Urban Subversion and Mobile Cinema: Leisure, Architecture and the “Kino-Cine-Bomber”

Abstract

This paper introduces our bicycle-based cinema device-the "kino-cine-bomber"as a vehicle to re-imagine disused buildings and obsolete urban infrastructure for reactivated public leisure spaces. It is also a vehicle to conceptualize theoretical relations between leisure, architecture, cinematic geographies and urban spaces. Through these lenses, we focus on a series of Situationist-inspired methods using the kino-cine-bomber to identify buildings that could be removed-as architecture by subtraction-in Coventry (UK). There, the River Sherbourne flows hidden beneath the city, culverted and capped, a relic of postwar urban planning no longer fit for purpose. We explore river "daylighting" plans by postgraduate architecture students using the kino-cine-bomber, first to trace the hidden river beneath the city streets, then to project architectural designs where buildings may be repurposed and the river revealed. We discuss the possibilities of these designs and, befitting a paper celebrating Situationism, we close with a manifesto for urban leisure spaces.

Leisure, Activism, and the Animation of the Urban Environment

“…One intervention, which offered an urban walking tour, was developed in association with local residents in Leeds, using their individual lived histories and memories of space to peel back hidden stories that collectively challenged the anonymity and commercial homogenization of the city through the heterogenous voices of the walkers. In another intervention, a collaboration with postgraduate architectural students, a freight-carrying bicycle was adapted to serve as a mobile cinema and used to disrupt the city through cinematic projections (Lashua & Baker, 2018). A further set of interventions involved a programme of film screenings that were disrupted through the incorporation of a live choir, a free banquet of 'rescued food' (food that was still fit for consumption but discarded by some of the larger food retailers), a demonstration for an unknown cause, or requiring the film's audience to navigate a crowd attending a music gig in a room adjacent to the one used for the screening.…”

Leisure, activism, and the animation of the urban environment

“…One intervention, which offered an urban walking tour, was developed in association with local residents in Leeds, using their individual lived histories and memories of space to peel back hidden stories that collectively challenged the anonymity and commercial homogenisation of the city through the heterogenous voices of the walkers. In another intervention, a collaboration with postgraduate architectural students, a freight-carrying bicycle was adapted to serve as a mobile cinema and used to disrupt the city through cinematic projections (Lashua & Baker, 2018). A further set of interventions involved a programme of film screenings that were disrupted through the incorporation of a live choir, a free banquet of 'rescued food' (food that was still fit for consumption but discarded by some of the larger food retailers), a demonstration for an unknown cause, or requiring the film's audience to navigate a crowd attending a music gig in a room adjacent to the one used for the screening.…”

Fuzing Play and Politics: On Individualized Collective Action in Leisure

“…5 4 There are other kinds, also touching on leisure and contemporary politics. Some apply situationist-inspired methods, say, when arranging midnight cricket matches in London's financial district to challenge the use of urban space (see for instance Lashua & Baker, 2019).…”