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Road rumour : ground plans for the sky blue city
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Whybrow, Nicolas (2018) Road rumour : ground plans for the sky blue city. Performance Research, 23 (4-5). pp. 283-290. doi:10.1080/13528165.2018.1506450
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2018.1506450
Abstract
This item, which will combine artist’s pages and an essay form, will appear as a commissioned piece in the June 2018 centenary edition of Performance Research journal. That edition has been organised to cover all 99 themes featuring since the journal’s inauguration in 1996 and “Road Rumour” specifically addresses ‘On the Road’ as a theme. It is effectively a fictional piece which presents an anonymous document – a text + image montage – entitled ‘Bare City: We’ll Live and Die in These Towns’. This envisages the utopian fantasy of Coventry’s ring-road being converted into a traffic-free pedestrian eco-zone, incorporating pop-up facilities, open markets, artworks etc. – above all somewhere that would not only lure suburban citizens into the centre but encourage them to interact and relish being there, and therefore linger (in the best tradition of the architect and urban theorist Jan Gehl). The dual form, which presents a thought-provoking item on the one hand and an interpretative framing of that provocation on the other, permits the author in effect to have two voices (not unlike the Brechtian actor): that of the anonymous proposal (a masked performance on the page) and its interpretation. Thus the author creates the privilege for himself of being the critical interpreter of his own fiction. The device functions to enable a ‘prepostorous proposal’ or rumour to begin to be accorded credibility in the hope of provoking urban change.
The montage takes into account the structural morphology of Coventry’s ring-road, focusing on its phenomenological presence as a brutal(ist) structure. In particular, it will adopt as its paradigmatic point of departure, first, the fact that it is in itself inaccessible for the pedestrian, yet occupies a prime position within the built environment of the city centre. And, second, that it represents a form of barrier in the mental image that the pedestrian has of the city, rudely blocking the way between the outlying residential city surrounding it and the civic centre, which, in an era of internet shopping, increasingly struggles to sustain its purpose as a functioning, populated public location. In the same way as Walter Benjamin saw the 19th century metropolitan arcade, with its promises of the fulfilment of urban dwellers’ desires, as being effectively in radical decline – the epitome of the transiency and inherent ‘will to decay’ of a ‘phantasmagorical capitalism’ – so the Coventry ring-road represents a mistaken 20th century investment in a dehumanising ‘cars and concrete’ policy of urban living. In the 21st century the city centre threatens, in a fulfilment of Situationist predictions, to be rendered ‘naked’.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications N Fine Arts > NA Architecture |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Beltways -- Coventry (England), City planning -- Coventry (England), Performance art -- Coventry (England) | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Performance Research | ||||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||
| ISSN: | 1352-8165 | ||||||
| Official Date: | 29 October 2018 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 23 | ||||||
| Number: | 4-5 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 283-290 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/13528165.2018.1506450 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Publisher Statement: | “This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Performance Research on 29/10/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13528165.2018.1506450 | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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