Art and the City:
A Conference on Postwar Interactions with the Urban Realm

11-12 May 2006
9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Het Trippenhuis
Kloveniersburgwal 29
1011 JV Amsterdam

Organizers:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Institute of Culture and History, UvA
Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), UvA
Lectoraat Kunst en Publieke Ruimte/Rietveld Academie

Since 1945, the world’s metropolises have undergone both growth and
decline. These developments have brought not only economic and social
change, but also cultural transformations that have found their reflection
in all artistic media. The physical and mental city has proven a fertile
breeding ground for the visual arts, film, graphic design, and the written
word. Furthermore, while cities continue to generate and project a unique
identity, they have also become globalized commodities in themselves. The
products of these interactions and their precise mechanisms are the
subjects of this conference. How have artists, filmmakers, designers and
writers dealt with the singularity, complexity and diversity of their
surroundings? In what ways does the metropolis contribute to their work?
How have they absorbed and transformed their various environments? And how
do these works alter the city and our perception of it? What role does
contemporary “city branding” play and how does a city “remember”? Art and
the City: A Conference on Postwar Interactions with the Urban Realm will
bring together around 40 international scholars for a two-day symposium on
this important topic, among them Malcom Miles (UK), M. Christine Boyer
(US), and Thomas A.P. van Leeuwen (NL).

PROGRAM:

Please note that this program is subject to change

Thursday, 11 May

9.00-9.30
Registration

9.30-9.40
Welcome by organizing committee

9.40-10.30
Keynote lecture:
Malcom Miles, University of Plymouth
Recreating a Public Sphere?

Tea/coffee break

Session 1: City Branding
(Moderator: To be announced)

10.45-11.10
Roemer van Toorn, Berlage Instituut,
Amsterdam Towards a practice of dissensus. Aesthetics as form of politics

11.10-11.35
Venda Louise Pollock, University of Glasgow
Cultivating the Past for a Changing Present: Public Art in Urban
Regeneration

12.00-12.25
Michael Wintle, Universiteit van Amsterdam Brussels:
Visualizing the EU

12.25-12.50
Ward Rennen, Universiteit van Amsterdam Programming the City:
The European Capitals of Culture

12.50-13.00 Discussion

Session 2: New York into Art
(Moderator: Rachel Esner, Universiteit van Amsterdam)

10.45-11.10
Robert S. Mattison, Lafayette College Robert Rauschenberg:
Urban Diversity and Crisis in New York during the 1950s

11.10-11.35
Joshua A. Shannon, University of Maryland
Donald Judd and the Postmodernization of New York

12.00-12.25
Royce W. Smith, Wichita State University
“What Attracts You to Dark Things?”: Imagining Urban Queerscapes in the
Art of David Wojnarowicz

12.25-12.50
Susanne Stemmler, Center for Metropolitan Studies-Berlin
City, Music, Text: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s New York in the 1980s

12.50-13.00 Discussion

Lunch

Session 3: Citygraphy
(Moderator: Margriet Schavemaker, Universiteit van Amsterdam)

14.15-14.40
Andri Gerber, ETH Zürich
The City as Poetical Text: Isidore Isou and Lettrism

14.40-15.05
Caroline Igra, University of Haifa
The Individual Revealed: Narrative vs. Descriptive Cityscape in the
Twentieth Century

15.30-15.55
Sabine van Wesemael, Universiteit van Amsterdam
The Physical City and its Mental Spaces Since 9/11

15.55-16.20
Ari Ofengenden, University of Tübingen
The Grammar of the City: Religion and Urban Experience

16.20-16.30 Discussion

Session 4: Cinematic Cities
(Moderator: Wanda Strauven, Universiteit van Amsterdam)

14.15-14.40
Mark Shiel, King’s College-London
“Celtic Tiger”: Dublin and its Imaging

14.40-15.05
Anna M. Dempsey, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth
Cinematic Los Angeles: Architectural Landscapes and Dreamscapes of Dystopia

15.30-15.55
Caroline Philipp, Humboldt University
Horizontality/Real-Time vs. Simultaneity of Time and Space: Gordon
Matta-Clark’s Filmic Interactions with the City

15.55-16.20
Floris Paalman, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Cinematic Proliferation of a City: Rotterdam in the 1960s and 1970s

16.20-16.30 Discussion

20.00-22.00
Club 11, Stedelijk Museum. Program to be announced

Friday, 12 May

9.15- 9.45
Keynote lecture: M. Christine Boyer, Princeton University
New Orleans: La Ville fatale

9.45- 10.15
Keynote lecture: Thomas A.P. van Leeuwen, Amsterdam
Artistic Blasting

10.15-10.30 Discussion

Session 5: (The) Street (and) Art
(Moderator: Jeroen Boomgaard, Universiteit van Amsterdam/Lectoraat Kunst
en Publieke Ruimte, Gerrit Rietveld Academie)

10.45-11.10
Shelley Hornstein, York University-Toronto
Curating Place for Museums-Without-Borders

11.10-11.35
Hannah Feldman, Northwestern University
Art During War: The Street, The City, and the Nation in “La France Déchirée”

12.00-12.25
Hanna Harris, University of Helsinki Moving Between Streets and Screens:
Urban Spaces and the Italian Telestreet

12.25-12.50
Lara Schrijver, Delft
rom New Babylon to an Aesthetic Collective

12.50-13.00 Discussion

Session 6: City Graphics
(Moderator: Esther Cleven, Universiteit van Amsterdam)

10.45-11.10
Miguel Antunes, New School University- New York
Visual Disobedience in New York City

11.10-11.35
Christoph Ribbat, University of Basel
Glowing Cities: The Cultural History of Neon

12.00-12.25
Daniel van der Velden, Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht
Logo Parc: Economy, Symbol and Architecture on the Amsterdam Zuidas

12.25-12.50 To be announced

12.50-13.00 Discussion

Lunch

Session 7: Urban Memory
(Moderator: Leen Engelen, Universiteit van Amsterdam)

14.15-14.40
Lanfranco Aceti, Univeristy College London
Imaged Cities: War Times and Spaces of Peace

14.40-15.05
Danielle Leenaerts, Université Libre de Bruxelles
The Photographic Missions and the Construction of City Identity: The Case
of Brussels

15.30-15.55
Carolyn Loeb, Central Michigan University
The City as Subject: Contemporary Public Sculpture in Berlin

15.55-16.20
Richard D. Lloyd, Vanderbilt University
Sitting on the Barstools of Giants : Place Aura and the Contemporary
Production of Culture

16.20-16.30 Discussion

16.30-17.15 Closing discussion (with all keynotes and chairs)

A conference website will be launched at the end of March:
http://www.artandthecity.nl

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Dr. Rachel Esner
Assistant Professor - Art of the Modern Period
Art History Institute
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Herengracht 286
1016 BX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
+31 (20) 525 3101
r.esneruva.nl

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