URBAN LIFE IS NOTHING IF NOT THEATRICAL: THE ROLE OF ART IN THE REGENERATION OF THE MEDINA OF TUNIS CITY (original) (raw)

Art contribution to cities’ transformation

Since the mid 80s the evident objective of public art has been to intervene in someinfrastructures so that the historical function of a square or of a monument could be re-foundwith a completely new approach, thus defining a spatial whole as a social whole. Through a qualitative research approach that enlightens artists and commissioning agencies’ points of view, this paper seeks to document the creative processes that characterizes public art and to explore the democratic potential in urban artistic interventions. Although in the past, through instituting public art projects in disadvantaged andfragmented communities, policy makers consciously tried to promote a fallacious sense of shared space, true urban art would not embrace a purely decorative function and would not hesitate to break with the conventions that mark the political use of public art. Even if it is recognized that past expression of public art spoke of universalist and modernist themes, some recent Italian practices of public art are characterized by a strong collaborative effort between the public artist and the community: intended both to design the physical appearance of the city and to rebuild the relationship that underpins urban life. Thus the paper will show how the recognition of the value of public arts can lay the foundations for more integrated urban regeneration strategies driven by cultural policy imperatives.

Art in Urban Spaces

Sustainability

This study investigates the effect of art on promoting the meaning of the urban space. After considering the semantic dimension of the urban space and the mechanism of transferring the meanings of art through the views of experts, a model is presented for examining the art’s cooperation in promoting urban space meaning. In the first stage, the categories of space meanings influenced by art were extracted using the qualitative method of interpretative phenomenological analysis, and by examining 61 in-depth interviews in 6 urban spaces eligible for urban art in Tehran. In the second stage, these categories were surveyed in these spaces through 600 questionnaires after converting to the questionnaire items. Based on the results, “experience and perception capability”, “social participation”, and “relationship with context” were the main themes of the semantic relationships between art and urban space. Further, the lower scores related to the theme of “social participation” in the quant...

The Medina of Tunis facing the modern city Tangible, intangible and social values in an Arabic old city

TANGIBLE – INTANGIBLE HERITAGE(S) – DESIGN, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CRITIQUES ON THE PAST, PRESENT AND THE FUTURE, 2018

The cultural heritage is presented in different, physical and non-tangible forms and attributes. Cities of the middle age are a glorious testimony and a singular trace of a specific architectural vocabulary, and also, an urban and social networking reflecting a particular way of living of the previous civilizations. The Medina (old Arabic city) of Tunis is a city which flourished in North Africa since the 8th century. Until the present days, it is a place of living and attracting tourists coming from all around the world to experience the Arabic spirit and atmosphere in its alleys and streets. However, located in the heart centre of the Tunisian capital, the Medina had to endure the negative aspects of the urban growth pressure. This problem has become steadily more critical since the implantation of the modern city during the French colonization. The objective of the paper is to present the rehabilitation project of the Medina of Tunis, which was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1979. We will analyse the interaction between the tangible and intangible values of a city, from the one side, and the social needs and practices, from the other side, starting from a global context to the particular case of the Arabic Islamic city of the Medina. In addition to that, we will evaluate if the social implication and participation are taken into consideration in the main urban projects and interventions in the city. As a conclusion, we will suggest a reflection of how to consider the different tangibles and intangibles parameters of the city and involving the social groups to preserve the city’s identity and respond to its users’ needs.

Staging Urbanism The Intersection of Art, Space and the Public Research Dissertation in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

PhD Dissertation, 2019

This is a socio-spatial research that explores the reciprocal relationship between art, urban space and the public., It suggests that this three-headed intersection, forms a conceptual framework for deciphering the unique urbanism of the city in which they takes place. The research expends the theoretical discourse regarding this relationship beyond the common perspective of art as an urban renewal strategy to position it within the theoretical discourse on urbanism Through a discussion, that ranges between macro and micro perspectives and between art’s ability to reinforce or subvert the socio-spatial structures of the city, this research presents the unique characteristics of Acre as an example for a peripheral mixed city in the Middle East. On the on hand, the research demonstrates how the city’s socio-spatial structures, stemming from the continual Israeli-Palestine conflict, are replicated in the city's artistic activity. This insight is analysed first through a macro perspective of the five theatre institutions, showing how each institution functions as a closed sphere, which addresses only a small part of the population, and therefore fails to challenge the urban socio-spatial power relations. It then proceeds in using a micro perspective, which focuses on the Fringe Theatre Festival, to demonstrate how the city’s artistic hierarchy is translated into spatial segregation, which duplicates the urban segregation and condenses it to the scale of one quarter. On the other hand, this research reveals processes of change in the power structures of Acre's urbanism and highlights art’s part in this process. The macro perspective focuses on the struggle between the city and the Tel Aviv artists’ community in 2017. The accumulation of forces of cultural production, evolved into a city consciousness, which enabled it to stand up for its right to produce and manage its own cultural capital. The micro perspective followed life stories and trajectories of individual artists suggesting that the local theatre field enabled alternative artistic trajectories that progress under different rules from those of the national theatre field. Through these twofaced insights, the research culminates; suggesting that art has the power to bring about changes in cities, not only as part of culture-led-urban-renewal strategies, but also as part of change in the city's socio-spatial structures. In addition to this theoretical contribution on the methodological level, the research presented here contributes super-positioning; a method adopted from architectural practice in order to integrate top-down macro perspectives with bottom up micro perspectives. Utilizing superposition, it combines methods from architecture and urban studies, mainly spatial and historical research, with methods from the social sciences and specifically ethnography. On the empirical level, the study provides a new perspective on the city of Acre, as a mixed peripheral city in the Middle East, examining its relation to artistic activity. It therefore expands upon the body of knowledge dealing with these types of cities and emphasizes how their unique characteristics lead to 'other' forms of urbanism.

CFP 5th Conference ART AND THE CITY (Columbia University Global Centers-Amman 11-14 June 2023, Online and In-person)

Since 2019, every year in a different city, Art and the City: Urban Space, Art, and Social Change conferences bring together a team of international scholars with an interest in art and the right to the city, urban creativity, aesthetics and politics, cultural and artistic rebellion, aesthetics of urban social movements, and art activism in the urban space. The central goal of the conference series is to critically engage in a multifaceted, multidisciplinary , and multi-geographic perspective to articulate and promote a richer and more integrated understanding of the ideologies, relationships, meanings, and practices that arise from the diverse interactions among the three social spheres: urban space, art, and society. Art's role in the urban space involves a multitude of spatial and temporal dynamics and constitutes emotional, dialogical, and aesthetic interactions. On the one hand, art assists in the improvement of urban development, tourism, public health, race relations, and even welfare. On the other hand, we observe that art lends its KEYNOTES

“Urban Art by osa as a Laboratory - New Approaches to Urban Architecture, City Planing, and Community Building"

Urban Art: Creating the Urban with Art, 2018

New approaches to urban architecture, city planning, and community building that are triggering and evoking alternative and interdisciplinary forms of public engagement, encompassing both creators and recipients, makers, and the last twenty years. At least, that is true for among those creatives, who occupy themselves professionally with the phenomenon of global metropoles and megacities, i.e. architects and planners, artists, and theoreticians. With this the ideological and aesthetic debates of the sixties, seventies, and eighties any longer, but the current actor-network idea. osa, new urban art, urban imagination, public intervention, participatory installation, artistic lab, community building, social design, scenography, network idea Over the recent years, the manifold urban interventions and various temporary installations in urban space by 1 can be seen as a new form of collaborative architectural research, cooperative design experiment, and participatory creation of user-oriented, highly inclusive art which is easily accessible to a wide audience in the public sphere. Public art hereby is utilized as a kind of artistic-architectural laboratory for creating the urban anew with alternative, or rather subversive, forms of ephemeral architecture, temporary interventions, and as well as urgencies of our time beyond "decorative cosmetics" might then open and suggest a new path to greater public engagement and civic co-creation, for example by artistically enhancing the functions and roles of public space in cities or by establishing social interaction and active participation, shared (emotional) experiences, and mutual encounters. The creative reinterpretation and aesthetic transformation of public space by artistic imagination might facilitate the sustainable regeneration of the urban in the end, and even more, discuss the idea of ownership of urban space anew. However, it is not considered a substitute for politics though.

The Place of Public Art in Social Change

Social Science Research Network, 2010

The main focus of this paper is the implementation of social committed public art projects in urban renewal actions. It seeks to explore the democratic potential in urban artistic interventions and to challenge the view of public art as a collective good, by examining the role of public art works in terms of urban governance. It takes into account the first public art projects realized in Italy within the Nuovi Committenti Programme and it shows how recent practices of public art are intended both to design the physical appearance of the city and to rebuild the relationship that underpin urban life. Nuovi Committenti, promoting citizen participation in the patronage and production of contemporary art project that acknowledge a concrete demand for a better quality of life, seems to take into account a change in the relation between art and the society and it shows how public art can laid the foundations for more integrated urban regeneration projects. KEYWORDS: city, public art, community, social change, urban regeneration 1. Art and the city: the historical evolution of a dense relationship Art has always been one of the leading actors of the city-building process. Moreover in the past artworks were considered tangible signs of the men who have lived in the city. Monuments The relationship between art and the city in past centuries, has found expression in the realization of civic monuments or in the construction of large religious building such as churches and cathedrals. On the one hand art founded sustenance in the city and its citizens, on the other hand the monument was the major channel used for the transmission of political, economic and social values (Romano 1997, 2008; Sacco 2006). Throughout history, two different interpretations of the artistic contribution to urban planning were given: the first one refers to the idea of civic aesthetic and the second one takes into account the idea of mere embellishment. Until the modern design of urban space belongs both to traditional arts, such as painting and sculpture, and to architecture and urban planning and it is often the city in its entirety to be considered a work of art. In this context, the arts, wholly considered, make legible the life, the history and the thoughts of inhabitants, so that citizens feel represented and responsible of its urban space. The urbs, or in other words the materiality of the city, is thus the product of the civitas. With the advent of industrial revolution, however, the division of knowledge becomes clear and the contribution of art to urban design becomes limited to decorative or celebratory function. For centuries all the important architectural projects-churches, public and noble buildings, squares, schools, monasteries, hospitals, bridges, factories, ports and so on-were born together with works of art, paintings, sculptures, carvings, mosaics and ornaments (Pulini 2009). Until the late nineteenth century architects were trained, in fact, in the same school of sculptors and painters. In other words those who drew churches and palaces were trained as artists and had attended academies and art shops. Architects were also painters, sculptors, or designers (Pulini 2009). Urban planning took into account the beauty as an end. The recognition of the identity of each person as part of a collective body, the civitas, depended on the beauty itself. Thus fertile were

Art in the urban landscape

URBAN DESIGN International, 1997

This paper discusses the emerging use of public art in cities as a means of positively transforming the urban environment. It emphasizes the need for a symbiosis between an appropriate urban design and the natural transformation that occurs with the placement of sculptures in an urban context. It comments on several examples of planned artistic interventions and, in particular, analyses a recent major project of urban design in Concepcion, the third largest city in Chile. An environmental vision, that addresses itself to the contemporary city's development, has also to consider that urban spaces should provide adequate venues for leisure and civic entertainment for the inhabitant. Historically, the notion of art has been associated with the degree of culture of society and, indeed, it represents the expression and spirit of our urban communities. Hence, together with the macro-planning goals of development, there exists a chance to restore people's sense of belonging and pride of place, providing adequate spaces related to artistic manifestations that can contribute to the overall quality of life in neighbourhoods and inner city areas. The conclusions suggest that these types of artistic expression can be a key factor, but only by integration, that is a combination of an appropriate scale of intervention through urban design, rather than 'parachuting' the art into different places. 'Art is the only one way to get away, without leaving home' (Graffiti in Harvard Square, Boston 1992.

ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL ACTIONS IN PUBLIC SPACES: FROM SPECTACLES TO LIVED CITIES

Observing recent artistic actions in public spaces as social and urban practices, our research aims to have a broad comprehension of their actual potential in maintaining public spaces’ main functions and in inserting new processes for discussing and creating collective the city. Analysing the past uses of art and culture as strategies for city development and its consequences in inducing the transformation of historic centres into emptied “spectacles”, we had observed recent artistic actions in Rio de Janeiro as part of a global process of renewed resistance to this process, defending art as a citizen right and as a way to discuss a city in transformation. Rio de Janeiro had recently passed by several urban transformations, due to big events like 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. Since Barcelona was promoted as the model to inspire Rio de Janeiro, we had searched for study cases of artistic actions in this city. Based in social and urban theories that relate city, art and culture, we intended to define these recent artistic actions and compare study cases in both cities as a way of understanding recent their potential in maintaining and creating collectively the city, especially its historic centres, preventing them to be spectacles and returning them to be lived places.

Public art and the making of urban space

City, Territory and Architecture, 2014

Following in the footsteps of seminal studies like E. W. Soja Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (2000) or Miwon Kwon One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity (2004), this article constitutes a contribution to our current understanding of contemporary societies, more specifically to the shaping of urban identities and the role of contemporary art when revealing the most current and ubiquitous mechanisms of cultural hegemony at the terrain of the visual arts. The interpretation is rooted in the analysis of concepts such as the site-specificity component of the works he discusses through the paper. To sum up, the article supposes a revision of historical and social aspects of public art, in which the language of hermeneutics intends to challenge rather than validate Modernity's set of discourses of what public art is mean to serve. The monster of public art: Kitsch Public art is the child of the postmodern condition. And the first and natural reaction against "geometric" urban