Urban Transcripts

“In the case of I am a tool of Gentrification (2019) my real-life situation really set the project in motion. It started with a wish to understand gentrification processes in Amsterdam. I ended up really diving into it and adopting a journalistic/documentary method. However, it was not plain documentary research, I collaborated with performers and included performances with masks and costumes that reflect the topic of the movie. The result, an experimental documentary series, was my reply to the precarious life of the artist: a reaction to my eleven months long desperate house search and feeling of being used as a tool of gentrification. I interviewed more than 35 people, from municipality officials and urbanists to individual artists and artist run spaces. I wanted to create a platform for discussion, and I found it very important that everyone who worked with me had a similar attitude: nuanced, really searching for insight and looking at the issue in a constructive, solution-oriented way.[...]"

“I Am a Tool of Gentrification: An Experimental Documentary Series”, by Lyubov Matyunina
Image: Screen capture from “I am a tool of gentrification: Amsterdam-West” video
Featured on Urban Transcripts' new issue - RIGHTING THE CITY
Watch it in full at: https://journal.urbantranscripts.org/article/i-am-a-tool-of-gentrification-an-experimental-documentary-series-lyubov-matyunina/
The entire issue is available at:⁠ https://journal.urbantranscripts.org/contents/?issue=volume-5-no-1-jan-jun-2022
Thank you for reading the Urban Transcripts Journal. If you want to support our work, please consider becoming a Urban Transcripts Patron at:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/theurbantranscriptsjournal

I Am a Tool of Gentrification: An Experimental Documentary Series Lyubov Matyunina - The Urban Transcripts Journal Lyubov’s work is inspired, often indirectly, by her personal life or everyday life events. As she tells us “in the case of I am a tool of Gentrification (2019) my real-life situation really set the project in motion. It started with a wish to understand gentrification processes in Amsterdam. I e...

"[...] In reaction to the massive protests, subway stations were closed, train schedules were adjusted and train frequency reduced. As public transport service was temporarily reduced bikes started to emerge, people forgot the underground world and started walking the streets, appropriating bus lanes and car lanes. Due to the COVID19 pandemic that started shortly after, the city slowed down even more and urban mobility came to a halt in many ways. Paradoxically, once mandatory quarantine ceased, the dynamics of transport were re-established. The uncomfortable daily ride that was a topic of demonstrations has been resumed unchanged, in the same inhumane fashion already perpetuated for decades. The only appreciable post-COVID19 and post-demonstrations transformation is the obligation to wear face masks, as a new addition in people’s outfits. [...]"

“Crowded but With Masks: On the Resilience of an Unfair Mobility, Reflections From Santiago, Chile”, by Fernando Campos-Medina, Iván Ojeda-Pereira and Josefa Mattei
Image: Resonance. Source: Authors
Featured on Urban Transcripts' new issue - RIGHTING THE CITY
Read it in full at: https://journal.urbantranscripts.org/article/crowded-but-with-masks-on-the-resilience-of-an-unfair-mobility-reflections-from-santiago-chile-fernando-campos-medina-ivan-ojeda-pereira-and-josefa-mattei/
The entire issue is available at:⁠ https://journal.urbantranscripts.org/contents/?issue=volume-5-no-1-jan-jun-2022
Thank you for reading the Urban Transcripts Journal. If you want to support our work, please consider becoming a Urban Transcripts Patron at:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/theurbantranscriptsjournal

Crowded but With Masks: On the Resilience of an Unfair Mobility, Reflections From Santiago, Chile Fernando Campos-Medina, Iván Ojeda-Pereira and Josefa Mattei - The Urban Transcripts Journal The present photo essay seeks to visualize the resilience of a transport system and how it exposes deep social differences in Chile. On the 18th October 2019 a social outbreak started, first in Santiago of Chile, to then expand the rest of the country. This seemed a moment of transformation, a turni...

"Living in a black place mattered to me, the granddaughter of black southern migrants who had left homes in Louisiana to make new homes out west. Monroe, Lake Charles, Gary, Marin City. All of these cities were intimate coordinates on a family map. Soft-breathing places where children and elders and married people made their beds, ate supper, played records, told stories, said their prayers, and left kinfolk behind when it was time to pick up and leave. This was migration. A great train moving toward bigger and brighter cities. A river of black folks flooding into previously all-white towns and streets, wading after jobs, new adventure, greener pastures, a reprieve from the noose despite never learning how to swim.[...]"

From “Black at Home in the Bay Area”, by Wendy M. Thompson
Image: Redfin listing | house sold for $838,000 | 3 Beds, 2 Baths | 1,100 Sq. Ft., Newark. Source: Redfin
Featured on Urban Transcripts' new issue - RIGHTING THE CITY
Read it in full at: https://journal.urbantranscripts.org/article/black-at-home-in-the-bay-area-wendy-m-thompson/
The entire issue is available at:⁠ https://journal.urbantranscripts.org/contents/?issue=volume-5-no-1-jan-jun-2022
Thank you for reading the Urban Transcripts Journal. If you want to support our work, please consider becoming a Urban Transcripts Patron at:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/theurbantranscriptsjournal

Black at Home in the Bay Area Wendy M. Thompson - The Urban Transcripts Journal Living in a black place mattered to me, the granddaughter of black southern migrants who had left homes in Louisiana to make new homes out west. Monroe, Lake Charles, Gary, Marin City. All of these cities were intimate coordinates on a family map. Soft-breathing places where children and elders and....