'Placing' Culture in Urban China / 对话2015:中国城市与文化

As the Chinese city transforms, arts and culture are widely used instruments of regeneration and competitive place promotion, and serve as well in the struggle to upgrade from labour-intensive manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy. But arts and culture are not just associated with regeneration; they may also be used to contest the meaning and identity of urban space, politicize questions of belonging, and/or resist the insistent displacement pressures that accompany accelerated urbanization.

This workshop aims to provide a platform for urban geographers, planners, urban artists, cultural scholars, and specialists from other fields to showcase their latest research and exchange views.

Keynote speakers

• Professor Chris Berry (King's College London) - Cao Fei's 'Magical Metropolises': Chinese video art and the city
• Dr. Maurizio Marinelli (University of Sussex) - Urban revolution and Chinese contemporary art
• Professor Andy Pratt (City University London) - Cultural production, regeneration, and the Chinese city
• Dr. Hyun Bang Shin (LSE) - Learning from urban China

Papers

• Kristina Karvelyte (University of Leeds) - The (re)branding of Shanghai: why culture matters
• Dr. Paul Kendall (University of Westminster) - Yuanshengtai branding, urban soundscapes, and everyday music
• Dr. Nadia Bertolino (University of Sheffield) and Dr Ioanni Delsante (University of Huddersfield) - Urban reactivation through the creative industry: outlining a frame for selected contemporary case studies in China
• Dr. Rui Su (Middlesex University) - Sustaining culture: dialectic relationships with urban tourism
• Christen Cornell (University of Sydney) - Post avant-garde 'movements': from yundong to spatial change in 1990s Beijing
• Julie Ren (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) - The reappropriation of hutongs for art spaces: Arrow Space, Za JIa Lab, HomeShop
• Angela Becher (SOAS, University of London) - Humour as détournement: Chinese artists mock the architectural spectacle
• Jian Xiao (Loughborough University) - 'Everybody's Donghu (East Lake)' art project: resistance through representing urban space
  

Read the abstracts here.

View the programme here.

Book via Eventbrite.

This workshop is being produced with the support of the University College London Joint Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies (JFIGS).

Further information: placingcultureinurbanchina.wordpress.com.