[Commlist] CFP Imagining the Ordinary City: Arts, Placemaking and Everyday Urban Lives

*CALL FOR PAPERS*

*Imagining the Ordinary City: *

*Arts, Placemaking and Everyday Urban Lives*

*28-29 October 2024 *

*Centre for African Studies Gallery, University of Cape Town*

*Confirmed keynotes:*

Professor Jennifer Robinson (University College London)

Dr Thembinkosi Goniwe (Rhodes University)

Professor Lynda Gichanda Spencer (Rhodes University)

Though the city has long been associated with speed and spectacle, 
including its fast-flowing transport systems and towering buildings, it 
has also always harboured more mundane activity and sights such as the 
rehearsed small talk of (consequential) strangers and the habitual 
queues of daily commuters. These everyday practices (in Michel de 
Certeau’s terms) form ordinary spaces that are fundamental to the urban 
imaginary yet are rarely explored in artistic endeavours and, 
connectedly, rarely granted a cultural value that adequately conveys the 
social value they afford a city’s population.

In broader discourse on cities, when the notion of ‘ordinariness’ is 
accepted as an urban quality it often fuels a centre/periphery binary, 
with artistic and scholarly interest only occurring when it is located 
in the latter (the sustained representation of suburban ennui, for 
example). Resonating with Njabulo S. Ndebele’s work (1991), it is 
important that cities – where the spectacle of state trauma and violence 
is often most obvious – are understood in more complex terms, with 
everyday urban lives foregrounded. Additionally, there is a tendency 
within and beyond academia to hierarchise cities, with those in the 
Global North held up as the model to which all others are compared, 
despite Jennifer Robinson’s (2006) seminal work in calling for an 
alternative framework where all cities are considered ‘ordinary’ and 
worthy of examination.

In linking together different strands of understanding ordinariness 
then, this conference seeks to (re)establish the value of the ‘ordinary 
city’ as it is employed, constructed and imagined in a range of artworks 
including, but not limited to: literature, visual art, screen media, 
theatre and performance.

The conference is part of a British Academy-funded project, and it is 
intended that selected papers will become part of an edited collection. 
More information about the wider project can be found here: 
https://research.kent.ac.uk/imagining-ordinary-cities/ 
<https://research.kent.ac.uk/imagining-ordinary-cities/>.

The conference will take place over two days and will explore 3 themes:

*Theme 1:  Overlooked Cities*

This theme examines the representation of smaller, often overlooked 
cities in the arts (literary, visual, performance, sonic) and/or 
questions of distribution and exhibition in such cities. Topics might 
include:

  * Portraying, performing, writing, scoring small cities
  * Regional arts centres and venues (galleries, theatres, cinemas)
  * Representations of everyday urban life across geographical regions
*Theme 2: Mundanity in the Metropolis*

This theme focuses on the ordinariness that does not exist exclusively 
at the periphery and in relation to the spectacle of the centre. Topics 
might include:

  * Rediscovering ordinariness in spaces usually associated with
    violence and trauma
  * Spaces in-between the city/suburban divide; urban edgelands; non-places
  * Emotions and atmospheres of the urban everyday in sound and image

*Theme 3: ‘Ordinariness’ as multi-faceted artistic lens *

This theme looks into the experience of artists (writers, poets, theatre 
practitioners, filmmakers, musicians) in capturing and representing the 
everyday city. Topics might include:

  * Drawing inspiration from the urban everyday
  * Artistic practices that are rooted in mundane metropolitan activities
  * Local artist networks and grassroots initiatives

We welcome abstracts (max. 300 words) in one of the three main 
conference themes. Please indicate in the abstract which of the listed 
sub-themes you would like to contribute to. Submissions should include 
the title of the paper, author’s full name, email address and 
affiliation (e.g. university, college, archive, independent 
researcher/artist) plus a short biography (50 words). Final conference 
presentations should be 20 minutes.

The conference will take place in-person, but we may consider online 
zoom attendance by request. If applicable, please indicate this request 
in your submission.

The abstracts should be sent as a Word doc or pdf file via e-mail to 
(imaginingordinarycity /at/ gmail.com), with the subject: ‘Name_Imagining the 
Ordinary City Conference Abstract’. The *deadline for abstract 
submissions is 30 May* and all applicants will be notified of the 
outcome by mid June.

*Convenors: *Lavinia Brydon (University of Kent); Bibi Burger 
(University of Cape Town); Sanele Ntshingana (University of Cape Town); 
Janina Schupp (University of Oxford)


*Scientific Committee: *Markus Arnold (School of Languages and 
Literatures, University of Cape Town); Emre Çağlayan (Department of 
Communication, Media and Culture, American University of Paris); Ashvin 
Immanuel Devasundaram (Department of Film Studies, Queen Mary University 
of London); Isolde de Villiers (Faculty of Law, University of the 
Western Cape); Louisa Uchum Egbunike (Department of English Studies, 
Durham University); Sonja Loots (School of Languages and Literatures, 
University of Cape Town); Rike Sitas (African Centre for Cities, 
University of Cape Town); Dylan Valley (Centre for Film and Media 
Studies, University of Cape Town).


	
	
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