001 – Valencia/Bilbao/Barcelona – Vilaseca on Street Art in Spain – Urban Cultural Studies Podcast

UCS 001 Stephen Vilaseca on Street Art in Barcelona Valencia and Bilbao Spain (28 June 2013)   Conversational interview inspired by scholar Stephen Vilaseca‘s recent article “From Graffiti to Street Art: How Urban Artists Are Democratizing Spanish City Centers and Streets,” originally published in the journal Transitions: Journal of Franco-Iberian Studies (8, 2012). Topics include: public space, graffiti vs. street art, artists Escif, Frágil and Dr. Case, Valencia, Bilbao, and Barcelona. [LINK TO ORIGINAL PUBLISHER]

000 – Test Only – Intro-Outro – Urban Cultural Studies Podcast

UCS Podcast INTRO and OUTRO

Introducing Urban Cultural Studies Podcasts!

Introducing Urban Cultural Studies Podcasts!

There’s a new page on this site (main menu bar above) dedicated to the podcasts, which will feature interviews with authors of recent article-length publications relating to the cultures of cities. Episodes will be in the 20-minute range and strive to venture beyond the content of the original publication. Still some tech stuff to figure out, but they will eventually be available both here and through iTunes.

Aeon magazine – can architecture improve our sex lives?

Wallhunters: The Slumlord Project (Baltimore)

WallHunters: The Slumlord Project

[Watch the 5 minute video here]

[this post follows up on previous posts on artist Gaia posted on this blog]

The project will install 15 large street art pieces with posted info that reveals/publicizes the ownership of dilapidated vacant houses.

Using radical methods, our project will unite three forces to catalyze discussion of Baltimore’s vacancy problem and how to solve it:

• Wall Hunters Inc, a recently  created, street  artist run non profit organization
• Baltimore Slumlord Watch
• a film being made that gives voice to the ignored on the topic of vacancy and the power of street art.

In short, the project will bring together 15 artists from around the country, each of whom will install a large piece on a dilapidated vacant house. QR codes and text detailing the ownership information that is uncovered by Slumlord Watch will accompany the art. Voices of the people who live in these neglected areas of town, will be heard

Lefebvrebot (3) Philosophy and the City

 

A robot possessing the urban knowledge of French philosopher and spatial theorist Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) explores the multidimensional nature of the city. (part 3) This episode draws from Lefebvre’s works Writings on Cities [The Right to the City], The Production of Space, and The Urban Revolution.

PhD programme in Urban Studies, GSSI, Italy

GSSI CITIES [ORIGINAL SITE HERE]

Research and post-graduate study at the GSSI’s Urban Studies Unit focus on the long-term development trajectories of ‘territorial systems’, and ‘urban systems’ in particular (cities, metropolitan areas, metropolitan regions). The methodological perspective in research and teaching is genuinely trans-disciplinary.

Review of Adrian Forty, Concrete and Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 2012)

RICHARD J WILLIAMS

A version of the following review appeared in Sculpture Journal in 2013

Everybody has a view about concrete, but few of these views are exactly the same: there is no material so contradictory and complex in its application and meaning. I myself became fully aware of concrete’s contradictions in Brazil, latterly accompanied by Forty’s edited book on the country’s modernist architecture (Brazil’s Modern Architecture, 2007). I had never seen so much concrete. But equally I have never been confronted with such a disjunction between aspiration and application. Standing outside Oscar Niemeyer’s MAC art museum in Niteroí, it was impossible to square the MAC’s futuristic form (a flying saucer) with the crudeness of its execution (all cracks and, lumps, like a primary school project). That contrast was really quite disturbing, as the official photographs of the MAC depicted a building of otherworldly sleekness whose construction was a mystery to…

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Madrid in the Journal of Iberian Studies

An incestuous post – the link originally came from Ben Fraser and UCS. I’ve added a few words. Great topic.

Guest-edited special issue: Madrid and Urban Cultural Studies

The guest-edited issue on the topic of “Madrid and urban cultural studies” has been published in the International Journal of Iberian Studies (26.1-2 [2013]: pp. 3-102). Click here for link to publisher’s page.

Editorial and four articles include: