Civic Matter

Civic Matter's image
Created: 2013-11-11 09:45
Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Description: Taking infrastructure in a narrow material sense, Civic Matter is about thinking through the social, ethical and political work of infrastructural design, (re)construction and maintenance, and the ways in which anticipated and obsolete infrastructures are imagined, remembered, destroyed, recycled or eschewed. Our central aim is to explore the past and potential of infrastructure as a civic project through a combination of (inter)disciplinary angles, from architecture to archeology, geography to history. We plan to discuss the forms of labour and imagination that materialize past and future polities, and to identify the threats posed by neglect, exclusion, dysfunction and privatisation to this project, and the material effects –from immobility to toxic exposure—that infrastructural disenfranchisement might produce.
Infrastructure, it is said, is invisible until it breaks down. Maybe more accurately, infrastructure is topical when it overflows the present; when destruction, disrepair or regime change make cables and pipes things of the past, or when the design of boulevards or dreams of electrification augur new destinies. As memory, history or futurity, infrastructure provokes reflection and debate on the ethos of utilities, communication, circulation and disposal. What kinds of collectives might sewers and subways bind? Should civic, market or paternalistic relations guide the shape, size and flow of infrastructural networks? How have metropolitan, national, imperial and cosmopolitan visions been materialized as railways and telecommunications? How do collapsing bridges and mismatched gauges expose political, technological and ethical failures, as well as the forms of long-term planning, care and repair required by socialism, welfare, capitalism or democracy? What political claims have infrastructural interruption and renovation evoked?
 

Media items

This collection contains 17 media items.

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Media items

Civic Matter - 12 February 2014 - The Makeshift City: Radical Infrastructure and the Politics of Squatting in Berlin

   437 views

Alex Vasudevan (University of Nottingham)



Abstract
In this paper I explore the history of squatting in Berlin from the late 1960s to the present. The paper pays ...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Thu 27 Feb 2014


Civic Matter - 13 October 2014 - Re-Imagining the Sound of a Mining Landscape

   131 views

Listening to Ghosts: Re-Imining the Sound of a Mining Landscape

Sarah Buckler (Robert Gordon University)

Chair: Noémi Tousignant ( University of Cambridge)

Abstract

In...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Tue 14 Oct 2014


Civic Matter - 15 January 2014 - Infrastructural Visibility: The Political Performance of Transport in Contemporary...

   111 views

Andrew Harris (University College London)



Abstract
This paper uses an empirical focus on transport projects in contemporary Mumbai to challenge the assumption that urban...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Mon 20 Jan 2014


Civic Matter - 20 November 2013 - Roundtable on Scientific Infrastructure in Africa

   120 views

The Elusive Lab: Roundtable on Scientific Infrastructure in Africa



Professor David Dunne (Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge)

Dr Wenzel Geissler...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Mon 25 Nov 2013


Civic Matter - 21 May 2014 - Mobilizing Development Narrative in South Korea, 1956-1973

   100 views

Mobilizing the Development Narrative: South Korean Developmental Visions for Infrastructure, Domestic and Southeast Asia, 1956-1973

John DiMoia (History, National University of...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Tue 3 Jun 2014


Civic Matter - 23 April 2014 - Mostra d’Oltramare: Recuperating Mussolini’s Show Case

   91 views

Marcial Echenique (Architecture, University of Cambridge)

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Mon 22 Sep 2014


Civic Matter - 24 November 2014 - Participatory Sonic Arts in Rio and Belfast

   91 views

Professor Pedro Rebelo (Queen's University, Belfast)

Abstract

This paper addresses the relationship between local and distributed strategies with reference to two recent...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Fri 28 Nov 2014


Civic Matter - 26 February 2014 - Planned Violence: Performing and Resisting Urban Infrastructures in London and...

   103 views

Professor Elleke Boehmer (Faculty of English, Oxford University)
Dominic Davies (Faculty of English, Oxford University)


Abstract

Elleke Boehmer (Network Convener) and...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Fri 28 Feb 2014


Civic Matter - 4 June 2014 - Ruins of Utopia: Ponty to the University of the African Future

   142 views

nfrastructures of Utopia: The University of the African Future, Rising from the Ashes of L'Ecole Normale William Ponty

Ferdinand De Jong (Anthropology, University of East...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Fri 6 Jun 2014


Civic Matter - 6 November 2013 - Camps as Infrastructure: Perspectives

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Session Theme: Camps as Infrastructure: Spatial and Everyday Perspectives


Irit Katz Feigis (Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge)
1) Infrastructure of...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Mon 11 Nov 2013


Performing Laboratories Workshop - 19 January 2015 - Keynote: Roger Kneebone

   127 views

Keynote:

Roger Kneebone (Imperial)

Backwards through the keyhole: re-enacting the surgical past

Collection: Performance Network

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Mon 26 Jan 2015


Performing Laboratories Workshop - 19 January 2015 - Session 2

   135 views

Performing African Laboratories

Wenzel Geissler (Oslo) - Tanzania
Mariele Neudecker (Bath Spa) - Tanzania
Guillaume Lachenal (Paris Diderot) - Cameroon
John Manton...

Collection: Performance Network

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Mon 26 Jan 2015


Performing Laboratories Workshop - 19 January 2015 - Keynote: Mike Pearson

   169 views

Keynote:

Mike Pearson (Aberystwyth)

'No joke in petticoats’: interpreting the remains of early Antarctic expeditions

Collection: Performance Network

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Mon 26 Jan 2015


Civic Matter - 2 February 2015 - British Rivers: Flow, Ownership, and ‘Modern’ Water

   95 views

Dr Marianna Dudley (Bristol)

Abstract

This paper explores the emergence of conflict between recreational users of British rivers in the twentieth century, and subsequent...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Fri 6 Feb 2015


City Seminar - 9 February 2015 - Skateboarding and the City

   519 views

Skateboarding and the City: From Margin to Centre
Iain Borden (University College London)

Abstract
In this talk, I trace the way in which the urban practice skateboarding...

Collection: City Seminar

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Fri 13 Feb 2015


Civic Matter - 11 May 2015 - Noise Pollution

   418 views

Aga Tamiola (Artist - Berlin)

Born and raised in Stargard, Poland, Aga TamioĊ‚a is a multimedia artist living and working out of Berlin and London. Her geographical and...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Thu 14 May 2015


Civic Matter - 16 February 2015 - KNITSONIK: Wool, Sound, and a Sense of Place

   107 views

Dr Felicity Ford (Artist, Oxford Brookes)

Abstract

With influences as diverse as Rebecca Solnit, Kate Davies, Brandon LaBelle and Pauline Oliveros, Felicity Ford’s KNITSONIK...

Collection: Civic Matter

Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Created: Tue 24 Feb 2015