Filmed as part of the Spring 2021 Digital Research Seminars presented by scholars affiliated with the O’Donnell Institute’s Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities in Naples.
23 April 2021
Dr. Gabriel N. Gee
Franklin University, Switzerland
Cities on the edge: a tour from Liverpool to Naples and back again
In September 2008, artists Alan Dunn and David Jacques installed a series of billboards in Kirkdale, Liverpool, featuring photographs of the bay of Naples taken in the 1960s by Peter Forster. On the panoramic views, the hilly Neapolitan horizon roams under a blue sky and over the port facilities. On closer inspection, one came to notice cinematographic instructions inscribed on the images, as well as extracts of conversations about football, music and architecture. The project amusingly entitled ‘La dolce vita’ was developed in collaboration with the local community, as well as visiting artists from Naples.
It was part of a series of exchanges entitled Cities on the edge, which aimed to explore connections between six port cities in Europe: Liverpool, Naples, Bremen, Gdansk, Marseille, and Istanbul. Cities on the edge was originally designed by the Liverpool Culture Company, which had been charged to build the program of the Merseyside city’s celebrations as European Capital of Culture that year. It aimed to foster dialogues between these port cities based on perceived affinities in their histories and identities, woven into a cultural economy strategy.
The initial impetus appeared to have rapidly faltered, while documentation of the different interventions and events appear scarce. An eponymous publication directed by the British photographer John Davies is amongst the most tangible record, featuring besides Davies’ urban photographs taken by Gabriele Basilico, Philippe Conti, Ali Taptik, Sandy Voltz and Wojtek Wilczyk. Perhaps the elusive nature of the project only served to better underline the present bordery nature of the port cities under consideration?
More broadly, the stress on the peripheral that was at the heart of the initiative opens a line of investigation in the history of port cities and their representation. At the crossroad of the sea and the hinterland, port cities might be considered as significantly positioned between the endogenous and the exogeneous, ideally located to perceive and negotiate the fluctuations of the world. However, Cities on the edge clearly thought that some port cities were better qualified than others to wear that mantle, which prompts a question of categorization.
This presentation embarks on a tour of European ports seen through contemporary aesthetics in order to unpack the histories, potential and limits of edges in port cities.
BIO
Gabriel N. Gee is Associate Professor in Art History and Visual Communication at Franklin University, Switzerland. He holds a PhD in contemporary art history from the université Paris X Nanterre. His doctoral research focused on aesthetics and politics in the North of England from the 1980s onwards. His study on “Art in the North of England. 1979-2008” was published by Ashgate (now Routledge) in 2017. His current research interests include 20th and 21st century British and Irish art, the changing representations and imaginaries of port cities in the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century, as well as interconnected global and trans-industrial histories. Rooted in contemporary aesthetics, his present research pursues a reflection on historical maritime and global entanglements, with particular case studies in Europe and Southeast Asia, paying attention to the potential of artistic research to open new spaces for cultural dialogue and innovation. Recent publications include a co-edited volume (with Alison Vogelaar) on the “Changing representations of Nature and cities: the 1960s -1970s and theirl egacies” (Routledge, 2018); and a co-edited volume (with Caroline Wiedmer) entitled “Maritime Poetics: from coast to hinterland” combining theoretical essays with artists texts and voices (Transcript, April 2021). He co-founded TETI group in 2011 and co-chairs the group’s activities to this day.