Lessons from Love-Locks: The archaeology of a contemporary assemblage

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version. The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Journal of Material Culture, November 2017, published by SAGE Publishing, All rights reserved.Loss of context is a challenge, if not the bane, of the ritual archaeologist’s craft. Those who research ritual frequently encounter difficulties in the interpretation of its often tantalisingly incomplete material record. Careful analysis of material remains may afford us glimpses into past ritual activity, but our often vast chronological separation from the ritual practitioners themselves prevent us from seeing the whole picture. The archaeologist engaging with structured deposits, for instance, is often forced to study ritual assemblages post-accumulation. Many nuances of its formation, therefore, may be lost in interpretation. This paper considers what insights an archaeologist could gain into the place, people, pace, and purpose of deposition by recording an accumulation of structured deposits during its formation, rather than after. To answer this, the paper will focus on a contemporary depositional practice: the love-lock. This custom involves the inscribing of names/initials onto a padlock, its attachment to a bridge or other public structure, and the deposition of the corresponding key into the water below; a ritual often enacted by a couple as a statement of their romantic commitment. Drawing on empirical data from a three-year diachronic site-specific investigation into a love-lock bridge in Manchester, UK, the author demonstrates the value of contemporary archaeology in engaging with the often enigmatic material culture of ritual accumulations.Peer reviewe

A Philosophical Topography of Place and Non-Place: Lithuanian Context

Drawing on French anthropologist Marc Augé and his seminal book Non-Places (1995) the author pays attention to the transformation of contemporary urban landscapes. In thinking trough the dialectic of place and non-place, this paper aims to account for the apparent sense of placelesness in our cultural landscapes and in increasingly globalised world. If we want to ask fundamental questions about what has happened to our urban landscape and to the spirit of cities during the last decades then the concepts of place and non-place help us to describe the actual changes. Besides, Augé’s work gives us the methodological tools to address philosophical questions about the nature of supermodernity and the relationship between modernity and postmodernity moving toward new conditions of globality. This article will attempt to apply anthropological and philosophical concepts of place and space to the context of Lithuania, comparing the ways of spreading of non-places (non-lieu) in the Soviet modernity and contemporary global, hyper-visual and liquid cultural landscape

Insights into horizontal slug flow pneumatic conveying from layer fraction and slug velocity measurements

The many advantages of slug flow pneumatic conveying are outweighed by the lack of understanding of the flow mechanisms. For horizontal slug flow, the unique feature is the stationary layer of material found between the travelling slugs, which was recently shown to be characterised by two constants. This paper looks to utilise the vast data available in the literature, which is representative of the entire mode of flow, and relates the stationary layer and slug velocity to predict the two constants from only these inputs. It was found that, even for the vast range of materials and systems considered, slug flow encompasses a narrow bound of the two constants. Furthermore, an empirical approach that was developed to relate the layer fraction and particle velocity was found to provide good agreement to measurements and may be of use in other investigations that require an additional equation for modelling

REVITALISATION OF PUBLIC SPACES IN THE CONTEXT OF CREATIVE TOURISM / VIEŠŲJŲ ERDVIŲ GAIVINIMAS KŪRYBINIO TURIZMO KONTEKSTE

Straipsnyje kūrybinio turizmo modelis, nukreiptas į viešųjų erdvių gaivinimą, yra aptariamas remiantis aktyvaus dalyvavimo ir kūrybinių dirbtuvių koncepcija, kuri įtraukia tiek turistus, tiek vietinius gyventojus į kūrybinį kultūros produkcijos procesą ir aktyvų mokymąsi apie turistinę vietovę siekiant sugeneruoti unikalias keliavimo patirtis, tobulinti gabumus ar gaminti ilgai išliekančius objektus, kurie prisideda prie viešųjų erdvių gaivinimo. Kūrybiniame turizme miestas ir jo atmosfera, bendruomenės meno iniciatyvos ir kitos vietinės kūrybinės veiklos tampa turizmo objektu. Apibrėžiant turisto, kaip aktyvaus dalyvio kūrybiniame procese vaidmenį, skatinama gaivinti viešąsias erdves pritaikant kūrybines dirbtuves, kaip kūrybinio turizmo veiklas, kuriose dalyvautų keliaujantys ekspertai.The paper discusses a model of creative tourism, which can be used for revitalisation of public spaces. The model is discussed on the basis of the concept of active participation and creative workshops. The creative process of cultural production and active learning about the destination should engage tourists as well as residents. As a result, generated unique travel experiences, developed skills or produced long-lasting objects would contribute to the revival of a site. In creative tourism, a city and its atmosphere, community arts initiatives and other local creative activities are seen as objects of tourism. By defining the role of a tourist as an active participant in cultural processes, the model of creative tourism encourages to use such formats as creative workshops for travelling experts in the process of revitalisation of public spaces

Performance and participation in the panopticon: Instruments for civic engagement with urban surveillance technologies

While there is a plethora of surveillance technologies in public space, they are hard to see, as they are sometimes literally hidden, or they have become such a common part of everyday surroundings that they escape conscious observation. Through this invisibility the smart city and its surveillance technologies escape public awareness, critical reflection and democratic debate. In this chapter we discuss several ways of raising awareness about surveillance technologies. We show how artists and activists have engaged in cultural performance to bring surveillance in sight; we review a number of instruments of participatory action research that critical scholars have introduced. These performative and participatory instruments to expose surveillance technologies do have an immediate effect, however it is a temporal one and one would need additional efforts to move discussions away from individual responsibilities to collective ones and from individual awareness to political agenda-setting. This directs us, as participatory action researchers, towards examining how the few political conflicts around urban surveillance technologies have emerged and played out, and towards designing new interventions for political representatives and their constituencies