A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. The art includes the words "Brighton Creative Quarter!".
A photograph of street art on a building in New Brighton.
A photograph of street art on a building in New Brighton. The artwork includes the words, "We still love this place".
A photograph of street art on a building in New Brighton.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. The photograph was taken through a wire fence.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. There is a wire cordon fence in front of the wall.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. The artwork depicts a stylised face, with the words, "Such a lovely place bro!". There is a wire cordon fence in front of the wall.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. The artwork depicts a woman's face. There is a wire cordon fence in front of the wall.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. The artwork depicts a stylised face, with the words, "Such a lovely place bro!". There is a wire cordon fence in front of the wall.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. There is a wire cordon fence in front of the wall.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. The artwork depicts a woman's face. There is a wire cordon fence in front of the wall.
LVS acts as site brokers for a creative Christchurch, finding short and medium-term uses for the many vacant sites and buildings of Christchurch.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. The artwork depicts a woman's face, and the silhouette of a suffragette wearing a jester's cap. There is a wire cordon fence in front of the wall.
A photograph of street art on the Work and Income New Zealand building in New Brighton. The artwork depicts a musician.
A photograph of street art on Fitzgerald Avenue, near the On Fitz cafe. On the left is a painting of a waxeye bird. Next to it is written "South bound". On the right is a painting of a blue-skinned figure. Next to the man is written "Li'l Elliot.
A video of a conversation between John Hamilton, National Controller of the Civil Defence Emergency Response, and Dr Sonia Giovinazzi, Research Fellow at the Department of Civil and Natural Resource Engineering at the University of Canterbury. Hamilton and Giovinazzi discuss the Civil Defence's response to the 22 February 2011 earthquake and the lessons that they learned.The video includes footage from the Ministry of Civil Defence (licenced under Creative Commons Attribute 3.0 New Zealand).
There is a now a rich literature on the connections between digital media, networked computing, and the shaping of urban material cultures. Much less has addressed the post-disaster context, like we face in Christchurch, where it is more a case of re-build rather than re-new. In what follows I suggest that Lev Manovich’s well-known distinction between narrative and database as distinct but related cultural forms is a useful framework for thinking about the Christchurch rebuild, and perhaps urbanism more generally.
A Transitional Imaginary: Space, Network and Memory in Christchurch is the outcome and the record of a particular event: the coming together of eight artists and writers in Ōtautahi Christchurch in November 2015, with the ambitious aim to write a book collaboratively over five days. The collaborative process followed the generative ‘book sprint’ method founded by our facilitator for the event, Adam Hyde, who has long been immersed in digital practices in Aotearoa. A book sprint prioritises the collective voice of the participants and reflects the ideas and understandings that are produced at the time in which the book was written, in a plurality of perspectives. Over one hundred books have been completed using the sprint methodology, covering subjects from software documentation to reflections on collaboration and fiction. We chose to approach writing about Ōtautahi Christchurch through this collaborative process in order to reflect the complexity of the post-quake city and the multiple paths to understanding it. The city has itself been a space of intensive collaboration in the post-disaster period. A Transitional Imaginary is a raw and immediate record, as much felt expression as argued thesis. In many ways the process of writing had the character of endurance performance art. The process worked by honouring the different backgrounds of the participants, allowing that dialogue and intensity could be generative of different forms of text, creating a knowledge that eschews a position of authority, working instead to activate whatever anecdotes, opinions, resources and experiences are brought into discussion. This method enables a dynamic of voices that merge here, separate there and interrupt elsewhere again. As in the contested process of rebuilding and reimagining Christchurch itself, the dissonance and counterpoint of writing reflects the form of conversation itself. This book incorporates conflict, agreement and the activation of new ideas through cross-fertilisation to produce a new reading of the city and its transition. The transitional has been given a specific meaning in Christchurch. It is a product of local theorising that encompasses the need for new modes of action in a city that has been substantially demolished (Bennett & Parker, 2012). Transitional projects, such as those created by Gap Filler, take advantage of the physical and social spaces created by the earthquake through activating these as propositions for new ways of being in the city. The transitional is in motion, looking towards the future. A Transitional Imaginary explores the transitional as a way of thinking and how we understand the city through art practices, including the digital and in writing.
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