Rebel Streets conference aims to shift the focus from a rather disempowering critical perspective towards urban art to one that stresses its aesthetical and political powers as a part of the urban social resistance. Participants discuss the hypothesis that the aesthetic reconfiguration of the neoliberal city does not only allow for a hegemonic restructuring of the urban environment, but it also facilitates the growth of counter-hegemonic resistance.

The conference is organized around the three areas of the conference theme:

  1. Street art and everyday life in the city
  2. Art and anti-gentrification resistance
  3. Art and the urban social movements

Keynote Speakers:

  • Ilaria HOPPE (Art and Philosophy, Katholische Privat-Universität Linz)
  • Peter BENGTSEN (Art History and Sociology, Lund University)
  • Myrto TSILIMPOUNIDI (Geography, University of Aegean)
  • Julia RAMIREZ-BLANCO (Art History, Universitat de Barcelona)

Tuesday, May 28, 2019: MSH Salle Polyvalente

8H30-9H00 Welcome Coffee

9H00-9H10 Welcome Speech, Nora Semmoud, Director CITERES/University of Tours

9H15-9H35 Opening Speech, Gülçin Erdi, Tijen Tunali, CITERES/University of Tours

“Art and Urban Social Movements”

9H40-10H40 Keynote Speech: Ilaria Hoppe Institute of Contemporary Arts and Media, Catholic University of Linz, Austria
“Graffiti is back: About the interconnection of visual and spatial practices in Berlin”

Parallel Sessions:

Session1A: Art, Space and Place in the Neoliberal City
Room: MSH Salle Polyvalente

Moderator: Divya Leducq, Department of Planning, University of Tours

  • 10H40 Panos Leventis, Drury University, Aegina, Greece: “Mapping the old city: Street art and community building in Nicosia, Cyprus”
  • 11H10 Irit Carmon Popper, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel: “Art Interventions as tools of civil rights in conflictual sites”
  • 11H40 Mor Cohen, Manchester Metropolitan University, England: “Ecosophical art practices in Israeli urban spaces”

12H10-12H30 Discussions

Session 1B: Urban Encounters: Art, Architecture and the Public in the Neoliberal Era
Room: MSH Salle 147

Moderator: Ilaria Hoppe, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Media, Catholic University of Linz

  • 10H40 Emma Stein Lewis, Lake Forest College, Ilinois, US: “Clearing, transforming, destroying: Photographing public housing as a heterotopia in Chicago.”
  • 11H10 Konstantinos Avramidis, Drury University, Aegina, Greece: “Writing [on] architecture in crisis-ridden Athens: The aesthetics of destruction and reconstruction”
  • 11H40 Mathilde Vignau and Alexandre Grondeau, The University of Aix-Marseille, Marseille, France: “Arts, culture and neoliberalism: instrumentalization and resistances through the case of Marseille.”

12H10-12H30 Discussions

Keynote Speech: Julia Blanco Ramirez, Department of Art History, University of Barcelona, Spain

“Activist aesthetics in Madrid’s 2011 camp”

MSH Salle Polyvalente

Parallel Sessions:

Session 2A: Urban Art and Everyday Resistance
Room: Salle 147

Moderator: Gülçin Erdi, CNRS-CITERES

  • 15H10 Sreejata Roy, Revue Art Collaboration, New Delhi, India: “Street art and every day: A Collaborative community art project engaging young women in an urban village in New Delhi”
  • 15H40 Zeynep Uğur, EHESS, Paris, France: “From staging to enacting politics: The case of alternative theatres in Istanbul”
  • 16H10 Justin Malachowski, University of California, Davis, US.: “Imagining the Sha`b: Exploring the fears and hopes of the new empowered political actor through the public arts in Tunisia.”

16H40 Coffee Break

16H50-17H20 General Discussion

Session 2B: Art, Communities and Anti-Gentrification Resistance
Room: MSH Salle Polyvalente

Moderator: Tijen Tunali, CITERES/ University of Tours

  • 15H10 Michelle Veitch, Mount Royal University, Canada: “Indigenous cultural resurgence and creative city discourses”
  • 15H40 Marie-Pierre Vincent, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France: “Art and anti-gentrification resistance: the role of two artists in a local community market (Ridley Road market, in the borough of Hackney, Inner London”
  • 16H10 Heather Shirey, Todd Lawrence and Paul Lorah, University of St.Thomas, Minnesota, USA: “The urban art, landscapes, and community stories project: Mapping art, narrative, and community in St.Paul, Minnesota”

16H40 Coffee Break

16H50-17H20 General Discussion

18H30-21H00 Conference Cocktail and Exposition

“ The Oaxaca Commune of 2006: Right to the City, Right to Visual Democracy”

Wednesday 29, 2019: Faculty of Social Sciences and EConomics, Salle du Conseil

9H00-9H30 Morning Coffee

9H30-10H30 Keynote Speech: Peter Bengtsen, Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, University of Lund, Sweden
"Living with Street Art"

Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics, Salle de Conseil (2nd Floor)

Parallel Sessions:

Session 3A: Street Art Utopia and Its Discontents
Room: POR B 2

Moderator: Christian Gerini, Department of Philosophy, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and Toulon

  • 10H40 Vittorio Parisi, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France: “Neoliberalism and the death of graffiti: a “spectral” analysis”
  • 11H10 Sandra Uskoković, University of Dubrovnik, Croatia: "Urboglyphs - Urban figures of memory "
  • 11H40 Tina Bitouni, Lund University, Sweden: “Racist street art: implicitness, impunity and interaction”

12H10-12H30 Discussions

Session 3B: Art and Activism on the Streets
Room: Salle du Conseil

Moderator: Roman Stadnicki, Department of Geography, University of Tours

  • 10H40 Tijen Tunali, University of Tours: “But is this art? Artistic activism and the rebel streets"
  • 11H10 Mohamed El-Shewy, University of Warwick, England: “The spatial and aesthetic politics of street art in post-revolution Egypt”
  • 11H40 Irina Kozlova, The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow, Russia: “This is our city: Spatial structure of street protests in contemporary Russia”

12H10-12H30 Discussions

14H00-15H00 Keynote Speech: Myrto Tsilimpoudini, Department of Sociology, University of the Aegean, Greece
‘If these walls could talk’: Political street art from the streets of Athens"

Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics, Salle de Conseil (2nd Floor)

Parallel Sessions:

Session 4A: Art, Urban Space and Migration Crisis
Room: Salle de Conseil

Moderator: Myrto Tsilimpoudini, Department of Sociology, University of the Aegean

  • 15H10 Christy Petropoulou, Orestis Pangalos, University of the Aegean, Greece: “Representing and commoning the ‘refugee crisis”
  • 15H40 Geneviève Guetemme, University of Orleans, Orleans, France: “Street art’s take on migration”
  • 16H10 Vincent Lambert, University of Nice, France: “Palimpsested walls for an entanglement heritage: street art & graffiti against financial & migration policies in contemporary Europe”

16H40-16H50 Coffee Break

16H50-17H20 General Discussion

Session 4B: Artistic Intervention, Re-appropriation and Self-Organization in the Urban Space
Room: POR B 2

Moderator: Julia Blanco Ramirez, Department of Art History, University of Barcelona

  • 15H10 Demet Lüküslü, Yeditepe University and Cemre Zekiroğlu Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey: “Street musicians struggling to open for themselves a space in the city”
  • 15H40 Iberia Pérez González, Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA: “TRAMA: Artists’ initiatives and Territorial Autogestion in post-crisis Argentina.”
  • 16H10 Gabriele Boero, University of Genoa, Italy: “The ‘Assedio’ project in Turin, Italy: a real siege to give an example of Street Artists’ resistance in public space re-appropriation.”

16H40-16H50 Coffee Break

16H50-17H20 General Discussion