DWELLING, WALKING FALLING: A CONFERENCE ON THE EXPERIENCE OF EVERYDAY SPACE
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, February 13-14

How do we experience space? How do we navigate and inhabit the city?
The conference "Dwelling, Walking, Falling" addresses the social, political
and psychoanalytical modes through which we encounter and interact with
urban
space. The focus will be on the individual and collective experiences of
architecture and urbanism, and the ways in which these experiences operate
at
the levels of everyday reality as well as imagination and fantasy. In order
to develop a set of more accurate tools with which to approach this
psycho-social nexus, we will let ourselves be guided by experimental
practices and theories in the fields of twentieth- and twenty-first century
art and architecture, engaging with the role of play, desire and fear
within
urban and architectural experience, focusing on liminal states such as
sleepwalking or getting lost, and mapping out relations between falling
bodies, urban decay, or abandoned spaces.

Friday 13 February, 2:00 - 7pm
Session 1 The Politics of Walking

Susan Laxton (Columbia University), 'The Politics of Errance: Surrealists
in
the Streets'
David Pinder (Queen Mary, London), 'Errant paths: walking in shadows and
light' (provisional title)

Session 2: Spaces of Disaster
Simon Baker (Nottingham University), 'Ruins: the ruin of ruins, or, how we
got along after the bombs'
Steven Pile (Open University), 'Falling Bodies: 9/11 and the
(dis)embodiment
of memory'

Drinks and visit of the exhibition

Saturday 14 February, 10 am - 5pm
Session 3: Progress and Decay
Richard Williams (Edinburgh University), 'The Politics of Eros: Sexuality
and
Modernist architecture in Brazil, 1930-60'
Judith Rodenbeck (Sarah Lawrence College, New York), 'Venetian Snares'

Session 4: Liminal States
David Lomas (University of Manchester), 'Sleep/Walking'
Steven Gartside (Manchester Metropolitan University), 'Sitting Still:
reading, writing and the city'

Session 5: The Pull of Gravity
Catherine James (Christie's Education, London), 'Gravity and Fantasy:
Vertigo'
Arnauld Pierre (Université Paris IV-Sorbonne), 'To Move in Gravitational
Space, 1960s-1970s'

Keynote paper: James Meyer (Emory University, Georgia), 'From Nomadism to
Cosmopolitanism'

Registration fee: £30 (£15 student concessions).
For more information about the conference, please contact:
Samantha Lackey (Samantha.lackeymanchester.ac.uk)
or Anna Dezeuze (anna.dezeuzemanchester.ac.uk).
For registration, please contact Leanne Lightfoot by email
(leanne.lightfootmanchester.ac.uk) or by phone (0161 275 7463).