THE RIGHT TO THE SURFACE IS THE RIGHT TO THE CITY
The world of Melbourne walls and public images is slowly revealing itself to me, and so are some good people in this city. One of them is Prof David Nichols from the Faculty of Architecture, Building, and Planning at the University of Melbourne. David runs a podcast called "This must be the place", which is …
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📺📽️ Television documentary alert! Two days before I left London in February 2023, I spent a day with the more-than-wonderful team at GA&A Productions to work on a documentary about street art, public ownership, and Banksy's symbolic community importance. 🎉 BANKSY AND THE STOLEN GIRL is now out - and traces the theft and subsequent police investigation …
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A few thoughts on Anselm, Wim Wenders’ 3D film about the artist Anselm Kiefer, which I saw as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. Spoiler alert: infuriation ahead!
I am speaking tomorrow at the International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology in Melbourne! The title of my talk is “Interviewing walls? Lesson and methods from urban surfaces” and it draws from years of thinking what this wall interview method might mean, and how it can draw us closer to the meanings of urban …
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I have recently been appointed as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cities and Urbanism at Melbourne Uni. The position is affiliated with the School of Culture of Communication, Faculty of Arts, and I sit within the wonderful Centre for Cities. Melbourne is my new home now and I hope to produce exciting research from here …
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Images like this are like a pluri-vocal whisper reminding me of the energy of urban togetherness, in all its messy, smelly, disorderly forms. One of my Leake Street photographs has been featured on the cover of the Visual Studies journal (Vol 36, Issue 1, 2021). You can see the cover on their website and read …
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Oh so delighted to have been nominated in the Inspiring Teaching Delivery category of this year's Education Awards at UCL. This nomination is particularly meaningful because it has been put forward by students of the Bartlett School of Architecture (it's the Student Choice Award) and because it comes in this online teaching year. Shout-outs to …
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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 …
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“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 …
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