THE RIGHT TO THE SURFACE IS THE RIGHT TO THE CITY
One of the main losses resulting from covid lockdowns and curfews has been that of rights to disorder, mischief, debauchery, and any number of afterhours activities which take place among people. To respond to the thresholds theme of the new Borderland journal, I propose to inhabit the time-space of curfews and lockdowns, and confront their moral authority through …
Continue reading "Out late and dirty: curfews and the covid city"
“Power, Paint and Public Walls” was my six-day endeavour with Sprya Sharma and 25 students from CEPT University in Ahmedabad, India. Taught online under an intensive "winter school" format, the course aimed to develop a multidisciplinary reading of contemporary cities by examining walls, surfaces, graffiti, street art, advertising and other types of wall writing. The …
I was excited and pleased to speak to Eric Mollo of ABC News Radio about the social value of street art, as part of the programme "Celebrating the arts". Eric prepared a short segment on "Street art as a symbol of unity", reflecting on the many murals and other forms of memorialisation on public walls …
I will be teaching a week-long winter course at CEPT University in Ahmedabad, India (well, online) with my colleague Sprya Sharma. Sprya is an architect who has been researching wall drawings in her region (particularly the fascinating Madhubani paintings), and the two of us work with similar wall-reading tools, which we are going to bring …
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I wrote a short article for U+I Think, about how to imagine a heritage culture of movement and change, by learning from graffiti. "Having written a PhD on graffiti – my friends call me Dr Wall – one of my most important takeaways is this: colour and beauty are not intrinsically valuable for cities. Yet …
Continue reading "Article on graffiti as living heritage now out"
My Leake Street repeat photography research project has won the International Visual Sociology Association's Prosser Award for outstanding work in visual methodologies. The Prosser award is offered annually to emerging scholars from the social sciences, arts, humanities (and architecture!) and supports the development of qualitative visual research methods. I am very pleased that this project …
Soho / Chinatown It was eerie yet energising to see my favourite part of town all boarded up. There is a hopeful paradox in this state of suspension, as the activity behind the boards has ceased, yet the street is hammered at and activated with intense works, the kind of which I have never seen …
Continue reading "Covid surfaces. Public walls in lockdown London (2)"
Highbury/ Stoke Newington / Dalston / Brick Lane Leave it to city surfaces to tell the stories of our times, even during lockdown. This is an ever-so-limited perspective of a city that seems far and is dearly missed, but remains accessible in a compressed, guarded, hyperlocal iteration. First block of photos is from seven weeks …
Continue reading "Covid surfaces. Public walls in lockdown London (1)"
I did a talk on the Greek Academic Asylum Law as part of the Bartlett picket line teach-outs on 10 March 2020. The teach-outs have been taking place during the most recent national UCU "four fights" strike, which concerns workloads, casualisation, pensions and pay inequalities. The Academic Asylum Law in Greece was introduced in 1982 …
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SABINA ANDRON 