Crossing Lines-July 2010
Crossing Lines: July Meetup: Goldsmiths RHB 356: Tuesday 20th July: 6-8 pmThe evening programme will include the following:
Anita Strasser has been working in Deptford High Street with shop owners, customers & residents on present & future change. Anita is investigating what attracts people to Deptford, their perception of their quality of life within it & their expectations & aspirations for the area. It's an emerging investigation & Anita will be presenting work to date, indicating directions & responding to ideas about how the work might progress.
Peter Coles has documented & commented upon the relationship of people to the varieties of 'nature' within the city; relationships that are complementary & those that conflict despite 'the best of intentions'. Peter will be presenting The Urban Forest: Paris and London.
Judith Jones has begun a long-term project on the Dorset community of Poundbury, a community built upon land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. Judith writes: "Poundbury is built as a museum with its rules and codes of design. Its visual characteristics organised to emulate a quintessential British rural village. I would assume that those who choose to reside here are compliant parties to the museums functioning, as at least initially they accept these codes in order to settle in the area. Living within a prefabricated community, akin to stage sets I aim to question how the residents have changed or will alter the prescriptive character of the area; will they modify it by their individual values and behaviour?
I wish to enquire as to how their individuality can be imprinted upon the geographical space that is ‘Poundbury’ and whether in the long term it will be a space formed by the often intransigent values of individuals or by what is often seen as the big brother ethics of the Duchy."
Alex McIlhiney has been working on a collaboration with Claire Haslam on the mapping of 'non-spaces'; areas of the map apparently barren & devoid of activity & human presence. Alex will be presenting work from recent excursions on the Thames estuary.
Spaces of Transit is an emerging project between John Levett & Beatriz Veliz Arguta. John will be illustrating current work.
Future Crossing Lines initiatives will also be discussed including a projected October exhibition of collaborative work to date.
Blog: http://cucrlip.wordpress.com/
Contact: john.levett1@gmail.com
Crossing Lines-June 2010
Crossing Lines: June Meetup: Goldsmiths RHB 307*: Tuesday 15th May: 6-8 pm
*Please note change of room for this month
The evening programme will include the following:
Nick Scammell is a photographer & poet, new to the group, with an interest in the intersect between image and word.
He writes: Lately I have begun to make double exposures, a decision driven by the resultant reflection of the act of wandering and its attendant state of reverie, where separate images, through association, throw up new and unexpected suggestions. In coming together, each image suffers a loss, but this layering grants a sensation of depth and delayed comprehension, much like the city itself.
Building on a previous two-year citywide project (London: Ghost Autopsy), I aim to take on a focused project in a specific area, being the 12km that is Green Lanes, one of the city’s longest and most ancient roads, offering a walk from the suburban (Winchmore Hill) into the urban (Newington Green) and the chance to question where the urban truly begins.
Christian von Wissel will be presenting work on Citámbulos (City amblers) that he has been working on with friends over a period of six years. Christian will be focussing on aspects of mapping, scale getting-lost to find a way, text-image-relations, hopscotch reading.
Spaces of Transit is an emerging project between John Levett & Beatriz Veliz Arguta which had as its starting point David Harvey's Between Space and Time. John will be presenting the background to it & inviting responses to the work so far.
Paolo Cardullo [http://kiddingthecity.org/] will be returning to Crossing Lines & presenting current work.
Nicholas Cobb has been walking a new development, Central St. Giles, between Bloomsbury & Soho assisted by the work of Peter Ackroyd. He has posted his reflections on the Crossing Lines blog [http://cucrlip.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/central-st-giles/]. Nick will be taking us further into the exploration & seeking responses
Blog: http://cucrlip.wordpress.com/
Contact: john.levett1@gmail.com
Crossing Lines-May 2010
May Meetup: Goldsmiths RHB 356: Tuesday 18th May: 6-8 pmThe evening programme will include the following:
Dianne Dowling writes: I have been working on two themes: firstly, Memory and secondly, Space-time. I have started writing about Bergson on Space and Time and am revisited Doreen Massey's work on Space, place and gender. Also informing my work is Janet Foster's book, Docklands: Cultures in Conflict, Worlds in Collision. This is new project about to move forward so your thoughts will be welcomed.
For Claire Haslam politics, ideology & maps are central to her practice. She will be showing current ideas in motion. One intriguing channel of thought Claire writes about as follows: I've been thinking a lot about the way I see and looking at short-sightedness as a quality or condition that's of interest, rather than just a difficulty to be overcome. This ties in to the isolation of seeing and being, and the limits of communicating and understanding between people who necessarily have different lexicons / experiences / ideologies / tastes.
Alex Rankin will be presenting work from his explorations of derelict & fringe spaces in the city based on M. Douglas's belief ('Purity & Danger') that "there is energy at the margins and in unstructured areas'
Surinder Singh has been working on street protest & space hijacking as an integral component of London communities. Current work from the recent election will be on show.
Christian von Wissel will be presenting work on Citámbulos (Citamblers) that he has been working on with friends over a period of six years.
Spaces of Transit is an emerging project between John Levett & Beatriz Veliz Arguta which had as its starting point David Harvey's Between Space and Time. Beatriz is currently in Germany but John isn't so your responses to work so far will still be welcomed!
Blog: http://cucrlip.wordpress.com/
Contact: john.levett1@gmail.com
Crossing Lines-collaboration between CUCR & London Independent Photography (LIP)
Crossing Lines: a collaboration between CUCR & London Independent Photography (LIP)
Meeting: monthly on third Tuesday
Goldsmiths RHB 356
6pm-8pm
May 18
June 15
July 20
August 17
September 21
October 19
November 16
December 21
Crossing Lines is an on-going forum for collaboration between photographers & researchers whose central interest is the urban situation, its constituents & its dynamics.
It seeks to provide:
• a valuable resource for developing a photographic practice
• an opportunity to pursue a joint project away from academic demands
• expanding contacts within photography
• an additional audience for research-in-progesss
• an alternative channel for disseminating a project
• the prospect of working with someone who might challenge one’s assumptions
It encourages:
• innovative approaches to collaboration at distance
• serendipitous encounters
• accidental outcomes
It believes that:
• everyone benefits from the sharing of supportive reactions to their work
• photography in itself, and in the service of a wider project, is a developmental and explorative
process which can benefit from partnership with others
• experimental work that has no formal platform for presentation benefits from a sympathetic forum
It is open to:
• all members of London Independent Photography
• all students, researchers and staff of CUCR
• all those who have been associated with CUCR and who seek a point of contact for continued
practical involvement
Please contact
John Levett john.levett1@gmail.com
Islands and corridors: the urban biosphere
*Thank you for everyone who came to this Urban Edge. Please click here for a link to all the images that the participants took on the day.*
Saturday 22nd May 2010
Goldsmiths RHB 356
Dr Peter Coles, (photographer, journalist and researcher at CUCR)
£30 waged
£10 unwaged/student
Please click here an Agenda for this workshop
‘Nature’ is everywhere in a city like London, from cracks in the pavement to rooftops, parks and rivers. Metaphors abound: Victorian cemeteries can be conservation ‘islands’ where species thrive. Rivers and railway lines can be ‘green corridors’, allowing species to migrate and maintain sustainable populations. Meanwhile, the ‘edge’ where humans and ‘nature’ meet in urban spaces can tell us a great deal about distant and recent local history, as well as current use.
This photography-based workshop invites participants to explore the relationship of people to ‘nature’ in an inner-city area, using photography, on a walk along the Ravensbourne River and Deptford Creek in South-east London. The derelict, urbanized tidal Creek is, in fact, extraordinarily ecologically diverse and alive. Studies have revealed over 25 aquatic species, 300 terrestrial species or insect and other invertebrates, over 140 trees, shrubs and wildflowers. The Creek is also home to breeding black redstarts, which are nationally rare birds.
If you wish to attend this UEW please download the form below and send to the address at the footer of the form.
Please email CUCR for more information
Making Sense of Sense part 2
Saturday 8th May 2010
Goldsmiths RHB 350
Time-10am-5pm
Karla Barren-CUCR researcher
Alex Rhys Taylor-CUCR Researcher
£30 waged
£10 unwaged/student
Cities are inherently sonorous, aromatic, delectable and textured places, littered with an astonishing array of sensoria. Yet urban sociology has tended to overlook many of the cities sensuous components, relegating them to the background against which ‘real life’ takes place. ‘The Sense of Making Sense’ workshops intend to help bring the nuances ascribed to experience by the ‘other senses,’ out from the ambient background of sociological accounts, and into the foreground.
The multi-sensory sociology that will be developed through these workshops draws on a combination of ethnographic and photographic practice, augmenting them to ‘making sense’ through the nose, ear and taste-buds.
This workshop will comprise of a a session at the start of the day discussing some of the difficulties posed when trying to research the social roles of the 'other senses' including limitaitons imposed by a lack of technologies for their representation and translation. It will also, however, focus on why the 'other' senses might be particularly useful for understanding. Participants will be invited to explore their own orientation in the city using olfactory, gustatory, sonic, written and
visual methods.
These workshops are intended to be of interest to, and open, to all, However, they will draw on prior knowledge and practices of ethnographers and photographers, and thus, may be of the greatest interest to them.
THE EYES OF THE STREET LOOK BACK: with a camera in a (very) foreign city.
Saturday 13th March 2010
Goldsmiths, RHB 356
10am-4pm
£30 waged
£10 unwaged/student
Ariadne van de Ven
When we visit a foreign city, we find ourselves at an unfamiliar
urban edge: we don’t know the way, the language, the people or the
street behaviour rules. Even if we do not use a camera, we wander, we
wonder, we look, we interpret what we see. This workshop will explore
the politics of photographing and of seeing in cities in the majority
world (or ‘Global South’). The starting point is the connection
between the two, and the ways in which photographs—and, crucially, the
making of photographs—can ask important questions about seeing and the
judgements we attach to what we see. The vocabulary of photography
pins down a one-way process: taking, capturing, shooting. The language
used by critics of photography frequently assumes the same power
imbalance: the gaze, objectification, commodification.
The workshop will approach these issues from two different angles:
first, the making of the photograph as an interaction, a collaborative,
visual improvisation: the eyes of the street look back, and in doing
so, they subvert assumptions about otherness, about power relations.
And, second, we shall also explore to what extent the resulting
photograph, after the long journey ‘home,’ can retain the spark of this
interaction.
This one-day workshop is for everybody who wants to
explore visual reactions to very unfamiliar urban settings. For the
past seven years, I have been going on holiday to Kolkata, or Calcutta
and I shall bring photographs of my own; participants are expected to
bring their own stranger-in-the-city experiences with their images
(digitally or printed). I hope the session will leave us all
productively baffled.
Collective Memory: Exploring Social & Spatial Possibility, Participation or Exclusion
Saturday 27th February 2010, 10am -5pm
David Kendall (Researcher and Photographer)
meeting point: Piccadilly Heathrow exit terminal 1,2,3. Ticket Hall.
Heathrow airport situated within the ‘Green Belt’ to the west of Central London is waiting to undergo spatial expansion. A new runway is proposed and will run parallel to the M4 motorway; the area planned for this redevelopment (which includes the villages of Sipson and Harmonsworth) is geographically small yet its potential future has global significance. London’s status as a Global City is forcing spatial growth of the airport and leaves open questions as to how the social dynamics of these neighbourhoods, which are inserted between the proposed airport extension could expand or contract.
The concept of ‘collective or public memory’ could provide an entry point to explore the urban sociology of this location and map social possibility, participation or exclusions. Do factions involved in redevelopment appropriate and create their own versions of the past, present and future, through contesting forms of public memory? Diverting current spatial debates or events and slowing down or speeding up planning
processes in or around the area. Or could this site be considered a landscape that is antagonistic towards collective memory? Activating new debates about community cohesion and the potential extension of city-spaces.
This one-day workshop will visit the proposed site and invites participants to explore how suburban-urban landscapes act as fixed or fluid social spaces. Where macro spatial concepts of globalization: land usage, speculative economic development and surveillance fuse with everyday social practices and micro political spaces of ‘memory’, historical conservation, community and environmental activism. The outcome of the workshop will be a series of written propositions and visual materials (maps and
photographs) that explore the urban sociology of the site.
David Kendall’s practice explores how spatial, economic and design initiatives and participatory practices combine to encourage social and spatial interconnection or conflict in cities. David exhibits and publishes projects internationally: Visual and written research initiated within CUCR was included in the 4th International Architecture Biennale, Open City: Designing Coexistence, 2009-2010 and published in books, magazines and journals the UK and the Netherlands.
If you wish to attend this UEW please click on the link below to download a payment form and send to the address at the footer of the form.
Here is a testimonial from one of our participants
The sense of Making Sense Part 1
Karla Berrens , Alex Rhys Taylor (CUCR Researchers) and Paul Halliday(Convenor of MA Photography Urban Cultures)
Cities are inherently sonorous, aromatic, delectable and textured places, littered with an astonishing array of sensoria. Yet urban sociology, grounded in a ocularcentric en'light'enment discourses, has tended to over'look' many of the cities sensuous components, relegating them to the background against which ‘real life’ takes place. ‘The Sense of Making Sense’ workshops intend to help bring the nuances ascribed to experience by the ‘other senses,’ out from the ambient background of sociological accounts, and usher them into the foreground.
The multi-sensory sociology that will be developed through these workshops draws on ethnography and photographic practices. Where it departs from these practices is in the development of a heightened attention to the ways of ‘making sense’ through the nose, ear and tastebuds. Much of this ‘making sense’ is, of course, already undertaken by our bodies at the lowest levels of consciousness. However, the purpose of these workshops is to bring the work of the ‘other senses’ into conscious reflection, and feed this new sensitivity through pre-existent sociological imaginations.
The first workshop will look into how we make sense of our surroundings beyond images. Participants will be invited to explore their own orientation in the city using sonic, written and visual methods. It will encourage people to think of their body as a receptor as well as an actor. It will provide a base for the Multi-Sensory Methods Workshop held in May 2010.
These workshops are intended to be of interest to, and open, to all, However, they will draw on prior knowledge and practices of ethnographers and photographers, and thus, may be of the greatest interest to them.