A Performative Response to Sites of Surveillance: The Gorilla Park Project
(2022)
author(s): Shauna Janssen, Katrina Jurjans, Eduardo Perez Infante, christian scott
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The key interlocutor for this project is Gorilla Park, an irregular shaped parcel of land located on a disused railway track, in a Montreal neighbourhood called Marconi-Alexandria, currently a rapidly gentrifying quarter of the city. The uneven development in this part of the city is, in part, due to the increasing presence of Big Data and Smart City start-up companies.
The politics of the smart city discourse are deeply entangled with ideas of the ‘right to the city,’ and brings into question: who is the smart city for? What is a smart city? Current trends towards connectivity and mediated urban environments are generally predicated upon a ‘digital agenda,’ wherein the privileged position of smart and intelligent technologies is being furthered. In this exposition one of our aims is to problematize urban sites of surveillance through performative and sonic experiments.
Due to the global pandemic, however, we began to collaborate remotely and work with the documentation of our temporary occupation and in-situ exploration of Gorilla Park. As such, this exposition foregrounds an unfolding and iterative approach to artistic research that focuses on performative methods of urban research taking place in contested city sites; foregrounding the experimental use of bespoke sound devices and 360˚ video recordings, to situated methods such as walking, and hacking Google Earth imagery.
The improvised city: contributions of informal dwelling towards an expanded paradigm of the metropolis. The case of Porto, Portugal
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Ana Miriam Rebelo
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Acknowledging the importance of dominant global discourses and aesthetics in the validation of a hegemonic urban development model that reinforces urban inequality, this paper addresses the need for narratives and representations that challenge current paradigms. Taking the city of Porto as a case study, we hypothesize that within this context, the acknowledgment and valuation of informal dwelling may provide relevant contributions to the construction of such alternative discourses. Delving into the aesthetics and the implicit politics of informal dwelling, we examine its contributions towards aesthetic and social diversity, and the opportunities it presents for participation in the construction of Western urban landscapes. Contrasting the emanant visual character of informal dwelling with hegemonic representations and re-branding narratives in the city of Porto, the paper brings light to a ubiquitous, yet disregarded reality that may bring crucial inputs to a purposeful debate on diversity, equity, and democracy in urban environments.
Aknowledgement
This article is part of the research project “Visual and semantic identities of the city of Porto: an ascertainment of the contributions of informal dwelling”, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the European Social Fund (ESF), under the grant PD/BD/150641/2020
critical place-making [score]
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): christian scott
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This research catalogue exposition, becomes an exploration of place/place-making via critical reflection and engagement with methods. A review of placemaking from a personal perspective and narrative, from a site-responsive practice that involves walking, sound, poetry.
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what are the practices, and normative assumptions that lead the practices and policies of placemaking in Montreal—among planners, city officials, urban studios, non-profits.
What is the role of play—as method—to make this processes more inclusive and diverse, in order to make more resilient and just cities.