/ Italy): Film as a Map: Cinema, City and Transmedial Geographies
Session (9): The impact of the media on the perception of urbanity/ urban life style (13.15-15.15)
Chair: Hatice Övgü Tüzün
13.15-13.45: Jakub Machek (Charles University and Metropolitan University Prague, Prague/ Czech Republic): New Metropolitans and their Popular Press in Fin de siècle Prague
13.45-14.15: Nicole De Togni (Polytechnic University of Turin, Turin/ Italy): When architecture was the world – Specialized Magazines Shaping the Image of Milan in the Second Post-war Period
14.15-14.45: Daniele Campobenedetto (Paris Est University, Paris/ France and Polytechnic University of Turin, Turin/ Italy): The satirical line – The image of the city as a cultural and social paradigm through the New Yorkers’ cartoons 1968-1978
14.45-15.15: Peter Volgger (University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck/ Austria): The Sleeping Beauty - Imaging the City in the Context of Neo-Colonialism
15.15-15.30: Coffee Break
Session (10): Images of the City in the Arts (15.30-17.30)
Chair: Nadine Shovakar
15.30-16.00: Léa-Catherine Szacka (Laboratoire d’Excellence Création, Arts et Patrimoines, Hautes Études Sorbonnes Arts et Métiers, Paris/ France): When the city enters the museum – Exhibitions as a media for the analysis, invention and projection of urban realities
16.00-16.30: Eszter B. Gantner (Humboldt University, Berlin/ Germany): From Industry to Art – Production of “Metropolisness” in the case of Berlin
16.30-17.00: Anna Notaro (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee/ UK): The Magic Line in Matteo Pericoli’s ‘Unfurled Cities’
17.00-17.30: Katharina Lunardon (University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck/ Austria): “mailbox domicile” a “narrative image” – subjective realities of Austrian artists working lives
17.30-17.45: Closing Remarks by Organizers
Conference organizing procedures supervised by
This conference is supported by
Burcu Alkan: Writing Istanbul: A diachronic narrative – 2 (As Construct of Romantic Imagination)
Istanbul has been a hub for cultural, literary and artistic production throughout its history and remains to be so today. It has also been the setting of many literary works. However, only in a way that a few cities achieve, it transcends being a mere setting and pervades both the imaginations of the writers and their narratives. Oftentimes, in whatever genre they might have been written, in most narratives of the city, Istanbul manifests itself as a construct of a Romantic imagination. This study is a diachronic analysis of the narratives of the city, examining its Romanticised construction.
Gönül Bakay: The Industrial city ın Dickens’ Hard Times and Gaskell’s Mary Barton
Drawing on the theories of Raymond Williams, this paper aims to critically examine English industrial novels of the 19th century. According to Raymond Williams, the industrial novels didn’t offer a viable solution to the problems of the age: “recognition of evil was balanced by the fear of becoming involved. Sympathy was transformed not into action but into withdrawal.” In this context, although it is true that both Hard Times (1854) and Mary Barton (1848) draw attention to the hard conditions working classes are subjected to and profess reform, they don’t actually indicate ways of doing that. Both authors notice the problems of the industrial city but evade suggesting viable solutions to its problems.
Souad Baghli Berbar: From Reality to Myth – the City of Alexandria in Lawrence Durrell’s Justine (1957)
Lawrence Durrell’s Justine offers an impressive image of the city of Alexandria. It is a place where reality borders on myth, where the sense of mystery goes hands in hand with the commonplace, and where emotional ecstasy and physical rapture accompany mental exertion and highbrowed investigation. This paper purports to explore the image of Alexandria in Justine by following its progression from reality to myth and trying to trace the gradual transfiguration of the city from a convincingly realistic oriental place to a mythical feminine entity merging the eroticism of a Cleopatra with the mysticism of a Jewess.
Luigi Andrea Berto: Images and Definitions of Urban Centers in Early Medieval Venice
Medieval Venice offers a complex and fascinating world for investigating how cities were perceived in the past. Venice was not like the present-day city. It was a duchy comprising several urban communities gathered in a series of lagoons and along the adjacent coastline. Moreover, urbanization was a novel phenomenon in this area. The goal of this paper is to examine how Venetian authors perceived and defined the urban space of their homeland as well as the connections and comparisons these writers formed in relation to the rest of the Mediterranean world in the early middle Ages (sixth – tenth centuries).
Agnieszka Bielewska: Migrants and urban space – the question of local and global character of Wrocław
The purpose of this paper is to show how the foreigners perceive Wrocław (Poland) national urban space and how they change it by their spatial routines. It is based on ongoing study on the everyday routines of immigrants in context of their socio-economic status and gender. The daily routes of immigrants were examined to determine their spatial needs, their favourite and detested places and the reasons behind their choices and analyse The collected data show how immigrants change local and national into local and global.
Burcu Böcekler: Istanbul’s Past and Present: Reading Istanbul’s Transformation Through Panoramic Photographs
There is no doubt that since the 19th Century, Istanbul has transformed immensely, changing into a “chaos” city from a “picturesque” one. In this paper, panoramic photography in 19th Century Ottoman will be scrutinized. In addition to that, the reflection of today's Istanbul in contemporary panoramic photography will be analyzed through the works of Arif Aşçi [Panorama İstanbul 2003-2008)], and Serkan Taycan [Kabuk (2011-2013)]. Old and new panoramic photographs will be compared in terms of technique and content, while emphasizing how transformation of the city is manifested on photography.
Contemporary Shanghai, as restarted in 1990 by a political planning decision, is undergoing a process of reconstruction of the idea of the city itself, of its imaginaire of city. This process has led to several redefinitions: inhabitants are redefined in their role and status, and so is their relationship with perceived urban environment. This is expressed in the shaping of new typologies of urban habitat, and in the transformation of the idea of a country-side for Shanghai in a planning/ building issue, designed by the most powerful actors, and later communicated by Urban Planning Exhibition Centers, public spaces where imaginaires become promotional experiences.
Between 1968 and 1978, the image of the city was the mean to asses a cultural defence of New York and at the same time, through the representation of architectures, one of the most powerful systems for social taxonomy. The new Yorker’s satirical line is able to influence (in the Big Apple context) and at the same time to capture that view of the city which, in the same years investigated by this study, had an important role in the process toward identity setting in northern American cities.
Where Else :: Every Where
Some urban spaces seem to belong elsewhere; as though they are alienated from their actual locations. Such fragments of our urban environment appear to exist in separation, and arguably belong not just to a different place, but also possess a distinct culture, and even time.
Other images, equally disturbing, but operating in an entirely different fashion, could be found in any city, and are everywhere.
How some city dwellers can share more than just the aesthetic appearance of their surroundings over a large physical distance, and yet, at the same time, have no connection with their physical neighbors, will be discussed.
Nicole De Togni: When architecture was the world – Specialized Magazines Shaping the Image of Milan in the Second Post-war Period
Architecture and planning periodicals strongly influenced the representation and perception of
Italian cities in a moment of great urbanization and changes in the current concept of urbanity
as the second postwar period was. The paper discusses the role of specialized magazines in theoretically and critically shaping the architectural discourse about Milan during Forties and Fifties, oriented toward a polarized situation in which few knowledgeable professionals materialized the features of responsible Italian architecture, in sharp contrast with misused planning instruments and a discouraging milieu.
Ayse N. Erek: Contemporary art and urban image
This paper will explore the tension between the city’s past and its present in the ways it informs the collective urban imaginary against the background of intensifying discourses of globalisation. Inspired by The Workhouse Room 2 (2013) by Ines Schaber and Avery F. Gordon and A Brief History of Collapses (2011 – 2012) by Mariam Ghani, exhibited in 2012 at Documenta 13 and The Memory of the Square (2005) by Gulsun Karamustafa, the paper will discuss the ways artworks reveal the identifications with place, as a building / a public space becomes a living object for ‘imaginative and critical thinking.’
Eszter B. Gantner: From Industry to Art – Production of “Metropolisness” in the case of Berlin
At the fin de siécle Berlin became the industrial centre both of Imperial Germany and Central Europe. “Metropolisness” and the image of “Laboratory” had been linked until the interwar period. Nowadays, Berlin is famous of its lack of industry, but art and artists are playing an immense role in the city branding. The images of art and artists may partly explain the recent production of the Metropolisness”. This presentation reflects on the changes of Berlin´s image from the fin de siècle till today trying to understand how historical changes are linked with various images in the production of “Metropolisness”.
Massimiliano Gaudiosi: Film as a Map: Cinema, City and Transmedial Geographies
In some contemporary movies the narrative functions as a peculiar map: a cartography crossing the screeen borders for opening to the globe’s curvature and to a reconfiguration of the city. The spectator is lead through a journey inside locations: a bird’s eye view allowing to reach the most distant cities, to take a turn around the earth at the speed of a glance sliding from one end of a planisphere to another. The classical map dissolves in a coming and going among places, similarly to the experience of surfing the Net.
Shaida Ghomashchi/ Farzaneh Bahrami: Horror Vacui
In the context of over‐densification in Tehran, it is unlikely to have an urban landscape free of cranes machines. Cranes pop up and disappear in the skyline of Tehran, but their image goes beyond the construction sites and urban development .We would like to take “crane” as a visual element and explore its multiple-faceted presence in the social‐urban fabric of Tehran today. The project will take the “horror vacui” beyond its conventional implication (in visual art) and exploit variant meanings of horror in this context.
Magdalena Łukasiuk: The Image of Contemporary Warsaw in Context of Migration Processes and Local Discourse
The way of constructing images bases on physical (visual or even bodily) contact with the materiality of a city, which can be seen as a quite objective container of meanings. In my presentation I will analyze the image of the city commencing not from its visual or material conditions but from the local discourse of internal migration, which impacts interpretations (meanings) of an existing, material city. The presentation bases on the empirical research conducted in contemporary Warsaw.
Katharina Lunardon: “mailbox domicile” a “narrative image” – subjective realities of Austrian artists working lives*
Megan MacDonald: Alternative Cartographies: Displacing Paris with Leila Sebbar, Abdelwahab Meddeb, and Abdellah Taia
In this paper I read the multiple ways in which Leila Sebbar, Abdelwahab Meddeb and Abdellah Taïa defamiliarize Paris, through characters that insist on the ‘and’ in ‘roots and routes’. How is the city imagined in these three texts, and what kinds of imagery are mobilized? Sebbar, Meddeb, and Taïa insist on multidirectional memory, and the ways in which they negotiate Paris and the wider world destabilizes typical renderings of the city, and insists on reading it as a transnational space, one necessarily in flux.
Jakub Machek: New Metropolitans and their Popular Press in Fin de siècle Prague
The paper is exploring the experience of the newcomers to urban areas in the Czech lands at the turn of the 20th century. The rising Czech popular culture is a significant source for revealing fundamental social and political changes that took place during the period. Production and reception of the emerging popular press are analysed as a marker of the new modern urban experience and its social influences. During this era, even the members of lower social classes broadened their economical and cultural potency and thus capacity to absorb the development of new common.
Nicolas Marque: Putting the town outside the town – the redefinition of urbanity*
Sandra C. S. Marques: Kolkatascapes: Images of an Indian City
“Too much poverty”, “too crowded”, “too dirty”, “too polluted” are the expressions most used by Western tourists when describing Kolkata (capital of West Bengal, India). In order to reflect on such representations and the way cultural practices are articulated with the (re)creation of public space in this metropolis, I shall centre the object of analysis on visually exposed spaces in which a certain ambiguity, a dissociation between the vocation for which they were configured and their appropriation by social agents is present. I argue that this subversion of visibilities is the causal factor of the great anxiety shown by foreigners.
Z. Nilüfer Nahya/ Fulya Anılır: The nature and the city – The Image of Nature in Istanbul
This paper aims to put forth the picture of nature in Istanbul city through nature and culture relations. Nature – culture “dichotomy” and “conflict” can be seen in different parts of the cities in several ways. The questions of how nature reveals itself and how human beings use and modify the nature will be answered by analyzing the observation of some districts and of Gezi Parkı occupation in Istanbul. The complex order of Istanbul city can be observed also in its natural spaces. Many photos were taken and will be analyzed in the context of nature and the city for this research.
Anna Notaro: The Magic Line in Matteo Pericoli’s ‘Unfurled Cities’
The paper discusses London Unfurled (2011) and Manhattan Unfurled (2001), by architect/illustrator Matteo Pericoli (www.matteopericoli.com/), two beautiful books in accordion format containing a collection of pen and ink drawings of the two cities’ skyline. In both cases we are presented with a visual representation of the city thanks to the graphic sign of the line. Pericoli’s line is silent and yet it tells a lot, and this is because the line has a key role in the history of drawing, art and writing, the line is what all these systems of human communication have in common, it is deeply embedded in our cultural heritage.
Stefan Peychev: Lost Sofia: Ottoman Cultural Heritage and the Construction of Modern Urban Identity
Ottoman Sofia’s urban fabric was dominated by magnificent examples of imperial architecture reflecting the city’s status of a provincial capital. Yet, in the modern narrative of Sofia’s long history, the Ottoman period is represented by the image of an “oriental village” with ramshackle buildings and muddy crooked streets. This paper addresses this inconsistency by identifying and studying three types of factors: the establishment of a conception of cultural heritage and the institutional framework related to it, the development of archaeology and its intimate relationship with nation building, and the dominance of a vision of the past as a romantic object.
Kunal Rakshit: The changing spatial image of the city*
Parama Ghosh Roy: Cultural identity and image of the city – Kolkata case study*
Avishek Shovakar: Chakra
Chakra is a film about the untold truth behind the street kids in Mumbai. Their hopes, their dreams, their passion. Some years ago, I was in India, India with one of the largest population of street kids in the world, took me by surprise. The stark differences in cultures, not withstanding economic parity, social circumstances or wealth baffled me. Although these kids on the street had nothing, no money, no schools to go to, their spirit was unbroken, it almost glowed with the sparkle I saw in their eyes. I could only surmise it with one word: Happiness.
Mladen Stilinovic/ Bieke Cattoor/ Bruno De Meulder: Being there, yet not being on the map - The representation of the military in the urban imagery
This paper is a part of a research on the spatial interactions between the military and civil society. The development of both case studies: Skopje (Uskub) and Bitola (Monastir), has been characterised by consequent periods of war and strong army presence. The paper explores the local productions of urban imagery by observing the specific agency of the military. Throughout the historical 'bifurcations', army-related images became elements of the local palimpsests of urban and territorial narratives. The present urban context is analysed as well, as the current 'absence' of the military leads to new forms of (often violent) spatial contest.
Léa-Catherine Szacka: When the city enters the museum – Exhibitions as a media for the analysis, invention and projection of urban realities*
Lisa Maria Teichmann: Reflecting on Istanbul in Turkish Literature – A Comparative Approach to the Issue of Urban Change in Turkish Novels from the Republican Period and the 1930s
How are representations of Turkish society in fiction from the Republican period and the 1930´s connected to urban space? I want to seek the traces of the apartment building in means of a constructed social space and its relation to society in Turkish fiction from the early Republican Period (“Kiralık Konak” by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu) by comparing it with more recent examples of Turkish literature (Memduh Sevket Esendal “Ayaşlı ve Kiracılar”). Thereby I hope to generate a discussion on how literature is involved in the process of urban change.
Ipek Tureli: Panoramic Urbanism – Visualizing Urban History in Istanbul*
Hatice Övgü Tüzün: Celebrating Multiculturalism: London in Zadie Smith’s white teeth
Published in 2000, Zadie Smith’s debut novel White Teeth is an examination of London at the turn of the century, told from a range of viewpoints that represent various ethnic and cultural groups. The story revolves around Archie Jones, his Bengali Muslim friend Samad Iqbal and their extended families. Through their stories, Smith meditates on varieties of historical experience and the impact of socio-cultural dynamics on individual lives. Highly acclaimed by critics and readers alike, White Teeth tactfully deals with issues of race, ethnicity and culture, while celebrating the multicultural and cosmopolitan environment of modern London.
Peter Volgger: The Sleeping Beauty - Imaging the City in the Context of Neo-Colonialism
Asmara contains an ensemble of modernist architecture. Time seems to have stopped there. The city preserves a modernist program which the colonial powers inscribed into the city. Eritrea conserves those tendencies within a post-modern world, as an experiment, which uses strategies of bio-politics in order to defend the nation-building-project against the influence of globalization. Both, global and local actors create their own images of the city. Therefore Asmara enables an analysis of the ‘images of the city’ in a sarcastic way, not only as part of an archive of memories, but rather as an incident that is constantly repeating.
* Unfortunately, by the deadline set no abstracts of appropriate length (100 words) reached us.
/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.over-blog.com%2Ft%2Fcedistic%2Fcamera.png)