Time: 5:30pmVenue: Room 220, Geography Building, Queen Mary University of London
This lecture examines spatial and cultural practices of the street at two pivotal moments in the urban history of New York City: the rise of the modern sidewalk in the 1890s and the later reconfiguring of that urban form under current conditions of globalization. Focusing on streetwalking, the discussion moves between analysis of the ‘perambulatory modernism’ of writers and artists like John Dos Passos and Mark Rothko, to consideration of 21st-century experiments with ‘slow urbanism’, such as the High Line elevated park on Manhattan’s West side.
The purpose of moving between the street-scapes of modern and global New York is to understand more fully how urban memory and nostalgia, as well as industrial heritage and transport technology, are used in the High Line and its various spin-off projects (like the Queensway and the Lowline) to enable a practice that will be called ‘retro-walking’. To make this argument, Christoph Lindner traces connections between New York and urban renewal initiatives in Paris and Detroit, while also rethinking theories of the flâneur in relation to the aesthetics of mobility and discourses of the smart and sustainable city.
Christoph Lindner is Professor of Media and Culture and Director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. He is also the founding Director of the Netherlands Institute of Cultural Analysis, co-founder of the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies, and a member of the Centre for Creative Industries Research. His recent and forthcoming books include Imagining New York City (forthcoming 2014), Paris-Amsterdam Underground (2013), and Globalization, Violence, and the Visual Culture of Cities (2010).
Professor Lindner is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film.This lecture is held jointly with The City Centre at Queen Mary University of London.
All are welcome and there is no need to book. The lecture will be followed by a wine reception.