THE RIGHT TO THE SURFACE IS THE RIGHT TO THE CITY
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 …
Continue reading "Strike teach-out: Greek Academic Asylum Law"
I wrote this text to reflect on my workload in Higher Education, seven weeks into Term 1 of 2019-20. I hope friends in similar situations add their voice, while friends in better situations and students become fully aware of the following example (here, mine). If nothing more, getting this down on paper was a meaningful …
Continue reading "I adore my work, yet I consider quitting every day: this is teaching"
Join me in Manchester on 12 and 13 October 2019 for a free weekend of talks, street projects, workshops and film screenings on city life and its appropriations. I will be hosting the programme of talks for the weekend, with a bunch of great people who think about and do things in cities. From the …
Continue reading "Social Surfaces +0161"
I am taking part in the Nuart festival of public art in Aberdeen between 18-21 April 2019. My talk is part of the Nuart Plus series that complements the artworks produced during the festival. The title is "Mended Matter and Layered Politics – The Challenges of Researching Urban Surfaces" - and the content will cover …
Continue reading "Mended Matter and Layered Politics: Talk at Nuart Aberdeen 2019"
I am taking part in the CityStreet3 conference in Beirut between 31 October - 3 November 2018, with a paper on Venetian surface semiotics. The paper is entitled "This way to San Marco: A semiotic examination of vernacular signage in Venice" and will be presented as part of a conference track on communication, visualisation and …
Continue reading "Venice surface semiotics paper at CityStreet3 conference in Beirut, Lebanon"
"Selling streetness as experience: the role of street art tours in branding the creative city" is now free to access on the Sociological Review Journal website. Particularly relevant for anyone interested in Bourdieu, Becker and the sociology of art, and also in how the street art world becomes established as a part of the creative …
Urban Walls: Political and Cultural Meanings of Vertical Structures and Surfaces is out now with Routledge. The volume is edited by Andrea Mubi Brighenti and Mattias Kärrholm and contains an essay I wrote, alongside many brilliant contributions by scholars I so deeply admire! Mubi Brighenti's first edited volume on walls, The Wall and the City, …
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