Author name: admin

02/02/2023 – 16/02/2023 and 11/01/2024 – 26/01/2024

My secondment to Coventry University took place in two two-week visits, one year apart. Although this planning occurred to accommodate work obligations, it worked quite well in allowing for enough space in between the visits for initial relationships within the network to develop, and the focus of the secondment to be finetuned by the second visit. 

One of the main objectives I had going in this secondment was to connect with members of the network and explore the different ways in which spatial practices are incorporated into the work of colleagues across disciplines. Coming from a non-profit cultural organization like the Home for Cooperation which operates from the buffer zone of Nicosia Cyprus, the transformative potentiality of spatial practices in cross-sectoral practices and methods, was of great interest. 

A key element of my time in Coventry included walking and exploring the vastly contrasting landscapes of the city, visiting museums and galleries, while connecting with people who call Coventry home or workplace. The first visit was more about tracing my steps, finding my bearings and deciding what the secondment would focus on. Coventry offered a multitude of stimuli not only regarding its beautiful landscape contradictions but in the reflexivity I witnessed among the SpaceX network in the discussions around the aftermath of Coventry being UK’s City of Culture. 

During my first visit I had the chance to meet with Sevven Kucuk and Ryan Hughes from Coventry Biennale, discussing methodologies and approaches in organizing an arts festival where locality and creative exploration are at the forefront, exchanging experiences and practices regarding the organization of the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival in Nicosia by the Home for Cooperation. I also had very fruitful discussions with Dr Ahmadreza Hakiminejad, Dr Mahsa Alami Fariman, Prof. Gary Hall, as well as PhD researchers of the Postdigital Cultures Centre at Coventry and fellow Space-X researchers.

I also gave a presentation about my organization and own PhD research at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures with fellow SpaceX researcher Georgia Perkins from Sirius in Ireland. Additionally, along with Mel Jordan and Andy Hewitt, I attended a talk in neighbouring Northampton visiting NN Contemporary and Vulcan Works, finding out more about their efforts in creating inclusive spaces for local artists. 

My second visit to Coventry, a year later, focused on reflecting on the connections built within the network and how they could potentially inform our work at the Home for Cooperation, and my own research. Having already hosted researchers at the Home under SpaceX, prior or during my second secondment visit I connected with Dr. Fiona Whelan from NCAD, Alex Parry and Marley Treloar from the University of Coventry, exchanging and reflecting on our experiences within the network and project. During this time, I also did some more hands-on fieldwork, focusing on Fargo Village at Coventry, speaking to the management team and finding out more about their approach and efforts in supporting local creatives balancing openness and inclusivity with viable business models.

Since the completion of my secondment, I had the chance to participate at an Online Conversation at Coventry University by Art, Space and the City research group, with fellow SpaceX researcher Ryan Hughes from Coventry Biennale, coordinated by Marley Treloar. The focus of the talk was on the importance of organizations being reflective towards their approach and operational structures and how this practice can inform the organization’s vision and commitment to its values and mission.

Lastly, in celebrating the possibilities of the smaller networks created within the wider SpaceX network, an informal online discussion was organized with Georgia Perkins, Marley Treloar, Alex Parry and Fiona Whelan and myself. In this meeting we discussed and exchanged experiences of our secondments, research interests and explored potential outputs and collaborations.

27 Jan 2023 – 28 Feb 2023

SCREAM – STREET CORNER REALITY: Ethnography As Mockery is a spatial practices observation game inspired by the pioneers of Sociology and Urban Ethnography on the one hand, and the artistic avant-gardes of the 1970s on the other.

The main idea of SCREAM is to realise a video shot by choosing a perspective and a single sequence to which a ‘script’ is subsequently added. The aim of SCREAM is to challenge the tradition of ethnographic observation by reversing it without invalidating it. Ethnography is in fact a method based on the organisation of field notes or detailed descriptive accounts of any observation of reality made during a given period. In contrast, SCREAM creates a fictional text from the indications provided by reality that manifests itself without mediation by revealing inspirations, expectations, curiosities and patterns of everyday spatial practices.

Below are the ‘instructions’ for making a SCREAM video.

• Observe the space near your location and choose a perspective from which to shoot. It is important that it is a public or mixed space where different daily activities take place. Choose a shooting point that is reliable and does not disturb the activities of the space to be filmed.
• Equip yourself with a video camera or smartphone, a tripod and possibly a directional microphone (not necessary but can be useful).
• Record a single sequence. You can also move the camera or zoom the shot.
• Watch the recording. If you are not satisfied, try again, but try to find even in the most seemingly insignificant gestures and practices something to “play with” and meaning to bring out.
• Add your own audio commentary in the form of a choreography or script of what really happened.

I realised until now 3 SCREAM videos in Berlin, Florence and Dublin. 

27 Jan 2023 – 28 Feb 2023

LOCABULARY – A KIND OF DUBITATIVE AND PROVOCATIVE MULTIMEDIA GLOSSARY  TO BE WALKED THROUGH AND LIVED IN. 

LOCABULARY stems from the need to give a name to the urban experiences and spatial practices stimulated by the SPACEX project.

LOCABULARY is a way of noting and describing the spatial practices that each of the subjects within the SPACEX project experiences and could imagine.

LOCABULARY is a glossary on “loci” with or without “genius”. 

LOCABULARY aims at provoking practices and observing their effects rather than cataloguing and prescribing them. 

LOCABULARY is conceived as a space to be inhabited: there are streets to walk along, places to stop, squares to discuss, gardens to contemplate, etc. 

ROADS are conceptual paths indicated by opposing terms, guiding concepts. 

Each POINT on a street can be considered a lemma, i.e. a word or locution. 

The PIAZZA is the place to bring one’s own experiences and to propose new ones. A place for discussion and confrontation, in the PIAZZA practices are gathered and proposed to be replicated.

Each LEMMA may include: 

• One or more descriptions of a word or expression; Definitions may in fact be multiple and disagree, so it is not certain that a certain term corresponds to a single description.  

• Images, videos, audio, links, etc. to provide examples of the concept described.

These may be in-depth studies and examples that already exist or have been collected and produced specifically in the SPACEX network cities. 

• Questions and issues that may arise from a given headword.

• The reference to other lemmas linked by opposition or affinity.

The connections are partly determined by the ‘roads’ but the LOCABULARY can function like a rhizome, that is, following a principle of connection and ethereogeneity in which ‘any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other and must be’ (Deleuze-Guattari).

23 May – 4 June 2024 (1st part)

DOORS is an augmented reality software for mobile devices. It was conceived during my secondment in Nicosia at AHDR (May 2024) and after a series of urban explorations aimed at exploring conflicting narratives of public space. 1) The first step was to identify sites that are significant for the memory of the city of Nicosia, and in particular those sites that are the subject of conflicting memories and practices. 2) The second step was to collect photos and videos of the sites, as well as accounts from direct or indirect witnesses (e.g. from literature). 3) Then I designed a city trail based on some of the most significant narratives collected. 4) Finally I created an AR interface for mobile devices with the content collected during the urban explorations.

DOORS was implemented using technology that allows content to be uploaded and enjoyed on a smartphone without the need to download apps or other softwares. Just frame an image or an object to unlock audio, video, textual, etc. associated. DOORS makes it possible to create urban itineraries with stops that function as “milestones” to be reached in order to discover traces of contested and conflicting memories. Finally, DOORS allows each user to insert their own augmented content linked to specific milestones. In this way, it is possible to create participatory and interactive urban itineraries in dialogue with the oral and multimedia archives of a city.

The first prototype focused on Nicosia and Modena and can be refined and adapted to the future needs of each partner. For example, one of the possible future experiments could be to work with children in a playful-creative form of urban exploration and collection of information and narratives about the city’s spaces to be included in a mobile AR system.

17/8/24 – 31/8/24

In the second half of August this year, I undertook part of my SpaceX-Rise secondment in The Netherlands, hosted by Stroom Art Centre in The Hague. The secondment was coordinated by Stroom’s wonderful and brilliant Lua Vollard, a fellow SpaceX-Rise member who couldn’t have been more welcoming and supportive. I was fully immersed at the time in two ongoing research projects: a study of race and racism in sports video games, with Associate Professor Paul Campbell, University of Leicester, and Dr Anika Leslie-Walker, Nottingham Trent University; and a number of inquiries into the male-centred and reactionary/antifeminist online ‘Manosphere’, most notably a study of its Indian incarnation with Dr Saba Hussain, University of Birmingham. In this brief context, it’s difficult to encapsulate the full usefulness of this experience to these projects, and my broader agenda, but I will try.

My secondment took me first to Stroom itself (obviously) and exposure to some of the great work Lua continues to undertake there (including a really interesting project around women and gaming). I then visited New Institute, Rotterdam, where I was privileged to meet its senior researcher, Dr Ramon Amaro. This was followed by a meeting with Professor Geert Lovink at The Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. Finally, I met with Dr Daniël de Zeeuw, University of Amsterdam, to discuss our overlapping work with a view to future collaborations.

I had been grappling with two key challenges at the time – one practical, the other more conceptual. First, Paul had asked me to lead on a second article relating to our work on racism in video games, based on the same dataset as the first but geared more towards my digital-theoretical interests. Fully ‘unlocking’ this had proven frustrating – that is, until my encounter with Ramon whose groundbreaking work on technology and Black identities provided the ‘circuit breaker’ that enabled me to envision a second article genuinely differentiated from the first. Just yesterday (at the time of writing), this was accepted for publication in Oxford University Press’ exciting new Oxford Intersections: Racism by Context series. 

The second, in some ways pretentious, ‘challenge’ related to my theoretical wavering over the respective utility of social vs. technological determinisms in understanding digital cultures – i.e. do we shape technologies, or do they shape us? My (now ongoing) discussions with Geert, a scholar with an extensive background in both digital research and (pre- and post-digital) social activism helped me realise how unhelpfully arbitrary the binary itself is. Complimenting this was both my subsequent meeting with Daniël, but also my wider exposure over the period (especially the work being undertaken at New institute) to art-practice engagements with the ‘digital’. These engagements seem to almost inevitably dissolve boundaries between human and technology, and in ways that continue to inform my more ‘theory’-based work as digital sociologist and writer.

05/02/2024 to 19/02/2024 and 04/01/2025 to 21/01/2025

The aim for my secondment in Prague is to explore critical spatial practices that challenge contemporary urbanisation processes and support spatial justice through critique and imagination. The exploration of such practices is closely connected to my PhD research. 

I decided to divide my secondment in two parts:

The first part aimed at understanding the Prague creative scene and mapping individuals, groups, institutions, spaces and practices that are connected to the aim of my research. The host institution’s network and suggestions were an important part in achieving this.  During the first two weeks in Prague, I was able to follow several exhibitions and participate in different activities. For example, I visited the “Right to Housing” exhibition in Galerie Jaroslava Fragnera that examined a series of actions organised by different collectives in the city to claim the right to housing. I also had the chance to participate in a walking tour by the “Corrupt Tour” team that investigated different corruption cases that influenced urban development in the city. 

The second part of my secondment (forthcoming) will revolve around contacting some of the identified groups and individuals to conduct semi-structured interviews. The interviews will revolve around the aims and processes behind the practices of these agents, their approaches and ways of working, the challenges they face and the potentials they see in developing their practices further.

Through this, the aim will be to understand the ecology of spatial practices taking place in the Prague scene, analyse some key examples that are relevant to my work, and use this knowledge to enrich and contextualise my own practice. In this way my hope is to gain a better understanding of how such spatial practices unfold and raise critical questions that could enable new paths for further exploration of how spatial practices can support spatial justice.

July 12 to August 13, 2023

During my secondment in Palestine from July 12 to August 13, 2023, I was hosted by Wonder Cabinet, a space for art production and cultural development in Bethlehem. The objective of my stay was to explore how arts organizations and cultural practitioners develop spatial practices of resistance to counter the destruction of Palestinian heritage. This destruction, termed “epistemicide,” seeks to erase Palestinian histories, culture, and identities, a process that has persisted since the Nakba of 1948. My research focused on understanding how these practices preserve collective memory and challenge systemic erasure.

I collaborated with key cultural organizations, including Al Mamal Foundation in Jerusalem’s Old City, Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research in Bethlehem, Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation in Ramallah, and Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center. These organizations, alongside smaller cultural spaces and practitioners, work at the intersections of art, ecology, and heritage preservation. Their efforts provided a comprehensive view of strategies used to sustain and protect Palestinian heritage.

My methods were grounded in feminist approaches, particularly in-depth interviewing with recursive and close listening as a feminist-relational practice. This allowed me to engage deeply with participants, gaining nuanced insights into their lived experiences and the socio-political challenges they navigate. I prioritized fostering a relational and respectful approach, ensuring participants felt heard and valued while also remaining self-aware of my own positionality.

This experience highlighted the vital role of arts and culture in resisting systemic oppression and preserving collective memory. It also underscored the resilience and creativity of Palestinian cultural practitioners, offering valuable insights into how spatial practices of resistance can be cultivated and sustained in contexts of ongoing adversity.