Civic Matter
| Created: | 2013-11-11 09:45 |
|---|---|
| Institution: | Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities |
| Description: | Taking infrastructure in a narrow material sense, Civic Matter is about thinking through the social, ethical and political work of infrastructural design, (re)construction and maintenance, and the ways in which anticipated and obsolete infrastructures are imagined, remembered, destroyed, recycled or eschewed. Our central aim is to explore the past and potential of infrastructure as a civic project through a combination of (inter)disciplinary angles, from architecture to archeology, geography to history. We plan to discuss the forms of labour and imagination that materialize past and future polities, and to identify the threats posed by neglect, exclusion, dysfunction and privatisation to this project, and the material effects –from immobility to toxic exposure—that infrastructural disenfranchisement might produce.
Infrastructure, it is said, is invisible until it breaks down. Maybe more accurately, infrastructure is topical when it overflows the present; when destruction, disrepair or regime change make cables and pipes things of the past, or when the design of boulevards or dreams of electrification augur new destinies. As memory, history or futurity, infrastructure provokes reflection and debate on the ethos of utilities, communication, circulation and disposal. What kinds of collectives might sewers and subways bind? Should civic, market or paternalistic relations guide the shape, size and flow of infrastructural networks? How have metropolitan, national, imperial and cosmopolitan visions been materialized as railways and telecommunications? How do collapsing bridges and mismatched gauges expose political, technological and ethical failures, as well as the forms of long-term planning, care and repair required by socialism, welfare, capitalism or democracy? What political claims have infrastructural interruption and renovation evoked? |
Media items
This collection contains 17 media items.
Media items
Civic Matter - 12 February 2014 - The Makeshift City: Radical Infrastructure and the Politics of Squatting in Berlin
Alex Vasudevan (University of Nottingham)
Abstract
In this paper I explore the history of squatting in Berlin from the late 1960s to the present. The paper pays ...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Thu 27 Feb 2014
Civic Matter - 13 October 2014 - Re-Imagining the Sound of a Mining Landscape
Listening to Ghosts: Re-Imining the Sound of a Mining Landscape
Sarah Buckler (Robert Gordon University)
Chair: Noémi Tousignant ( University of Cambridge)
Abstract
In...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Tue 14 Oct 2014
Civic Matter - 15 January 2014 - Infrastructural Visibility: The Political Performance of Transport in Contemporary...
Andrew Harris (University College London)
Abstract
This paper uses an empirical focus on transport projects in contemporary Mumbai to challenge the assumption that urban...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Mon 20 Jan 2014
Civic Matter - 20 November 2013 - Roundtable on Scientific Infrastructure in Africa
The Elusive Lab: Roundtable on Scientific Infrastructure in Africa
Professor David Dunne (Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge)
Dr Wenzel Geissler...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Mon 25 Nov 2013
Civic Matter - 21 May 2014 - Mobilizing Development Narrative in South Korea, 1956-1973
Mobilizing the Development Narrative: South Korean Developmental Visions for Infrastructure, Domestic and Southeast Asia, 1956-1973
John DiMoia (History, National University of...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Tue 3 Jun 2014
Civic Matter - 23 April 2014 - Mostra d’Oltramare: Recuperating Mussolini’s Show Case
Marcial Echenique (Architecture, University of Cambridge)
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Mon 22 Sep 2014
Civic Matter - 24 November 2014 - Participatory Sonic Arts in Rio and Belfast
Professor Pedro Rebelo (Queen's University, Belfast)
Abstract
This paper addresses the relationship between local and distributed strategies with reference to two recent...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Fri 28 Nov 2014
Civic Matter - 26 February 2014 - Planned Violence: Performing and Resisting Urban Infrastructures in London and...
Professor Elleke Boehmer (Faculty of English, Oxford University)
Dominic Davies (Faculty of English, Oxford University)
Abstract
Elleke Boehmer (Network Convener) and...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Fri 28 Feb 2014
Civic Matter - 4 June 2014 - Ruins of Utopia: Ponty to the University of the African Future
nfrastructures of Utopia: The University of the African Future, Rising from the Ashes of L'Ecole Normale William Ponty
Ferdinand De Jong (Anthropology, University of East...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Fri 6 Jun 2014
Civic Matter - 6 November 2013 - Camps as Infrastructure: Perspectives
Session Theme: Camps as Infrastructure: Spatial and Everyday Perspectives
Irit Katz Feigis (Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge)
1) Infrastructure of...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Mon 11 Nov 2013
Performing Laboratories Workshop - 19 January 2015 - Keynote: Roger Kneebone
Keynote:
Roger Kneebone (Imperial)
Backwards through the keyhole: re-enacting the surgical past
Collection: Performance Network
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Mon 26 Jan 2015
Performing Laboratories Workshop - 19 January 2015 - Session 2
Performing African Laboratories
Wenzel Geissler (Oslo) - Tanzania
Mariele Neudecker (Bath Spa) - Tanzania
Guillaume Lachenal (Paris Diderot) - Cameroon
John Manton...
Collection: Performance Network
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Mon 26 Jan 2015
Performing Laboratories Workshop - 19 January 2015 - Keynote: Mike Pearson
Keynote:
Mike Pearson (Aberystwyth)
'No joke in petticoats’: interpreting the remains of early Antarctic expeditions
Collection: Performance Network
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Mon 26 Jan 2015
Civic Matter - 2 February 2015 - British Rivers: Flow, Ownership, and ‘Modern’ Water
Dr Marianna Dudley (Bristol)
Abstract
This paper explores the emergence of conflict between recreational users of British rivers in the twentieth century, and subsequent...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Fri 6 Feb 2015
City Seminar - 9 February 2015 - Skateboarding and the City
Skateboarding and the City: From Margin to Centre
Iain Borden (University College London)
Abstract
In this talk, I trace the way in which the urban practice skateboarding...
Collection: City Seminar
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Fri 13 Feb 2015
Civic Matter - 11 May 2015 - Noise Pollution
Aga Tamiola (Artist - Berlin)
Born and raised in Stargard, Poland, Aga TamioĊa is a multimedia artist living and working out of Berlin and London. Her geographical and...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Thu 14 May 2015
Civic Matter - 16 February 2015 - KNITSONIK: Wool, Sound, and a Sense of Place
Dr Felicity Ford (Artist, Oxford Brookes)
Abstract
With influences as diverse as Rebecca Solnit, Kate Davies, Brandon LaBelle and Pauline Oliveros, Felicity Ford’s KNITSONIK...
Collection: Civic Matter
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Created: Tue 24 Feb 2015