In yesterday's post we looked at the power and energy of protests as filtered through a fashion collection characterised by some military references. We have also analysed in previous features the link between fashion and public/private spaces. New York-based readers who may want to collide these themes together and ponder a bit about the military power in urban spaces should take a note about a debate that will take place next week.
Organised by Storefront Salon, a monthly gathering open to everyone launched by nonprofit organisation Storefront for Art and Architecture, "Militarized Metropolis - The Life and Death of Public Space" (27th February 2015), is an event facilitated by designer, scholar, and educator Mabel O. Wilson, Associate Professor of Architecture at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, and artist, photographer, and educator Bayeté Ross Smith, Associate Program Director for the Kings Against Violence Initiative.
The debate, as the title suggests, will focus on the modern metropolis and on the clashes between the public and the police that we have seen happening at different times and in cities all over the world such as New York, Hong Kong, London, Istanbul, Athens and Madrid among the others, but also at the months of civil disobedience in the central squares and streets of cities involved in the Arab Spring - Cairo, Tunis, Manama, and Tripoli.
Ordinary public spaces have recently turned into tragic stages: protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in response to the murder of unarmed black youth Michael Brown by a white police officer solicited the reaction of the armed National Guard, state troopers, and local police, while the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD was followed by marches and gatherings in downtown Manhattan.
Rising racial tensions are sadly particularly relevant in our times and Mabel O. Wilson is definitely among the best scholars to tackle them also from an architectural point of view since she has been investigating space and cultural memory in black America for a few years now. In her researches, Wilson has indeed looked at architectural discourse, race and visual culture, tracing a fascinating evolution of black public history from the Civil War through the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the importance of emancipation expositions, and grassroots public museums in her book Negro Building - Black Americans and the World of Fairs and Museums.
"Militarized Metropolis" will therefore analyse several issues, including the intersections between urban violence, public space, civic protest, and the security state in our cities, looking at different themes, from the power of the police forces to the role of surveillance apparatuses including CCTV cameras, safety barriers and temporary architectures of security employed to stop civic protest.
Different dichotomic dimensions such as force and coercion and democracy and participation meet and touch in the public spaces, and while this the debate will not be a recipe in equalising unequal powers, it will definitely touch upon many issues at the core of our everyday lives that have become part of the modern and defining media spectacle.
Militarized Metropolis - The Life and Death of Public Space, Storefront for Art and Architecture, 97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY 10012, 27th February 2015, 7.00 p.m.
Image credits for this post
Protesters partake in a 'die-in' at Grand Central Station on December 3, 2014. REUTERS/Adrees Latif.
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