International Conference: Urban Sustainability and Cultural Landscapes in Europe in times of crises

The conference will take place at CBEES on Day 1, Oct. 13; and at Långholmen on Day 2, Oct. 14. It will be complimented with the evening evening screening and talk by the US artist Anton Vidokle: "Future Past Perfect. Immortality For All: a film trilogy on Russian Cosmism" at MB313 on Oct. 13.

Urban Sustainability and Cultural Landscapes in Europe in the times of crises: political plastic, recycling of the (post)-Soviet pasts, and utilization of heritage.

The purpose of the conference is to discuss the problems of contemporary urban sustainability and cultural landscapes in the Baltic Sea region, Eastern Europe, and beyond, that are outlined by the ongoing political, social, and cultural changes within the region and that have been dramatically intensified by the Russian war in Ukraine. The researchers from different academic fields: aesthetics, urban studies, history, cultural and media studies who work on the problems of aesthetical transformation of urban landscapes, will address these issues from different perspectives. We aim at analyzing how the public spaces, historical monuments, sites of international heritage, industrial complexes and natural landscapes in the target region transform their identities and symbolic meanings; how they are being re-evaluated, re-formed, and re-constructed both in terms of their material existence and ideological reception; how they alter urban and natural spaces that they are part of; how they respond to political and military events that affect their material and symbolic existence.

Program:

Day 1, October 13, Södertörn University, MA 796

10:00–10.30 - Welcome Fika at CBEES kitchen, MA 7.

10:30 – 12:00 – Panel 1: Political Plastic and Urban Landscapes in the times of crises. Moderator: Irina Seits, Project Researcher at CBEES

• Lauren Andres, Professor of Planning and Urban Transformations, Bartlett School of Planning, UCL, London.

Adaptive Sustainability, Rhythmic Resilience and the Future of Cultural Landscapes in Times of Uncertainties

• Tihomir Topuzovski, Interdisciplinary Programme Director at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, North Macedonia, and editor-in-chief of the journal The Large Glass.

Political plastic (Aesthetics as a political technology)

• Neda Genova, PhD in Cultural Studies, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at University of Warwick.

Give them the colors: fictive surfaces and electric circuits in Sofia

12:00–13:30 - Lunch at Alle Elva

13:30 – 15:00 – Panel 2: Urban Aesthetics in Transition. Moderator: Mark Bassin, Professor of the History of Ideas, CBEES, Södertörn University

• Masha Panteleyeva, Lecturer at Cornell University School of Architecture and at Princeton University School of Architecture

Recycling Utopias: Socialist City Redux

• Irina Seits, PhD in Aesthetics, Project Researcher at CBEES, Södertörn University
From Utilisation of Heritage to Recycling of the Past: the Nobel Mansion in St. Petersburg and Villa Petrolea in Baku.

• Vadim Bass, Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Cultural Heritage, European University at St. Petersburg

TBA

15:00 – 15:30 – Coffee Break

15:30 – 17:00 – Panel 3: Aesthetics of Urban Activism. Moderator: Ekaterina Kalinina, Assistant Professor in Media and Communication, Jönköping University

• Oleg Pachenkov, PhD in Sociology, Researcher and Project Leader at the “Open Urban Lab” (OUL), St. Petersburg, and at The Center for Independent Social Research (CISR), Berlin
• Lilia Voronkova, Co-founder of the OUL, St. Petersburg, and Researcher, Project Leader, and Curator at CISR, Berlin

Novel aesthetic dimension of political struggle in urban space: non-human actors as protesters in Russian cities

• Valeria Rumiantseva, Project Coordinator at CISR, Berlin

Environmental Urban Activism(s) in Russia: De/politicisation of claims and practices during wartime.

• Ilya Kalinin, Visiting Research Scholar at The Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University.

"Iconography of the deed": memorialization of the "special military operation" heroes and the visual landscape of Russian cities.

17:00 – 18:00 – Reception at CBEES kitchen

18:00 – 19:00 – Svarta lådan (MB313). Public program: Anton Vidokle (ZOOM) – film screening and project presentation

Future Past Perfect. Immortality For All: a film trilogy on Russian Cosmism. Moderator: Tihomir Topuzovski, Interdisciplinary Programme Director at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, North Macedonia, and editor-in-chief of the journal The Large Glass.


Day 2, October 14, Långholmen, Södermalm. Please, e-mail: irina.seits@sh.se if you would like to attend the panels on this day

10:00 – 10:30 – Welcome fika (coffee break)

10:30 – 12:00 - Panel 4: Urban Plasticity and Utilization of Memory in War and Peace. Moderator: Maria Engström, Professor of Russian at the Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University.

• Andrej Kotljarchuk, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at the Department of History, Uppsala University.

The Roma Holocaust memorial in Babi Yar, Kyiv. Transformation, material existence and ideological reception in times of peace and war.

• Viacheslav Morozov, Professor of EU-Russia Studies at the University of Tartu, and the Academic Director of The Centre for Eurasian and Russian Studies (CEURUS).
• Elena Pavlova, Senior Researcher at the University of Tartu's Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies

The selective plasticity of urban landscapes: War, politics and the Estonian North-East.

• Aleksei Semenenko, Associate professor in Russian Literature at Umeå University, Project Researcher at the Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University.

Museum of Moscow: Rebranding the Past and Creating a New Identity

12:00 – 13:30 – Lunch

13:30 – 15:00 - Panel 6: Aesthetics of Cultural Landscapes in Music and Film. Moderator: Helene Carlbäck, Associate Professor in History, CBEES, Södertörn University.

• Maria Engström, Professor of Russian at the Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University.

Russian Mnemonic Resistance: Neo-Rave and the Cultural Recycling of the 90-s.

• Marco Biasioli, PhD in Russian Studies, Lecturer in Russian Studies at the University of Manchester.

Transnational hauntology: Molchat doma and post-Soviet post-punk.

• Per-Arne Bodin, Professor Emeritus in Slavic Languages, Stockholm University.

”The construction of a multiethnic Wilno: Andrzej Wajda’s movie ”A Chronicle of Amorous Accidents.”

15:00 – 15:30 – Coffee Break

16:00 – 17:00 – Tour around prison