LIVING MAPS REVIEW [new journal]

LIVINGMAPS REVIEW

First issue of new online journal

Livingmaps Review explores map making as a democratic medium for visual artists, writers, social researchers and community activists. The journal has its roots in the highly successful series of seminars, walks and learning events presented by the Livingmaps network over the past two years across London. Many of the contributions to the first issue are drawn from material presented at those events.

LMR crosses boundaries between the arts, humanities and sciences, and also between professional and amateur mapmakers. We encourage the use of experimental audio-visual, interactive and graph- ic formats and especially welcome contributions from younger and unpublished   contributors.

The journal will document and disseminate innovative and participatory forms of cartography, opening up new spaces of debate and making visible what is hidden or erased by conventional mapping.

Highlights of the first issue include Phil Cohen on critical cartography and the struggle for a just city; Jerry White on Charles Booth’s maps; Andrew Motion talking about his poem ‘Discovering Geographies’; Jerry Brotton on the relationship between poetry and mapping; Kei Miller reading from his award winning collection ‘The cartographer tries to map a way to Zion’, also reviewed in this issue; plus maps by artists Emma McNally and Stephen Walter.

The journal has five sections. Navigations carries longer scholarly articles about key issues in cartographic theory and practice. Waypoints has shorter, more experimental pieces. Lines of Desire explores the cartographic imaginary in literature, performance and the physical arts. Mapworks is a gallery in which contemporary visual artists exhibit and comment on their work. There is also a review section for books, exhibitions, and events.

Forthcoming themed issues will focus on indigenous cartography and smart cities.

The journal will come out twice a year in Spring and Autumn. The editorial team brings together leading academics, artists and activists drawn from a range of disciplines, backgrounds and perspectives.

Access the launch issue:

www.livingmaps.review

Further information about LivingMaps:

www.livingmaps.org.uk

NDSM: Are You Tough Enough?

This gallery contains 3 photos.

Walk [Your City] started as guerilla public art statement, now a small business.

Mental Flowers

I think it is a great activist approach to promoting healthy behaviors in a playful way. I’m also thrilled to see that there is a huge demand for this playful kind of sign creation and development, and Tomasulo has been able to turn it into a business.

The signs, the brainchild of then-graduate student Matt Tomasulo, were meant to help people think differently about distances in the city, and to encourage them to get out of their cars and explore the place under their own power.When it debuted in 2012, the project drew international notice and received lots of favorable press coverage, including here on CityLab. It also got the attention of Raleigh’s city government, which eventually took the signs down for violating local ordinances. But the city’s planning director was a fan of the concept behind Tomasulo’s action, and soon they reached a compromise. The signs went back up…

View original post 77 more words

Calendar for Online Hispanic Urban Theory Discussion Group

We would like to invite you to a continuation of a series of events that the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona has launched in Virtual Reality for the academic year of 2015-2016. They will take place at Cibola, the Department’s home in Second Life. Next conversation will be between Malcolm Compitello (The University of Arizona), Susan Divine (College of Charleston), Juliana Luna Freire (Framingham State University), Megan Saltzman (West Chester University), Silvia Ruíz Tresgallo (Wisconsin-Stout), Matt Feinberg (Oberlin College) and the new Cibola Manager Laura Vazquez Blazquez (ABD, The University of Arizona). It will be about the relationships between urban studies and Hispanic culture. Everyone is welcome!

We meet on Thursdays (please see dates below) at at 5:00 p.m. Tucson time (7p.m. EST).

Here’s our tentative schedule:

2/4 – “The Urbanization of Consciousness” by David Harvey (led by all)

2/18 – “The Invisible Political Economy of Architectural Production” by David Harvey and “Architecture is now a tool of capital, complicit in a purpose antithetical to its social mission” by Reinier de Graaf (led by Malcolm Compitello and Megan Saltzman)

Date TBA – “Theses on Urbanization” by Neil Brenner (led by Matt Feinberg)

Date TBA – Section of Cities of the Global South Reader (led by Silvia Ruíz Tresgallo)

– TBA (led by Juliana Luna Freire)

– TBA (led by Susan Divine)

TBA  – “Rethinking the geographies of cultural ‘objects’ through digital technologies: interface, network and friction” by Gillian Rose or Extract from the book: Food and Urbanism by Susan Parham (led by Laura Vázquez Blázquez)

We hope to see you at the event. In order to access Cibola, you will need to install Firestorm in your computer (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/cibola/26/180/28). If you need help, please contact any of us.

In Search of Lost Cities: Imagined Geographies and the Allure of the Fake (2015)

Lion and the Hunter

‘Fake Paris’ in Tianducheng, China

The Diffractions Graduate Journal for the Study of Culture, run by the Lisbon Consortium, has published my article in their 5th issue: ‘Urban Imaginaries’ (Fall, 2015). Employing  Edward Said’s notion of ‘imagined geographies’  and Robert Alter’s notion of ‘phantasmagoria’, my new article ‘In Search of Lost Cities: Imagined Geographies and the Allure of the Fake’, looks at the portrayal of famous cities in popular culture and media, and discusses the touristic disillusionment with the ‘real’ city. Here is the abstract:

Despite audiences being aware of the way in which popular culture frames and invents history, places and people, these representations inevitably impinge on a viewer’s initial conception of various global landscapes and features, particularly the nature of an urban environment so often depicted through the lens of popular culture. It has been well established that the disparity between one’s expectations and the reality of a city’s layout…

View original post 164 more words

Antipode Intervention on Lefebvre – “Towards a Metaphilosophy of the Urban” by Andy Merrifield

Progressive Geographies

Antipode Intervention – “Towards a Metaphilosophy of the Urban” by Andy Merrifield. This piece discusses Lefebvre’s Metaphilosophy, forthcoming in English translation with Verso.

I suspect I’m not the only one thrilled by the prospect of seeing Henri Lefebvre’s great philosophical tract, Métaphilosophie, from half-a-century ago, finally make it into English. Thanks to the dedicated steady work of Stuart Elden, rapidly becoming Lefebvre’s Anglophone ambassador (I’m tempted to say an English Rémi Hess, but that wouldn’t be kind), and David Fernbach’s considerable translation skills, Metaphilosophy is due out next spring with Verso. This might well be the philosophical event of 2016. The translation has a wonderful postface essay by Marxist scholar Georges Labica, a former philo prof at Nanterre.[1] Labica says Métaphilosophie is a very important book, as important for us today as it was important for Lefebvre himself back then. Indeed, it’s perhaps Lefebvre’s mostimportant…

View original post 83 more words

The Urban Lens: Documenting Gentrification’s Toll on the Mom-and-Pops of Greenwich Village | 6sqft

The RDNY.com Rent Apartment in NYC Blog

6sqft’s new series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. To kick things off,
http://www.6sqft.com/the-urban-lens-documenting-gentrifications-toll-on-the-mom-and-pops-of-greenwich-village/?utm_source=6sqft+Daily+List&utm_campaign=5d4a5c817d-Daily_403&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ac79eda340-5d4a5c817d-246868149

View original post