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PRODID:-//Columba Systems Ltd//NONSGML CPNG/SpringViewer/ICal Output/3.3-
 M3//EN
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20180914T082148Z
DTSTART:20181003T130000Z
DTEND:20181003T140000Z
SUMMARY:The urban imaginary in ruins: video games and the future-present 
 feedback loop
UID:{http://www.columbasystems.com/customers/uom/gpp/eventid/}c12e-jm1qi2
 b6-4uqyie
DESCRIPTION:Urban ruins have come to dominate the conception of the moder
 n city to such an extent that in 2014 Cairns and Jacobs wondered whether
  such ruins are “too full of multiple\, hyper-meanings to be worthy of a
 nalysis or use any longer”. Despite this pronouncement\, urban ruins hav
 e rarely been studied in relation to urban imaginaries\, or video games.
  This paper therefore considers both real and imagined cities in terms o
 f an urban ruin imaginary that is particularly common in games\, which i
 ncreasingly turn to hyper-real aesthetics of ruination in their depictio
 n of the modern city.\n\nSeveral recent games have been set in recogniza
 bly contemporary cities\; this paper will focus on the hypothetical futu
 re ruins of Boston\, Pittsburgh and Washington from The Last of Us (2013
 ) and Fallout 3 and 4 (2008/2015). Drawing on PhD fieldwork undertaken i
 n these cities and in urban ruins\, and an auto-ethnography of gameplay\
 , the argument presented here delineates an emerging “urban ruin imagina
 ry”\, through Frederic Jameson’s "Archaeologies of the Future" (2005)\; 
 the work of Walter Benjamin on the decaying Paris arcades\, and Marshall
  Berman’s work on urbicide and modern ruins. In this context\, the ruins
  in these games reveal an emerging imaginary that views “the city” (pres
 ent and future) as an increasingly fragmented space in terms of material
  obsolescence\, social change\, and contested space\, detected through t
 he real/imagined feedback loop between the actual cities depicted in eac
 h game\; the real-world ruins of modern cities like Detroit\; and the ac
 tivity of playing the end of the city in the ruins of the future.\n
STATUS:TENTATIVE
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
LOCATION:2.219\, University Place\, Manchester
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