2nd Global Conference
Wednesday 3rd September - Saturday 6th September
2008
Mansfield College, Oxford
Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 9: Cultural Politics
Chair: Eleni Pavlides
Concepts of Locality, Regionality and Europeanness in European Capitals of Culture
Tuuli Lähdesmäki
Art History,
University of Jyväskylä,
Finland
Since 1985, the European Union has nominated cities as European Cities of Culture or European Capitals of Culture in order to “highlight the richness and diversity of European cultures and the features they share, as well as to promote greater mutual acquaintance between European citizens” (Decision 1419/1999/EC). For the chosen cities the nomination creates a possibility to promote the city, region and theirs characteristics, people and identity. Locality and regionality, as identities of the place and its citizens, are being materialized and visualized in the cities through art and cultural products and events. However, the European Capital of Culture program is an ideological construction, which gets profoundly political content not only on the local and regional level but also in the EU. Thus, besides the locality and regionality, the program produces and promotes consciously and unconsciously ‘Europeanness’ or European identities.
The concepts of locality, regionality and Europeanness seem to confront in the European Capital of Culture program in a complex way. In my presentation I will analyze the contents of these concepts in application books and promotion material of five forthcoming European Capitals of Culture: Essen, Istanbul, Pécs, Tallinn and Turku. Despite their differences, all the cities follow the same instructions and criteria formulated by the EU in order to apply for the title of the European Capitals of Culture. Following the same pattern have an influence on the discussions, definition and depictions on identities in the cities. Thus, the presentation also lightens the rhetoric and ideology of the EU-policy on the concepts in question. Particularly, the application books and promotion material of the cities seem to follow an ideology of the interplay between the regions and Europe in construction of their identities. In several studies in recent years this process has been called the ‘localisation of Europe’ or ‘Europeanisation of the local’.
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La Parisienne in the Media: Moving Beyond France
Agnès Rocamora
Cultural and Historical Studies,
London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.
Paris has long been celebrated as a fashion city, with la Parisienne [the Parisian woman] a recurrent figure of discourses on the French capital. French writers, painters, and film directors have appropriated this figure, feeding into its status as an iconic model of femininity. The contemporary French fashion press, the focus of the proposed paper, has also been central to the consecration of la Parisienne. Looking more specifically at a dominant institution in the international field of fashion, Vogue Paris, the paper will interrogate the discursive construction of la Parisienne. In particular, it will argue that, in line with discourses on Paris, in Vogue, la Parisienne is at once the essence of French femininity but also a superior being whose identity resides in her belonging to the Parisian territory and places her above the nation. It will thereby address a key topic in debates on French cultural life: the division Paris/the provinces and the tension in the portrayal of Paris as both part of, but also superior to, and detached from, the rest of France. La Parisienne, following Vogue’s geography of fashion, has more in common with women from other capitals than with les provinciales [provincial women]. Inscribed in a chain of major cities from various nations, Paris is further detached from France, lifted off the French map and reinserted into a supranational order of urban places.
In discussing such ideas, attention will be paid to the continuum between the French journalistic discourse and that of cultural forms such as paintings and literature. Today’s discursive Parisienne is nourished by a past whose many interwoven layers of textual representations have sedimented into its contemporary value, and the paper will show the persistence across texts and time of visions of Paris and la Parisienne. Light will thus be shed on the production and reproduction of the Paris myth.
Dream or Nightmare?: The Architectural Illustration of Conflicted Cultures and Identities in Post-Communist Eastern Europe
Raluca Manoliu
Architect, “Gh. Asachi” Technical University,“G.M. Cantacuzino” Faculty of Architecture,
Iasi, Romania
The paper aims at presenting and critically analyzing the ways in which artistic representations and medias – mainly architectural drawings- express ideas and solutions for bringing back from the ashes shattered cultural identities. The discussion can be extended over the entire Eastern post-socialist and post-communist Europe, which is facing paradigmatic economical and political shifts and, in some cases, dramatic war actions, aimed at reconfiguring states. The world is in a perpetual motion, and wars and various other types of aggressions change the face of cities and countries. These changes go as deep as affecting or even mutating cultural and personal identities. Which is, then, the best solution for realizing a transition for these reconfigurations? Do artists, architects and urban planners have a word to say in the process?
The paper will have as a starting point the work of Lebbeus Woods, with its highly provocative and radical solution for traumatized cities and cultures, and from there, with the help of historical examples and references, it shall try to understand which is the best way for a culture to keep its memory and identity - the mimetic reconstruction, the radical change, or a solution in between.
It will be a dialogue between the loss of equilibrium (conflicts and wars) and the state of peace, between history annihilation and history preservation, a dialogue situated at the brink of an abyss between two worlds, the old and the new.
National and individual identities have always been embedded in architecture; therefore it is by looking at its mutations, that the artist and architect can make an accurate diagnosis of the state of cultural identity.
Strict preservation can mean the annihilation of history in the same way as complete destruction would. There is a fine line between the two, and the illustrations of Lebbeus Woods give the opportunity of grasping and analyzing the implications of either of the ways.