Creative Urban Methods: A Critical Exploration – session 2

Credits: 3 ECTS (seminar sessions) + 2 ECTS (workshop day). Credits are for RMa Students and PhD Candidates only, MA students are welcome to participate, but are not eligible for credits. The seminar series is open to (R)Ma students and PhD candidates
Organized by: https://urbaninterfaces.sites.uu.nl. Prof. dr Nanna Verhoeff, Dr Michiel de Lange, Dr. Sigrid Merx, and Elle Zwinkels
More information: urbaninterfaces@uu.nl

In the overall seminar, we will discuss ways to expand conventional ways of doing theory in, for and with cities and urban contexts. The growing catalog of creative methods for various disciplinary and interdisciplinary urban inquiries demonstrates a wide array of research techniques ranging from data walking to performative mapping or critical making, from experimental ethnography and co-creation to dramaturgical or interface analysis, and curatorial or action-based research to uncover and engage alternative ways of data collection, production, and analysis. Such creative urban methods are embodied and explorative, as well as experimental and interventionist. They share a phenomenological emphasis on embodied experiences of the (citizen/academic) researcher.

In the context of the multifarious global crises on planetary, societal, and political levels we find ourselves in today, it seems relevant to explore creative methods that can reshape ways of knowing about the city. We are keen to stimulate debate on the use and application of creative methods in academic and practice-based contexts, critically examining and addressing questions related to their merit and limitations as problem-solving research tools. What is the specific value of creative methods for understanding urban lives, situations, and spaces? How are urban creative methods different from more traditional and established methods for research on the city? What (new) urban knowledges can we produce with suchmethods? Who/what are privileged in and through such approaches and what kind of power relations are produced?

This second seminar session will explore the potentialities of different forms of visual analysis to comprehend urban environments as surfaces. Specifically tending to the walls in our cities, the session looks into how we can research walls as visual-textual objects from which we can learn about our social and material environments. We will approach this methodological question of comprehending walls from semiotic, visual studies, psychoanalytic, and poststructuralist dimensions. In doing so, the session touches upon various concepts, including but not limited to materiality, visibility, power, and spectatorship. The session investigates this methodological question at the hand of examples that we bring along and will analyze together.

ECTS
Research Master students can acquire 3 ECTS for the seminar, if they write an illustrated blogpost of about 1000 words for each seminar session (3 in total). The best blogposts are selected for publication on the [urban interfaces] website. Research Master students can acquire an additional 2 ECTS if they participate in the workshop day and write a (creative) reflection (1000-1500 words).