Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-sjtt6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T07:54:07.072Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 20 - Film and Thinking Space

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2023

Marion Werner
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Buffalo
Jamie Peck
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Rebecca Lave
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
Brett Christophers
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
Get access

Summary

Perched on what appears to be an uncomfortable grey cube, Doreen Massey is shown on grainy CCTV footage being interviewed by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist (H.U.O.) and architect Rem Koolhaas, as part of the Serpentine Gallery’s first 24-hour interview marathon in 2006 (Obrist & Koolhaas 2006). It is an art celebrity event and among those being interviewed are Damien Hirst, Doris Lessing, Brian Eno and Zaha Hadid. H.U.O. notes that Doreen’s text, “London Inside-Out”, was key to their preparations of “this whole marathon. It’s a text that we always came back to.” As the interview progresses, H.U.O. returns to her influence: “You are, as a professor of geography, in terms of influence, venturing into all kinds of other fields. Many of my artist friends are unusually inspired by your books.” And then he asks, “I was wondering what are your inspirations. What are your … I mean heroes is kind of a big word.” She ventures that she does not have heroes. Rather, there are lives that she finds fascinating:

Tina Modotti, a photographer who mixed art, politics: a weird life of continual commitment and travelling everywhere. And died in a taxi on the way home from a party at a rather early age [age 45]. As lives go, that seemed to me to be pretty impressive. She was in Spain for the civil war. She was in Mexico for the revolution. And so on and so forth. But I don’t have heroes.

Asked more explicitly about her disciplinary influences, she turns instead to her geographical preoccupations, foremost that of reconceptualizing space. When Rem Koolhaas asks her “Is this space you are talking about the same space that architects work in?”, she replies, “I’ve wondered about that for donkey’s years because I have worked with architects a lot.” She concedes that her preoccupation is more abstract. Perhaps

the way it relates to architectural practice is thinking of space as the intersection of stories, as socially produced, as always moving. And one of the essential contradictions with architecture is that you are essentially enclosing it, pinning it down, carving off bits of it. And that’s just a tension.

Type
Chapter
Information
Doreen Massey
Critical Dialogues
, pp. 277 - 288
Publisher: Agenda Publishing
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×