Cultural Transformation: Friday seminar on Gentrification, Art and Social Housing Areas

The seminar will include three short (20 min.) presentations and a joint discussion followed by a glass of wine and pre-weekend socializing.  

• Bjarke Skærlund Risager: Territorial Stigmatization, Ghetto Politics, and Gentrification
• Tijen Tunali: Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape
• Birgit Eriksson: Public Art Projects in ‘Exposed’ Social Housing Areas

Bjarke Skærlund Risager (MOSPUS, RUC) presents his research on the interplay between the ghetto discourse and privatizations in the so-called ‘hard ghettos’ in Denmark. The presentation is based on his Carlsberg Foundation project “Resisting 'Ghettos': State-led Gentrification and Community Organizing in Danish Social Housing”.

Tijen Tunali (AIAS and IKK, AU) presents her new book Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape (Routledge 2021) which brings together various disciplinary perspectives and diverse theories on art’s dialectical and evolving relationship with urban regeneration processes. It engages in the accumulated discussions on art’s role in gentrification, yet changes the focus to the growing phenomenon of artistic protests and resistance in the gentrified neighborhoods.

Birgit Eriksson (IKK, AU) presents a research project on publicly supported art projects in four Danish social housing areas (carried out with Anne Scott Sørensen, SDU, Anne Mette W Nielsen, AAU, and Mia Falch Yates, ITU). Based on a wide range of empirical art projects she asks what kind of socio-aesthetic relations art projects can establish in the political context of the ghetto-legislation, and how they may avoid taking part in the stigmatization of the neighborhoods, and offer alternative relations and models of change.