Reeh – University of Copenhagen

Cultural Cities. Creativity and Social Inclusion in Osaka and Copenhagen
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Henrik REEH

Abstract (February 9):

In Search of the Spirit of Urban Place: Sønder Boulevard [Southern Boulevard, Copenhagen]

May the concept of ‘genius loci' - the spirit of place - be applied to modern urban environments that are subject to profound changes of their visual appearance, urban population, social functions, economic basis, and semiotic charges? Together with students of humanistic urban studies, Henrik Reeh selected Copenhagen's Sønder Boulevard as a field for experimental urban-cultural desciption and interpretation. Accompanying Reeh's photographs, a series of texts outlines Sønder Boulevard as of 2004, just before SLA/Stig L. Andersson's design for the present urban place was adopted and turned into reality by the Municipality of Copenhagen.

Abstract (February 10):

Darkness and Light in the City by Night: Experiences and Experiments

Cultural cities stage new relationships between darkness and light. Still, the usual concept of reality is based on the city as it appears by daylight, and urban representations take those transparent spaces as their point of departure. Although decisive urban imaginaries rely on experiences made during the evening or night, representations of the noctural city rarely recognize darkness as a cultural space in its own right. Delving into the urban night, experiments made by Brassaï (photographer) in Paris of the 1930s may inspire an urban-cultural approach to practices of every-night spaces in central Copenhagen.

Short CV:

Henrik Reeh, PhD, is Associate Professor of Humanistic Urban Studies and Modern Culture at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Ornaments of the Metropolis: Siegfried Kracauer and Modern Urban Culture (The MIT Press, 2004) and other studies in urban culture, contemporary art and cultural theory. Recent publication: "Arrivals and Departures: Travelling to the Airports of Berlin" in Memory Culture and the Contemporary City: Building Sites, U. Staiger et al. (ed.) (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).