Agora Cultural Centre

Via delle Trombe, 6 (Piazza dei Servi, Centro Storico)
55100 Lucca Tuscany, Italy
 

 

 

Lucca is one of the most beautiful cities of Tuscany, a treasure of beauty, culture and history, preserving exquisitely the signs of past kingdoms and dominions, the beauty of nature and the works of many renown architects and artists. Dante spent a part of his exile in Lucca. Located between Florence and Pisa, Lucca is the home town of Giacomo Puccini and Luigi Boccherini. Is a town where each of the streets has a story to tell. The city walls are the best preserved Renaissance walls in the world, offering the opportunity of a relaxing and enchanting ‘passeggiata’ (promenade) or a bike ride with amazing views over the surroundings. Piazza Napoleone -one of the main squares – was built in the time of Napoleonic conquest when the city was led by Napoleon’s sister Elisa Bonaparte. It is rivaled in beauty by Piazza del Amfiteatro, built to maintain the shape of the Roman Amphitheater built during the I and II centuries that could accommodate over 10,000 spectators. A city of 100 churches, Lucca is labyrinth of small streets that hide secrets to be discovered.

Lucca is very easy to reach both by bus as well as train from both Pisa and Florence, making it perfect for anyone getting around solely on public transportation. The train station is right outside the southern walls, with an entrance below the balcony of San Colombano that brings you right behind Lucca’s cathedral and into the heart of the small walled town.

When arranging your travel by plane, book a flight to Florence (Petrola) or Pisa (Galileo Galilei) airports. The easiest way to reach Lucca is from Pisa airport that requires a 25 minutes public bus or train travel right from the airport. From Florence the travel by bus or train takes about 50 minutes. Make sure that your flight arrives earlier during the day as after 22.00 buses or trains to Lucca are no longer available. Taxis are available in Pisa airport and will cost around 50 Euro until your destination in Lucca. If your flight arrives later in the night, book a room for the night in either Florence or Pisa, and start your travel to Lucca in the morning since buses and trains are available from 5.30.

 
 
See an interactive map:

HERE

Conference participants are fully responsible for arranging the accommodation and travel to Lucca.

Conference Program

The Conference Agenda is available in the right sidebar of this page.

The extensive conference program with abstracts and available draft papers is accessible below by clicking on the panel number tabs and individual presentations.

Thinking Identities Today and Practices of Politicization: Class, Groups, Markets and Legal Integration of Identities

• 
  Mark Neufeld, Global Politics,Trent University, Canada
  Identity in Political Discourse: The Return of Class First, as class is a relational category, what are the counter-parts to the “middle class” (working class, bourgeoisie, other) and what is the relationship between them? Secondly, how do class categories in contemporary political discourse fit with those which, for so long, were seen to supplant class identities (individuals/ families, race, etc.)? And finally, how is the category of class being used to explain/ critique/ legitimate the new populism manifest in (but not limited to) events such as the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency?

  Continue reading 

• 
  Robin Kurilla, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
  Environments and Raw Materials of Identity Construction Processes? A Communication-Theoretical Account of Politicized Uses of Collective Identities The paper traces the politicized uses of collective identities from a communication-theoretical point of view. Identity construction is depicted as composed of emergent social processes with communicative, pre-communicative, and non-communicative episodes that distill their components from different environments, such as emotional, technical, institutional, discursive and spatial environments.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Katya Assaf, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

  Lisa Herzog, Technical University of Munich, Germany
  What’s in a Name? The Identity of Market Participants in the Legal Rhetoric of the US and Germany This paper focuses on the cultural perception of work in an individual's life, and how it is captured in different legal systems. It contrasts two models, based on the works of Adam Smith and GWF Hegel: "human capital" and "vocation." The paper inquires how these models are reflected in legal regulations and judicial rhetoric in the US and Germany.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Yussef Al Tamimi, European University Institute, Florence, Italy
  Identity and Belonging at the European Court of Human Rights Identity provides a strong instrument for the Court to place greater responsibilities on and reduce the margin of appreciation of states, and on the other hand, the ambiguities relating to the term identity prove a fascinating forum for witnessing the indeterminacy of human rights law and how the Court attempts to thread a way through these tricky debates.

  Continue reading 

Identity and the ‘Visual Turn’ in Social Representations: Visual Identitarian Discourses in Various Mediums from Brand Logos to Caricature, Sequential Art and Photography

• 
  Jeremy Pilcher, Birkbeck School of Law, University of London, UK
  Art, Law and Unstable Corporate Identities A stark opposition of art with the law is too simplistic. Art is able to open an engagement with the violence of the law as exemplified in the ways it structures and forecloses the ways that identities may be created and perpetuated.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Todd Burke Porterfield, New York University, USA
  Caricature’s Refusal of Identity: Difference without Otherness I’ll analyze Gillray’s scenes of meetings of difference without otherness, of love and friendship, of kissing, hugging, slapping, swallowing, and screwing, not only in the context of their making, but also in dialogue with the writings of Elsa Cayat, a columnist and psychiatrist, the only woman killed in the Charlie Hebdo massacre of early 2015.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Marco Favaro, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Berlin, Germany
  The Mask and the Symbol I will refer to J.P. Sartre and his concept of Subject (being-for-itself) and Object (being-in-itself), in connection of course with being-for-others. Thanks to the connection of Nietzsche’s and Sartre’s philosophy I will show that the new identity taken on by the superhero creates a new meaning of the world.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Robert Burton, Teesside University, UK
  The Powerful Whispers Project: A Box of Family Photographs as Archival Site of Post-Memory and the ‘Trace’ The Powerful Whispers Project considers the remembered object and the remembered image of post-memory in relation to discourses on the concept of the surreal object and the phantasmagoria of memory, informed by Derrida’s ‘undeciderability’ of the archive.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Alaa Badr, European University Institute, Florence, Italy
  Camera Illuminate. Arab Photography Post Arab Revolutions Photography can be considered as a visual discourse on identity where the choice of photographic subject is telling of the ways in which Arab photographers deal with their social, political and physical environments.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Dustie Spencer, University of Edinburgh, UK
  Expression of a Culture of Resistance through Images: Kashmiri Freedom Activists in the UK This paper focuses less on the specific grievances of freedom activists which can contribute to rational choice actions to protest and more on how images influence the discourse surrounding resistance which act as more subjective calls to action.

  Continue reading 

Identities and the Cities: Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in Urban Image Construction

• 
  Peter Carelli, National Historical Museums, Sweden
  Brave New Urban World: The Emergence of Urban Identity in Medieval Europe, c. 1000-1300 The study takes its theoretical starting point in a model of regional identity, developed by the Finnish geographer Anssi Paasi. The model uses the theory of institutionalization as an analytical tool to describe the growth, development and reproduction of regions. The emergence of a new urban identity in the High Middle Ages was, according to Paasis model, shaped by the successive establishment of defined boundaries, the use of common symbols and the makeup of corporate institutions.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Hande Tunç, Faculty of Architecture and Design, Özyeğin University, Turkey
  Disinformation of Historical Stratification Through Reconstruction Because of this tangled relationship between object, memory, and history; the history of architecture witness reconstruction activities after major traumas. Reconstruction, as a societal battle tool against pain through the attachment of memories to physical objects, obstructs overcoming the traumas that can only be beaten through confrontation and lead to the manipulation of the historical layers defined by the historian.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Angela Alcantara, Independent Researcher, Berlin, Germany
  Building Identities: Architectural Approaches to Integration This paper looks into relevant urban interventions that attempt to maintain or develop the identity of the city, in light of the emergence of unfamiliar identities that arrive together with migration. Emergency situations result to the need for both short and long term solutions. The integration of immigrants in the city deals with a shift in patterns, both for the newcomers and in context of the already defined urban fabric.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Gianni Talamini, City University of Hong Kong

  Ting Liu, City University of Hong Kong
  Banks and Urban Image in Neoliberalism: Study of the Intentional Symbolism and Perceived Impact of Banks’ Headquarters Buildings in Hong Kong Drawing inspiration from David Harvey’s conceptualization of the neoliberal city and Antonio Gramsci’s definition of hegemony, this research aims to provide a better understanding of how the employment of banks' headquarters buildings as corporate symbols affects the image of the neoliberal city, with reference to Hong Kong as a case study.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Karen Matsuda, Architecture and Urbanism College, University of São Paulo, Brazil
  A Certain Brazilian Identity in the Itamaraty Palace In this way, we intend to reflect on the material culture and its communicative use in the elaboration of a concept of identity desired by the Brazilian diplomatic corps of this period. The translation into materiality of an image of modern Brazil inserted in an international context is presented by the promenade architecturale in the palace that, in a certain way, becomes a museum with political intentions, due to the institutional character of the building.

  Continue reading 

Politics of Identity: Social and Intellectual History Readings of Identity Making Practices from Protest, Rituals, Gendered Practices, Indigenous Identities, Heritage and Cultural Policy

• 
  Raphaella Dewantari Dwianto, Department of Sociology, Universitas Indonesia
  Say It with Flowers: Negotiating Urban Collective Memory in National Monument Park This paper highlights the process of re-constructing collective memory of Jakarta people on the National Monument Park through a silent counter-movement using flower-boards as a medium of negotiation. This paper questions: who takes what part and how in the making of the 'new' collective memory; who are in(ex)cluded from collective memory by whom and how.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Maryam Rahmani, University of Erfurt, Germany
  Emergence of an “Unauthorized Generation”: Challenges of Political Culture, Identity and Belonging in Contemporary Iran Using the concepts of power-resistance in everyday life of Iranian youth, as well as the space encroachment by Asef Bayat, I will try to trace the challenges of hegemonic political culture and the society’s reaction(negotiation) for recognition through some of the highlighted rituals over the last decade.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Maddalena Chiellini, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
  Conceptualising Gender and Mobile Subjectivities: The Case of Women’s Driving Practices in Contemporary Delhi The paper argues that driving practices and the construction of women’s subjectivities are intertwined in mutually transformative processes that can provide insights on women’s intimate negotiations with power and its declinations around modernity/tradition, contesting models of womanhood, class inequality, and ethno-religious affiliations.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Anni-Siiri Länsman, University of Oulu, Finland

  Terttu Kortelainen, University of Oulu, Finland
  The Role of Social Media in the Spread of a New Ethnic Concept. Inclusion and Exclusion Processes in Transition Social media, with its interplay with traditional media and its ability to construct and maintain networks and issue publics with political agendas, and to provide attention data cannot be overlooked when attempting to understand how scientific knowledge is circulated, framed and reframed in society.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Giulia Casartelli, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
  European Identity in the Making: EU Cultural Heritage Policies between Demos and Ethnos The paper points out how the founding aspiration of the European political project to foster a European demos (Balibar 2009) – namely a civic community of rights (Eriksen and Fossum 2004), beyond dynamics of cultural differentiation – is hardly reflected in the current EU cultural policies, based on an essentialised understanding of the concept of culture and easily challenged by national resistances and rhetorics.

  Continue reading 

Performing Identities: The Relationship between Identity and Performativity in Film, Theater and Literature

• 
  Evelyn Preuss, Yale University, USA
  Shadows on the Wall: Power, Politics and Propaganda in Emir Kusturica’s Underground (1995) and Black Cat, White Cat (1998) As Pankaj Mishra sees colonialist identity politics boomeranging in the European wars of the last century and reads their resurgence along a trajectory leading to a fatal conclusion, Kusturica’s analysis of the shadows of Balkanization that the West casts on the wall of Otherness should invite reflection.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Levent Yılmazok, Beykoz University, Istanbul, Turkey
  The Troublesome Interaction of Two Languages: On the Way to School My paper first provides a historical background for the construction of Turkish national identity, its representation in cinema, and then analyzes the abovementioned film which incites the spectator to question this problematic issue.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Daria Demekhina, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
  Theatre as a Laboratory for Altering Identity: Cases of Theater of Cruelty and Sobornyi Theatre The object of this research is theater as an inframedium between life and art within the context of Artaud’s and Ivanov’s lifeworks, and how theatre can function as a laboratory for alteration of everyday life.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Lidis Garbovan, Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, UK
  Politicizing Refugees’ Identities: Performance, Theatre and the Body I argue that the politicization of refugees’ bodies continues elsewhere, as long as the political takes over the human, moral and legal dimensions of migratory movements, denying the human need to live in safe and free spaces.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Vinita Teresa, University of Hyderabad, India
  The “Other” City—Varanasi and the Reintegration of Western Identity This paper intends to study the postcolonial literary and cultural representations of Varanasi and analyse the ways in which the sanitized modern Western self, predicated on the disciplining of bodily functions, gets destabilized and remolded.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Denise Henschel, University of Warwick, UK
  Performative Writing as a Subversive Act: Hybrid Identities in Olga Grajsnowa’s Texts Olga Grjasnowa’s writings have primarily been read as so-called migration literature and have as such been fixed as a marginalised, ‘other’ genre in the literary discourse. I introduce an alternative reading: I understand both texts as subversive forms of writing that perform the rejection of metaphysical identity concepts and the rejection of fixed identities in their own writing.

  Continue reading 

Art, History and Identity Making: Visual Narratives of Identity

• 
  Adriana Nausica Pais, University of Bucharest / Salzburg University
  Reconstructing Identity in ”Layers” (2010) Starting from a Contemporary dance piece, ”Layers”, a solo work by the Romanian choreographer Cristina Lilienfeld, we will interrogate the relation individual-society, discussing the cyclic process of building identity which consists, in the context of the presented performance, of the following phases: construction, deconstruction, re-construction.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Xin Ai, Peking University / University of Amsterdam
  Invisible Face and/in Black Square: Strategy of Self-expression and Identity of Malevich’s Suprematism This article aims to clarify the evolutionary process of "replacing iconic face with black square" by Malevich, as well as to explore the philosophical, religious and scientific synthetically motivations behind this phenomenon, namely how the fourth dimension and theosophy, doctrines that were extremely popular in avant-garde circle then, influenced on Malevich's strategy of self-expression and identity.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Christina Lambrou, Kingston University, UK
  Painting and Place-Making in A. Diamantis ‘The Planters’ Approaching painting as cultural medium and as process, the paper adopts WJT Mitchell’s lens whereby interest is directed not just to what a painting is or means but to what it does . The paper addresses the theme of a ‘return to the soil’, in relation to the local context of growing anti-colonialism and within the wider European framework of rising nationalisms in the 1930s.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Maria Höger, Foundation Gugging Artists / Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria
  ‘Art Brut’ and ‘Outsider Art’ – Consisting ‘Heterotopia’ of the Art World? Categories as ‘Art Brut’ or ‘Outsider art’ are common in the contemporary art world as well as in art historiography. They aim at the work of artists whose personal backgrounds can be located in such ‘heterotopian’ places. These theoretical terms seem to mirror directly social hierarchic structures and refer to the construction of social identities and identifications.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Benedetta Bronzini, Università degli Studi di Firenze/ Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität Bonn
  The Interview between Identity and Performance: A Case Study – Heiner Müller – The “Artist of the Interview” The Müller-Kluge video-interviews, the only situation in which Müller answered to private questions in public, offer us a very interesting case of study concerning the identity of the artist between private subject and persona.

  Continue reading 

Urban Identities and Spaces as Sites of Cultural Identitarian Production: From Art Spaces to City Museums and World Exhibitions

• 
  Christine Kaiser, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

  Gianni Talamini, City University of Hong Kong
  Art Spaces and Cultural Production in Post-Reform China: Evidence from the Case of Shenzhen This research aims at understanding how the quantitative growth of art spaces is related to the current transition in the economic structure of the city, by analyzing the dynamic pattern of their diffusion in relation to the expansion of the tertiary sector of the local economy. Moreover, this study will employ in depth interviews with selected stakeholders to provide a better understanding of their curatorial and artistic approaches.

  Continue reading 

• 
  Kristina Kraemer, Museums of the City of Lüdenscheid, Germany
  Representing Home? City Museums and Concepts of Identity Based upon the assumption that identity is not ready-made, but rather the outcome of a dialogical, participative process, I regard city museums as burning glasses of urban identity, as materialized belonging within social, physical and historical structures. How does the interaction between (non-) local visitors and the city museum as a retainer of heterogenic regional memory produce collective, and therefore also individual identity?

  Continue reading 

• 
  Brunella Angeli, University of California, Davis, USA
  Identity In The Age Of Uncertainty This paper argues that there is a connection between the phenomenon of World Expositions and the construction of multiple identities. Seville ‘92, the first universal exposition after Osaka ‘70, was promoted as an exceptional opportunity for Spain to realize its longstanding ambition of a ‘bridge between America and Europe.’

  Continue reading 

• 
  Martyna Łukasiewicz, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan / National Museum in Poznan, Poland
  Narratology of the Exhibition Space in the Context of Displaying Identity The aim of the paper is to provide specific example and reflect on the 19th Century exhibition of Danish national art, established by Niels Laurits Hoyen, which played a crucial role in the process of redefinition the national identity and at the same time creation the canon of Danish national art.

  Continue reading