Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Minna Valjakka, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

How can we examine and develop public art practice for distressed environments and traumatised communities within urban recovery processes? This question underlies my presentation of preliminary findings ensuing from fieldwork carried out in Christchurch in April-May 2018 as part of my institutional Researcher Mobility Award CARED: Community Art & Recovery in Environments Disrupted by Disasters, in further collaboration with the cultural geographer Dr David Conradson at the Department of Geography, University of Canterbury.

Christchurch in the New Zealand region of Canterbury faced a series of devastating earthquakes in 2010–11 and has subsequently undergone a significant repair and construction policy programme. The city’s recovery is remarkable, as it has witnessed an unparalleled mushrooming of commissioned art practices in combination with grassroots community art initiatives.

I will employ this in-depth case study to internationalise the debate about the intersecting geographies of public art, urban recovery, social care and public engagement. Prior to my fieldwork in Christchurch, I provided the ex ante seminar “How Do We Care?” in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne to discuss the project’s methodological and ethical aspects and challenges. Within this project’s ex post context, including this seminar and the preceding invited address “How Did We Care?”, provided in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at Western Sydney University, I will illuminate ‘fresh’ primary research findings. On the basis of insights from ethnographic observations and interviews and focus groups with planners, policymakers, artists, community groups and members of the public, I will critically discuss transformative community experiences and the social and political possibilities of art-led post-disaster urban recovery.

I will bring a unique transnational perspective to this seminar at the Asia Research Institute by juxtaposing the Christchurch case with reported recent key cases across Asia, such as ‘spiritual’ arts resilience in Fukushima after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and the therapeutic roles of the visual and performing arts in the reconstruction of the southern urban region of Taiwan, after it was hit by Morakot in 2009, the deadliest typhoon in recorded Taiwanese history.

Moreover, I will aim to pool expertise and deepen comparative insights within the scope of current work conducted at the Asia Research Institute. How can we interrogate community and public art policies and practices and how may they articulate and create space for social difference in post-disaster urban landscapes from an international perspective? I will conclude this seminar by inviting a critical debate about the ways in which community and public art may contribute, or not, to participatory citizenship and more just and socially inclusive urban futures within transnational Asian contexts.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Martin Zebracki is Associate Professor of Critical Human Geography in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. He has published widely across the intersecting geographies of public art practice, social engagement and (sexual) citizenship and has recent special interest in how these topics are linked in digital culture. Zebracki’s recent volumes include The Everyday Practice of Public Art: Art, Space, and Social Inclusion (with Cameron Cartiere; Routledge, 2016) and Public Art Encounters: Art, Space and Identity (with Joni M. Palmer; Routledge, 2017). In addition to the institutional Researcher Mobility Award CARED, he has been awarded a grant by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to lead the multi-site project Queer Memorials: International Comparative Perspectives on Sexual Diversity and Social Inclusivity (QMem), 2018-19. Profile: https://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/m.zebracki.

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