Abstracts

Liam Bierschenk
Pedestrian Space conceived as a K (knowledge) Space: from negative to positive hallucination and symbol formation

In this paper I will discuss Sandback’s concept of ‘Pedestrian Space’ being a diffuse space combining the triple ontology of space-viewer-artwork, to ask how the capacity to conceive of space and objects arises in the first instance, from a psychoanalytic perspective. I will draw on the work of psychoanalysts Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion to describe a developmental process between self and other, which passes through phases of hallucinatory experience to arrive at the capacity to use symbols proper. I shall touch on the significance of these processes for art and science, specifically mathematics, and make the case that psychoanalysis, or rather the psychoanalytic state of mind, is a method for exploring these developmental experiences and the spaces they reveal.

Liisa Bourgeot
Stalin-era logicians: a quest for intellectual freedom in a totalitarian state

The emergence of Soviet dissent caught everyone off guard. Soviet leaders and Western observers alike had assumed that Stalin’s iron regime had crushed free thought and independent action in the USSR. Thus, the first public manifestation of inakomyshlenie (‘thinking-otherwise’) that took place on Moscow’s Pushkin Square in 1965 was utterly unforeseen.

Recently, the evolution of the Soviet human rights movement in the 1960s and 70s has been a topic for rich discussions. Their narratives often build around the eccentric mathematician, poet, and gulag-inmate Alexander Esenin-Volpin, whose founding idea was simple: the Soviet state should be held accountable for its own laws. Stalin’s Constitution purported to guarantee rights – freedom of assembly, speech, and the press – to all Soviet citizens. These rights never existed in reality; yet Esenin-Volpin inspired the early dissidents to pretend they were real.

In my talk, I suggest that the roots of the dissident movement can be traced further back in Soviet intellectual history, specifically to the “rebirth” of logic after WWII. This claim appears at first paradoxical. From 1947 onwards, all Soviet philosophy had to conform to the official ideology; those who failed to comply risked harsh repressions. Yet, even under the strictest control, logic developed in relative freedom. Thinkers such as Valentin Asmus and Sofiya Yanovskaya – both future mentors of Esenin-Volpin – kept their university posts, published new ideas, and thus prepared the ground for future generations.

Intellectual freedom in the USSR was not only a phenomenon of a post-totalitarian era; its seeds were sown during Stalin’s harshest years. My talk examines how expressions of freedom could arise from the midst of extreme ideological control – first in the field of Soviet logic, then through the rationale of Soviet law.

Marta Gutman
Pedestrian Space, School Children, and Racial Justice in Harlem

For this architectural historian, the tag pedestrian space carries dual connotations—the first being architectural, meaning that when a building or a space is labeled pedestrian, it is viewed as unremarkable, a second rate work; the second being geographical, meaning that when an urban space is designated “pedestrian” it is reserved for people who walk, excluding vehicles and the danger and risk that are associated with them. The tag in the first instance casts pedestrian as a problem, a failure, and in the second as a success, as something to strive for, a benefit to city dwellers of all ages. 

I am not convinced that either assumption helps in understanding pedestrian space in relationship to public architecture for children, historically or in the present day. For instance, in New York City, my hometown, streets were closed to traffic during the pandemic and portable playground equipment was introduced, scattered willy nilly on asphalt and concrete. Kids are adept at turning adult-designed play equipment to their own uses, but this intervention shows how easily a space turned to pedestrian use can easily become an example of pedestrian architecture.

I start from this vantage point, that children are pedestrians, “walkers in the city” who inscribe pedestrian spaces in their neighborhoods. Alfred Kazin coined the phrase to describe his childhood in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and he invoked the city block as the salient spatial structure in the life of a young immigrant child—a place to inhabit, and to imagine leaving, to claim a life in the city beyond the block. In this paper, I turn to another salient material feature in the public life of city children—the public school, which I examine in relationship to pedestrian space and racial justice in Harlem. If school officials acknowledged the child as a walker in locating public schools, children learned who they were when they walked to school. I’m especially interested in discussing white and Black children who walked to different schools in Harlem in the middle of the nineteenth century. If their walk to racially segregated school buildings imparted lessons about racial hierarchy, racial inequality, and privilege to students, walking by common schools also required whites to recognize Black children’s childhood, their standing as students, and their rights to public education. I show that these distinctions were a harbinger of anti-racist struggles to come, struggles which also engaged children, schools, and pedestrian space.

Klaske Havik
Urban Tapestry. Weaving timelines of pedestrian experience in The Hague

In this talk, I will present an urban tapestry, woven from spatial and temporal lines through the city of The Hague, The Netherlands. I will describe pedestrian space in the Dutch city The Hague through different periods, based on two female characters. Part of my narrative describes the city in the 1930s, a city undergoing change as new modern lifestyles emerged. In the early 20th century, The Hague was a vibrant city with a dynamic cultural life, boasting many cinemas and theatres, while the new phenomenon of the department stores emerged. Streets were being widened or newly built as part of urban development projects to accommodate motorised traffic. It is in this Hague that I set the story of Jeanne, who travelled to the city daily to work at a textile atelier in the Passage. Running parallel to her daily route is that of Maria, a young writer living in the city center around the year 2000. Through her eyes, we see how another architect, Rem Koolhaas (OMA) follows in Berlage’s footsteps, aiming to turn The Hague into a contemporary metropolitan city — a goal that only partially succeeds due to the city’s somewhat unruly and conventional character. Both storylines address the experiential aspects of the city streets through the eyes of the pedestrian.

Susan Stewart
Far-fetched: On the Poetry of Walking

A talk on the synergy between walking and the imagination, with a focus on poems by William Cowper, William Wordsworth, and others.