Memory and Movement in the Urban Fabric
“Memory is one of the key ingredients in the creation of place. It is subject to political as well as physical operations.”[1]
In the previous project I have looked at the relationship between memory and our experience of the city bearing in mind the importance of everyday routines. This was studied at an individual scale using narratives to explore furthermore how the passage of time contributes to this experience and that events of the past have an impact on the future of a place. Within the UD Report, I would like to take this at a larger scale and explore the effects of collective memory on the urban fabric and how this subjective element hand in hand with the actual physique of the city implements itself in the way the inhabitants move around it. The project will strive to encompass political, cultural and social entities in our experience of urban life. The main site of study will be in the area of Clerkenwell in London, which holds strong element of history and memory.
“As a historical production, space is not independent of time; we must consider how the city comes into being, how buildings are constructed, and also how the whole edifice of the urban is continually reproduced. Clearly time makes a difference.”[2] My first comparative example is the city of Venice, preserved in time almost a game board of sudden encounters. A maze and host to the labyrinth like movement of man and water. A city so dense in its physical fabric by creating extremes of public and private, where wanting to make the smallest change would threaten the ‘densely coded past’. So dreamy yet so real.
The other example I will be looking at is the fictional story of Alice in Wonderland in which the time of the story is the time of Alice’s dream and the spectator does not know this till she wakes up. Alice in this context is a tool for exploring the relationship between body and space[3]. The importance of scale and gender; and the existence of different landscapes for the body to experience on her way are other elements of interest.
“Social relations in the city are dynamic ones, and although we argue for the importance of space, time is increasingly entering into discussions of the social production of spaces not solely the time of historical materialism, but also personal and irregular times: bodily rhythms, unconscious and conscious memories, the flux of complexity and chaos.”[4] The lack of social interaction in the rapidly modernizing world is an issue that I addressed in the previous project. There seems to be a mask (both psychological and physical) put on by people in their day-to-day lives. For example the Venetian masks[5] are worn for completely different reasons as the Afghan Chadors (Borqa; a religious extremist cover for women imposed at the time of the ruling of the Taliban).
At different times (periods of history) and at different locations in the world, certain movements or events take place due to traditions, social and urban culture, politics or religion. Even though the reasons for them are different the outcome is still similar. These can be overlapped and interwoven to create a fictional landscape with the warp and weft of reality.
Another aspect of the city to be studied is the importance of memorials which are intended as mnemonic devices to trigger accumulative collective memories of particular historic events or people for the city inhabitants.. However it is widely argued that Memorials are now becoming a way of forgetting (Ian Sinclair) maybe due to the lack of relevance; instead they are becoming places of gathering and tools of orientation.(As well as serving their new roles as devices of amnesia.[6])
The different examples of locations , events, narratives and traditions given above will be mapped/modelled in a conceptual manner and linked to the site in London. The models of locations will be over-layed to study similarities and differences between them; and to also discover the qualities that the juxtaposition of totally different environments can bring out in another place.
Bibliography
Alex Coles, The Optic of Walter Benjamin, Black Dog Publishing limited, 2001
Heidi J. Nast and Steve Pile, Places through the body, Routledge 1998
Ian Borden, Joe Kerr, Jane Rendell with Alicia Pivaro; The Unknown City, The MIT Press 2001
Lewis Carol, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: And through the Looking Glass, Penguin Classics; Rev Ed edition (23 march 2003)
Mark Crinson, Urban Memory: History and amnesia in the modern city, Routledge 2005
Films:
· Disgraced Monuments, Produced, written, and directed by Mark Lewis and Laura Mulvey. 1993
· Alice in Wonderland, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson1951
Websites:
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