Aesthetics of Gentrification: Art, Architecture, and Displacement
International Conference
UO Portland, April 5-6, 2019
Organized by SLOW LAB, this interdisciplinary conference at UO Portland’s historic White Stag Block brings together scholars from across the humanities, social sciences, and art and design fields to explore the aesthetic dimensions of gentrification in the present era of accelerated urbanism.
Gentrification is reshaping cities worldwide, resulting in seductive spaces and exclusive communities that aspire to innovation, creativity, sustainability, and technological sophistication. Gentrification is also contributing to growing social-spatial division and urban inequality and precarity. In a time of escalating housing crisis and unaffordable cities, scholars speak of eco-gentrification, techno-gentrification, super-gentrification, and planetary-gentrification to describe the different forms and scales of involuntary displacement occurring in vulnerable communities in response to current patterns of development and the hype-driven discourses of the creative city, smart city, and sustainable city.
In this context, how do contemporary practices in art, architecture, and related fields help to produce or resist gentrification? What does gentrification look and feel like in specific sites and communities, and how is that appearance or feeling implicated in promoting stylized renewal to a privileged public? To what extent do the aesthetics of displacement travel globally between cities and cultures? And in what ways do those aesthetics express contested conditions of migration and mobility? Addressing such questions, this conference seeks to examine the relationship between aesthetics and gentrification in contemporary cities from multiple, comparative, and transnational perspectives.
HOPES[25] will take flight April 10-13, and we will come together from various backgrounds and disciplines to discuss this year’s theme, Destructive Idealism.
Our way of life is the product of decades of ideals—growth, individualism, the American Dream. While these ideals have inspired hard work and innovation, too often they lead to mass scale disruption of our environment. Like a double-edged sword, our ideals separate us from the reality of current issues and we respond with devastating complacency.
Destructive Idealism is both an attack on complacency and a pledge to resilience. In its 25th year, HOPES revisits the visions of past generations. We call for resilient thinking that transcends scales, anticipates challenges, and unrelentingly pursues a dynamic and equitable future.
To keep up-to-date as the conference approaches, follow us on Instagram: @hopesconference.
Join us for the 2019 College of Design Commencement Ceremony and the presentation of the Ellis F. Lawrence Medal.
College of Design Commencement details are available on the College of Design website.
There will be a reception prior to the College of Design ceremony from 1:00–3:00 p.m. in the Lawrence Hall Courtyard. We encourage students to bring their families and friends to engage and mingle with faculty and fellow students.