Place blogging Panel - 9 April
Penultimo is hosting a panel discussion about the strange act of “placeblogging” (and writing about place).
This forum is part of the Right to the City Symposium on Saturday 9 April 2011, at the Faculty of Architecture Design and Planning, University of Sydney, 148 City Rd, Sydney, from 3pm to 4.30pm. The full schedule of the Symposium is available here. Plus: it’s free. And it has Margaret Crawford, we love Margaret Crawford.
The panelists for the Place Blogging discussion are:
Matt Levinson and Polly Levinson - Darlinghust Nights
“Matt and Polly started darlinghurstnights.com days after their daughter Nina was born in 2008. It’s all about things that happen in their neighbourhood. Darlinghurst, of course, Potts Point, Kings Cross, Woolloomooloo, Rushcutters Bay, Elizabeth Bay, even some of Surry Hills. Just has to pique Matt’s and Polly’s curiosity.”
Dr Meredith Jones – Marrickvillia
Meredith is a media and cultural studies scholar. She is Senior Lecturer, Institute for Interactive Media and Learning, University of Technology, Sydney. Her research is based around the intersections between culture and technology, gender, popular media studies and feminist theories of the body. One of the pioneers of Cosmetic Surgery Studies, Meredith is the author of Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery (2008) and Cosmetic Surgery: A Feminist Primer (2009). She is currently working on a large international project about Cosmetic Surgery Tourism. She is the author of Marrickvillia, among other blogs.
Linda Carroli - Brisbane researcher, Placeblog: place writing, writing place
Linda Carroli is a writer, editor, researcher and consultant, investigating the areas of art, science, technology and urbanism. She is currently working on the Placing Project, an exploration of planning, community and environment, funded by the Visual Art Board of the Australia Council and hosted by Harbinger Consultants.
Jesse Adams Stein - Penultimo (Panel Chair)
Jesse is an Ultimo local and blogs about her suburb on Penultimo. She is also a PhD Candidate in design history (up the road in Ultimo), at the Centre for Contemporary Design Practices at the University of Technology. Her research interests include human-machine interaction, the gendering of technology, printing history and computer history in Australia. A late-night archival image search (for the Ultimo blog) led her to discover the former NSW Government Printing Office (GPO), Ultimo, 1959-1989. The GPO is now the central case study of her PhD.
The panel discussion will also include mentions of the recently closed Life in Chippendale (by Steven Noble), Duncan (the Mayor of Newtown)’s blog News from Newtown, Stanmore and the City, and Lucas Ihlein’s Bilateral Petersham project, among others.
Place blogs enact a very specific act of watching, witnessing, monitoring, recording, sometimes celebrating, sometimes protesting - on a very local level. What does it mean to write about your location, in situ, in blog form? What can we learn from that micro engagement with place? Does walking around your neighbourhood become a constant hunt for stories, does it make you see differently? When does this sort of search exhaust itself? Can place blogs contribute to actual community action and involvement, or are they just extra noise, decoration? What audiences do they leave out?
Can we claim that place blogging is a form of micro-political action? We’re not trying to make any grand claims for the social or political worth of blogging, but we’re interested in the idea that place blogging could be seen as the 21st century equivalent to Jane Jacobs’ “eyes on the street”. While some despair that multiple generations are turning inwards online – supposedly to the detriment of community involvement, and their knowledge of the outside world – other evidence suggests many Australians have a deep and complex involvement in community, urban and environmental issues, but the expression of that active interest might happen to be via new media.
The other pattern that seems to have emerged is that blog writers tend to start their local blogs within a few months of moving to a new location. This act of writing about place is a mode of learning, a way of getting to know your place, and finding yourself in place. But it also challenges perceptions of what it is to be a “local”. Speaking to long-time locals in Ultimo about Penultimo, for example, is sometimes an awkward experience, and results in comments like, “you’re not a real Ultimo local if you…” (etc. etc.) This shaping and reshaping of local identities is influenced by urban history, class, race, and everyday choices, and it can be a difficult position to try to speak for a locality, when you are a relatively new resident.
These, and many other issues will be explored during the panel … and audience participation will be encouraged. So come along and heckle! We should hopefully have internet working during the panel, so we can load some blogs as we go.
See you there!
