Archive for February, 2007

trestruction bauhaus

Wednesday, 28 February 2007 at 7:46 pm · Filed under architecture, politics

bauhaus dessau reflection on trees

the icon of modernism stands again like a temple on the field, as the great modernist gropius had planned it in the 1920s.

or does it?

erased

the trees planted after the WWII around the BAUHAUS building in dessau were cut on 14-15 february 2007. the plan is to create a new park around the building, following the original plans, and to better accommodate a visitor car park. the new minimalistic design for the surroundings of the UNESCO protected building have already been chosen in a competition.

space for more

this action is for preserving the original state of the building that in 1926 was constructed on a field – out of the city and urban structures of dessau.

it tries to return its original shape and setting.

at the same time the the ‘icon of modernism’ is being turned into an eternal, timeless building. a temple, as it was once envisioned to become.

age removed

the building is stripped off from its own historicity turned into an ageless, contextless icon.

or is it really? can it really be?

context remains

links: more photos, bauhaus dessau

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posters for bauhaus

Tuesday, 27 February 2007 at 7:16 pm · Filed under architecture, memorials, politics, sibiu 2007

below are the presentations for the mid-term projects here at the bauhaus kolleg.

Luxembourg personal project mid-term part one

Sibiu personal project mid-term part two

discourse theory and comparison

Personal contribution on sibiu memorials to group project

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CFP: The Construction of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Discourses on populism and nationalism

Monday, 5 February 2007 at 5:01 pm · Filed under events

cfp_laclau_helsinki.pdf

Here’s a call of papers for a conference I’m organising in September 2007.

(The pdf is also available here on the Department of Political Sciences, University of Helsinki.)

Discourses on populism and nationalism

Call for papers

The Construction of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’:
Discourses on populism and nationalism

University of Helsinki, 7-8 September 2007

A key
theme in politics, which translates to many fields of study, is
identification * or disidentification. ‘Us’ and the sometimes equally
relevant ‘them’ are articulated at various levels from the family circle,
to the neighbourhood, local identifications, sub-cultural groups,
political parties and social movements, and further to the level of
nationhood and beyond. These may overlap or draw from each other in the
process of their articulation. One of the cases in contemporary Europe,
are the overlapping identifications with the EU, nation, region and the
locality. They may also deal with populism, exclusion and minorities.

A useful tool for recognising and understanding the logics operating in
these processes is discourse theory. The key note speaker at the
conference is professor Ernesto Laclau – an author of, most recently, On
Populist Reason (2005), and also Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; Towards
a Radical Democratic Politics (Verso: London, 1985, with
Chantal Mouffe), New Reflections on Revolutions of Our Time (1990), and
Emancipation( s) (1996). Laclau’s discourse theory have made major
contributions in the field of politics, but also history, literary
studies and sociology, as well as area studies. This is his first visit
to Finland.

The conference seeks to discover different cases, logics and phenomena in
the construction of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Papers addressing nationhood and
populism are particularly sought for, but other ‘we’ groups may also be
studied, with focus on either empirical or theoretical problems – or a
combination of both.

The aim of the conference is to allow a truly interdisciplinary forum for
the study of these questions. The conference language is English.
Abstracts for presentations (ca. 150 words) should be emailed to the
conference organiser by 15 March 2007.

The conference is organised by Emilia Palonen on behalf of the Academy of
Finland funded research
project Nations and Their Others: The Finns and the Hungarians since
1900, led by Heino Nyyssönen. It is supported by the Aleksanteri
Institute, the Department of Government and the Collegium Helsinki at the
University of Helsinki.

Contact:
Dr. Emilia Palonen,
University of Helsinki
emilia.palonen@ helsinki. fi
emiliapalonen@ yahoo.co. uk
(please use both addresses)
Tel. +358 40 5077198

I just came accross a reproduction of my conference call online: http://gaptoknow.org.ua/uncategorized/discourses-on-populism-and-nationalism.html

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A hidden saint in Sibiu

Saturday, 3 February 2007 at 5:45 pm · Filed under Eastern European Politics, architecture, history, memorials, sibiu 2007

hidden saint

Sibiu 2006. A removed saint.

Until now, much of my academic work has been on street names, statues and memorials, and the, mainly, postcommunist politics of memory mainly in the context of Budapest but also on London. In Sibiu (Hermannstadt in German, Nagyszeben in Hungarian) in Transylvania, Romania, I was fascinated by this statue, which had recently been removed from the main square, Piata Mare. The square had undergone a serious transformation shortly before the beginning of the 2007 European Cultural Capital year. Only sometimes memorials are stored somewhere after the removals.

This happened in Budapest after the WWII and the establishment of the new political order, the statues in the city were changed. Many of the removed memorials were stored in a farm. Their clandestine existence was ended, however, in the postcommunist period, when many of these statues were returned to the city, to cover the empty plinths which had hosted Soviet and socialist heroes.

The hidden saint in the backyard of a courtyard in Sibiu is a reminder of the changed political climate and the establishment of new discursive-ideological order. As a case of relocation rather than destruction it says something about the values of this new order and its readyness to deal with the past, even by hiding it in a near-by courtyard. The relocated saint also demonstrates how when taken out of its previous context and embedded in a new one, the hidden saint loses its previous meanings and reference points and gains new ones.

For instance, surrounded by walls, to the extent of giving an idea of someone imprisioned, the statue loses its aura of a hero overlooking a square gaining its power from its dimensions and monumentality. Reduced to the company of everyday objects, the wash-lines, the memorial becomes domesticates, forgotten.

This of course is the fate of many statues and memorials. Do we really notice them? Is there an encounter? And if we remove them, relocate them, do we realise them better. Do they appear in their absence?

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