An entry from Deb Robertson's blog for 21 August 2015 entitled, "Sociology of the City {Part 2(4) Sociology 355}".The entry was downloaded on 2 November 2016.
A blog post written by Thérèse Angelo, Director of the Air Force Museum of New Zealand. This is the third guest post in the NZ Museums blog series marking the first anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake. This blog post was downloaded on 4 February 2015.
An entry from Deb Robertson's blog for 8 August 2015 entitled, "Sociology of the City {part 1(4) Sociology 355}".The entry was downloaded on 2 November 2016.
A story submitted by Rosalee Jenkin to the QuakeStories website.
The last few years have seen the emergence of a range of Digital Humanities projects concerned with archiving material related to traumatic events and disasters. The 9/11 Digital Archive, The Hurricane Memory Bank and the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive are a few such projects committed to collecting, curating and making available disaster-related images, stories and media for the purposes of commemoration, teaching and research. In this paper Paul Millar 1. examines the value of such projects in preserving post-disaster memories, 2. explores some differences between passive and active digital memory projects, and 3. asks whether even the most determinedly open and inclusive digital memory project can preserve its values when issues of race, class, gender, politics and economics impact upon its activities.
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.
Local independent radio stations in Christchurch, New Zealand, had their operations severely disrupted by major earthquakes in September 2010 and February 2011. This article examines the experiences of three radio stations that were shut out of their central city premises by the cordon drawn around the city after the 22 February quake. One of the stations continued broadcasting automatically, while the others were unable to fully get back on air for several weeks afterwards. All of the stations had to manage access to workspaces, the emotional needs of staff and volunteers, the technical ability to broadcast, and the need to adapt content appropriately when back on air. For the locally based radio managers decisions had to be made about the future of the stations in a time of significant emotional, physical, and geological upheaval. The article explores how these radio stations were disrupted by the earthquake, and how they returned to air through new combinations and interconnections of people, workspace, technology, content and transmission.