
Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Il Quarto Stato, oil on canvas, 293×545 cm, Museo del Novecento, Milan
In analyzing the constant change and renewal of cities, architectural and urban historians have predominantly taken the vantage point of the governing elites and looked at urban developments as manifestations of power. More attention needs to be paid to practices and visual manifestations of discontent, resistance and protest within the urban environment. The urban fabric is made of spaces defined by successive authorities as well as manifestations of resistance, both in the margins and in the centre of the city. Beyond propaganda and the visual and artistic language promoted by established authorities, beyond utopian discourses on imaginary cities, this series of lectures examines how representations of protest disrupt the notions of space produced by the elites. Iconoclasm, satire, graffiti, disruptive behaviour and sounds, provocative clothes or hairstyles reveal an urban geography marked by visible, if often ephemeral, acts of creative reaction against a given order and its symbols. Over the centuries and across national boundaries, “counter-cultures” have taken innumerable forms, ranging from collective actions to art, fashion and music. The speakers will look at such manifestations and ask how they shaped the urban space, inscribing it with dense webs of meaning. Marginal spaces, virtual or material boundaries, squares and markets offer potential venues for displaying an active reaction against the vision of orderly space promoted by the authorities. We hope this approach will encourage a fruitful encounter between art historians and architectural historians, cultural historians and anthropologists.
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Mon 9 Oct, 2017 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
Protest on the Piazza: Early Modern...
One consequence of the ‘spatial turn’ in history and the social sciences is a growing interest in the location of protest. In the 21st century, its location in squares is impossible to miss. Was this…
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Mon 6 Nov, 2017 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
City walls, piazze, hoods, flags, a...
Despite their prejudices and ideological objectives, contemporary chronicles and surviving illustrations from the late Middle Ages fail to support models drawn by historians and social scientists (George Rudé, Charles Tilly, James C. Scott and others).…
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Mon 13 Nov, 2017 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
From Graffiti to Riots: Contested S...
Demonstrations, riots, and rebellions—but also graffiti, shouts, songs, and libellous placards—were part of a repertoire that the “disenfranchised masses” used to influence elite politics in the Renaissance and early modern city. Social historians have shown…
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Mon 27 Nov, 2017 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
Protest in Movement: Marching in th...
Marches have long been a key tool of protest used by a wide range of movements on both Left and Right. This lecture will look at the symbolic and strategic functions of marches in modern…
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Mon 4 Dec, 2017 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
What Punk does to Art History / Wha...
In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock became widespread all over Europe, with sounds, but also images, clothes and attitudes. Based on a constant refusal to inscribe itself inside the artistic world, punk…
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