Re-framing the creative city: Fragile friendships and affective art spaces in Darwin, Australia
研究澳大利亚达尔文市边缘化少数族裔与原住民之间短暂友谊的形成，发现地下车库的草根创意艺术通过共同热情将他们的情感世界联结起来，为城市社会差异研究提供新视角。
Australia has one of the most urbanised and diverse populations in the world, but there is little research that explores fleeting friendships between marginalised/racialised ethnic minority and indigenous populations. In contrast to metropolitan cities in white settler societies that have been the focus of much research, this paper focuses on the small, tropical city of Darwin in Northern Australia. This is a city that is at the centre of public debates on indigenous wellbeing, migrant integration and asylum seeker policies, with social welfare programmes that provide little opportunities for hopeful encounters among indigenous peoples and ethnic minority newcomers in surface spaces. I argue, however, that ‘grass root’ forms of creativity in an ‘underground’ car park bring their affective worlds together through a shared passion for art. The paper draws on gentle methodologies including participatory visual methods to privilege non-Western ways of inhabiting place. Through a ‘quiet politics’ and affective engagement with spacetimes both proximate and distant, the paper shows that it is possible to invoke different futures and crystallise experimental publics in the diverse city. The paper responds to a call to push the boundaries of urban research on social difference through geographies of friendship that are yet to engage with multisensory bodies, emotion, affect and art.