Universität zu Köln

Broich, Jacqueline Maria ORCID: 0009-0000-7517-947X (2024). Terrains vagues. Urban Interspaces in French Cinema.

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Abstract

Das vorliegende Dokument ist eine von der Autorin angefertigte Übersetzung ihrer Dissertation "Terrains vagues. Urbane Zwischenräume im französischen Kino". Der Link zur Dissertaion ist im Feld "Weitere URLs" hinterlegt. The project focuses on the phenomenon of abandoned, neglected, and often forgotten urban spaces, described in French as "terrains vagues", a term which could be translated as fallow land, vacant land or waste land. But both the phenomenon and the concept of the "terrain vague" are hard to define; in fact, both remain somewhat unexplored, despite their topicality. In the arts the "terrain vague" is currently in vogue. Not so well known are the historical antecedents of the concept, growing from the romantic aesthetics of ruins, and its particular semantic potential, developed in two centuries of literary use, which forms the basis of its enduring fascination. Based on a systematic consideration of its specific topology and of cognate concepts such as heterotopia, non-place or dead zone, the aesthetics, poetics, and conceptual evolution of the "terrain vague" in modern French cinema will be explored. Special emphasis will be placed on the mythology of Paris, as created by surrealist poets and photographers, on conceptual urban explorations which haunt contemporary writing on the city, and on the representation of urban waste lands in French cinema. From an anthropological point of view, the study will consider the extent to which the "terrain vague" forms a sort of reservation for experiences which have lost their place in the course of increasing suburbanization and homogenization of urban space, and how such spaces can provide utopian settings or be otherwise creatively appropriated. The study of the representation of "terrains vagues" in (literature and) film provides three perspectives from which the handling of urban waste land, aesthetically and poetically, can be elucidated: (1) the "terrain vague" as a prismatic space or chronotopos, in which lines of urban development concentrate and refract and through which one can read the current condition of urban space in relation to its historicity and sociality; (2) the "terrain vague" as a place of experience that, representing the extraordinary that manifests at the margins and in the gaps between urban order, provokes liminal experiences of strangeness and transgression; (3) the "terrain vague" as a space of potentiality that, due to its lack of purpose and indeterminate meaning, can be reclaimed for imaginative projection, creative action or utopian visions.

Item Type:	Other
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Broich, Jacqueline Maria jacqueline.broich@gmx.net orcid.org/0009-0000-7517-947X 169468200
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-736816
Date:	2024
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Fächergruppe 5: Moderne Sprachen und Kulturen > Romanisches Seminar
Subjects:	Romance languages French The arts Civic and landscape art Architecture Public performances
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language urban interstitial spaces, urban interspaces, abandoned spaces, neglected spaces, forgotten spaces English fallow land, vacant land, waste land English heterotopia, non-places, dead zones, xenotopia, terrain(s) vague(s) English media representations of urban wastelands: photography, comics, video games, documentary films, cinema English French cinema English playground, space of possibility, place of exclusion and the abject, place of first/secret love, place of crime, place of potential for creativity and participation English
Related URLs:	Publication
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/73681