Negative urbanism: unknowability, illegibility and ambivalence in the platform city

Bissell, David

doi:10.1080/13604813.2022.2145633

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…We might even choose to use all three kinds of presentational technique in our write-ups -or even use quotes within interview reflections (see Bissell, 2021Bissell, , 2023. And there are so many other ways of writing through interview encounters that are yet to be tried which might draw inspiration from experimentation happening in other disciplines (Pandian & McLean, 2017).…”

Section: Feeling Distancementioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning quotation: Writing about interview experiences without using quotes

Bissell

2022

Area

Self Cite

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RITA: So the thing is that when I had the accident, oh, my god, this is my only form of income. For fuck … What have I done?Interview quotes have a sacred quality. Through the pages of our essays, articles, and reports, quotes like the one above are the part of the text that can seem beyond the remit of readers' interrogation. As readers, though we might challenge the author's interpretation of the quote, or suggest that more quotes are required to justify the argument, the presented quote itself can feel sacrosanct and strangely off-limits, out of reach. Akin to the presentation of photos in our write-ups, interview quotes stand out on the page, transporting us to the timespace of the interview itself and, as we read them, our mind's eye tries to conjure a vision of how that part of the interview encounter might have taken place. As human geographers in the qualitative tradition, we routinely use this conjuring device in our write-ups. We present a quote much like we'd present a photo, and we follow this with analysis of what was said, often in terms of how the quote concurs with or diverges from previous understandings of our topic. Though quotation is an invaluable technique in our write-ups, in this short piece I suggest that human geographers should consider those occasions where it might be advantageous not to use interview quotes.

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Section: Feeling Distancementioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning quotation: Writing about interview experiences without using quotes

Bissell

2022

Area

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“…Throughout my postdoctoral experience in Vancouver in 2019/20, coming to an abrupt halt due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I encountered various ghostly materialities in urban public space and art (i.e., tracing them by means of qualitative research methods such as interviews, taking field notes during long walks, spending lunch breaks on site, conducting policy and historical document and visual analysis, reading novels and poetry on Hogan’s Alley). In the face of this heterogeneous information, I acknowledge a persistent degree of illegibility of this data (Bissell 2022). The workings of hauntology in public art, and public space, thus necessarily remain contingently entangled with our own positionalities.…”

Section: Introduction: the Multiple Politics Of Muralsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ghostly murals: Tracing the politics of public art in Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley

Landau

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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The article unpacks the multiple political implications of commissioned murals in contested urban space. It examines public artwork in Hogan’s Alley, a historically Black neighborhood in Vancouver, BC, situated on the unceded Indigenous territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Coast Salish Nations. Drawing from ethnographic field research and semi-structured interviews with local artists, policymakers and community activists, I read the mural Remember Hogan’s Alleny (2019), covering the sidewall of a subsidized housing project, as a contested public space. In this conflictual space, multiple pasts appear, disappear and reappear, oscillating between the celebration of Black culture, food and entertainment and the systematic displacement of Black residents and businesses. By contrasting diverging rationales, expectations and dreams regarding murals’ contributions to memory-making and cultural reconciliation, I trace where and how conflicts about public art inscribe themselves into the urban cultural fabric. The article intervenes into the predominantly ‘positive’ discussion of sanctioned public art to develop a more conflict-attuned understanding of artworks placed in the public realm. It deploys a framework of hauntology to discuss the appearance of ghosts invited into the public realm via official art commissions. These ghosts, becoming visible on urban walls via acts of placemaking, conjure memories of spatial displacement and racial discrimination, as well as stories of community care and healing. In sum, the article argues that the analytic of ghosts assists to foster an understanding of public art as always-already conflictual, thus inviting to stay with conflicts of belonging and memory, rather than to suppress them or shy away. By reflecting on what public art does politically – unpacking diverse narratives of the past that continue to mark present racial inequalities – the article contributes to sketching a conflict-oriented understanding of public space that is needed in cities wounded by racism and displacement.

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