Cities of culture and the regeneration game

Capital of Culture (ECoC) programme exactly a year on from its inauguration. This event also saw the transition from Liverpool's "Year of Culture 08‟ to "Year of Environment 09" and a simultaneous event in the Austrian city of Linz to which the Capital of Culture mantle passed, along with Vilnius, Lithuania. An estimated 60,000 people congregated at the Pier Head as well as at the Albert Dock and Wirral bank, for a celebration that included sing-a-longs, firework displays, street artists on illuminated bikes and light projections onto a famous refurbished new museum building making up this World Heritage city. This "Light Night" celebration also kick-started similar events held in cities in England and Scotland, with extended opening of venues. The Light Night theme chosen for Liverpool 08's swansong emulates the Nuit Blanche festival celebrated in dozens of cities such as Paris, Rome, Montreal and Toronto - the largest of which attract 1 to 3 million participants over "late night" weekend extravaganzas (Jiwa et al., 2009). These "eventful cities" (Richards and Palmer 2010) reflect a global trend and network that spreads virtually and geographically (Evans, 2011)

Hos in the garden: staging and resisting neoliberal creativity

This article takes up the challenge of extending and enhancing the literature on arts interventions and creative city policies by considering the role of feminist and queer artistic praxis in contemporary urban politics. Here I reflect on the complicities and potentialities of two Toronto-based arts interventions: Dig In and the Dirty Plotz cabaret. I analyse an example of community based arts strategy that strived to ‘revitalise’ one disinvested Toronto neighbourhood. I also reflect on my experience performing drag king urban planner, Toby Sharp. Reflecting on these examples, I show how market-oriented arts policies entangle women artists in the cultivation of spaces of depoliticised feminism, homonormativity and white privilege. However, I also demonstrate how women artists are playfully and performatively pushing back at hegemonic regimes with the radical aesthetic praxis of cabaret. I maintain that bringing critical feminist arts spaces and cabaret practice into discussions about neoliberal urban policies uncovers sites of feminist resistance and solidarity, interventions that challenge violent processes of colonisation and privatisation on multiple fronts

Come Together: An Exploration of Contemporary Participatory Art Practices

This thesis examines the growing trend of participatory art practices employed in the installation works of contemporary artists Roman Ondák, Ann Hamilton, Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett. It focuses on how three art installations use interactive and collaborative methods, each within a different exhibition setting, in order to include and communicate with the public audience. The first chapter discusses how Ondák’s Measuring the Universe draws on shared experience to encourage viewers to interact with the installation within a large art gallery. The second chapter considers how Hamilton’s the event of a thread creates a social event between participants and performers using an alternative gallery space. The final chapter explores how Brown and Garrett’s CLOUD uses public contributors and participants throughout its development to include the public audience and to reconsider the urban space. Overall, the thesis illustrates how contemporary artists are using fun and relatable everyday elements to engage with the public, establish their audience as a community, and comment on larger social situations

Place and Identity in two autobiographical novels set in Vietnam: Metisse blanche by Kim Lefevre and L'Amant by Marguerite Duras

1998-01-01

Through an Hour-glass Lightly: Valentine Penrose and Alice Rahon Paalen

1996-01-01