<TITLE: Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 2: Space and Culture
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: humanities
DISCIPLINE: cultural studies
EVENT TYPE: conference discussion
FILE ID: CDIS01D
NOTES: presentations deleted, (CDIS01A-C and CPRE01A-C are part of the same conference)

RECORDING DURATION: 31 min 26 sec

RECORDING DATE: 2.7.2002

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 24

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 13

NS1: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: English (Australia); ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: female; AGE: 24-30

S2: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: unknown; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50

S3: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Portuguese; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50

S4: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Italian; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50

NS5: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: English (USA); ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: 24-30

S6: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S7: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S8: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Portuguese; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50

S9: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Dutch; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S10: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: female; AGE: 24-30

S11: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: unknown; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50

S12: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: unknown; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S13: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: research student; GENDER: female; AGE: 24-30

SU: unidentified speaker

SS: several simultaneous speakers>



<PRESENTATIONS DELETED>

<NS1> <START MISSING> punctual @@ look at the time so we have almost we'll have more than half an hour for questions and discussion so it's really over to you what questions you have , for the speakers . (or if you) just wanna make a comment and . yes </NS1>
<S2> can i can i ask <NAME S3> a question on a very intrigued the link you were making to to what <NAME NS5> said yesterday about you know approaching somebody directly and ask them in they even if they wanted to they they probably couldn't and i'm just wondering er er in the way you recommend to look at space and bring space into that as as of intended trigger for memories do you do you think there is there is methodologically er er er possibilities of of i- in doing research and in having people talk about it to actually walk people through spaces or you said do you do you have thought about that or or </S2>
<S3> yeah it's something so new i mean this has just occurred to me and i haven't been really experimenting with that and i think it opens er er a kind of a possibility of of intervention er but i i wouldn't be able to tell at this point what what are the possibilities , erm </S3>
<S4> well can i <S3> [yeah] </S3> [just say] something i was i was very fascinated with the with the idea of sort of the re-enactment of space to a memory and i was thinking whether one could do maybe something i don't know this sounds very confused @@ but whether one could do something for (to couple) dreams and space because er i'm a very intensive dreamer @@ so i find that that that space plays an enormous er , an enormous role in dreams because you can have all the kind of you know freedom of moving through space that you certainly don't have in reality they will only try to approximate with digital stuff maybe and er the feel of the concord whatever with so so you have this and and in dreams you can have both surface and depth be exchanged so i wonder whether dre- whe- memory and especially migrant memory whether you , th- there is one could find a way of addressing that peculiarity and address it the way in which spaces are then rearranged in one's new culture to find that trace i don't know if this sounds totally confusing does it <SS> @@ </SS> , does that make any sense because i thought that that has has a sort of (xx) has that quality of a dream like that's what i i really love about it and and that the , maybe er we've al- maybe we've always been such slaves of narratives of you know of sort of temporality and er , one can think in terms of spatiality without becoming a slave to it that would be er , possibly you know a way of reconciling affect with affection </S4>
<NS5> and i i think the the use of prose is interesting there and its influence with the works of you know this is a kind of a levelling in which the objects and the world kind of i think space is the catch all for objectness in a certain way erm and the and the levelling of to come back use use my words er or not my words but my emphasis er such that er it's no longer this kind of (secret) repository of perception within er within the subject i mean this is something that's played out image the the the migrant er the you know (<NAME>'s film noir) (xx) the cities empowering those objects and i haven't done any of of that and , i thought that was we- extremely well put in in in (xx) kind of almost a shock moment and maybe it sometimes you need that , that shock moment is the one that sticks out more than the the mundane of the of the everyday memories (xx) doing the same as </NS5>
<NS1> do you have questions comment anyone , yeah </NS1>
<S6> i have a question to <NAME S7> er <COUGH> did it come out at all like that the er private homes could be like social spaces or or er er er places for spaces for playing place ballet it's er er as as far as i know sometimes the finns think that they er for example somali families they are a bit too social </S6>
<S7> yes er that's true but er , er however i was talking only about public space , er i've done er also research er on on on private spaces and even spaces (xx) but er i i couldn't take it all out here i only er this er this part but it's true what you're saying that er the the home is is very important talking about er place ballets and and and the creation of space </S7>
<NS1> someone wants to comment on that (xx) yes </NS1>
<S4> actually can i ask a question which is totally unrelated to our papers that has to do something with spaces it's a it's a naive er observation i wonder why is it that , i i've only seen tampere i haven't been out of er this is addressed to the finns <SU> @@ </SU> and er @@ why is it that in a place that has so much space there are buildings multi-storey buildings instead of small houses </S4>
<NS1> all you finns (xx) </NS1>
<SS> @@ </SS>
<SU> raise raise your hands </SU>
<SS> @@ </SS>
<S6> we are doctory level planning so </S6>
<SS> @@ </SS>
<S8> it has to do with real estate economic values that's for place what makes cities look like you know (xx) i'm saying that because i present a paper er on preservation and development , and their economic country could have you know i'm from brazil brazil has lots of space but you see the cities they are so dense so dense and it has to do with how much i valued (xx) real estate (xx) so that's my @@ hypothesis i i don't know if it's true </S8>
<S4> well euro is shaking [(xx)] </S4>
<S9> [(netherlands) have] so many er examples to the contrary that there is a lot of land available and cities are spread out . so this is not it has <S8> had some [(xx)] </S8> [probably much more] to do with culture than with real estate </S9>
<S4> well i'm wondering because i've always assumed that the association would be in i i've lived many years in the states but i'm i'm from italy and in italy we live on one on top of each other and and that is simply because there we don't have enough we really don't have enough space and you know most people want to stay there rather than do a- as i did and and leave but in the states there is quite a good of space and cities tend to i mean people tend to er , s- to tend to have houses even cheap houses even you know very kind of kind of a [so- sort of er (professional) houses] </S4>
<S9> [also in australia] australia and new zealand and so many other places </S9>
<S4> there is so there is this sense that they're you know they're kind of filling this space and and i was i mean it really struck me yesterday i took a very long walk throughout the and er it struck me that there were i didn't see , single houses </S4>
<S6> but there are but er you went to wrong pla- place i guess </S6>
<S4> [yeah but i] </S4>
<S6> [but the er] the er the er model of city for finland for example comes from italy not from the states so if if the the [model of european city] </S6>
<S4> [i did notice] i did notice some <S6> [@@] </S6> [similarities] actually in the buildings yeah but i but i was but i , well i i guess that i i obviously i said you know i've only seen tampere and only a small section of tampere but even so if you were in a in a city of a of a comparable size in the united states covering the territory that i covered you would have seen a lot more single houses and and a lot fewer er multi-storey buildings </S4>
<S10> what came to my mind about this i'm finnish but living i've been living in england for five years and also in hungary so where and in england people wants to live in sort of one-family houses instead here you have all this , erm , more more urban-looking houses i i was thinking that at some points er when they have been building helsinki and the biggest cities in finland they have been wanting to er live in urban environment and show an urban environment as a contrast to the countryside and and therefore there's also some areas in cities where there are very small houses one-family houses et cetera and that's when they wanted to break away from the city so there's been er idealised urban <S4> [mhm-hm] </S4> [spaces] and then also idealised , rural spaces </S10>
<S4> yeah i i actually i i i was wondering about something of that sort but ye- yeah </S4>
<S3> well it's just so very different from england because the garden is a kind of continuation of of nature and of wild life and the houses have the small gardens which , so it's a it's a cultu- cultural thing <S9> [yeah] </S9> <S10> [yeah] </S10> [this this and] </S3>
<S9> [the people here but] </S9>
<S11> [it doesn't really] <S10> [(xx)] </S10> [necessarily have] anything to do with with the amount of space <SU> [oh yeah] </SU> [because] very of- it's it's certainly the idea that when you have high-rise buildings then that takes up less space but <S4> yeah </S4> if you compare neighbourhoods with each other and very often you see that high-rise neighbourhoods er are very much er very l- much less there's less er dwellings per <SU> [erm] </SU> [square] kilometre <S4> oh yeah </S4> than er <S4> (xx) </S4> neighbourhoods with single family <S4> [(xx)] </S4> [houses] so it's really an image that you have that this <S4> yeah </S4> , it's because of the amount of space but , that doesn't necessarily have to be the case </S11>
<S4> oh okay well that's interesting i never @@ that have never [crossed my mind] </S4>
<S6> [i didn't have (xx)] </S6>
<S11> [no it it's it's (xx) space] </S11>
<SS> (xx) </SS>
<S6> in helsinki metropolitan area there are three cities actually helsinki espoo and vantaa and er if you er try to walk in espoo it's impossible you need a car it's an american city <S4> [er yeah] </S4> [so er there are] different , models as well <SU> [yeah there's er (xx)] </SU> [so if you want to go in] america in finland go to espoo </S6>
<S4> no i don't want <S6> [@@] </S6> ['cause i mean] i don't even want to go to america in america (xx) i wanna go </S4>
<SS> @@ </SS>
<NS5> i'm from texas and everything is big <SS> @@ </SS> this is the kind of expression you know everything's bigger in texas er but yet you know with this kind of , er , plethora of space this excess of space people go to places to er jog on treadmills which they go nowhere and i think there's desire for mobility and i think also there's sports complex i i the (xx) of that would be particularly interesting that you want to go to places to to get around you wanna go home maybe to stay but you also wanna go to a place to go somewhere , and in the urban context i mean that gets er you know that needs to be compressed in a certain type of way like (xx) kind of some erm connection i like to try and make here is with that video game sort of industry in which that is being (solved) as as a way to get around and it's not the exotic of going to the other or kind of a kind of travel show it's just this kind of repetition of er and kind of (xx) enjoyment of mobility er that the also just the er the rapid kind of er the birth of gym i think in the US is that also </NS5>
<NS1> i think that was in <NAME>'s presentation yesterday they must build technology for americans because of the car after those japanese (xx) that that's very much like physical space and that kind of intensities of population would help people feel that er actually their neighbourhood you know what they consider as the horizon of their neighbourhood i think in finland it's much (closer) er since it's been (xx) in cars there's no yeah so do you have something to say </NS1>
<S10> yeah i i also thought about the er sort of unbuilt er space and garden space and it's it seems to me that in england people want to occupy the garden space by by occupying the space and creating a garden whereas here was it <NAME> in a , in another session where i was also giving my paper erm there was a japanese girl talking about finnish cities and she said that the finns want to leave some unbuilt areas so maybe that's also why we why we want to build , u- up instead of spreading out </S10>
<S4> you have been on built areas <S3> [preserve (xx)] </S3> [oh preserve] the nature oh alright </S4>
<S11> but isn't it also a question for urban planners i mean er they , i- it's not only a question of choice it's also the that the the way urban planners <S7> [and it's] </S7> [divide] (the space) </S11>
<S7> and it's a question of a domination of resources <S11> yeah </S11> it's er they are not planners' choices <S4> yeah </S4> not so much </S7>
<S11> not not so much but i mean you have this sort of modernist er idea of high-rise building <S7> [yes] </S7> [and that's] the thing you should aim for and er for a long time planners like this idea so </S11>
<S7> yes maybe we are now following the what the what the public wants us <S11> yeah </S11> yeah you er you should see a a finnish suburbs they are they are how cities are quite dispersed dispersed at the mome- moment we have a huge suburbs pri- private houses so . i think most of er finns want to live er very near the nature . often we have er urban centres , so most important , if they live in in centres they have a summer cottage </S7>
<S3> but you have not so much shopping centres and which is a very strong cultural mark isn't it i mean i haven't seen too many big shopping centres around here from what i </S3>
<NS1> [they are (xx) @@] </NS1>
<S3> [there are still shops , streets] with shops and </S3>
<NS1> yeah </NS1>
<S6> no they are they are <S4> [oh yeah] </S4> [just] located outside the er city centre </S6>
<S4> yeah but outside yeah </S4>
<S6> they have better roads there you can go there with a car easily so </S6>
<S3> but for instance in cities like peru you have hu- really mega shopping centres on the centre <S6> [mhm-hm yeah] </S6> [of the of] the city , this the idea of shopping in the street is been completely obliterated and </S3>
<NS5> i think it's interesting the er instead of the (xx) model what kind of er (xx) there would be in the er kind of er soviet communist er soviet tradition er that's what (xx) they place a the monument er versus within a mall er where the (xx) has trace from (xx) paris er and the world's fair exhibits for which the multiple objects are the monuments the objects themselves er whereas the kind of state model in which you have the figure or the you know the the state sponsored artist or the er whoever on the bus er so what always seems kind of to resonate wrong with me is when i go out to a mall it's kind of new and then there's some monument there <SU> @@ </SU> and i'm not sure what it you know it's just some <S4> [yeah] </S4> [thing] maybe it's some abstracts of er who knows you know but er somehow that's important to have to have that kind of , monumental space and i think there's something er coming from <NAME>'s defacement er er american erm (xx) which at the monument has to be marked to be able to be seen because these monuments we don't see them until they become marks so it's that kind of er the (xx) that are (xx) and then they become charged <S4> mhm-hm </S4> er and i think that's yet to happen although it's starting to happen with the kind of even er 1980s mall sort of culture in which there might even be the renaissance in which these things become (xx) and i find myself having driving around texas having nostalgia for a 70s kind of shopping centre <SS> [@@] </SS> [where i pull up] and it's like i go <SU> [@@] </SU> [behind] and i'm like with that air conditioning unit it's just very special er <SU> @@ </SU> and it's because it's become past that i can really appreciate it er </NS5>
<S4> it's very special </S4>
<SS> [@@ (xx)] </SS>
<NS5> [invaluable places] </NS5>
<SU> yeah </SU>
<S3> but in in the south america the shopping centre is a sign of mark of exclusion it's not only a practicality because for instance indians the poor people just don't go in there it's a place where you feel safe you know there's an elite coming so it's interesting how these things acquire this kind characteristics er depending on the , social er setting </S3>
<NS1> is that actually policed or people wouldn't walk in there 'cause they wouldn't feel </NS1>
<S3> they wouldn't feel [comfortable] </S3>
<NS1> [yeah] mhm-hm . sorry @@ </NS1>
<S12> since er you are from (xx) it's interesting what very interesting (xx) but er it's you (could hear) about this er benjamin he also talks about the (xx) and the possible time i mean he talks about the iron constructions that are produced for being like passages in just like functional spaces for modernity and for effi- efficiency and then just some year decades later they have become monuments themselves because we don't see them anymore as actual (xx) that's monuments in the pause of time of the modern urban and all urban cities i mean even if they don't change in material form especially then then they change in (xx) , and and er (xx) but i was also very interested and fascinated by the , rio de j- de janeiro er , presentation because it reminded me also that , it there is connection to what you said about dreamwork i mean because dreamwork is like it's also , (xx) psychoanalytical theories of (xx) but the narrativisation of dreams in waking them up it's er related to a sort of er defence mechanism also but it also something that makes dreams content or meaningful we make them in the culture which they (xx) before it's almost as spaces maybe they are not (cultures) themselves but we cannot avoid beha- do tough work all the time to narrate to narrate them which we have done here today for example and that's what (cultures) are about dreaming (xx) <SU> mhm-hm </SU> <SS> @@ </SS> it is not that already we cannot (xx) in everyday life so , benjamin does i mean in the way benjamin does he in his work also he presents sorts of fragments (xx) , he tries to makes interpretations of it all the time (xx) didn't finish at the work into one big narrative <SU> [mhm-hm] </SU> [there are] lots of dream narratives that's the reason , i'm not sure i think it what <NAME> said about before said about walking , people through spaces would be , he did something like that in a passages object in stockholm maybe and informants and walk around at diffe- different spaces it's very useful <SU> mhm-hm </SU> because it's like , it's like when you are doing studies on elusive (xx) but it's much better to do (xx) than just to look back (xx) </S12>
<NS1> but you're right about it </NS1>
<SS> [@@] </SS>
<S12> [you're right about] that yeah i mean it's that [yeah] </S12>
<S4> [but there is a] there is a path to the (xx) and there's a tha- the idea's also that this spaces char- if if the spaces in me charged were memories and stuff it becomes also imaginary spaces it's a little difficult to walk through er , imaginaries i guess that what i'm what i'm (xx) with this idea of how you go about investigating it because of course yes the idea is walking through but , and how do we exactly do that you know you can take people back to the places of their dreams or to places of their memories but there's always some some kind of dislocation which is what makes that interesting </S4>
<NS5> perhaps (acquire) some new er (poetics) i mean they have to articulate these (xx) that we we desire we want to hear that and it's it's remarkable how (xx) is set about you know as we walk on the street with strangers we do not communicate er all the memories that we're having er our feelings about this and that er and er i (xx) create a moment which one is trying to do that is nice but (xx) how people fall to a a type of comparisism that they assume that people maybe like us might expect or want you know they want the truth about when this happened or that happened er little kind of irrelevancies can be hard to find </NS5>
<NS1> <S3> [yeah] </S3> [i guess] that's the (xx) </NS1>
<S3> no i was also thinking of cinema and dreams and cinema because i i have the feeling that i myself dream differently because i have been exposed to film in a like i i see things from the top like a a camera creates them on the top would would see you know i i have all these images of of the space seen through the movie camera that perhaps i i wonder if i would have them if i lived before </S3>
<SU> well that's interesting (xx) </SU>
<SS> @@ </SS>
<S4> (xx) i was (xx) exposed to a lot of television <SS> @@ </SS> yeah @@ yeah it certainly would be yeah </S4>
<NS1> mhm-hm , yeah i think er your emotional affection may pick up on that relationship but the what's the monument has other relationships too i think it's just the monument or it becomes just sort of these memory that this subjectivity is always negotiation (xx) i think that's really helpful yeah this thing , (someone) did you have a question . (xx) before </NS1>
<S11> me </S11>
<NS1> no [behind you] </NS1>
<S13> [no er] well my point was just about this , town of tampere i mean why we built up because er originally the town was er founded between two lakes so there wasn't that much <S4> [uh-huh] </S4> [space] and you don't really have to go far to see the single houses <S4> ah </S4> , and things like that so , and i think right now because this is a very lively student city so and er cars driving a car in finland is very expensive students can't afford it so they want to live near the town centre the university and different schools so that's why we built up <S4> uh-huh </S4> as close to the schools as possible and then when the students graduate and , get jobs then they move out , and then they have these single houses </S13>
<S6> but there is one of the one of the most famous finnish wooden house areas there pispala that was er <S4> [mhm-hm] </S4> [built] by a workers alone they bought the land with one mark or something and then then they er built upon the hill and it was between two lakes and everybody tried to build in that way that they didn't built in the front of the neighbours view so everybody had a view of the lakes and there it's excellent you should go there </S6>
<NS5> it's a question of who built you can build a log cabin and northern or diff- like a group of friends or some community of (xx) , er and the US did that project in the 70s in government housing but then abandoned it you know because er then they're (xx) US what people want </NS5>
<S3> so <NS5> [(xx)] </NS5> [would this] single house be an object of desire for finnish people i mean when you have a better salary or a family would you naturally move on to a single house because it's not like that for instance in rio the apartment is i mean people don't have this dream of having a house around , is is this </S3>
<S6> i don't want a house cause i'm from the (xx) , so er but for for many other people it is maybe because er basically everybody is from the countryside there are not so many families that have lived in cities from generation to generation so er i guess it's quite generally their knowle- their (imaginary) about good life <S3> [mhm-hm] </S3> [is] like that er it's a sort of kind of version of the farm house the ideal farm house the old times so er they are like so we are quite divided , others want to live in famil- single family houses and others want to live in the city centres @@ </S6>
<S3> (xx) it's interesting </S3>
<S4> isn't it that in the states would be er er it's even a class thing that if you are if you live in a flat i mean the the first you know they they do say that there's no class there are no classes @@ <NS1> @@ </NS1> there's no class consciousness in states actually it's i don't find it that way at all i mean it it's a little bit i think that there is er in i i remember hearing somebody once saying that if you know that somebody's address and then go and there is a number er like that you know like that the street er the number of the street and then number of the flat , you know that you're not dealing with anybody wealthy and then i i find that is @@ quite er talent it's i think it's changing a little bit in certain centres where it is becoming fashionable to restore like wooden houses and make this you know for example manhattan manhattan i don't think anybody would frown upon er er you know apartment in the er in the village or whatever but but it it's certainly a majority of the cities is seen that there is also a class thing which and then it becomes kind of permissible for middle class people to move into flats which then would be called condos i've when you become too old to manage the house it's also attached to stages of life i think i- i- in very different ways than in europe or most countries in europe , because the places tend to be also as large as you can make them and er it's so that it gives a sense of like physical mobility but that @@ becomes less and less </S4>
<NS1> i guess the question here is is this division in finland between cosmopolitans and people who aren't quite in that global scale is that (xx) if you want to [move to states @@] </NS1>
<S6> [one question] erm , would you like to try that </S6>
<SS> @@ </SS>
<S10> well i do- i don't think it's it's that easy to see because i have i have seen people changing their dreams their first dream to be living in a in a city and then wanted to move away from the city and then but there are there are some regional things like in , some of my friends from eastern finland which is more rural they have they are having dreams of building a house building their own house and sort of in that sense sort of taking their own space and and and their , situating their o- own life in that sort of rural area but in a normal way , and then , then again there are many people who wants to live as you said in in the city centres and i don't think it's a class based thing , either because , erm , well i would say that the class isn't that big an issue in finland in the traditional sense erm , and it would be equally er important to almost any finn to have access if not to have a summer cottage somewhere by a lake @@ <SU> mhm-hm </SU> er so so it's it can be these two can be combined in that summer cottage which can be very very modest and then er urban cosmopolitan flat and a life in a city so you can have basically two lives and live in two spaces </S10>
<S6> and you have (xx) setting nordic countries where you have had this idea of social mixing <S4> mhm-hm </S4> on the home areas so er so in one flat there can be a millionaire and a poor beggar almost in the same er so er it's it's the whole idea of the land has been that we we are not creating ghettos <S4> mhm-hm </S4> so er so er that's why the address doesn't necessarily tell </S6>
<S4> mhm-hm </S4>
<NS1> but doesn't that mean that just in areas packed like this sort of idea of the trans-national space in the city i mean does that make finnish cities also trans-national as well does that create that sort of displacement with finnish people , in the city </NS1>
<S7> er maybe some finns are are are , with (xx) because er they they want mix them with the the immigrants and er especially young young people , they are er playing football with them or going to mosque they are first to convert to <NS1> mhm-hm </NS1> er muslims i know young people , who turned here , er , can't say more @@ </S7>
<NS1> mhm mhm see in- inventions and it's sort of (surprises) in the city and it's always (xx) that kind (xx) i think that </NS1>
<S7> er i think it's not very not very , popular it's er , it's quite rare <NS1> mhm , mhm </NS1> (xx) trans-national space er it's a , (xx) by by immigrants mainly </S7>
<NS1> any last questions or comments , thank you very much for coming and (xx) and the speakers as well </NS1>
<APPLAUSE>
