Events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival | 12-28 August
Part of the Writing the City series of events
Reimagining future cities
The research collaboration “The Quito Papers” is a global project led by Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen, rethinking the vision of how cities are built in the 21st century. Having been to Beijing, London, New York, and Cumbernauld on the Edinburgh Book Festival ReimagiNation tour, the Quito Papers will be next presented in Edinburgh.
Cities of our dreams
Honor Gavin and Adam Kaasa will join Ishbel McFarlan in a discussion on cities and creative imagining. Ishbel McFarlane created Plan, an interactive game to get people thinking about the complexities of creating New Towns. Honor Gavin and Adam Kaasa’s project (Un)Common Building at Theatrum Mundi explores city possibilities, urban memory and built form.
Words on the street
John Bingham-Hall will be chairing a session on urban storytelling through hip-hop. Panelists include american novelist and graffiti artist Ryan Gattis, Scottish hip-hop star Dave Hook of Stanley Odd and Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante of award-winning hip-hop dance company Blue Boy Entertainment.
Working Paper on New Cultural Infrastructure
Theatrum Mundi presents a working paper that provides a critical account of three roundtables asking artists, architects, writers, scholars, publishers, and institutional leaders, ‘Can we design the conditions for culture?’ The paper has been presented to the Mayor of London’s Culture Team as part of their development of a Cultural Infrastructure strategy, and been the basis of a charette bringing together four architecture practices to develop design propositions responding to the issues it raises. A full report incorporating the designs will be published in October.
(Un)common building book
Currently being designed by Spirit Duplicator, a small press based between Doncaster and Basel, Theatrum Mundi’s forthcoming (Un)common Building publication explores the possibilities of speculative fiction in connection with the urban and has its provenance in an experimental workshop held in partnership with the University of Sheffield in April 2016. The ensuing publication, developed by Theatrum Mundi academic-in-residence Honor Gavin, will entail four elements: a ‘guidebook’ to the findings of our first workshop or excavation; a collaborative archaeology of a nonexistent building; an ‘etymology’ reflecting on our terminology and methodologies, and, because our uncommon building is by no means the only one, an instructional manual providing some suggestions and guidelines as to how to collectively excavate other uncommon buildings.
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