Adams-Hutcheson, G. (2016). Buildings as dangerous spaces: mobilities of emotion and affect in disaster relocation. Presented at the 7th New Zealand/Aotearoa Mobilities Symposium – Transport and People-Centred Mobilities, Conference held at Massey University, Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand.
Abstract
Disasters are something Mimi Sheller has been recently working with, e.g. her keynote at the last Mobilities Symposium was entitled mobility in a disconnected world, moving people, information and aid after disasters.
Disasters imply multitudes of varying mobilities and assemblages at different scales. Earthquakes also disrupt moorings, such as: pipes, roads, bridges, telephone and power cables, sewerage, gas lines and so on as well as buildings. Earthquakes roll and buckle the earth creating lasting and momentary upheavals, in turn causing inanimate objects, such as buildings to: jump, shudder, roll, collapse, lean, sway, bend, break and crack.
This paper is linked to my PhD project on people who relocated out of Christchurch to Hamilton following the devastating 2010/2011 earthquakes and aftershocks
In Christchurch, not only the ground moved through seismic motion, but people moved through internal/external migration (relocation) and they told moving stories imbued with emotion.
I consider today the recentring of the corporeal body as an affective vehicle through which place and movement are sensed, particularly paying attention to embodied vibrations and how these are experienced at different times and in different spaces
