W2 PROVOCATIVE:

CRINSON

1.

What is the claim being made of a city then if you say it embodies a memory?

Where do you find that memory, what about the city, what is the city being understood as, how
many aspects of the city?

Physical form ? imagination? Visual ? daily life? Noise? Etc.

Being able to map something (mapping and counter mapping to the city)

2.

IS THERE A SINGULAR MEMORY? OR MULTIPLE? DO MEMORIES ALL SYNCHRONISE AND

RESONATE OR IS THERE DISSONANT MEMORIES?

2A

why is it said in the concepts crinson reviews, that the polarity of memory is history and not
amnesia? can there be dissonant memories?

Sources and the historian

History is by professionals, collect data, employed by the state.

More objective? But maybe not true reflection?

Vs. memory – you are both the data bank and the interpreter. You are one in the same.

Memory is from you and me.

Urban memory and urban history –

Influenced how we should talk about it (The context in which we live and the assumptions of how
we should talk about something).

History data archive, is it true, historians themselves, what is their positionality.

 Urban heritage

Intro:

- Memory form altered different ways and levels

- Residue, active
- Memory evokes loss – a recollection of gone / immaterial things

- Memory forms, differ( time and space), make use of memories for diff purposes

1. Trauma and memory in the city

a. Mnemonic – certain parts of the city triggers
b. Amnesia of self – disregard self, but what the city writes for you, immerse in the
experience
c. Traumatic events
d. Sense of loss – not limited to building forms… just about association, and only when
memory is threatened, then you are more aware of it being a memory
2. Urban memory / surburban oblivion
a. Traumatic exp -> hidden / filtered away, intentional or unintentional (traumatic not
that bad / emphasise good points)
b. E.g. Medical stretchers used in a war, used for garden fences
c. Suburban home differs from person to person – ghetto? Sterile? The American
dream? Same spaces, very diff memory attached to it / how ppl view it.
3. Clocking off in Ancoats
a. Industrial city –
b. Form / materials - isit rly preserving it? Or isit like a Disneyland façade, display?
c. Fantasizing, totemic, worshipping of the aesthetic
d. An extrapolated image from just a trace /element
e. Where does memory reside and how is it used -an aspect of a building, mnemonic
device to then read into something. To call for or even overwrite… that fragment can
have many readings. But imbue overlay -> a dominant reading (counter reading) – a
dominant / official discourse / narrative
f. A frame of looking, stretching across different examples
g. Image to evoke image – is it still considered conservation ? – material trace / remains ->
stories around it – to dissociate the two (What if there is no physical trace, or so radically
altered) (what is read for you on its behalf, for it)
h. Character (realm of interpretation) – degrees of reading something
i. Iconography and iconology – Panofsky:
1. Connotation / association
2. Universal
ii. Which layer does conservation lies – material or isit alr manipulating /
connotating?
i. Interpretation in dominant historiography
4. Concrete and memory
a. Concrete – modern and reasons it is used for is what it is hated for, contrasting
views, same material, different memories
b. Nazi Germany – concrete un-german, not german soil, vs. hard labour of the
workers. Same country, diff views, short time.
c. Concrete Neutral
5. Totemic Park
a. Totem – symbol / monument, whereby you simplify the memory associated with it.
But totemic franchises it even more.
b. Supress memories that are unaccepted in the narrative.
 6. Remembering, forgetting and the industrial gallery space.
a. Old industrial estates -> a new status symbol (modernise cultural symbol) (art
galleries) -> appropriating industrial space to cultural space
b. Represent ideas of the past, articulate them publicly , and change them
c. A selective amnesia – hardship associated w industrial labour, erased and
overlooked, its just about economic development
7. Future of the past – archiving singapore
a. Koolhas – tabula rasa, clean slate and rebuilding
b. Author yap – less about urban form, but the small things that happens in the city
c. Tabula rasa = starting with an open mind? You are still binded by the rules of the
slate.
d. Sg acutely aware of its heritage – but diff conservation approach?
8. 9/11
a. Even when something doesn’t exist anymore, you can associate a memory with it.
Only when you are threated do memories form.
b. 9/11 buildings rep
c. Projection of self onto the building – losing self to understand city vs. building is
projection of self – attack on tower = attack on US ppls values
d. Not so much reading the environment but ourselves. How we associate = our values
that we prioritise.
9. Mnemotechny of the industrial city
a. Improving ones memory of the industrial city
b. Where / creating loci of memory – more higher order, the ordinary man might not
be able to read it that way, don’t know background of the work, you might not know
what it is trying to say – cultural and art literacy and history of thought

Without understanding the history of thought. (If you don’t know how to read it, the meaning is lost
on you.)

Without understanding the history of ideology- we cannot understand any critical intervention on it.

Without understanding history of urban life – as it is lived on the everyday level, spatial practice.

(awareness thing)

3D of space- lefebvre spatial triad

The representational space, representational, spatial practice

Where can we locate them and why?

Understand heritage not just as pdn of objs, but pdn of space- and then u have to

What are the key claims the author is making -> summarise
Modernist city + post modernist -> opening to talk about concrete // reuse of space -> still
modernist? Technically post modernist. (modernist = build anew) (appropriating and modifying =
post modernist approach to the city)

Tabula rasa -erase tablet – erase but cannot deny geo, political, material context. Context is always
there, even reclaimed land.

Urban memory:

HOW WOULD YOU RELATE CRINSONS IDEAS TO GOH’S IDEAS?

1/ 2 OR GHOSTLY 3/ 4?

HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO GOH’S CLAIM THAT THERE IS AN ASIAN IMAGINATION VS.
COSMOPOLITAN IMAGINATION (the binary)

The actual outcomes in sg -does it match what I see?

We present cultural heritage products as Asian as opposed to cosmpolitan The PRODUCTS of tourism
are positioned as Asian products. Eastern Asia // a one stop commodification of asia.

Where did this come from in Goh’s writing

Bland global Asian // hyper commodified Asian…

Call back claims into question. // question how well the claim is substantiated ? //

GOH

1. Summary:
a. Shared history
b. Identity vs. commodity (critical / interpretative approach)
c. Orientation of imagination / ends of production

Why do you keep claiming all that past to be yours?

How heritage uses the past

Late capitalism: Federic jameson – neoliberal + post mod ; gives up public goods to market –
libraries, museums, … to make money for itself. The hidden power of late capitalist .. oligarchy.
Visible, aesthetic // invisible roots (political and economical order – neo-lib)

Representation of space

Representational space – inhabitants, cultural memory through lived space,

Everyday life, social spatial practice

3 -- MAPPING - CRITICAL ASPECTS FOR WRITING // SUGGESTED ASPECTS FOR MAPPING

4 – SURVEYING AND MAPPING

Lefebvre –

When we talk about maps, when we look at a map, it is usually the product of a map maker
(professional-ish) (urbanist, planners, geographers) the maps are products of an oculous thing – you
are supposed to be able to navigate through space and is a particular way of conceiving space. What
other ways of _ a city

Representations of space. – map

Representational space – space of ideals and imaginations and desired image, (Actual space – the
urban theatre where you do and project space – spaces in the real city where representation occurs
– where people live out what they want- stb, people, …) (the city is a vast network of spaces, some
more impt than other in representing things) (field forces – some stronger than others) (Dimensions
of space)

Spatial practice – space of daily routine which you cannot separate from urban reality – what you
have to navigate as you live your life.  question of access, social justice, .. .routes and networks,
daily life – particular space would have its own little networks.

Possibilities of counter mapping.

Another:

Layers of historical and contemporary, identity, socio political, … that doesn’t even come into the
picture – but its always there. Maps don’t ever show it. “hidden layers” there, visible, but never
talked about.

The way we frame heritage districts in Singapore – manila street, kampung serani, queen street –
sekyani (serani) – Portuguese Eurasian. These names don’t exists in official mapping and
annotations,

// invisible yet visible element

Provided you know where to get sources and references

Sources for counter mapping