Objectives

en/counter/points objectives are to analyse, compare, contrast and unpick multiple forms of public spaces, of cultures, and notions of integration within and of Europe, including:

1. varied and changing roles of specific places and spaces, buildings, cultural institutions and socio-political narratives simultaneously within cultural and individual memory, publiccityscapes and identities, in relation to contested notions of belonging and place attachment

2. relationships and power dynamics between public cultural institutions, such as museums, galleries and heritage sites or institutions, and their potential publics, particularly in connection to representations and activities relating to migration, belonging and othering

3. narratives, performances and activism relating to often emotional and embodied responses to challenging social issues of cultural elitism, ‘authenticity’, cultural ‘nativism’, or ‘multi-culturalism’, such as protest movements and demonstrations in public spaces, local grass-roots support networks, and pan-European cultural movements

4. individual and ‘community’ notions of belonging, attachment and identity in relation to issues of visible or invisible ‘otherness’, including religious practices, migration or colonial histories, border or political change, and questions of individual and group status, as experienced within public space and place

5. the influence of urban planning and public space design in shaping or directing opportunities for, and the nature of human encounters between different life-worlds and cultures as well as between past, present and future articulations of belonging