Spaces, Places, and Contact Zones

Where do you think this is?

Spaces and Places: Exploring Berkeley City College

For this opening game, you will gather in teams of 3 students on different floors, and perform at least TWO of the following tasks (you must return back to class with your data in 15 minutes: 3:05-10): (1,2: Basement, 3-4, 1st floor, 5-6, 2nd floor, 7-8, 3rd floor, 9-10, 4th floor, 11-12, 5th floor)

1. Politely ask at least one student, teacher, or staff member (and record their responses): What is difference between spaces and places?2. While traveling on the elevator, one student faces backward during their trip, and other team members will record the reactions of other people.3. Stake out at least one spot on your designated floor you find artistically or aesthetically interesting, and describe the reasons why you think this is the case. Also, describe those central forms of play and work do within this entire floor.

JOKE

A man’s house stood right on the Russian-Polish border.

When it was decided that his home was actually in Poland, he cried:

“Hooray! I don’t have to go through those Russian winters anymore!”

CARTOON

The Poetics of Spaces and Places

the ways in which our cultural surroundingsare arranged, shared, contested, and changeover time

Sense of Place

Imagine where you lived as a child. Where is home?

Why and how do places take on meaning for human individuals?

Mapping Your Comfort Zones

DRAW A MAP OF WHERE YOU LIVE.

MARK AREAS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD THATYOU FIND ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT

(FORMAL, FUNCTIONAL, AND VERNACULAR).

a region set apart for human use

or:

the symbolic distance between people

or:

a realm of imagination

place:

a familiar or formalized space with recognizable boundaries

examples: homes, offices, buildings, malls, stadiums, museums, etc.

THREE TYPES OF CULTURAL REGIONS

•FORMAL: all members share a characteristic

•FUNCTIONAL: defined by a node of activity and distance decay from center

•VERNACULAR: perception of cultural identity

Overlapping Formal and Functional Regions

Vernacular Regions

What kinds of cultural

values are reflected

in each of these

American houses?

Gated community?

Where are we?

What values are reflected in each place?

Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey

Timber House, Switzerland

Yurt on Mongolian Steppe Suburban Home, Chicago

Quilting, Grace Earl Time: Morning

Space: Private Home, San Francisco, CA;

SMALL PRIVATE SPACES

Eating Dinner with Friends Time: Evening, 2005

Space: Plearn Restaurant, Berkeley, CA

INTIMATE PUBLIC SPACES

Children’s Handclapping Games Time: 1967

Space: Los Angeles, CA playground

VERNACULAR PUBLIC SPACES

See entire video at: http://folkstreams.net

“First, this seems to be primarily a female tradition; little girls begin to learn it during their 6 th or 7th year. By the time they reach puberty the tradition is abandoned, or perhaps simply transmuted into social dance. Boys of the same age-span seem invariably to know the games but do not perform them in public situations such as the school yard. In backyards or alleys, however, the games may be played by mixed groups.

The primary game form is the ring. The clapping formation in which two children face each other and clap hands is actually itself a small ring to which others can be added like a string of beads. The other principal play form consists of parallel lines of players facing each other. All action takes place inside the ring or between the parallel lines; players do not go "outside". Characteristically, there is a central figure who initiates the action, and the "plot line" of each game then consists of a series of moves which constitute one run-through of the play; this is repeated until the group is satisfied, or until everyone has had a turn at the center role. This structure guarantees that there will be no more or less time for any child to have the central power position; competition, then, in the sense of winning-losing, is absent. Though individual players may try to outdo each other in improvisational detail, there is no reward expressed in terms of game action (another turn at the central role, for example).

Stylistically the major feature is call and response; almost every phrase is echoed both in singing and movement patterns. Motor expressiveness is elaborated; musical expressiveness is not. Though the children clap, their clapping style seems to stress tactile rather than tonal values. Their hands are quite relaxed; they stroke instead of making an impact. This effect is emphasized by the degree of body empathy the children share; they move over, make room, spread out, close together, move in tandem and adjust to each other's physical

presence in a thousand subtle ways. Physically speaking, they enjoy group blend to a degree that white society only seems to achieve under the strictest imposed discipline.”

Pizza, pizza, Daddy-o: Children’s Musical Play Spaces

http://folkstreams.net

Bess Lomax Hawes (1967, Los Angeles)

Football (Cal vs. Oregon) Time: Afternoon

Space: Stadium, Eugene, OR

SPECTACULAR PUBLIC SPACES

Marcus Ezeff (Cal) tackles Cameron Colvin (Oregon), knocking the football into the “Endzone,” and saving a victory for the Cal Bears.

“Burning Man” Festival: Time: Summers, Space: Nevada

PARTICIPATORY (AND REMOTE) PUBLIC SPACES

MySpace

ONLINE OR VIRTUAL SPACES (NETWORKING)

World of WarcraftTime: Variable

Space: Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

ONLINE OR VIRTUAL SPACES (ROLE-PLAYING)

INVISIBLE OR CONFINED SPACES (PRISONS, HOSPITALS, CEMETERIES)

San Quentin Prison Veterans Administration Hospital

New Orleans Cemetery

MAPS

map:

a (visual) representation of a geographic region (or “space”)

*California is represented as an “island” in this map made during the Ming Dynasty in 1418 (Mo Yi-Tong).

We use maps and guidebooks to find our way a particular place and to help us understandits significance…

Maps, however, are not just physical guides to actual landscapes.

Maps are also ideological; they are culturaldistortions of physical space.

Think of the meanings we have associated with the “West” and “East,” “the Western culture,” “the Orient,” and the “Middle East.”

There is a whole range of spatial conceptsthat order and organize our lives:

1. Nation and region2. Public spaces3. Malls4. Parks5. Buildings6. Houses7. Rooms

What about the idea of a “nation” or “nationality”?

Western notions:

The nation is bounded territory.

Land is considered sacred and sovereign;yet it is owned, used, and policed.

San Ysidro, CA-Tijuana border

Nogales, AZ-Sonoraborder

Other notions:

The nation is made up of people identifiedby language and religion rather than a specificpiece of land. Land is considered a resource forall humans.

Examples: American Indian tribes, nomadic

groups, aborigines, Gypsies, Arab communities(prior to WWI, before Britain created the nations of “Iraq,” “Lebanon,” “Syria,” and “Palestine”),etc.

Other nationalist beliefs and assumptions used throughout history:

1.“Divine Right” (mystifying land)2.“Manifest Destiny” (American colonization)3. Increase Group “Purity” (“authentic” connection to land among exclusive groups)4. Decrease Group “Danger” (or the influxof “illegal aliens” or “polluted peoples”)

(Mary Douglas)

CITY SPACES

In Europe, there are two major systems for patterning space.

(Edward Hall)

1. Radiating star: France and Spain2. Grid: Asia, England, the U.S.

CITY SPACES

Radiating star: Paris, France

Grid: Chicago, IL, USA

From Ghettos to Gated Communities

From: Loic Wacquant. Deadly symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and meshhttp://www.uakron.edu/centers/conflict/docs/Wacquant.pdf

Jewish immigrants settled in loosely segregated areas

isolated districts of European cities in which Jews lived under anti-Semitic

laws and pressures

identified with the plight of blacksand new immigrants

“ghetto” became a term that appliedmore generally

to a variety of neighborhoods dominated by

distinct immigrant communities

Chicago sociologists

conflated the term with African-American neighborhoods

Only after World War II did the semantic range of the term “ghetto” contract...to denote exclusively the forceable relegation of African-Americans . Loic Wacquant, 2001

slums (U.S.),

burakus (Japan), favelas (Brazil), ranchos (Venezuela),

poblaciones (Chile), villa miserias (Argentina)

stigma, constraint, and institutional encasement

function: constrain and control

GATED COMMUNITIES

difference: voluntary and elective

islands of privilege

fortified enclaves of luxury

values: comfort, security, seclusion, social homogeneity, amenities, and

services

allow families to escape the chaos, dirt, and danger of the city

LEVITTOWN:THE FIRST SUBURB

over time

GATED COMMUNITIES

GATED COMMUNITIES

GATED COMMUNITIES

GATED COMMUNITIES

GATED COMMUNITIES

GATED COMMUNITIES

GATED COMMUNITIES

GATED COMMUNITIES

COMPARE AND CONTRAST ghettos and gated

communities.

Describe the buildings, patterns, activities, styles, etc. found within

these settings.

Race and Space

1. What is “redlining”?

1. How did this process affect the way space was used and shared in the United States?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW764dXEI_8

Film clip: Race: The Power of an Illusion (The House We Live In)