About (u)gs

This web-site is maintained by Jana Perkovic, and features my writings on urbanism in the most general sense (urban planning, urban design, published articles, travel notes, research notes, informal observations), and some entirely personal musings. The views expressed here are my own, and not those of my employers. Please ask if you need clarification.

(urban) guerrilla semiotics has come about in an attempt to segregate my professional, and increasingly specialist thoughts on urbanism from Guerrilla Semiotics. GS has existed on the web since 2002, as a place to air all my serious and frivolous thoughts on contemporary performance, graphic novellism, travel and travel writing, urban design, creative mapping, and any other meeting point between language, images, and thought. However, as GS found a large audience mainly in Australia’s arts community, it has become a more narrowly delineated project.

Meanwhile, I am becoming a professional urbanist, and I have been craving a bit of elbow room to think about space, cities, policy and our urban future. I think dialogically: writing for a reader helps me think. The purpose of this blog is threefold: to allow me to develop my thoughts; to leave a record of me having been here, having thought these thoughts; and to allow me to connect and converse with like-minded people across the globe.

About Jana Perkovic

Born in 1984 in Rijeka, Croatia. Resident of Melbourne, Australia since 2005. Australian citizen since 2011. A citizen of the world at heart.

I work at the Melbourne School of Design as a researcher and tutor in the fields of urban geography, design and planning. I also collaborate with the Centre for Art and Urbanism in Berlin, with Assemble Papers, and am a member of Architects for Peace and INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Activism). My main areas of specialisation are transport planning, GIS and cartography, urban policy and creative communities, temporary uses of space, and what is often (very facilely) called ‘place-making’: the right size, scale and grain of things. I have a personal interest in Japanese and Mediterranean urban structures, and in terrains vagues.

I am currently studying in the Master of Urban Design course at Melbourne School of Design.

In my other life, I write about contemporary performance and arts, publishing in different Australian media outlets. I am a member of the Green Room Awards, judging for the Hybrid & Alternative Performance panel. In 2013, I will be a member of Malthouse Theatre’s Artistic Counsel. Somewhere at the intersection of performance and urbanism lies my interest in story-telling through space and interaction: the dramaturgy of experience, not too different from experience design.

You can contact me on jana dot perkovic [at] gmail [dot] com.

Leave a Reply