Representation (March 10)

1. Subjectivity and space
1.1. From reason to perception: body experience
1.2. Spatial dynamics: subjectivity-body-environment

2. Subjectivity and cultural studies
2.1. Structuralist and post-structuralist approach
2.2. Three concepts of subjectivity (Stuart Hall)
-Enlightenment concept:a subject of reason
-Sociological concept: an institutional subject
-Post-structuralist concept: a contested terrain of discourses.
2.3. Discourse is a system and process of representation
2.4. Discourse is embedded in power relations (definition)
2.5. Example I: landscape painting and urban merchant class
2.6. Example II: Ocean Terminal and local identity
2.7. Implications for cultural studies: body experience and cultural representations

References: Hall, Stuart. 1992. "Three Concepts of Cultural Identity." Modernity and its Futures. Edited by Stuart Hall, David Held and Tony McGrew. Cambridge: Polity, 274-314.

3. Spatial representation and urban elements (Walter Benjamin)
3.1. Arcades
3.2. Panoramas (John Vanderlyn's The Palace and Gardens of Versailles) and photography
3.3. Display of commodities
3.3. Flaneur: a new kind of relationship between subject and object
3.4. Royal gardening-->Urban planning and restructuring
(Versailles 1, 2, 3)

4. Architecture as spatial representation (Robert Twombly)
4.1. Style as a symbolic elements
4.2. Social power
4.3. Example: The canoply of the West Kowloon Cultural District
4.3.1. Norman Robert Foster's (Foster & Partners) techno-modernism and Hong Kong's modernity
-1979/86 - New Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Headquarters, Hong Kong
-1992/97 - New Chek Lap Kok Airport, Hong Kong
-1992/98 - Kowloon Canton Railway Station and Ferry Terminal, Hong Kong
-1993 -Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong
-2002-WKCD
4.3.2. The transformation of late colonial culture
4.3.3. The image and imagination of globalization or internationalization
4.3.4. The (post-)colonial bureaucrats


References: Hong Kong Places