Oh Comrade, What Times those Were! History, Capital Punishment and the Urban Square.

From the perspective of traditional Western histories of the urban realm, public squares have been seen to represent a privileged site of urban containment expressive of a community's highest values of individual freedom, social inclusion and cultural refinement. But such views can be misleading. For what is omitted from the scope of these conventional historical visions and their ideal and conforming subjects of public spatial discourse, is an entire array of other and darker narratives that equally speak of personal choice, collective participation and cultural value. Capital punishment reflects such an example, a practice that once comprised an integral part of the political, social and cultural landscape of a Western city's squares and streets. Drawing from Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish and its implications on how we might begin to re-read the history of the urban square, the following seeks to explore those practices and modes of rationality that underpinned the once public spectacle of executions and torture as a vital condition of urban life. In particular, this discussion will question the assumptions of an historical tradition that continues to reduce our understanding of the city and its open spaces of public appearance and action to an idealistic and illusory reality of the urban realm and its narrow framing of collective conduct, necessity and significance

Framing the Real: Lefèbvre and NeoRealist Cinematic Space as Practice

In 1945 Roberto Rossellini's Neo-realist Rome, Open City set in motion an approach to cinema and its representation of real life – and by extension real spaces – that was to have international significance in film theory and practice. However, the re-use of the real spaces of the city, and elsewhere, as film sets in Neo-realist film offered (and offers) more than an influential aesthetic and set of cinematic theories. Through Neo-realism, it can be argued that we gain access to a cinematic relational and multidimensional space that is not made from built sets, but by filming the built environment. On the one hand, this space allows us to "notice" the contradictions around us in our cities and, by extension, the societies that have produced those cities, while on the other, allows us to see the spatial practices operative in the production and maintenance of those contradictions. In setting out a template for understanding the spatial practices of Neo-realism through the work of Henri Lefèbvre, this paper opens its films, and those produced today in its wake, to a spatio-political reading of contemporary relevance. We will suggest that the rupturing of divisions between real spaces and the spaces of film locations, as well the blurring of the difference between real life and performed actions for the camera that underlies much of the central importance of Neo-realism, echoes the arguments of Lefèbvre with regard the social production of space. In doing so, we will suggest that film potentially had, and still has, a vital role to play in a critique of contemporary capitalist spatial practices

Projet de R&D DIGUE 2020 : réalisation d'une plateforme de recherche en site maritime pour l'étude des actions de la mer sur les digues, la durabilité, et la perception du risque de submersion.

International audienceLes ouvrages de protection contre la houle ou contre les submersions couvrent 17% des côtes françaises, soit 1210 km. Compte tenu du changement climatique, notamment l'élévation du niveau de la mer, et de la présence démographique importante, les enjeux sur le littoral sont considérables. Dans ce contexte, le projet de recherche collaborative DIGUE 2020 a été conçu de façon à construire une plateforme de recherche sur les digues maritimes en associant, en parallèle, des travaux de recherche sur l'auscultation et la durabilité de l'ouvrage, ainsi qu'une étude sur la perception du risque de submersion marine. Les connaissances développées et partagées au moyen de la plateforme de recherche envisagée ont pour objectif, à moyen terme, le développement de projets de confortement ou d'élaboration de nouvelles digues d'une conception durable et, sur le long terme, le développement d'une culture commune sur le risque de submersion mari