Supervisors info:
Ελένη Τζουμάκα, Διδάκτωρ, Τμήμα Επικοινωνία και Μέσα Μαζικής Ενημέρωσης, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
This thesis, consisting of a theoretical part and an art-work in the form of a film, investigates the relation between urban experience and memory in the municipal community of Agioi Anargyroi, six kilometers from the center of Athens. In the film, I attempt to “read” the city as a cultural text using my personal “flânerie” through different landmarks of this area, on the one hand, and the narrations of older inhabitants about their lived experiences, on the other. At the same time, the questions that are being investigated refer to the influence of the transformation of the urban landscape to the inhabitants in modernity, the local culture and the configuration of their collective memory, their identity, as well as the identity of the city.
In the theoretical part of the thesis, the theoretical and methodological tools from the interdisciplinary field of the Cultural and Film Studies have been analyzed providing the basis for the film. Fundamental for our cultural analysis are the concepts of “lived culture of ordinary people” and their “urban experience”, which transmutes to memory consisting part of their collective memory. The concept of “collective memory”, as it has been introduced by Maurice Halbwachs, leads us to the method of oral history.We have also focused on the lived experience of urban “flânerie”, as a way of perceiving and understanding the city, and on the connection of urban space with the collective memory of human beings, as this has been first described by Walter Benjamin and later enriched by the theoreticians of culture, Roland Barthes, Guy Debord, Michel De Certeau and Guliana Bruno.
Synoptically, Barthes refers to the subjectivity of “reading” the city according to personal senses, preexisting knowlegdes, memories, history and fantasy. Debord suggests the term of “phychogeography” to emphasize the influence of space on the sentimental world of people. De Certeau lays emphasis on the process of walking as a way of reappropriation of public space. Bruno connects the emotions with e-motion, architecture of the city, flânerie and cinema. The theory and method of “observational cinema” and documentary in general, as described by Eva Stefani, provided the appropriate tools for the filming.
In the second part of the thesis, we present the film, describe the circumstances and procedure of filming and finally present the conclusions of the research.
Keywords:
Psychogeography, urban text, flânerie, flâneur, collective memory, urban experience, oral history, observational cinema, social-cultural documentary, reappropriation of public space, emotion, local culture
