Fleeting Cities

By Alexander C. T. Geppert

Subjects: Exhibitions, Europe, civilization, British Empire Exhibition (1924-1925 : Wembley, London, England), British Empire Exhibition (1924 : Wembley, England), Exposition coloniale internationale de Paris (1931), Civilization, Berliner Gewerbe-Ausstellung (1896), Cities and towns, Exposition universelle (1900 : Paris, France), Exposition universelle internationale de 1900 (Paris, France), History, Modern Civilization, Franco-British Exhibition (1908 : London, England)

Description: Imperial expositions held in fin-de-siècle London, Paris and Berlin were knots in a world-wide web. Conceptualizing exhibitions as meta-media, Fleeting Cities undertakes a transdisciplinary investigation into how modernity was created and displayed, consumed and disputed within the European metropolis. Focusing on five such expositions – the Berliner Gewerbeausstellung (1896), the fifth Parisian Exposition Universelle (1900), the Franco-British Exhibition in London (1908), the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley (1924/25), and the Exposition Coloniale Internationale in Paris (1931) – this award-winning book examines their specific aims and aspirations, evolving forms and execution, and the public debates they engendered. Who shaped these mega-events, how were exposition venues inscribed into the urban fabric, what legacies did they bequeath? Taken as dense textures stretched over time, these expositions undergo both a close hermeneutic reading and broad spatial analysis. Fleeting Cities weaves extensive empirical research with underlying theoretical concerns, investigating their individual meanings in a new form of transnational network analysis.