ARTISTIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE CITY SPACE Stimulation of the sensual sphere by using, collecting and reflecting urban situations
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IMPRESSUM © Sven Anderson, Anamarija Batista, Zoltán Bencze, Dušica Dražić, Rudolf Giffinger, Charles Hoch, Csaba Árpád Horváth, Balázs Kovács, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky, Barbara Rief Vernay, Angelika Schnell, Anja Steglich, Johannes Suitner, Iván Tosics, 2014 Published based on the international project called »Art in Public Space. Interdisciplinary Cooperations«, supported by the Austrian-Hungarian Action Fund (2013-2014, ref.n.: 86öu12), project partners: Iván Tosics, University of Pécs and Rudolf Giffinger, Vienna University of Technology. Concept, Editing & Organization: Anamarija Batista, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky Editing reader: Anamarija Batista, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky, Krisztina Rónaszéki, Jadre Skipina Design: Hanna Adél Tillmann Composer editing: Kornélia Nagy Contact: art.in.public.space@gmail.com Citation: Batista, Anamarija and Kovács, Szilvia and Lesky, Carina eds. Artistic Transformation of the City Space. Stimulation of the Sensual Sphere by Using, Collecting and Reflecting Urban Situations. 1.2 vers. Budapest-Vienna: Austrian-Hungarian Action Fund. Web. 8 December 2014 ISBN 978-963-12-0124-6
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FOREWORD Charles Hoch Forward
Forty years ago in my first internship job at the regional planning agency for San Diego County in southern California, I prepared a noise plan. California had adopted state policy requiring that local governments include a ÂťnoiseÂŤ element in their local plans. I plotted the noise contours for the vast freeway system and airport runways while mapping the few remaining industrial plants that roared and banged loud enough to disturb their neighbors. Noise was not only a nuisance, but if too loud, a threat to hearing health. Now in my office in a rehabilitated bra factory in Chicago I listen to the nearby traffic on one of the busiest freeways in America. I use my sonic imagination to recast the streaming car cacophony as the sound of Pacific surf. Visitors may find it difficult to share the sound my memory conjures up from the past, but they quickly adapt to the increase in ambient noise. Cities generate a lot of sounds we learn to ignore. Most spatial planning attends to the work cities do; how they function or fail to provide a living or a way of life. But I learned on a recent trip to Vienna that we can play the city for sound. We can with the help of an artful composer enter a soundscape as we journey through a place and find new meanings for a routine touri. My wife Susan and I walked with a small group through a working class suburb and a cemetery without speaking, but instead listening for the subtle varieties of sonic texture (and that pesky airplane takeoff) or the overlay of an ironic narrative selectively foregrounding the taken for granted. My American pragmatic sensibility has roots in the transcendentalism of Thoreau, the critical selfreliance of Emerson, the public poetry of Whitman and the democratic intelligence of Dewey. I embrace art as something we make and experience together. I may be a cultural stranger to the details of the public art the authors in this collection describe, but not to the underlying continuity. How do people living in democratic urban places make and experience art together in public? How might we make plans to enliven so reclaim ugly places with beautiful land and soundscapes? How do we expand and
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improve the diversity of artistic expression beyond the confines of elite taste mediated through corporate and state controls? Planning for most people still evokes the imposition of control by government – a blueprint for the future imposed from above. But democratic planning for complex places anticipates and prepares for uncertainty. Giving voice to the interplay of different viewpoints and experiences within negotiated and shared public spaces urban art helps hold together the expressive differences that complex interaction makes possible. But I beware combining public efforts to remedy social inequality, physical decay and spatial conditions that foster human suffering with the insurgent aspirations of artistic expression that celebrates irony and eloquence from social networks to the streets. The agonistic and adversarial politics of democratic governance in capitalist societies may turn beautiful places and episodes into props for positions or »just so« stories. Architects, landscape architects and spatial planners play a mediating role as they compete for commissions and prepare plans for places. The politics and interests of sponsors seldom match the increasing diversity of the current and future public clientele that inhabits and use these places. Exploring the varieties and complexity of public art in urban settings reminds us of the challenge and offers insight about what we might do to democratically nurture and experience this diversity as a resource for recognizing and making beautiful public places. ENDNOTE »Viennese Simmering: Sound Stories and Cinematic Experience«, 21-23 May 2014. Read more here: »Anamarija Batista, Rudolf Giffinger, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky, Iván Tosics: Marginalia on the Lettre »ARTISTIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE CITY SPACE«. i
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INTRODUCTION Anamarija Batista, Rudolf Giffinger, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky, Iván Tosics Marginalia on the Lettre »ARTISTIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE CITY SPACE«
The international project »Art in Public Space. Interdisciplinary Cooperations« was supported by the Austrian-Hungarian Action Fundi between July 2013 and June 2014, with the partnership of Iván Tosics, guest professor at the University of Pécs (HUN) and one of the founders of Metropolitan Research Institute (Budapest), as well as Rudolf Giffinger, head of the Centre of Regional Science, in the Department of Spatial Development, Infrastructure and Environmental Planning at the Vienna University of Technology (AUT); based on the initiation of three young researchers, recipients of a DOC-team Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, namely Anamarija Batista, Szilvia Kovács and Carina Lesky. The project consisted of two events: a seminar called »Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation« and a symposium: »Viennese Simmering: Sound Stories and Cinematic Experience«, as well as a related online publication, the presence »lettre«. The first event took place from 14 to 16 November 2013 at different indoor and outdoor venues in Budapest (HUN). The second happening was from 21 to 23 May 2014 in Vienna (AUT). This online »lettre« was edited based on the articles written by some participants/lecturers of these two programs. »Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation«: The interdisciplinary seminar aimed at providing a platform for young researchers and artists to present their work and to discuss their thoughts and ideas with colleagues, senior experts and professors. In the formats of lectures, site-specific workshops and debates, different theoretical, methodological approaches, as well as practical examples were discussed and related to urban, particularly public spaces and their versatile interpretations. Additionally we were also moving through the urban space of Budapest, as the seminar took place at different venues and sites of the city (e.g. in the downtown, in Csepel - 21st District)ii. The main aim of the conference was to interconnect different approaches and methodologies dealing with public spaces and artistic contributions. The great variety of perspectives opened space for thinking on the connectivity, but also for expanding and crossing disciplinary boarders. The moment of interdisciplinary overlappings as well as the moment of shifting focuses confirmed once again the complexity and multi-layered character of public space. The conference participants/lecturers were as follows (in alphabetical order): Sven Anderson (sound artist, IRL/USA), Nóra Nagyné Bácskay (chief architect of Csepel, Budapest, HUN), Anette Baldauf (sociologist, AUT), Anamarija Batista (economist, art historian, AUT), Zoltán Bencze (architect, HUN), Hannes Böck (photographer, AUT), Andrea Mária Császár (cultural scientsit, HUN), Dušica Dražić (visual artist, SRB), Tobias Gerber (sound artist & theorist, SUI), Isabel Glogar (architect, AUT), Csaba Árpád Horváth (sculpturer, HUN), Krisztina Keresnyei (economist, HUN), Szilvia Kovács (economist, sociologist, HUN), Carina Lesky (cultural scientist, AUT), Fanni Nánay (festival curator, HUN), Angelika Schnell (architectural theorist, AUT), Anja Steglich (landscape planner, GER), Johannes Suitner (spatial planner, AUT), Iván Tosics (sociologist, HUN), Barbara Rief Vernay (geographer, AUT), Tihomir Viderman (architect & urban researcher, AUT), Ivana Volić (cultural scientist, SRB), Balázs
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Wächter (economist, HUN), Mária Zám (historian, sociologist, dance therapist, HUN). The lectures were open for public audience (altogether cca. 20 visitors participated during the programs). »Viennese Simmering: Sound Stories and Cinematic Experience«: In an explorative city walk, we visited one of Vienna’s »forgotten« quarters - the 11th district, Simmering. In order to get familiar with its distinct acoustic and synesthetic environment, we approached its neighborhoods through different formats of exploration on location: experimental mapping techniques, a sound walk, as well as a subsequent round of discussioniii. The focus on the everyday sounds of the neighborhoods of Simmering and their interaction allowed tracing the place with its hidden features and relationships. Within the tour we also visited Vienna’s Central Cemetery (Wiener Zentralfriedhof). Having collected site-specific live impressions, after the walk, we moved on to a Viennese Kaffeehaus, where in a short lecture we introduced the work and approaches of artists Janet Cardiff and George Miller. Besides, filmic impressions of Simmering added historical perspectives to the site. We closed the afternoon with a discussion about the heard and seen adventure, the question of sound and the possible role of artistic practices in urban planning. The participants/lecturers of the symposium were (in alphabetical order): Anamarija Batista, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky and Iván Tosics, with the invited commentators: Balázs Kovács (sound artist, HUN), Zsolt Sőrés (Ahad) (musician, sound artist, HUN). As the program was also linked to the conference »Evolution of Planning Thought / AESOP-ERSA Lecture Series 2014« hosted by the Vienna University of Technology in 19-24 May 2014, some of its lecturers also joined to our event: Cliff Hague (Em. Prof. of Planning & Spatial Development, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, GBR), Charles Hoch (Prof. of Urban Planning & Policy, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA), Klaus Kunzmann (Em. Prof. of European Spatial Planning, University of Dortmund, GER). For further contextualization of the 11th district of Vienna, Simmering two representatives of the GB*3/11, »Gebietsbetreuung, Stadterneuerung« (Regional/Local Coordination, Urban Renewal) accompanied us providing insights on the area. Finally we were pleased to welcome there some colleagues who already joined the project during the Budapest-seminar. »ARTISTIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE CITY SPACE. Stimulation of the sensual sphere by using, collecting and reflecting urban situations«: The concept of our online »lettre« was to invite the participants of the Budapest-seminar and the Vienna-symposium to write short essays about their own approaches in relation to the project issues. Based on the voluntary cooperation of the colleagues, the result became a collage of scientific essays, subjective interpretations, lectures in audio-video format, and photographs – all of them illustrating the broad range of possibilities and approaches towards artistic research and urban realities.
ENDNOTES See more here: http://www.omaa.hu/indexde.htm (in German); http://www.omaa.hu/index.htm (in Hungarian) i
See here the program-booklet: http://issuu.com/artinpublicspace/docs/art-in-public-space_program; the proceedings: http://issuu.com/artinpublicspace/docs/art-in-public-space_content; the Faceii
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book-page: https://www.facebook.com/events/247246108761696/?fref=ts; some disseminations (in Hungarian): http://www.fuga.org.hu/art-in-public-space and http://muszi.org/?event=art-in-public-space-muveszet-a-kozteren, finally a media output (in Hungarian): http://mediatar.gtk.hu/fuga/ mp3/rj_20130412_16_17_aula.mp3 See here the program-booklet: http://issuu.com/artinpublicspace/docs/art_in_public_space_vienna; and the Facebook-page: https://www.facebook.com/events/247246108761696/?fref=ts
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Anamarija Batista, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky Art in Dialogue with Spatial Planning Practice
The format of the following volume was inspired by »belles lettres«, a category of writing which has been used to name literary works that do not fit into major classifications, like fiction, poetry or drama. It could contain essays, récits, published collections of speeches and so on. The genre of »lettre« is a subjective one. Characterized by the common tone, the weaving of fascinating ideas and the (un)secretly-wished publicity. In relation to the project »Art in Public Space. Interdisciplinary Cooperations« , the »lettre« appears to provide a suitable frame for the documentation and dissemination of collected thoughts. By the content and format of our publication we both, the authors and the editors intend to produce an in-betweenmode, a collage-like pattern of the different approaches and disciplines. Within the framework of our financial possibilities (read: almost zero budget), it was a challenge to edit the »ARTISTIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE CITY SPACE. Stimulation of the sensual sphere by using, collecting and reflecting urban situations« which presents itself as an »optical game«, a kaleidoscope of thinking about artistic research in public space and its connections to urban/spatial planning processes. Art can enhance the sensual quality of the city space by altering the aesthetic experience. Through bodily movements or audio-visual appearances, the artistic formats have the power to articulate, reflect and transform spaces into meaningful places. The artistic experiments include moments of irritation and of difference into the everyday activities in public space, breaking routines and thereby re-evaluating the experience of the city. Opening up urban planning strategies for artistic formats could enrich the planning practice and bring it closer to the ground level of inhabitant’s affairs, as we state. Although arts can open the discussion and punctually trigger the process, it anyway needs further interdisciplinary approaches and political decisions to secure long-term effects. Just mentioning a view, the similarities and differences in urbanization processes, the development and publicity of public spaces, the role of institutions as well as the different actors (like artists, architects, planners, city administration, social workers, dwellers etc.), transitions considering the historical dimension and city branding strategies are also part of the debates. Furthermore, the social aspects and the role of the humans have to be emphasized as essential factors. Being connected to the sensual experience and the role of subjectivity, human perception of space is increasingly centered as an object of analysis and reflection. Not just considering their material and functional matter but also their atmospheres and power relations. We think that the broad range of topics discussed in this collection mirror the complexity of these issues and contribute to shedding new lights onto ongoing debates. Capitals like Belfast, Belgrade, Berlin, Budapest, Dublin, Nairobi, Tirana, Vienna, and other cities such as New York, Lyon and Pécs, serve as spatial frames for the case-studies, not only covering diverse (Central) European perspectives, but also including links to Northern-American discourses. The »Collection of Studies« consists of three units: The section »City Space: Contribution of Cultural and Artistic Practice to City Reconfiguration«, with the tuning essays are discussing the challenge of »the permanent shift between spatial and artistic practices« (Steglich 13), the stage of changing attitudes towards arts in planning circumstances (Tosics 18) as well as the question how arts (can) contribute and improve city space. Anja Steglich emphasizes the need for »destruction and restriction of borders and regulations« in order to enter a(n) (inter)disciplinary perspective (13). As she argues, »it is impossible to hardly separate spatial practices from artistic practices, it is a shift in space, a shift in perception… « (13). According to Iván Tosics the positive effect of the cooperation and interlinked approach could be the critical potential of the artistic practice: »Art and artists might play a very important role in the post-democratic period when the state does not act any more as redistributor in order of spatial justice but became promoter of the free market.« (18)
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The second part of »lettre« is termed »Spatial and Artistic Practice: Artistic Methodology as Part of Planning Processes«. The essay entitled »In Pace with Metropolis: Artistic Practice and the Forming of Public Space« opens this section with a step back to the beginning of the 20th century. A closer look at the »avant-garde« movements and the development of the »modern metropolis« during these years, opens insights on the origins of contemporary debates about ongoing urbanization processes and artistic involvement in these processes (Batista, Kovács and Lesky 22-27). The argument of this article puts a special focus on sound and film artistic formats. »What Ever Happened to What Ever Happened to Urbanism?« is available in audio-video format which is a merge of the same titled lecture and its presentation slides (held in November 2013, in Budapest as one of the opening lectures during the seminar »Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation«). Beside the hereby published abstract, the detailed audio-video content also shows how Angelika Schnell calls Rem Koolhaas’ essay to introduce his new, different »perspective for the discipline of urbanism that was neither based on formalistic design principles nor on the voluntary impotence of participation strategies, the two theoretical poles that were influential during the 70ies and 80ies of the 20th century« (28). Schnell says, it could be understand rather as a bridge between »post-modernism« and contemporary strategies (like »situative/performative urbanism«), where the architect is positioned to be a master initiator of unpredictable and new (28). In addition, four artists introduce their own points of view on the role of art and artistic research. Csaba Árpád Horváth, sculpturer, centers »New Genre Public Art« and the democratization processes of art in public space. Horváth states: »The most important feature of the relationship with the audience that characterizes New Genre Public Art is its dialogical nature, that is, the involvement of the audience is not a metaphoric but a tangible and real process through the entire phase of creation. This means that despite the fact that the »neo avant-garde« artists chose quite an intensive form of involving the audience, it had a monologue like effect. … Contrary to this, New Genre Public Art is different; it applies a dialogical strategy in which case the relation to the audience is the work of art itself. « (31) He strengthens his argumentation line with his own works captured by the attached image-sequence. Dušica Dražić, visual artist, displays structures and collects traces, which point out the possibility of negotiation, redefinition and transformation of our social and material configurations. Within her artistic works she introduces and discusses the following aspects: working and researching amongst others in the slum of Nairobi and in the old districts of Belgrade, rethinking and rebuilding »new town« concepts and an anthropogenic forest, a »constructed landscape« in former Yugoslavia (35-37). In his essay »Questions to Sound Art on Public Spaces« Balázs Kovács labelles voice, noise, sound, tone, timbre, music, and silence as human resonances »which constantly shaping and following our days, while sometimes forming the culture back by creative minds as well« (10). The philosopher and sound artist involves also technology, especially »W3« into this formula and explains his temporary, network-controlled sound/lighting installations »Network Drive« and »Zsolnay Light-Organ« which generated sounds/lights who respond to websites’ interactions. He writes: »During this work, I introduced the term nobody as controller of something … by pushbuttons on … websites. It was strange feeling anyhow, that audience and events on a local situation was subordinated by the result of hundreds of nobodies’ work, while all the process was streamed live.« (40) In the next essay of this section, the project »Toward a Minor Architecture:Manual for Acoustic Planning (MAP)« is presented by its initiator, sound artist Sven Anderson about his collaborative work with the Dublin City Council (44). An edited audio-video file (another of the opening lectures during the Budapest-seminar) is following step by step the process how Anderson sound artistic practice is becoming an impulse, but also a part of the acoustic spatial planning processes. With its title »Site Specific Practices: Cultural Policies and Imaginaries« the last chapter focuses on city cases like Pécs and Viennai.. »4 Motivations and Objectives Behind Art Contest in Pécs« gives us a short overview of last years’ cultural activities in the frame of an art content and an art award on public spaces
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in Pécsi. »Each tenders received its name after a 20th century artist who was born in the City of Pécs. One of them was named by Victor Vasarely, and the other by Marcel Breuer.« (47) - writes Zoltán Bencze. The intention of this initiative was to invite artists for realizing their projects in public spaces in order to ask questions, open discussions, but also to »bring the city into a better position in the cultural map of Europe.« (48) The activities are also connected to the »European Capital of Culture: Pécs2010« program and to the local cultural-led policy of city planning. Johannes Suitner discusses the transformation processes of Karlsplatz, one of Vienna’s most central public spaces. He writes: »Driven by an urban Renaissance, economic adjustments after Fordism, and the narrative of intensifying inter-urban competition, European cities have since the 80ies put intense efforts in re-inventing their centers. And, these makeovers have to a large degree referred to the cultural particularities of urbanity and place in the one or other sense.« (52) Barbara Rief Vernay shows, how urban space and especially built heritage has been exploited within city branding strategies, which are related to global capital within the mechanisms of »symbolic economy« and are supposed to appeal primarily to senses and emotions (56). »Imperial Vienna« is the first pillar of the Vienna brand. In this article she describes the aim of the Viennese »place entrepreneurs« to show the cases of a postmodern simulacrum-like world, where the figures of past (eg. Sissy and Franz- Joseph) »talk« to the spectators in order to awaken their senses. As a closing remark at the end of the list of articles, we would like to quote from the »Foreword« written by Charles Hoch. Very simply: »forward« (3) with the discussion of artistic transformation and planning of city space as well as arts in our publics spaces.
ENDNOTES i The cases come from the cities where the project partners/universities of »Art in Public Space. Interdisciplinary Cooperations« are located, namely in Pécs (HUN) and in Vienna (AUT).
The essay »Balázs Kovács: Questions to Sound Art on Public Spaces.« is also contains references from Pécs. ii
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COLLECTION OF STUDIES CITY SPACE: CONTRIBUTION OF CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC PRACTICE TO CITY RECONFIGURATION
Anja Steglich Stepping into the Public Sphere. Approaches to Spatial and Artistic Planning Practices
Step 1: Searching the landscape or what I have learned from water. When I was invited to be one of the chairs in the »Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation« seminar in Budapest (November 2013), I have already finished my work at SKuOR, Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture & Public Space at Vienna University of Technology. My own – quite broad – approach to urban culture, public space including art, brought me for more than a year (May 2012/August 2013) to Vienna. My passion and my professional background is landscape architecture, a spatial discipline, combining approaches from applied natural and social sciences, design and art, environmental, spatial and urban planning as well as techniques and technologies in resource management. Quite early in my studies and my professional work I started to focus on water as an element, as a resource designing the landscape itself through its natural visible and invisible flows and cycles. I am happy about that early and basic fascination for such a strong, wild and uncontrollable element. This fascination guided me to cross bridges between disciplines, it guided me through the destruction and restriction of borders and regulations. The word landscape itself became a metaphor for me, to ask for, to describe and to design the partnership, the dependence or the rational and irrational references between men and nature (Krebs and Siefert vol.). Step 2: Communicating through space or merging spatial and artistic practices. Crossing bridges between disciplines through questioning different points of view, through destructing and restricting borders and regulations is a permanent process, working in the fields between spatial and artistic planning practices. My background as landscape architect offers me a permanent shift between spatial and artistic practices. It is a shift in space, a shift in perception, challenging my professional practice and my daily life as a citizen. How do I want to refer to the discussion about co-creating a public sphere through artistic and spatial practices? Artistic practices are central elements in our urban age as they have the capability to change the perception of space, addressing the artist or the audience. In the sense of accessing a sphere of social integration and cultural diversity, artistic knowledge and artistic practices challenge dialogues and communication about basic needs in the urban texture: Which places and atmospheres do we create from the present to the future? Do we have a spatial access to cultural history, collective memory and cultural diversity? Which resources, actors, conflicts and agreements co-create contemporary cultural driven transformation processes, which we perceive as urban space? Within the discourse about analyzing and interpreting processes in and the creation of urban space theoretical questions are foregrounded: Which disciplines do name, influence and mirror the existence and the transformation of urban space (Dünne and Günzel vol.)? Who is involved in the production of space (Lefebvre vol.)? Which communication media can figure out the ongoing transformation processes, without repeating and reproducing traditional positions? How can we tackle the unit of social and physical space (Löw vol.)? Within the theoretical discourse space itself appears as a cultural construction. Since the spatial theory discovered and marked a »spatial turn« and a »cultural turn«, the dialectic context between the physical and the societal space is filled up with a multidisciplinary discourse about the perception and the science of space (Dünne and Günzel vol.). These theoretical frameworks guide us, professionals working with spatial practices, through a dense and fast reality of urban transformation. Urban space seems to be a memory and became a vision at the same time. The process of urbanization seems to be fast, quasi not controllable and an urgent need for a broad theo-
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retical reflection appears in theoretical disciplines and daily life. Within that process unfolds an interface for artistic and spatial practices: As opposed to the theoretical search and discourse, the artistic process of using space, playing with space and creating spatial atmospheres seems to be something quite practical, expressing the spatial context itself. The spatial context itself is accessible. Artistic practices can show the diversity and the potential of a concrete place. The process of unfolding a public sphere is linked to the reality and the possibility of daily use and daily practice, dependent to the actors using the space or the artists performing in space. Focusing on that point of view, it is impossible to hardly separate spatial practices from artistic practices, it is a shift in space, a shift in perception: spatial practice can define and support the concrete place, can analyze and reflect ongoing processes of urban transformation, can amplify those daily stories or interrupt them. Artistic practices seem to be more subjective, asking for the imaginary, the symbolic, the unambiguity or the multidimensionality of the concrete, the space itself. Perceiving existence, presence, permanence, power, social cohesion, loss or temporality in space is linked to the capability of spatial perception through the citizen, the user or the performer and the production of space through the society. If the urban concrete is offering possibilities for individual expression, experience and emotion in space, the public sphere unfolds, co-created through artistic and spatial practices. Step 3: Approaching a public sphere or practicing urban diversity. Contemporary questions within the discourse about globalized processes of urbanization are basic questions about dialectics of the urban context: housing needs, access to save and healthy food, energy and water supply, economic, cultural and social integration (International Institute for Sustainable Development vol.) are basic needs. A public sphere seems to be the glue, the stage for that basic needs, as it is the place for expression, a sphere for negotiation about the allocation of spatial resources. Approaching a public sphere, really stepping into it, brings me back to what I have learned from water. Respecting the existing flows and the power of movement, supporting the cycles of nutrition, creation and destruction, taking care about my basic needs, visioning and embracing a spatial diversity. As landscape architect, as citizen, and artist I would express the need and the ability to grow food to the urban texture, to a public sphere. As performer, as artist and spatial planner I would approach the public sphere with my spatial practice of gardening, my artistic practice of communicating through space. I would express my vision of a human scale in urbanization through theatric storytelling and dance practices. And I hope to meet someone there, practicing something different, sharing knowledge and sharing space, sharing and co-creating a public sphere with me.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Franzen, Brigitte and Krebs, Stefanie, eds. Landschaftstheorie. Texte der Cultural Landscape Studies. Köln: Verlag Walter König, 2005. Print. Girot, Christophe. »A Vision in Motion.« Mikrolandschaften / Microlandscapes – Landscape Culture on the Move (Gegenwartskunst + Theorie, Bd. 1). Eds. Franzen, Brigitte and Krebs, Stefanie. Münster: Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe/Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, 2007. 138-156. Print. International Institute for Sustainable Development(IISD). A Summary Report of the Seventh Session of the World Urban Forum (WUF7): »Urban Equity in Development – Cities for Life.« Web. 4 July 2014 <http://www.iisd.ca/WUF/WUF7> Ipsen, Detlev. »Die Poetik von Ort und Landschaft.« Neuland. Bildende Kunst und Landschaftsarchi-
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tektur. Eds. Dziembowski, Bettina von and König, Dominik von and Weilacher, Udo. Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2007. 30-47. Print. Dünne, Jörg, and Günzel, Stephan, eds. Raumtheorie. Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006. Print. Gehl, Jan, and Svarre, Brigitte. How to Study Public Life. Island Press, 2013. Print. Löw, Martina. Raumsoziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2001. Print. Krebs, Stefanie, and Seifert, Manfred. Landschaften quer denken. Theorien – Bilder – Formationen. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2012. Print. Lefebvre, Henri. »Die Produktion des Raumes.« Raumtheorie. Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften. Eds. Dünne, Jörg and Günzel, Stephan. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006. Print.
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Iván Tosics Art and the Regeneration of Deprived Public Spaces
I am an urban sociologist, interested since for long time in the problems of deprived urban areas. If the public sector wants to deal with such areas, one of the potential approaches is the »area-based« intervention, i.e. improving the living conditions. The alternative option is the »people-based« approach, concentrating on the poorest, most disadvantaged people, regardless where they live (with the assumption that many of them might live in the most deprived neighbourhoods). Researches show that both approaches have pros and cons and usually their combination might lead to the best results. The most common type of area-based interventions is the physical upgrading of buildings and public spaces. However, it happens very often that the improved houses or streets/squares deteriorate again very soon as the people living around do not feel the importance to care of them. This problem/challenge has led to the recognition that in order to achieve sustainable regeneration, i.e. improvements that last for longer time, the involvement of the residents is at least as important as the physical works. It is not easy to activate poor people living in deprived areas. In such areas the sense of belonging is often not very strong – why should people like their neighbourhood if there is nothing attractive in it for them…? This is the point where art can become an important factor. I have never been really a lover of art as I recognized that art is very often »individualistic«, concentrating on the self-expression of the artist. As opposed to that, when considering art products I was always looking for the broader context and the potential effect of the art product on real life. To put it in other words: for me art is interesting insofar the artistic product or process brings visible changes into the urban space, it evokes the interest of local residents as being unusual and unexpected, and if it is produced with some type of involvement of the local people In the course of the last decades I experienced many examples in European cities which satisfy these criterias. It is the easiest to find urban art projects is in central and well-to-do areas of the cities, such as Artistic project with street lighting in Torino (e.g. showing a poem in a street row-by-row as part of the street lighting). Or using the lunar system as basis to put the planets into different parts of the city according to their size and distance from each other: a case in Zagreb. Or turning an unused elevated railway into public garden and art project: the sky gardens in New York. The task becomes a bit more difficult when artisitic intervetions have to address the problems of deprived urban areas. In the following I will first mention a few examples of unusual art products and processes in deprived large housing estate areas: Lyon was a dark, industrial, polluted city in the 1980s. In one of the deprived low rent HLM-housing estates (Habitation á Loyer Modéré) a group of muralists were commissioned by the mayor to prepare 30 large wall paintings. The giant murals were connected to the life of the residents, and turned out to be a huge success, changing the area (called Cité Tony Garnier) and also the life of the residents. Tirana in the middle 1990s was a wore-down, grey city with no investments since decades into the multifamily public housing stock, inherited from the communist times. The new mayor found out a very simple idea to give hope to the people: the city acquired some paint and distributed it among the residents, asking them to paint their houses. Suddenly the city became colourful and people understood that they can influence and actively work to change their surroundings. Art can also have substantial effect in deprived old inner city areas. It can change the usual way of things (marking the start of something different) and it can also be the method to involve the otherwise hard-to-reach residents:
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Belfast is one of the ethnically most divided cities in the world. The division was very visible not only by the wall but also by the very different murals in the two parts of the city, praising their own war heroes. Paralel to the peace process Belfast municipality initiated new types of murals in both neighbourhoods, using the same style but peaceful topics, adverting the interst of the residents from the ethnic conflict. Budapest initiated in the middle of the 2000s a pilot regeneration project in one of the most deprived inner city areas. The involvement of the poor, predominantly Roma residents was a difficult task. The preparation of small art pieces with school children was a first step through which also their parents could be informed about the aims and way of the regeneration project (Magdolna Quarter Program). During the Budapest and Vienna sessions of the ÂťArt in Public Space. Interdisciplinary CooperationsÂŤ also many other projects and case studies were discussed to illustrate the potential role of art to achieve better life in problematic areas. Art can contribute to changes, improvements in poor areas in two main ways: Through the process: involving residents into the creation of something new, creating communities. As well as through the result: making the poor areas more characteristic, interesting, increasing their prestige, attracting people from other parts of the city to come there. A common experience from urban regeneration projects is that large physical investments, substantial upgrading of the housing stock leads in most cases to the exchange of population (gentrification). Art, on the other hand, is a cheap way to initiate changes and has also much less negative social effects. In a more ideological understanding art and artists might play a very important role in the postdemocracy period when the state does not act any-more as redistributor in order of spatial justice but became promoter of the free market. Artistic ideas might be very important to create a new type of social contract with the people. Artists are of key importance to visioning radical future changes towards more spatial justice. It is my hope that artists will live up to the challenge to improve urban areas and fight for a more just societyi. ENDNOTE See here the audio format: https://soundcloud.com/artinpublicspace/ivan-tosics-what-could-bethe-role-of-culture-to-initiate-resident-participation
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SPATIAL AND ARTISTIC PRACTICE: ARTISTIC METHODOLOGY AS PART OF PLANNING PROCESSES
Anamarija Batista, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky In Pace with Metropolis: Artistic Practice and the Forming of Public Space
How do we think about noise today? In which way do we experience and perceive our cities and their atmospheres? How does the cinematic experience interact with our everyday realities? Researching on these questions, we notice that a step back and a closer look at the beginning of the 20th century give us an idea about the origin of contemporary debates on increasing urbanization processes and issues, as well as an insight into how the city and its layers have become a part of the artistic practice. The pace or tempo of metropolis is the substance from which it rebuilds itself over and over, Ernst Bloch writes in the 1920s. He was not only referring to the speed of the increasing traffic in the modern metropolis, but also to the hectic construction activity, the rapid change of fashions and the elusiveness of human relations, as Michael Bienert and Elke Linda Buchholz point out in »Die zwanziger Jahre in Berlin« (37). Besides fascination and the belief in progress, the rapid transformation of the cities into modern metropolises, also lead to fears, problems and social changes. As well the human perceptive apparatus had to get used to a range of new stimuli. The advent of technological innovations produced new types and qualities of visual impulses, but also mechanical sounds never heard before. But the novel instruments and facilities also had an impact on the organization and rhythm of everyday life. This change of routines and practices again confronted the inhabitants with unknown perceptive and physical phenomena. Rhythmized activities, shortened distances and an increase of population in urban regions – these changes affected the public space and together with the need for housing space and infrastructure brought about a set of challenges for urban planners and architects. Among the issues discussed, was the rising sound level in the city. In Umberto Boccioni’s picture »La strada entra nella casa« (The Street Enters the House, 1912) the street with its overwhelming sounds befalls a female spectator behind the handrail of her balcony. The objects blend forming a perceptive chaos that penetrates into the sphere of the spectator transgressing any sense of boundary (Lobsien 189). While a lot of voices, such as Luigi Rusollo or August Endell, regarded the new »urban« sounds as a potential to be discovered and explored, others felt irritated by the loudness and sharpness of the increasing noise. In 1937 John Cage puts the core of the debates into a nutshell, writing »Wo immer wir auch sein mögen, meistens hören wir Geräusche. Beachten wir sie nicht, stören sie uns. Hören wir sie uns an, finden wir sie faszinierend« (Kostelanetz 83). Both, stimulated and thrilled by the swamping experience of this early 20th century form of the metropolis, the inhabitants are caught between pain and pleasure. The rising tempo of the city and everyday life required coping strategies. An example would be the »blasé attitude« which Georg Simmel refers to, who describes the city inhabitant as becoming increasingly resistant and sensually blunted facing his or her environment (Simmel 329). Confronted with difficulties to keep pace processing the huge number of impressions, the city dweller filters and fragments the environment. This attitude is reflected in public space, where encounters become increasingly fugitive and hasty. The modern metropolis reduces interpersonal contact to the visual, displacing the tactile and oral that marks smaller communities. As a result of anonymity instead of the experience of voices in combination with faces, as when talking to a person, the modern city dweller, particularly the user of public transport is left with mere visual impressions, sheer covers (Srubar 38). Persons are reduced to their outward appearance and actions. Clothes, physical characteristics and performance are what count and the modern metropolis resembles a stage animated by performers. The transformation and ongoings in public space are observed and reflected by the arts. As the human perceptive apparatus literature, painting and photography were seeking to keep pace with the
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transformations and developments city experience was undergoing. Avant-garde art forms, such as Modernism, Cubism and Futurism are symptomatic for this tendency in their breaking with aesthetical, formal and structural traditions in order to live up to the standard modern urbanity called for. In »Die Wahrnehmung der Großstadt« Manfred Smuda describes that by the turn of the century especially the field of narrativity was calling for modification (Smuda 137). The traditional chronological narrative structure is abandoned in favor of a free syntax. Suggestive language replaces neatly built sentences. Impressions and events are depicted as they befall the narrator: hastily and chaotically, almost simultaneously. Initially a static observer, art steps into the street itself as an active practitioner. It merges with the urban substance and becomes subject to transformations in the pace of metropolis. There is a growing interest in the doings and dealings in the street, the stage of the city. The advent of artistic forms of technological reproduction added to a new way of urban subjectivity, a new way of looking at the city. Walter Benjamin comments this development writing »Da das Auge schneller erfaßt, als die Hand zeichnet, so wurde der Prozeß bildlicher Reproduktion so ungeheuer beschleunigt, daß er mit dem Sprechen Schritt halten konnte« (10). The hand-held cameras inhabiting the cities altered the perception of the modern metropolis, as well as the social interactions in its streets and public spaces. Debates of the time reflect the ambivalence toward the medium shifting between fascination of seeing and being seen, on the one hand, and on the violation of privacy, on the other. After photography, the young medium film sharpened the issue. From its very beginnings it absorbed the movement of the masses, the traffic and the whole ambience of metropolis. Emerging from the tempo and chaos of metropolis, film has also been participating in structuring and understanding urban ongoings and processes. As space-time based medium with his own rhythm, the motion picture allows a sequentialization. Capturing the moments in time, it produces its own complexity and temporality. It transcends given time frames and allows the juxtaposition of succession as well as the succession of juxtaposition. Hence, it was soon discovered as a means to understand and structure processes and activity flows. Frank Bunker Gilbreth used a motion picture camera understand and optimize hand motion in working flows, such as bricklaying. He aimed at making them more efficient by minimizing the movements involved. Gilbreth reduced all movements into combinations of 17 basic motions – so called therbligs – to describe the best way to perform a particular task (The Gilbreth Network). Similarly, film has been used as a means to grasp the complexity of the city. Also today urban planners and architects are using the motion picture as a tool to understand and design public spaces. For instance, Christophe Girot, the chair of Landscape Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich describes the potential of spatial video analysis as follows: »The focus of this investigation is the potential of video-based analysis of landscape as part of the design process. Our work shows how the view through a camera changes the gaze of the beholder and, with the help of the viewfinder, focuses on the surrounding landscape in such a way that elements can gain importance that otherwise elude our attention. It tests and confirms the ability of video to integrate into complex representations such volatile factors as immersion, the perception of atmospheres, the role of the sound, and our own activity in space that all together form the experience of large scale environments. In doing so, video is able to depict these environments not only as a perceived space, but also as a lived space« (Girot). The subjective point of view through the camera lens allows the successive depiction of elements, which are positioned side by side in a spatial formation. This selection allows to focus on particular aspects of the transversed environment. Thereby it not only captures activities and practices in space, but also the moving bodies own interaction with space. Moreover this temporalization of space is a means to cope with the complexities of urban space by filtering stimuli through the camera. The complexity and acceleration of the private and public life have lead to a transformation of social temporal conditions. Niklas Luhmann describes the transformation of structures and semantics of social time as correlating with social differentiation. In the dimension of time we can understand the processes
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of change in the forms of differentiation as a temporalization of complexities, Niklas Luhmann writes. The temporalization of complexity is a result of increasing complexity. This temporalization then forces to select, which leads to a displacement of the necessity of order in the sequentiality. This sequentiality allows us to distinguish between before and after, and thus provides an order of simultaneity (Luhmann 46). With its scale, variety and overflow the emerging modern metropolis resulted in an increasing individual and institutional need to structure phenomena and environments. There was an increasing desire for efficiency and organization in order to keep pace with the developments and novel possibilities. While, until the 19th century the church bells had structured the day, by the end of this century clocks on churches and city halls had become ubiquitous in the rhythmization of everyday life. By the beginning of the 20th century, when the wristwatch became affordable for the broader mass, order and sequentialization had finally set in as the motor of daily routine (Graf 21-22). Arnold Schönberg responds to these tendencies by providing a tool to handle the rhythms of urban locomotion. He adapts his method of composing to the spatial arrangement of Berlin. As, by the time, he needed to buy a new ticket, for each change of tramways, Schönberg developed a ticket for the Berlin Streetcar System (1927): The seven days of the week are represented by concentric circles, while the hours of the day take the form of radical lines. The ticket allows riding into all directions and changing tram lines within a certain period of time. On the 12th of January 1927 the composer sent his proposal to »Direktion der Berliner Straßenbahn-Betriebs Gesellschaft«, though without stamp. For this reason the letter was returned to the sender. Schönberg never forwarded the letter again. He commented this as follows: »I forgot to put a stamp on the letter. The streetcar company refused to accept it; I took that as a gesture of Fate and did not send it again.« (Exhibition) In a modified version, Schönbergs considerations later would be realized in the form of the zone system and the availability of daily tickets. The rhythmized city resembles a symphony taking the orders from the compository practice. The increasing structuring, organizing and rhythmization of the daily routine affected the spatial dimension of the city. It was more and more fragmented according to different functions, such as sleeping, working and leisure activities. For instance, the blasé attitude which filtered external impulses on an individual level manifested itself spatially in a stronger division between spaces of private and public life. There was growing need for retreat and protection from urban life, a division from inside and outside. These tendencies, of course, have had an impact on the process and decision making of city planning. So the separation between the private and public spheres has influenced the handling and perception of the sounds of the city. Had, in the beginning of the 20th century, the sounds of metropolis been regarded ambiguously, but with a certain fascination and appreciation of their multifold potential, today ,they are merely discussed in the form of noise pollution and require protective measurements to ensure unchallenged privacy. The need to regulate the city and the risk of oversimplification resonates with this structuring and is reflected in the way noise regulation of the city is handled today. According to the European Directive (2002/49/EC3) the city governments are invited to produce noise maps. Apart from this, in Austria every two years an institutional survey is conducted, but just for the residential areas. The survey questions especially regard the loudness, which means that the individual impressions of the acoustic sphere have been reduced to the private space. Also the quality and diversity of the sounds are not being considered. In the opera »Der ferne Klang« (1912), Austrian composer Franz Schreker relates to the waste of disobeying sounds around us. In this piece, a young music dramatist is seeking to develop a new style, a mysterious unworldly sound. He composes something radically new sacrificing his love for art. A scandal evolves and in the end he recognizes that the sound, which he was seeking for, had surrounded him all the time: in the form of Grete’s voice and in the complex acoustic layers of modern life (Ross 211). While, on an institutional level a closer look into the subject of sound beyond reglementation has been neglected, art has been dealing with urban sounds throughout the 20th century. Thinking, for instance of some representatives of Musique concrète, such as Pierre Boulez, John Cage or Brian Eno.
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Unfortunately, this knowledge has not flown into governmental urban planning processes. Discussing and reflecting issues of modern urban life, art has been an observer and actor of the transforming cities. In the beginning of the 20th century artists participated in exploring and reflecting social and public spaces. But it not only took the role of a passive observer, itself has been affecting public space as an active practitioner, while reinventing itself over and over reacting as it reacts to the changing metropolis. Stepping out from museums and galleries, they have merged with the substance of the city addressing issues and problematic aspects. Thereby, the technological development not only affects everyday life, such as the use of water and gas or means of transport in the city, but also the artistic production. They join the reinvention and organization of the city and everyday life. So for instance the Bauhaus call in their manifests for a common organization and construction of the future, where artists get an essential role to play. Side by side with architects, painters and sculptors work on the future city. They want to liberate the arts from their isolation and emphasize the necessity of revolutionize the idea of constructing. This call for a cooperation of artists with architects and urban planners today still is topical. Cultural initiatives as well as artistic interventions point at the validity of the imaginations by Bauhaus in the contemporary urban practice. Already taking a role as active participant of the city and its developments in the beginning of the beginning of the 20th century, from the 1960s onwards, it has been intervening in public space voicing problematic issues in the form of site-specific installations. Today artistic practice is interested in creating situations shifting perceptive constitution and sharpening the senses for the direct environment. It aims at voicing problematic issues of a particular site or a particular space. An active intervention into the bodily movements and social interaction of the inhabitants. They relate to the multiple layers of sensory stimulations pointing making us aware of the possibility to filter them or pay them our interest and fascination for the transforming urban environment, which surrounds us. BIBLIOGRAPHY Benjamin, Walter. Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Drei Studien zu Kunstsoziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1963. Print. Exhibition: art is: new art. Reflections on Schönberg in Contemporary Art. 2013. Arnold Schoenberg Center, Vienna. Graf, Johannes. »Im Takt der Uhr.« Ed. Beyrer, Klaus and Helmut Gold. Das Zeitsparbuch. Mainz: Hermmann Schmidt Verlag, 2012. Print. Bienert, Michael and Buchholz, Elke Linda. Die zwanziger Jahre in Berlin. Ein Wegweiser durch die Stadt. Berlin: Berlin Story Verlag, 2013. Print. Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. John Cage. Köln: DuMont Schauberg, 1973. Print. Lobsien, Eckhard. »Großstadterfahrung und die Ästhetik des Strudelns«. Die Großstadt als »Text«. Ed. Manfred Smuda. München: Fink, 1992. 183–198. Print. Luhmann, Niklas. Soziale Systeme. Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984. Print. Simmel, Georg. »The Metropolis of Modern Life.« Georg Simmel. On individuality and social forms. Ed. Donald Levine. Chicago: University Press, 1971. 324-339. Print.
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Gilbreth Network, The. Web. 21 February 2014 <http://gilbrethnetwork.tripod.com/therbligs.html> Girot, Christophe. »Official Website of the Chair of Landscape Architecture at the ETH Zurich.« Web. 28 March 2014 <http://girot.arch.ethz.ch/research/digital-media-perception/landscapevideoresearch> Ross, Alex. The Rest is Noise. Das 20. Jahrhundert hören. Munich: Piper, 2009. Print. Smuda, Manfred ed. Die Großstadt als »Text.« München: Fink,1992. Print Srubar, Ilja. » Zur Formierung des soziologischen Blickes durch die Großstadtwahrnehmung «. Die Großstadt als » Textî «. Ed. Manfred Smuda. München: Fink, 1992. 37–52. Print.
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Angelika Schnell What Ever Happened to What Ever Happened to Urbanism?
Almost 20 years ago, in 1995, Rem Koolhaas published in his seminal SMLXL three key essays on urbanism: »Bigness«, »Generic City« and »What Ever Happened to Urbanism«. In the fields of architecture and urbanism these major texts have been understood as the overcoming of so-called post-modern theories on urban design which were largely based on a more or less nostalgic notion of the historical (mostly) European city centres. Koolhaas’ essays seemed to provide a new fresh perspective for the discipline of urbanism that was neither based on formalistic design principles nor on the voluntary impotence of participation strategies – the two theoretical poles that were influential during the 70ies and 80ies of the 20th century. Koolhaas plied for the return of the architect as a socially conscious city planner, not as an impeccable master mind but instead as a master initiator of new events and developments which were not necessarily predictable and manageable altogether. The success and consequences of this wake-up call can not be underestimated. It revealed that Modernism and Modernization still were major issues in architecture and urban planning (for good or bad). Koolhaas’ and his office OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) became more influential than any other architectural position after World War II. Additionally, in the course of the years and decades, also OMA’s many scholars and collaborators distributed Koolhaas’ ideas practically. Hence, the brutal Super-Dutch movement as well as the rediscovering and revitalising of the Situationists during the 90ies were obviously a direct outcome of these influences. However, it should not be forgotten that Koolhaas’ basic ideas on urbanism were more or less already elaborated in his »retroactive manifesto« for Manhattan, Delirious New York, which came out already in 1978. Koolhaas could also be understood as one of the »Post-Modernists« who was critical towards the Modern Movement. In this light »Post-Modernism« becomes a more heterogeneous epoch than usually seen. But what is more important: Koolhaas interpretation of Modernism shows many differences compared to other theories on architecture and urbanism of that time but also to contemporary theories. Koolhaas makes a fundamental distinction between Modernism and Modernity (or Modernization). According to him the first stands for moralism and aesthetic dogmatism and the latter stands for amoralism, uncertainty and aesthetic freedom. The role model for this urbanism was Manhattan in the age between 1870 until 1940. Koolhaas’ belief in modernization as the driving belt for urbanism caused a quite unreserved embracement of late capitalism’s neoliberalism and globalism. In particular his early engagement in China faced him with political consequences that he did not theorize before and distinguishes his position from contemporary urban ideas of his followers, for example the post-Situationists. The lecturei tries to historise Koolhaas’ ideas and influences for the first time. It wants to give an overview of Koolhaas’ writings and analyses them in the light of other contemporary theories on cities and societies.
ENDNOTE i
See here the audio-video format: https://vimeo.com/101303265
AUDIO-VIDEO CONTENT o min:00 s Introduction of Angelika Schnell, by Carina Lesky - 01:54 Acknowledgements by Schnell for the Organizers of project/seminar: »Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation.« - 02:26 Focus on architectural perspective of public space - 02:43 The term of public space - 03:58 »Post-modern«
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and public spaces - 05:18 Italian piazza and Architecture as Art itself - 06:03 Centre Georges Pompidou - 07:02 Addressed: Rem Koolhaas’ and his theories - 09:42 Bridge between post-modernism and contemporary strategies like situative/performative urbanism - 11:26 Strand: two hypothesis of Koolhaas ‘- 12:22 1) Generation of ’68 - 13:15 Paradox situation: rediscovering the historical city at the same time giving up to be a responsible city planner - 14:41 2) Architecture and urbanism as oppositions - 15:10 If only architecture is left over… - 15:48 Closer look on Koolhaas’ observations - 16:30 Term: urban design - 17:05 Term: Städtebau/Stadtbaukunst - 17:42 Critique towards Generation of ’68: captivity of »modern« ideology - 19:23 Henri Lefebvre and the transformation of Paris - 19:55 Actions of Situationist International - 20:22 Guy Debord and the unitarian urbanism - 21:11 If only architecture is left without the idea of urbanism… - 21:44 Changed situation of streets in New York (spirit of Situationist International) - 22:23 New view on old city; squatting movement (International Building Exhibition, Berlin) - 24:26 Nostalgic view, romanticism of the City - 25:52 Koolhaas’ conclusion: neither new kind of architecture nor naive notion of city, but new idea of urbanism - 26:55 Role model: Manhattan 28:08 The role of architect: master initiator of unpredictable and new - 29:17 »Surfer on the waves« (in the »culture of congestion«) - 30:13 Manhattan’s grid as abstract matrix - 33:41 »Design by Commitee«; idealized model of collaboration - 35:37 Still something is missing… (»Freud Unlimited«) - 36:29 Most complicated and misunderstood parts of Koolhaas’: the links - 37:55 Two methods of psychological theories used by Koolhass - surrealist techniques: paranoiac-critical method by Salvador Dalí, automatic writing/psychography - 39:37 »Modernisation processes«: the Architect should be part of, at the same time, critical towards - 41:10 The Architect like a modern Münchausen - 42:38 Discussion, moderated by Batista - 42:50 Q: About the grid and the success of Manhattan - 45:49 Q: Collaboration - 47:01 Q: Koolhaas’ is not neutral but…? - 51:00 Q: Manhattan through the »retroactive manifesto« of the book »Delirious New York« - 52:40 – Q: Timeline in Koolhaas’ theories - 56:13 Q: Implementations - 58:31 Q: »Hero-fication«- 59:28 Q:»Freud Unlimited«: theory and practice, infrastructure as a grid (eg. Parc de la Villette in Paris) - 01:02:42 Appendix
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Csaba Árpád Horváth New Genre Public Art. The Democratization of Art in Public Areas
Why is »New Genre Public Art« interesting phenomena in the global art scene? There are two directions from which we can approach to answer this question simply and shorty. On the one hand, we can radically change the relationship with the recipient, on the other hand, narrow the thematic focus, which means a shift towards a community specific aspect within the neo avant-garde local specificity. »The notion of »place« does not primarily concern the physical environment of the artwork but it refers to a mental space which represents the collective depository of human and historical contents.« (Intermedia) Due to the logics of representation these historical contents are invisible. The product of the basically slow democratization process of this hierarchized system is New Genre Public Art. In the paradigm of classical avant-garde the artwork is the recipient, in the artist-artwork structure it is positioned above the two other players and the information is transmitted from the artist to the recipient within a closed system, in one direction. »This new type of street art questions the functions of traditional art systems, the traditional role that artistic authority, culture and art play in society. Contrary to the elitist concept of art, it aims at bringing about structures that share the power of creating culture with the most people possible.« (Süvecz) From a history of arts aspect, the artists of New Genre Public Art do not really feel any relation with traditional street art but rather with the social aspects of classic avant-garde; with integrating art into life, that is, recreating the tradition of historical avant-garde. This legacy is equally present in post-war flux and event art movements, the only sharp difference lies in the questions related to the artwork’s existence. I consider that it is very important to emphasize the importance of the tradition’s revival so that the image concerning the critique of modernity, that is an integral part of New Genre Public Art, healthy, progressive with an amending intention shall not be mashed with the diabolized image of modernity characteristic of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the financial crisis of our times. The primary objective of this critical attitude is to point out the inner contradictions that have been present in modernity since the beginning, whose root cause is the aversion between modernity and language, according to Mitchell. Based on the aspects of this phenomenon, this has a key importance since this is the mechanism surrounding works of art that is partly responsible for the relationship existing with the recipient through the communicational potential. The real enemy of abstract art used to be literal trash: »Trash is art which has not yet denied its trust in literature which is filled with well-known, everyday and sentimental stories…« (Szőnyi and Szauter 236) However, the truth is that linguistic-historical design was just as well present in the background of abstract art. Moreover, if it was required by the bare system of signs, interpretation reached far beyond its materiality. This particular relation was their very essence. It is another question that the linguistic interpretation embracing the works of art has become aristocratic as a result of art’s social and cultural status. The abstract artwork – although it can be easily interpreted as a series of linguistic signs due to its puritan system of signs –, did not become a system that can be verbalized or received by most members of society. Deyan Sudjic explains the unique use of the language related to works of art in the context of architecture with the following: »Mysterious language, incomprehensible for the common earthborn is a proof of the profession’s inferiority complex vis à vis other cultural forms.« (Sudjic 240) With the gesture that New Genre Public Art lifted colours, forms, objects – in other words each and every part of image or visual element – into the physical system of coherence, did not distance itself very far from the ideologically saturated practice of modern art. The only difference simply lies in the fact that while abstract art had the intention to verbalize its own thematics and context system through »modern artistic priesthood« which might seem narrow and slightly occult, due to their place of activity, »social sculpture« and later on New Genre Public Art does it through integrant use of languageand not
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by means of obscure rituals. New Genre Public Art is a linguistic creation, a communicational structure that is generated by the artwork’s plot/progress. This falls in line with the theory of social sculpture invented by Beuys where the main idea is the assumption that there is an anthropological point in making art; »where thinking is already creation and an artwork, that is, a plastic process and it is capable of creating a new, specific form, it can also be a sonic wave which gets to the other person’s ears. The notion of plastic thinking refers to this evolution theory that leads from »thinking forms« (ideas) through »linguistic forms« (notions) to »social sculptures« (image).« (Bunge) Not only on the level of basic elements but also on the level of operative functions: »From this aspect, the legacy of modernist art does not lie in dealing with the formal position and status of objects but rather in the fact that aesthetic experience is able to oppose the conventional concept and system of knowledge.« (Bálint et al 43) On the one hand, those who wish to assess artistic activity from an ideological or exclusively aesthetic aspect, question the inner dichotomy working as the inner impetus. On the other hand, they misinterpret the role of aesthetics; »since according to Rancière, aesthetics is the ability to think in contradictions, such as the contradictory nature of the relation existing between art and social change which can be characterized by the belief in art’s autonomy or in art as a promise of a better world to come. For Rancière, aesthetics does not need to be sacrificed for achieving social change since the promise of a better world is contained in it inherently.« (Bálint et al 53) The most important feature of the relationship with the audience that characterizes New Genre Public Art is its dialogical nature, that is, the involvement of the audience is not a metaphoric but a tangible and real process through the entire phase of creation. This means that despite the fact that the neo avant-garde artist chose quite an intensive form of involving the audience, it had a monologue like effect. Habermas also makes a distinction in his discourse theory, in as much as he distinguishes between »instrumental and communicative« (Felkai) rationality. Using his theory, in the context of art, Kestner also states in relation to classical neo avant-garde works of art: »Although it is not rare that a work of art launches a discourse between spectators, it usually means the reaction given to ready objects.« (Bálint et al 43) Contrary to this, New Genre Public Art is different; it applies a dialogical strategy in which case the relation to the audience is the work of art itself. The root cause of this phenomenon lies in the fact – as I have already pointed out – that New Genre Public Art does not primarily see its images in public art. This form of art was born in the United States during the civil rights movements of the 60ies, 70ies and 80ies and served the liberalization purposes of diverse minorities (African Americans, women, minorities) since they ensured publicity for groups excluded from visibility. New Genre Public Art is based on these movements that were aimed at redividing shares in cultural production. Thus, diverse roots served as a basis for the standpoint which sharply separated its identity from the tendencies of New Genre Public Art that have been trending until then. Lacy (39) created new history in the life of New Genre Public Art by well-defined activist attitude – through the social movements of the 70ies and the 80ies, the new left wing marxism and feminism. He was little interested in aesthetics, genre or institutional categories, especially ideological attachments were significant. In this sense New Genre Public Art is a sort of postmodern socialist realism which plans to create a work of art not for the community but together with the community. The task of the players active in the institutional background would be modified accordingly: »The role of the critique is to spread words, propagate ideas, conceptualize and look for relations between the artist and the audience. We are media. We need complex and versatile ways to connect personal with public, personal with political.« (Lippard 39) Of course, this ideal utopian effort had its critics who drew the attention to the structural self-contradictions. A part of the questions that arose proved to be justified even when the problem was approached from the seemingly opposite side. They criticized the little impact and influence that fine arts had
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in the political struggle for visibility. They considered that it was too weak to launch social processes and they thought that in this form they would fortify the already defined social rules. In order to be able to launch political change, visibility is indispensable as it was also pointed out by Rancière (10): »Politics is about visible entities and about what can be said of the visible, about those who have the ability to see and the right to make utterances about the possession of public spaces and the possibilties of time.« At the same time I think that those who oppose New Genre Public Art and state that it has little impact on politics, actually return to the ideas of an artist of Romanticism with this statement. They recur to the idea where the artist is present as a creative person, a »cosmic entity«. However, it is their utopian demands that makes it impossible for them to see – if not comprehensive – political power that art as a whole has over the visible.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bálint, Mónika and Kálmán, Rita and Polyák, Levente and Sevic, Katarina, eds. Köztes terek. [Intermediate Spaces.] Budapest: IMPEX, 2008. Bunge, Matthias. »Joseph Beuys. Plasztikai gondolkodás. Hírverés egy antropológiai művészetfogalomnak. 2. rész. [Joseph Beuys. Plastic Thinking. Promotion for An Anthropological Art Concept. Part 2.] « Adamik Lajos, trans. képek. Web. 21 July 2011. <http://balkon.c3.hu/balkon_2000_11/beuys_ text.htm> Felkai, Gábor. »Két társadalomelméleti illúzió széttörése a jelenkori magyar közgondolkodáson. [Breaking the Illusion of Two Social Theories on the Contemporary Hungarian Public Thinking.]« Web. 3 August 2011. <http://www.c3.hu/~szf/Szofi97/Sz97-03/Sz97-03-Area-4.htm> Lacy, Suzanne, ed. Mapping The Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Seattle: Bay Press, 1995. Print. Lippard, Lucy. »Looking Around: Where We Are, Where We Could Be.« Suzanne Lacy, ed. Mapping The Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Seattle: Bay Press, 1995. Print. »PUBLIC ART - Köztéri művészet« Intermedia. Web. 17 July 2011. <http://www.intermedia.c3.hu/ pst/public.html> Rancière, Jacques. Esztétika és politika. [The Politics of Aesthetics.] Budapest: Műcsarnok Nonprofit Kft, 2009. Print. Sudjic, Deyan. Épület-komplexus. [Building-complex]. Budapest: HVG books. 2007. Print. Süvecz, Emese. »Ellentmondások kiállítása. A kurátor társadalmi szerepéről. [Exhibition of Contradictions. About the Social Role of Curator.]« exindex. Web. 16 July 2011 <http://exindex.hu/print. php?l=hu&page=3&id=366> Szőnyi, György Endre and Szauter Dóra, eds. A képek politikája. W. J. T. Mitchell válogatott írásai. [Politics of Images. Selected Writings of Mitchell, W.J.T.] Szeged: JATE Press, 2008. Print.
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Dušica Dražić Constructed Landscapes
The issues that I explore within my art practice deal with the ambivalent interrelationship of the citizen and the city, their mutual support and protectiveness, but also their isolation and destruction. I search for spaces of irregularity, difference, flexibility, intuition. I explore their transformation and rethink them at the level of cultural continuity, symbolic irregularities and individual actions. I perceive the city as an archeological site, where one can find artifacts, architecture, bio-facts and cultural landscapes. I look for, work with and collect traces that show how culture is constantly being negotiated, redefined and transformed. »Monument to the Future«i (2011) consisting of a structural element, a reinforced concrete pillar, located in Kibera slum in Nairobi (Kenya), it is both symbolic, and somehow a pragmatic gesture. Symbolic, as it represents potential; the beginning of a structure that can be continued in the future. Pragmatic, as it is actually a functioning structural element, intended to be used and disappear into the framework of a future building. In the same year I have also realized the work »Blueprint« that »questions contemporary changes in the urban planning of the city, perceiving them as part of a collective and individual memory. It looks at the role of a location in defining personal identities and identities of local communities. With the installation »Blueprint« Dražić not only addresses the socio-economical context of the transformation and disappearance of old Belgrade districts, but also points to the ways in which these changes influence the relationship between a resident and the city [...] By transporting the rubble of what used to be a home and covering the floor of the gallery with it, she asks the visitor to walk over the remains of someone else’s private and personal space. In this way Dražić constructs a temporary »archeological« site where we can find or dig out traces of the past.« - as Radišić expressed (16-24). In 2012 I was focusing my research on architectural projects that were at the time of their conceptualization considered either progressive in form or socially empowering, but that have turned out to be a failure at the moment they were realized and inhabited. They failed in their main purpose and instead of protecting and generating a better life, they often became rather user-unfriendly. At the same time I looked at projects that were socially successful, but were considered as economical or aesthetic failures, and for that reason were demolished. As a result I created »New City«ii, a large maquette of a non-existing city. The buildings that this city consists of are chosen from projects that were actually built, but couldn’t reach their potential, missed their purpose and were eventually destroyed (the destruction was always intentional and organized and was never a consequence of war or natural catastrophes). The destruction of these structures was in itself the acknowledgement of their failure. At the same time, being interested in architecture and city, I started to observe landscape, its topography. We stay in oblivion, not knowing how much time has past and how much force was needed to come to this moment we gaze into. By cutting into the landscape, we discover multiple layers. Although often invisible, a radical change of the surface we walk on is caused by deep, inner, continuous drifting of plates. Due to the slow, invisible migration of plates and their interaction, depending on their primary matter, this seemingly static landscape in front of us is constantly being recreated. Time is a crucial factor, but also the most difficult to grasp. Often resistant, plates move and interact, and in that process they collide, slide, separate, sub-duct, fold… If buildings are observed in the same way, we notice similar changes in their seemingly stable structures. »Landscapes« are fragments of those changes translated into precise plaster casts, acting as a parallel to the traces of the slow formation of a landscape. On the other hand, looking at the esthetic changes of the landscape one can observe and analyze the economical, social, ideological changes of the times. In the period between 1973 and 1988 Pešter, a karst plateau in south-western Serbia (at that time Yugoslavia), was intensely reforested (over 150,000 hectares). It was realized through state-organized voluntary labor, done by ORA (acronym: Youth Work Actions). The reforestation was driven by ideology (to promote the idea of brotherhood and unity) rather than by economy (the costs were probably higher than the economic value of the wood).
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The final effect was in the end a creation of anthropogenic forests. Today, after almost 30 years, these forests are a representation of the commons and the potential of it that does not have the immediate visibility, but a long term effect. The anthropogenic forests always had a very precise form that was based on a scientific research, but always open for an improvement and experiment. That also means that at the moment of the creation, there was a strong idea of the authorship that would become irrelevant after certain period of time (when different events start influencing its shape). »Constructed Landscape« is an open-ended work. At this moment it is a collage of archive photos made by my father who was the leading project engineer of the reforestation at Pešter, furthermore a video that is trying to look at that anthropogenic forest as it would be a sculpture searching for traces that uncover its origin, profiles of trees that define the timeframe between the moment of reforestation and today and the model of a possible forest that could be constructed in the future.
ENDNOTES The work »Monument to the future« was organized and produced by the Goethe-Institut Nairobi and supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Kenya and Heron Hotel. i
Production: STUK arts centre, Leuven, Belgium. Technical drawings and architectural models: Goran Petrović, Dušica Dražić.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Radišić, Slavica. »Blueprint« Sećanje grada = Memory of the City. Ed. Dušica Dražić, and Slavica Radišić, and Marijana Simu. Beograd: Kulturklammer - Centar za kulturne interakcije, 2012. 16-24. Print.
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Balázs Kovács Questions to Sound Art on Public Spaces
Bad questions are usually answered as well – in the following, I propose some bad questions to sound art. Context: Our world is half full of sound, and half full of their aesthetic interpretations. These two ears consist of silence, industrial sounds, everyday noises, natural soundscapes, instrumental sound, and, of course, human voice in its Babelian meaning. Voice, noise, sound, tone, timbre, music, and silence are constantly shaping and following our days, while sometimes forming the culture back by creative minds as well. We can shortly summarize the process, because it is formulated around simple questions: what, how, why and where to listen? –What to listen to, it is an aesthetical question, opened by interdisciplinary artists of futurism, dada and electronic music. They proposed works using sound in a »different«, »broader« way than before: noise-sounds (for example, the intonarumori of Luigi Russolo), micro-tonal, electro-synthesized techniques. –How to listen to, is a psychological question aiming to expand listening modes. »Blind« listening (acousmatic music), audio-visual diffusion (Michel Chion) seems to be opposite ways, covering two poles of the spectra of possibilities. –Why to listen to, is a cultural question, looking for a place of music and organized sound in our life. Active listening, dance music, interactive sound installations, cooperative compositions, community radios are just keywords of new worlds for sound. –And finally, where to listen to? It is a question which connects all before in some way, and we will now focus only on listening in public spaces. Composing from public spaces: Public spaces have historically strong contact with art. Artists and artworks need a public space to present and spread themself (although public space does not need them any time), but it is important for them, which public space it is: a forest, a street, a toilet in the Museum of Modern Art and so on. I present two realizations, where the place is strongly connected with the artwork created in it. The first listening art composition in public space, which I met some years ago, was the »Electrical Walks« by Christina Kubisch (vol.). In her installation-performance, the listeners use a special device to listen to their surroundings’ electro-magnetic waves (mobile phones’ and other electronic devices’ buzz, chirp, noise). The resulting sound is strongly determined by the context, the development of the urban environment, however the timbres, the rhythms and the atmosphere could be similar in different locations. I referred composition as art form, but the composition is made by the listeners: how they walk around, what they focus on, what is going to be amplified or ignored; and, on the other side, it is a private, non-shareable experience in headphones, which is created fully from public space sources. Another approach of utilizing public space, which tries to make the experience public, is the »Aporee« sound map project by Udo Noll (vol.). The project is open for everybody, who is capable to publish field recordings (sound recordings of places) done on any place of the world, anytime. The resulting sound map can be explored as a sound adventure. While field recording has a great tradition in the conceptual art (through works of Hildegaard Westerkamp, Francisco López, Toshiya Tsunoda etc), this realization is a good way to convert a private experience into an another private assemblage with public tools and the power of community.
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As we see, these realizations set up communication between creator, listener, user, without placing them into the same sphere. In the next part, we look for communicative artworks acting this way. Composing for public spaces: Following the way began, we are looking for creating communicative artworks for a public space where we are not part of. The keyword is »communicative«: we set up strange combinations between partners of the »talk«. First, we could propose a local situation, which is accepting inputs from a wide area network. What? Why? Is it not a paradox to explore something from the net, while usually we explore something on the net? I think, yes, it is a paradox on one hand, and on the second, it is a sign of changing the order of things. The people used the internet for checking what is in the reality. They used it also for getting information about virtual things. Now, it is a situation maybe, where we need more real than virtual objects, more interpersonal than community-based connections, and more physical than intellectual to do. It is the time when the network should check the reality if it still exists or not... the virtual should appear again in the real. Why not? Independently that it is true or not, the internet-based locative artworks are signs of something similar. In the last decades, we had the possibility to control gardens (Goldberg et al vol.)i, real instruments (Moroney and Morgan vol.), lighting (Kovács vol 2.) etc. But really, why? Why is it important to be controlled by anybody (or nobody), and must be listened by us? The same question from an aesthetical point of view: why we should listen to somebody else, who could not be responsible for his/her product? The answer comes from fair-trade movement, an ethical approach in marketing. We could introduce ethical sense into network communication as well: if we used servers to get information from them, we should let them also to get information about our world... just simply re-activate our servers and clients to be partner in it. In a network-controlled sound installation of me, »Network Drive« (Kovács vol 1.), generated sounds were responding to a website’s interaction. During this work, I introduced the term nobody as controller of something. Nobody is not a machine programmed to do something, nor a human (either it is or not) sitting somewhere in the world, clicking on a webpage. Without nobody, nothing happens. But we can not regard it as actor, because there is no responsibility for acting; either we can not regard it as audience, because he/she is not here locally... The similar was by presenting the network-based »Zsolnay Light-Organ« (Kovács vol. 2)ii, where a festival’s decoration lighting was controlled by pushbuttons on the festival’s website. It was strange feeling anyhow, that audience and events on a local situation was subordinated by the result of hundreds of nobodies’ work, while all the process was streamed live. Nobody listens: As we found above, we could arrive to a standard performer-audience constellation, the communication methods do not matter. In this sense, nobody is similar to anybody – the roles of the listener and performer are a little bit mixed. If nobody listens to a composition, the process has no feed-back. If anybody could listen, but nobody is out there, nobody could take care about feed-back. When we let network strike back in such a way, the possibilities of interaction could be expanded. This is not a question, it is only a (sound-)vision.
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ENDNOTES i
Between 1996 and 1997, the project is closed already.
ii
A web-controlled light organ directed to the chimneys of Zsolnay Factory in Pécs, presented in 2012.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kovács, Balázs. »Network Drive.« Web. 14 July 2014 <http://kbalazs.periszkopradio.hu/networkdrive/?lang=en> Kovács, Balázs. »Zsolnay Light-Organ.« Web. 14 July 2014 <http://kbalazs.periszkopradio.hu/ zsolnay-light-organ/?lang=en> Kubisch, Christina. »Electrical Walks.« Web. 14 July 2014 <http://www.christinakubisch.de/en/ works/electrical_walks> Moroney, Gearóid and Morgan, Fearghal. »Guitar Player.« Web. 14 July 2014 <http://fyp.gearoid. me/> Noll, Udo. »radio apporee.« Web. 14 July 2014 <http://aporee.org/maps/> Goldberg, Ken et al. »The Telegarden. 1996-97: On Exhibit at the Ars Electronica Center. « Web. 14 July 2014 <http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden/>
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Sven Anderson Toward a Minor Architecture: Manual for Acoustic Planning (MAP)
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari describe minor literature as emerging from a minority culture expressed within or through a majority language, burgeoning with an implicit tendency to deterritorialize the power of the majority and to reveal the latent power of the marginalized or minoritarian perspective. We might imagine the concept of a minor architecture with the same potential, in which alternative spatial practices that perform as para-sites upon and within the fields of architecture and urban design are able to expose highly relevant modes of spatial enquiry distinct from those that emerge from the established perspectives of the major urbanist professions. As contemporary art practices cross over into this domain and seek to function from this minor perspective in relation to the production of the built environment, the concept of a minor architecture becomes a useful conceptual tool for understanding how these practices relate to the majorities that they interface with. With this notion of minor architecture in mind, this presentation will focus on the first stages of a public art project titled »Manual for Acoustic Planning and Urban Sound Design (MAP)«, commissioned as part of Interacting With the City, the second strand of the Dublin City Public Art Programme. The project is based on working for one year within the city council in the experimental role of Dublin City Acoustic Planner & Urban Sound Designer, negotiating the projects‘ outputs and workflow in response to how this concept is received internally within the council. Extending some of the ethics and methodologies of works carried out by the Artist Placement Group (APG) in the 60ies and 70ies, this project emphasizes a dematerialized practice through which produced objects (in the form of public sound installations) emerge as residual artifacts that are encountered as design prototypes executed within (or even by) the council itself. This approach opens new channels for the city - as an institution - to engender a sense of responsibility and possibility regarding this mode of working with sound in the urban context as an extension of existing planning and design processes. Working from the minor perspective of sound within the city (or of urban sound designer within the city council), the project functions as a productive dialectic set within an institutional framework, suggesting an optimistic mode of sustainable production that looks beyond the execution of finite urban interventions as well as beyond an internalized cycle of institutional critiquei.
ENDNOTE i
See here the audio-video format: http://vimeo.com/100388901
AUDIO-VIDEO CONTENT 0 min:00 s Introduction of Sven Anderson, by Anamarija Batista - 1:28 Acknowledgements by Anderson for the Organizers of project/seminar: »Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation.«- 01:45 Pass of Anderson in Dublin City Council - 03:01 Two books * Félix Guattari, Gilles Deluze: Kafka. Toward a Minor Literature; and Claire Bishop: Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - 03:55 Previous projects of Anderson* »Streets: Past, Present & Future«: sound and video installation in a busy tram station, Dublin, 2003 - 05:20 Shift: Artist > Project Manager > Incidental Person - 06:41 Previous projects of Anderson* Sound installation in the abandoned Pigeon House power station as part of the project »Landing Place«, Dublin, 2013 - 08:21 Pre- and history of »Manual for Acoustic Planning and Urban Sound Design (MAP)« - 10:52 Proposal: goals of MAP - 12:00 Research question: If there is an open framework within which to develop the idea/role of the artist as urban
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planner … ? - 13:42 Theoretical background: Minor Literature <> Minor Architecture - 16:24 About the City of Dublin - 17:50 Actors of MAP - 19:05 Artist and Institution (Dublin City Council) - 19:33 Quick look on »Artist Placement Group (APG)« - 20:10 Qute: aims of APG - 21:03 Criticism of APG - 22:02 Slogen of APG as well as Anderson - 22:14 Bishop / APG / Modes of Authorship & Evaluation - 23:22 Artworks/prototypes * »Smithfield Plaza«- 26:35 Draw attention to the potential of acoustic design 27:36 Artworks/prototypes * »Meeting House Square« - 30:15 MAP/Trinity College Dublin Masters Projects - 31:50 Noise Maps, Reports and Statistics … - 32:34 … and Action Plans - 33:29 Key to success of MAP - 33:55 Summing-up and representations - 36:00 Discussion, moderated by Batista - 36:03 Q: How far is acoustic space planable? - 38:19 Q: How is Anderson’s work influenced by the institution: Dublin City Council? - 39:43 Q: Noise vs. sound in the city - 41:12 Q: Subjectivity - 43:10 Q: Objectivity - 44:36 Q: Perception, evaluation - 46:38 Appendix
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SITE SPECIFIC PRACTICES: CULTURAL POLICIES AND IMAGINARIES
Zoltán Bencze 4 Motivations and Objectives Behind Art Contests in Pécs
The Transdanubian Chamber of Architects ran two international art contests for public spaces in Pécs within the program series called »ARCHITECTURE AND CONTEXT« i in 2010. Each tender received its name after a 20th century artist who was born in the City of Pécs. One of them was named by Victor Vasarely, and the other one by Marcel Breuer. As a result of the »Vasarely International Public Art Contest« a new artwork was born in Pécs. After 3 years the Contest also produced a new artwork for public space in Aix-en-Provence in France. In 2014 beside the Vasarely Contests a new art award was also established by the City of Pécs. Now the Vasarely project still continues and producing new public place artworks in different European cities every 3rd year. In this text I would like to talk about the motivations and the objectives which led us, founders of the Victor Vasarely program in Pécs at that time, in 2010 and since onward. I also hope when we talk about motivations the discussion will be a little bit about the situation of public spaces in Hungary too. Motivation / 1: from the state of the publicity of art. In connection with art in public spaces it always must be considered who decides about what goes into the public area. In this meaning, in Eastern Europe in the 2nd half of the 20th century, public spaces were the scene of representation of political regime. In Hungary, early in the 90ies after the political changes, monuments of the former regime vanished and new artworks in public area usually were born between political debates, many times with reinterpretations of the national history. The process was quite normal after the 40 years of foreign influence in Hungary, but this period could be characterized mainly with the lack of social consensus. The case of Pécs was similar by that time: most statues or monuments were set based on the national history, awaiting for new canonization or legalization. Objective / 1: After this period we wanted something different. Our intention was to create new artworks in public area that have connection with the present challenges of Pécs and which are able to open a new way for professional and community discourses about the city. So we set two art contests for new artworks in public areas: for curating the 1st »Marcel Breuer Art Contest« we have chosen József Mélyi, Hungarian art historian, who was ambitious to renew the genre (the form) of monuments in Hungary after the bad practice of two decades. He suggested a contest for the memorial of Marcel Breuer. Breuer’s career seemed to be a good opportunity to start progressive dialogues in that period of Pécs when actually giant architectural projects were reshaping the city because of the European Capital of Culture’s investments (eg. a new concert hall, a museum, a library, an art district and public spaces were under construction). Result / 1: The winning project of Breuer Art Contest, created by István Csákány could give a strong reaction for the curator’s ambitions. Csákány’s plan was titled »Marcel Breuer Memorial Room« which was actually an antithesis of the memorial, expressing the paradoxes and the impossibility of the Breuer remembrance in Pécs. Because Breure’s carrier had no direct impact on Pécs, vice versa Pécs had no significant impact on Breure’s carrier. As the workplan had so powerful critics on the actual cultural policy of Pécs, the city council did not support it and finally it was not realized. Motivation / 2: from the practice of public space reconstructions in Hungary. After the political transition in the 90ies public spaces were in run-down condition, although the development of public area had no priority for a long period, while the urban population was really unsatisfied with their built environment. In this context, there was no doubt that the reconsideration of public spaces was not only an artistic and architectural issue, but also a kind of test of democratization as well. Hungarian towns first time started working on the rehabilitation of their public areas in the 2000s as a result of the European subsidies. The case of Pécs was the same by that time: the local people were unsatisfied with the physical conditions of the city: with the smog, poor quality of roads and public spaces without
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public investments, as well as the huge block of flats and the old downtown were also dilapidated. Mostly commercial investments formed the city’s shape in the 90ies. After this period, more than 30 public squares were rebuilt at the same time for the year of the European Capital of Culture: Pécs2010. Unfortunately, almost all this projects were carried out without the involvement of local communities. They just have gotten them for present. Nobody asked about their interests and needs about their own environment and neighborhood. After 50 years, it seemed like the City of Pécs missed a good opportunity to strengthen the responsibility of local people’s commitment to their built environment. Objective / 2: We believed that, arts could help in this situation so we set the second, the »Viktor Vasarely International Public Art Contest« for this aim. We have chosen Hector Solari, German media artist as curator. Based on his concept, the main square of a formal mining housing estate, called Uranium City which is facing social problems became the venue of this public art competition. He expected an artwork which can start new dialogues about the urban environment of local residents and which is able to generate new authentic meanings as well. Result / 2: The winning project of the contest is titled: »37m2« by Zoltán Makra and Dóra Palatinus, which shows the parameters of a typical small apartment in real size. The artwork is exactly 37m2 big and set up in the main square’s publicity in Uranium City. The »37m2« offers a reinterpretation of the relationship between the present circumstances and the past heritage. At the same time, the reception of »37m2« is controversial in the local neighborhoods. Anyhow, the new artwork has more opportunities to enrich the topic of art of public spaces in Pécs. Motivation / 3: from the art scene in Pécs. In the 70ies and 80ies, the City of Pécs had significant position in the fine art scene in Hungary: with the Art Academy, some museums, home on a 20th century modern painting collection and with galleries of contemporary art. Despite this rich tradition, the art practice in public areas could not renew in Pécs since 80ies and the European Capital of Culture: Pécs2010 program did not get any changes in the field of fine art. Objective / 3: We expected that some successful international projects with high quality new artworks could give promising possibility for opening up new issues about urban space and art, as well as building up international relationships and involving local art institutions to refresh their profile. Result / 3: So we have opened debates and invited institutional actors (eg. local art school, Art Academy and museum) into the process of the program. At the same time we built up international relationships: two of the most important partners were the Robert Bosch Foundation in Germany and the Vasarely Foundation in France. The latter organize a new contest in Marseille-Provence after our initations during the project in Aix-en-Provence in 2013. Now we are planning the future together. Motivation / 4: coming from the culturalled policy of Pécs which prefers projects that could help to turn the cultural products and the quality of urban area into economic dimension. In this way, largescale infrastructure projects were realized few years ago: a new concert hall, a museum, a library and an art district were built. Objective / 4: We would have liked to take the advantage of this policy and also add to it. We hoped that a successful international art project can bring the city into a better position in the cultural map of Europe. Therefore, we planned to establish an international art award for public spaces, founded in Pécs. Result / 4: We built up great connection with the Vasarely Foundation in France and the City of Pécs stand behind the idea of the art award as well. In May of 2014, »Vasarely Art Award for the Public Spaces of Europe« was established. Nowadays we are forming an art board which will direct the award and we are searching for a city in Europe, where 3 years from now the following Vasarely public art
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competition could be settled. Our aim is to produce valuable new art pieces in public spaces of Europe. It is a long way and we made the first steps. ENDNOTE i
See more here: www.ek2010.hu
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Johannes Suitner Inner City Cultural Symbolism: the Politics of Public Space Transformation in Vienna
Driven by an urban Renaissance, economic adjustments after Fordism, and the narrative of intensifying inter-urban competition, European cities have since the 80ies put intense efforts in re-inventing their centers. And, these makeovers have to a large degree referred to the cultural particularities of urbanity and place in the one or other sense. Be it the spectacular architectural design of landmarks that celebrate the new-found self-esteem of a post-Fordist, globalized community, the staging of mega-events, or the elevation of a distinct storyline of local heritage - culture is always in place as either the icing on the cake, or the very substantial ingredient to urban transformation (Bianchini and Parkinson vol.; Zukin vol.; Häußermann et al vol.). The same holds true for Vienna, although in our conventional wisdom we feel the scholarly stories of urban change from the 80ies and 90ies need to be rewritten for that case. But, in fact, despite the city’s unquestioned planning history as an explicitly welfare-oriented regime, its recent transformations tend to be more entrepreneurial than one would think, as several cases have shown (Novy et al vol.; Hatz vol.; Novy vol.). And in this regard, both a focus on inner city areas and cultural specificity are recurrent characteristics and guarantors for their success - at least in economic terms. Yet, this would not be as interesting, if both inner city location and cultural symbolism were not legitimizing arguments in the planning-political process of decision-making in the first place. Numerous of today’s large-scale projects and processes of urban transformation are permeated by these two factors, which can hence be considered as dominant imaginaries of planning contemporary Vienna (De Frantz vol. 1., 2.; Hatz vol.; Grubbauer vol. 1., 2.). The case of Karlsplatz, one of Vienna’s largest squares and central public spaces, is no exception. Looking back on an 800 years long history, Karlsplatz went through an uncountable number of physical transformations, which also determined its culture as a versatile, yet rather undefined place of the city. Only in the 20th century it began to serve as what it is today: one of Vienna’s most important public transport hubs and the collective link between some of the city’s most renowned cultural and educational institutions (Geschäftsgruppe Stadtplanung). Anyhow, it still could not come up to its name as a square until in the 90ies the focus on its role as a public space and interests in transforming it into a place to sojourn evolved. It was back then and through the efforts of the Kunsthalle, which was temporarily located at Karlsplatz, that the undefined inner city area increasingly started to become Vienna’s gravity center of art in public space (KÖR). 20 years later and spurred by intense planning-political efforts to transform Karlsplatz into a representative place of the city, it has gained the status of the art space of the city: »The project was completed in 2006 with the Kunsthalle zone; today, »Kunstplatz Karlsplatz« may be called a cornerstone of Vienna’s regional and international positioning as a city of the arts.« (Municipal Department 13) What happened within these past two decades was a state-led makeover of Karlsplatz that had found a new way of influencing its perception and wide-ranging image. It was not only once again transformed physically, but symbolically. Since the late 90ies, the central public space was intensely aestheticized both in material and semiotic terms to cover it with the anyway established inner city cultural symbolism that transports the dominant imaginary of Cultural Vienna. Herewith, Karlsplatz’s recent transformation uncovers an unquestioned planning ideology that is typical of the city’s current approaches to cultural planning and modes of democratic representation. Without going into detail about the transformation process and the political discourse that accompanied it, it can be stated that two powerful imaginaries helped legitimize the reinterpretation of Vienna’s last undefined central public space. The first is the imaginary of the contemporary European city. It is structurally defined through mono-centricity, while strategically being oriented at global
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inter-urban competition for tourism and investments. The second is an (only seemingly outdated) narrow interpretation of the term »culture« as dominant heritage and high-brow arts. Backed by the cultural planning tradition of the past decades, it leaves no doubt that the local cultural identity and image of Vienna must be defined through the city’s imperial heritage and Vienna’s long-lasting and institutionally established fable for the »fine arts«. These two imaginaries become a powerful narrative of an inner-city cultural symbolism in Vienna’s planning-political discourse. In fact, the combination of a somewhat arbitrary European city imagination with a fine-arts-and-heritage culture definition can be considered an unquestionable reality in the city’s urban planning ideology. For the case of Karlsplatz’s makeover, it is spurred by the area’s inner city location and its close vicinity to the first district and Ringstraße, which not only both stand out for their well-conserved imperial architecture, but as tourism magnets for just this heritage-led cultural image. A managerial class of cultural and tourism economy representatives, planners and politicians demanded this cultural representation to include high-brow arts at Karlsplatz as well - yet, for different reasons of either artistic representation or public space aestheticization. Anyhow, all actors involved in the process of transformation a priori equated the inner city location of Karlsplatz with the need to transform it into a globally representative place of the city’s established cultural economy for the sake of touristic success and sustaining the hegemonic imaginary of Cultural Vienna in global competition (Nowak vol.). So, what the recent makeover of Karlsplatz has shown is that Vienna’s planning practice - at least as concerns big projects of urban transformation - flips the usual process of first material construction and then symbolic imaging and marketing. Instead, it begins with charging places with a dominant, uncontested culture-led symbolism before the actual material planning kicks off, in order to reach higher acceptance levels. Yet after all, the effect of establishing such inner-city cultural symbolisms is a double unequal treatment - first, between the city’s center and its (not at all peripheral) surroundings, and second, between an established cultural and tourism economy and numerous niche cultural processes of representation that occur in a city in globalization as Vienna is one. Hence, although inner city location still is a very powerful argument of the European city imaginary that holds true for the case of Vienna as well, the growing and diversifying city it is, it should think this through. And while the city’s distinct cultural imaginary might have gotten it a top seat in the rankings for attractive cities to visit, they have largely ignored the fact that it has in the meantime become a globalizing city, a metropolis in the making, that demands »culture« to be a broader term including literally all processes of expression of difference and representation of identities, and not only those of a past with which all tourists but only few locals can identify anymore. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bianchini, Franco, and Parkinson, Michael. Cultural Policies and Urban Regeneration. The West European Experience. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. Print. De Frantz, Monika. »From Cultural Regeneration to Discursive Governance: Constructing the Flagship of the »Museumsquartier Vienna« as a Plural Symbol of Change« International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29.1 (2005): 50-66. Print.
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De Frantz, Monika. Capital City Cultures: Reconstructing Contemporary Europe in Vienna and Berlin. Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2011. Print. Geschäftsgruppe Stadtplanung. Der Karlsplatz in Wien. Beiträge zur Stadtforschung, Stadtentwicklung und Stadtgestaltung 8. Vienna: Municipal Authority of the City of Vienna, 2010. Print. Grubbauer, Monika. Die vorgestellte Stadt. Globale Büroarchitektur, Stadtmarketing und politischer Wandel in Wien. Bielefeld: transcript, 2011. Print. Grubbauer, Monika. »Räume der Wirtschaft: Das Bürohochhaus als Bedeutungsträger in der visuellen Konstruktion ökonomischer Vorstellungswelten.« Stadt als Erfahrungsraum der Politik. Ed. Wilhelm Hofmann. Berlin: LIT, 2011. Print. Hatz, Gerhard. »Kultur als Instrument der Stadtplanung. « Wien - Städtebauliche Strukturen und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen. Eds. Heinz Fassmann, Gerhard Hatz, and Walter Matznetter. Vienna: Böhlau, 2009. Print. Häußermann, Hartmut, and Läpple, Dieter, and Siebel, Walter. Stadtpolitik. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2008. Print. KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum GmbH. »Projects.« KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum GmbH, 2012 <http://www.koer.or.at/en/index/>. Novy, Andreas, and Redak, Verena, and Jäger, Johannes, and Hamedinger, Alexander. »The End of Red Vienna. Recent Ruptures and Continuities in Urban Governance.« European Urban and Regional Studies, 8.2 (2001): 131-44. Print. Novy, Andreas. »Unequal Diversity - on the Political Economy of Social Cohesion in Vienna.« European Urban and Regional Studies, 18.3 (2011):239-53. Print. Nowak, Rainer. »Ein neues Museum für Wien.« Die Presse. 28 Augustus 2009. 11+. Print. Zukin, Sharon. The Cultures of Cities. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995. Print.
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Barbara Rief Vernay »Imperial Vienna«: Postmodern Staging of Urban History and Heritage as Competitive Factor
Long-term structural changes, globalisation as well as incisive geopolitical changes have led to an increasing competition among Central European cities for access to global capital, international investments, human resources and tourism. This competition has increasingly been transferred to the field of culture, namely by staging and visually representating local culture, urban history and built heritage, who have become essential competitive tools (Rief Vernay 79-113). Local culture becomes a competitive resource by linking it to global capital within the cycles of the symbolic economy (Zukin vol.). The symbolic economy aims at charging objects or spatial arrangements with values, atmosphere, narratives and to reproduce these as images. Global distribution and consumption of these images shall lead to an increase in the value of goods, services and urban space (Löw 128). When it comes to city or tourism marketing, its goal is to show the cities’ »finest faces« (Zukin 15) and therefore to visually represent them and to generate a consumable version which can be communicated to the outside world (Hauser 37). Historic ensembles and built heritage are particularly convenient for visually conveying cities’ images. The »culturalisation« of the economy and the »economisation« of culture (Dubois 33) are considered as main features of postmodernity. In his essay »Postmodern, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism«, Frederic Jameson emphasises the adoption of culture to business requirements and the corresponding »concept of a new systematic cultural nor as a characteristics of the world economic system of the late 20th century (50) which« »… assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic innovation and experimentation« (49). This means that culture and cultural heritage is represented in a particular, postmodern way to be economically efficient. During several centuries Vienna was an imperial residence. In today’s city competition, the capital of a shrunk republic, references to the heritage of the imperial past. An analysis conducted by Vienna Tourism Marketing highlights the utilisation of the past and the corresponding built heritage for economic purposes. It may seem logical that urban history and cultural heritage have become favourite resources in tourism marketing of cities. However, what concerns us here is the extent to which they are processed to make them accessible for urban competition purposes. All advertising material emanating from the Vienna Tourist Board presents Vienna first and foremost as an »imperial city«. The promotion concept is based on a branding campaign elaborated in 2009 whose aim was to better position the Austrian capital on the international market of tourism destinations. The campaign’s ultimate goal was to increase the number of overnight stays by 10% within a period of 7 years (PR- und Marketingagentur 5). For this reason, an international survey was launched to identify the most significant elements of the identity of Vienna, interrogating 11.000 travellers and 550 representatives of the Vienna tourism industry. The results of this analysis were crafted into five headline topics, out of which »imperial heritage« was the dominant opinion, followed by »profusion of music and culture«, »savoir vivre«, »functional efficiency« and »balance of urban and green areas«. An advertising agency then was commissioned to elaborate a communication strategy based on these five topics, but with a particular focus on »imperial heritage« (Brand Manual 6). Three main design principles should support a uniform appearance concerning the advertising message and the graphical formatting: 1. the repeated use of pictures with buildings considered as characteristic for the imperial history, 2. the insertion of a white so-called »communication square« with different campaign slogans, 3. all the images, showing imperial heritage or not, have to contain a golden yellow colour cast: »…the color of emperors, the color of a Wiener Schnitzel, the color of Schönbrunn: GOLD« (Brand Manual 30). According to these principles, the website of the Vienna Tourist Board, as well as related advertising materials, are dominated by images of sumptuous buildings and historic ensembles. It should be noted that the images never show the whole but only parts of different historic domes, ancient roofs, garden pavilions, interior spaces etc. All the images are coated with a yellow shade. Particular attention falls on details like statues, ornaments, mosaics, artfully crafted metallic elements etc., which reflect
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qualities like power, splendour, magnificence. At first sight, the audience does not understand which bits and pieces are pictured and it requires some research to find out that the imagery features parts of famous sights such as the Schönbrunn Palace, the Hofburg Palace, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the Belvedere Palace the interior of the Spanish Riding School etc. As a matter of fact, all of these buildings and ensembles evoke associations with the imperial court. The inserted slogans do neither bear any information about the sight nor the city in general. However, they are an invitation, suggesting the possibility to immerse into the past: »At this very moment a group of people is travelling back in time. When will you take your trip?«, »At this moment the emperor is granting an audience at the Vienna Hofburg. Don’t keep him waiting!« »At this very moment young men are waltzing. On horseback. Want to join them?«. »Welcome to Vienna! Now or never!« It is evident that neither the content of the images nor the accompanying messages target the intellect of the audience, nor it is about contemplation in art. The access to the product »Vienna« shall rather be established by immediate sensual experience and emotion, through regimes of pleasure and distraction, and not through the formal properties of aesthetic material (Urry 76). The visual quality of the campaign images, particularly the aesthetics of the surface, accordingly moves into the forefront. The aestheticization of the surface coincides with its separation from the content. Thereby we do not only think of the material content of the buildings or works of art and their functions but also of the narrative, in this case the imperial story, which emancipates from real Viennese history with its contradictions and barbarities. Not historical facts but stylistic connotations (aestheticizing imperial lifestyle) conveying »pastness«, are relevant for the immediate sensual impact which the campaign should trigger among the audience. The »conscious communication of imaginary and stereotyped ideals« serves to program the audience to the »appropriate »nostalgia« mode of reception« (Jameson 65). The blurring of fiction and reality, the arbitrary arrangement of historic figures and facts creates a »game of illusions« (Baudrillard 24), a simulacrum, which through its exaggeration is more impressive than the real history. Postmodern representation of the city such as shown in the framework of the Vienna tourism marketing satisfies economic requirements in so far as Vienna created its own earmark within the global urban competition by globally marketable images. This imagery appeals to a wide audience as it makes the city accessible via sensual perception. Prior knowledge about history and culture of the city has become obsolete. The construction of »imperial Vienna«, highly charged with affects and significance, mirrors the needs of today’s audience for it is intended to contrast economic and social reality as well as volatility and anonymity of everyday life – a short trip to the »lost paradise« of Proust (17), to the myth of yesterday. As Roland Barthes states: »In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, a world wide open and wallowing in the evident, it establishes a blissful clarity: things appear to mean something by themselves.« (Barthes 217) BIBLIOGRAPHY Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957. Print. Dubois, Vincent. »La vision économique de la culture. Eléments pour une généalogie« Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France, 46. 2 (2002): 31-35. Print. Hauser, Susanne. »Über Städte, Identität und Identifikation«. Kultureller Umbau. Räume, Identitäten und Repräsentationen. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2007. 29-41. Print. Jameson, Frederik. »Postmoderne - Zur kulturellen Logik im Spätkapitalismus«. Postmoderne. Zeichen eines kulturellen Wandels. Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rohwolt, Verso, 1991. Print.
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Löw, Martina, and Steets, Silke, and Stoetzer, Sergej. Einführung in die Stadt- und Raumsoziologie. Opladen: Budrich, 2008. Print. Proust, Marcel. Le temps retrouvé. Paris: Flammarion, 2011. Print. PR- und Marketingagentur für die Wiener Tourismusbranche. Edited by the Vienna Tourist Board, Vienna, 2013. Print. Rief Vernay, Barbara. Construire sur le passé. Patrimoine culturel urbain et politiques de développement. Etude comparative sur le rôle des quartiers historiques dans les politiques de développement urbain de Vienne et de Budapest. Paris: Doctoral thesis, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 2014. Print. Vienna Brand Manual. Edited by the Vienna Tourist Board, Vienna, 2009. Print. Zukin, Sharon. The Cultures of Cities. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Print.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Sven Anderson (sound artist, IRL/USA) His work explores the act of listening within diverse architectural, physical, social and emotional contexts. Recent awards include an Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Award (2013), a public art commission through the second strand of the Dublin City Public Art Programme (2013). He is pursuing a PhD at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) based on the practice of public sound installation within the larger fields of urban design. sa@svenanderson.net www.svenanderson.net Anamarija Batista (economist, art historian, AUT) She is holding a scholarship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (DOC-team) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (Institute for Art and Architecture). Her PhD thesis is about »Sound Artists as Urban Planners« a look at the cooperation between artistic and urban practices. She curated numerous exhibitions such as »The Common Which No Longer Exists« (Künstlerhaus, 2012) or »Retouch the Past_Shaping the Presence« (Bosnian National Theater, 2013). a.batista@akbild.ac.at urbanartresearch.wordpress.com Zoltán Bencze (architect, architectural publicist, HUN) He lives in Pécs and graduated at the University of Pécs. At the doctoral program of Moholy-Nagy University of Art And Design (Budapest) he researched urban revitalization procedures. Active member in many architectural, civil and artistic initiatives and launched many of them himself in Pécs. In 2009 he made one of the public spaces intervention’s architectural design in the frame of the European Capital of Culture, public space revitalization program in Pécs. In the term of 2009-2011 he was one of the thematic leader and project developer of the »ARCHITECTURE AND CONTEXT« architectural and artistic program series run by the South Transdanubian Chamber of Architects. zoobencze@gmail.com Dušica Dražić (visual artist, SRB) Education: 2006, MFA, »Public Art & New Artistic Strategies« at the Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany. Recent award: Young European Artist Award, Trieste Contemporanea, Italy. In the beginning of 2006 Dušica Dražić, Karolina Freino (PL), Sam Hopkins (UK/KEN) and Teresa Luzio (P) started to collaborate as »usually4«. Selected works, solo & »usually4« exhibitions: New city (curator A. Gregoric), Tobacna 001, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2013) / the amazing technicolor Dreamcoat (with Deqa Abshir), BEO_project, Belgrade, Serbia (2013). dusica.drazic@gmail.com dusicadrazic.wordpress.com Rudolf Giffinger (geographer, AUT) Since 2013 he is member of the Senate at Vienna University of Technology and official member of the council for Environmental Matters of the City of Vienna. He extensively works in European or Austrian research projects on metropolitan and polycentric development as well as on smart city topics like mobility, quality of living, urban competitiveness and territorial cohesion. rudolf.giffinger@tuwien.ac.at Charles Hoch (town planner, USA) He studies planning activity across scale and discipline. Struggling with New Left inspired criticisms of conventional rational planning at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Hoch studied the ideas of American pragmatist John Dewey. Setting out to discredit pragmatic ideas at their source he became a convert. He received his doctorate in Urban Planning from UCLA in 1981. After a short stint at Iowa State he settled in Chicago teaching urban planning in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois. chashoch@uic.edu
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Csaba Árpád Horváth (sculpturer, HUN) He received a DLA degree in 2012, with the thesis »Public Art: the Democratization of Art Appearing in Public Sites«, studied at the University of Pécs. Recent award: 2013, Artist In Residence Strasbourg, France, CEEAC. Solo exhibitions: 2013, »GPS: 47.938147,19.586284 It recedes as you imagine it«, King St. Stephen Museum, Székesfehérvár, Hungary; 2012, »30 days, 30 seconds«, GRO Gallery, Jakobstad, Finland. a.horvath.csaba@gmail.com Balázs Kovács (philosopher, sound artist, HUN) He is an assistant professor of electronic music and media arts at University of Pécs, Faculty of Arts. Holds a PhD in aesthetics of interactive sonification of image data. Head of Periszkóp Rádió, a community-based subcultural and art radio station in Pécs. His artistic works include electronic music improvisations, gesture based interactive sound installations, network-controlled sound or visual installations on public spaces, music for dance performances. Currently works on implementing digital culture into organic (agri)culture. kovacs.balazs@art.pte.hu kbalazs.periszkopradio.hu Szilvia Kovács (economist, sociologist, HUN) She was a junior researcher at the Institute for Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (20092012). At the moment she is a doctoral student at the Vienna Technical University, and a recipient of a DOC-team fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, with the PhD topic »The Artist as Urban Planner – A Social Science Research« (2012-2016). She is married and has a daughter and a son. sylvia.edina.smith@gmail.com urbanartresearch.wordpress.com Carina Lesky (cultural scientist, AUT) She lives in Vienna, where she has been working at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society as a research associate on amateur film and on the role and function of ephemeral film in relation to the understanding of urban phenomena. Currently she is holding a fellowship by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Doc-team) and writing her PhD-thesis »Stepping into the Street – Film in Public Space« about the role of film as in urban practice. carina.lesky@geschichte.lbg.ac.at urbanartresearch.wordpress.com Barbara Rief Vernay (geographer, AUT) After a number of years of professional experience in different architect’s offices in Austria she completed (2014) a PhD program at Université Paris X/ Nanterre Paris and University of Technology in Vienna. The thesis focuses on the use of built heritage within urban development strategies in Vienna and Budapest. vernayfl@yahoo.com Angelika Schnell (architectural theorist, GER) She is professor for architectural history and theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Focal points in research: history and theory of modernism; modern architecture and urban planning in the 20th and 21st century; media and architecture; the notion of transparency; the relationship of postmodern architecture and theories to the arts, to literature, and psychoanalysis within the context of design methods. a.schnell@akbild.ac.at
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Anja Steglich (landscape architect, GER) She is landscape architect (PhD) and works in the project group ROOF WATERFARM at the Technical University of Berlin. She has worked as lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Geosciences and Geography in Halle (GER), at the Faculty of Architecture in Rio de Janeiro (BRA) and at the Interdisciplinary Center for Urban Culture and Public Space at Vienna University of Technology. a.steglich@isr.tu-berlin.de Johannes Suitner (spatial planner, AUT) He currently works as a university assistant at the Vienna University of Technology. His professional interests range from urban politics, planning cultures and culture-led urban transformation to European spatial development and strategic planning. johannes.suitner@tuwien.ac.at Iván Tosics (sociologist, HUN) He is one of the principals of Metropolitan Research Institute (MRI), Budapest. He is mathematician and sociologist (PhD) with long experience in urban sociology, strategic development, housing policy and EU regional policy issues. Since late 2011 he is one of the three Thematic Pole Managers of the URBACT programme. He teaches at the University of Pécs, Department of Political Studies, Doctoral School. tosics@mri.hu www.mri.hu Hanna Adél Tillmann (HUN) is an artist, graphic designer and art teacher based in Budapest. Pavement drawings [Járdarajzok] Drawing series. Mixed technique, 2014. »When I received the exciting task to design this online publication I concentrated on the word »urban«. I tried to draw up what this word means for me. I found pavements as the »most urban« objects, as they cover the ground of the cities and they accompany us, pedestrians to our little journeys. As I observed pavements I noticed how different they are. I collected many kind of pavement-patterns and I transformed them a little bit. I hope these drawing series will serve the reader as a good company.« hanna.tillmann@gmail.com www.hannatillmann.com
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APPENDIX Tillmann, Hanna Adél. Pavement drawings. 2014. Mixed technique. Courtesy of the artist. (cover, page 2, 3, 4, 11, 12, 15, 38, 43, 46, 51, 54, 58, 61, 66, 68, verso) Page 7 Kovács, Szilvia. »Csepel Factory, Budapest- Entrance.« 2013. JPEG file. Tosics, Iván. »Csepel Factory - Sequence.« 2013. JPEG file. Glogar, Isabel. »Traces of Work.« 2013. JPEG file. Page 8 Glogar, Isabel. »Entrance to FUGA (Budapest Architecture Centrum).« 2013. JPEG file. Tosics, Iván. »Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation. Budapest. Opening lectures.« 2013. JPEG file. Glogar, Isabel. »Inside FUGA (Budapest Architecture Centrum).« 2013. JPEG file. Tosics, Iván. »Csepel Cultural House, Budapest - Façade.« 2013. JPEG file. Tosics, Iván. »Csepel Cultural House - Buffet + Lecture.« 2013. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation. Budapest. Workshop: The Creative Process of Dancing. Dancing as a Way of Space Perception - Sequence.« 2013. JPEG file. Tosics, Iván. »MÜSZI (Community & Art Level), Budapest - Sequence.« 2013. JPEG file. Tosics, Iván. »Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation. Budapest. Audience.« 2013. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »MÜSZI (Community & Art Level) - Exhibition + Lecture.« 2013. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »Viennese Simmering: Sound Stories and Cinematic Experience. Impressions - In the courtyard of a public housing in Simmering, Vienna« 2014. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »Viennese Simmering: Sound Stories and Cinematic Experience. Soundwalk in Central Cemetery, Vienna.« 2014. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »Viennese Simmering: Sound Stories and Cinematic Experience. Discussion.« 2014. JPEG file. Page 12 Kőszeghy, Gyula. Plan of Megyer Garden City, Pécs. 1930. Plan. Archives of County Baranya, Pécs. Page 16 Kovács, Szilvia. »TunedCity, Brussels, 2013 : Soundwalk Passacaglia with Guy De Bièvre.« 2013. JPEG file. Page 18 Iván Tosics: Complex Social Rehabilitation of the Magdolna Neighbourhood and the Ady Housing Estate: What Could Be the Role of Culture to Initiate Resident Participation?. CD-ROM. Vers. 1.0. Budapest-Vienna: Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation. - Project, 2013. <https://soundcloud.com/artinpublicspace/ivan-tosics-what-could-be-the-role-ofculture-to-initiate-resident-participation>
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Page 19 Tosics, Iván. »Lunar system in Zagreb - Sequence.« 2012. JPEG file. Tosics, Iván. »Street lightning in Torino - Sequence.« 2004. JPEG file. Tosics, Iván. »Wall painting in Lyon.« 2000. JPEG file. Page 20 N.d. Tirana’s new facades. N.d. <http://www.provisionalfutures.net> Photograph.13 November 2013. N.d. Tirana’s new facades. N.d. <http://suzyguese.com/> Photograph.13 November 2013. Tosics, Iván. »New types of murals in Belfast - Sequence.« N.d. JPEG file. Tosics, Iván. »Magdolna Quarter, Budapest - Sequence.« 2006. JPEG file. Page 21 Tosics, Iván. »Magdolna Quarter Program in Budapest - Sequence.« 2010-2013. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »Magdolna Quarter Program in Budapest - Sequence.« 2010. JPEG file. Page 26 Boccioni, Umberto. La Strada Entra Nella Casa. 1911. Sprengel Museum, Hanover. Oil on canvas, 100x100.6 cm. Page 27 Privatarchiv, B. Lupac. »Zeitdokument vom 27. November 1971.« 1971. (Wien) Photograph. Page 29 Angelika Schnell: What Ever Happened to What Ever Happened to Urbanism? CD-ROM. Vers. 1.0. Budapest-Vienna: Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation. - Project, 2013. <https://vimeo.com/101303265>
Page 33 Horváth, Csaba Árpád. »Trust - Sequence.« 2013. JPEG file. Page 34 Horváth, Csaba Árpád. »Word bubble - Sequence.« 2013. JPEG file. Page 36 Dražić, Dušica. Monument to the Future. 2011. Goethe-Institute, Nairobi. Site-specific installation, 40x40x260 cm.
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Page 37 Dražić, Dušica. Blueprint. 2011. Memory of the City, KCB, Belgrade. Installation, variable dimensions. Dražić, Dušica. New City. 2013. STUK arts centre, Leuven. Maquette of the new city, 1100x200x80 cm. Dražić, Dušica. Landscapes. 2013. BMUKK and KulturKontakt Austria, Vienna. 7 plaster sculptures, 30x30x13 cm each. Dražić, Dušica. Constructed Landscape. 2013. <rotor>, Graz. Model of the forest, variable dimensions, objects, video/7 min. Page 41 Kubisch, Christina. Electrical Walks Moscow. 2013. Courtesy of the artist. <http://www.christinakubisch.de/en/works/electrical_walks> Web. 20 July 2014. Noll, Udo. Apporee. <http://aporee.org/maps/> Web. 5 October 2014. Page 42 Kovács, Balázs. »Network Drive is hanging (on right) on a street of Brno.« 2011. JPEG file. Balázs Kovács: Web-controlled Light Organ. CD-ROM. Vers. 1.0. Pécs: Zsolnay Festival, 2012. <http:// www.ustream.tv/recorded/22167168> Kovács, Balázs. Light Organ. Graphic. 2012. periszkopradio.hu, Pécs. Page 45 Sven Anderson: Toward a Minor Architecture: Manual for Acoustic Planning (MAP). CD-ROM. Vers. 1.0. Budapest-Vienna: Art in Public Space. An Interdisciplinary Cooperation. - Project, 2013. < http://vimeo.com/100388901>
Page 49 Csákány, István. Marcel Breuer Memorial Room - Sequence. 2010. Design image. Marcel Breuer Art Contest, Pécs. Page 50 Csákány, István. Marcel Breuer Memorial Room - Sequence. 2010. Design image. Marcel Breuer Art Contest, Pécs. Körtefotó. Uranium City - Sequence. 2010. Photograph. Pécs 2010 European Capital of Culture, Pécs. Bencze, Zoltán. »37m2« 2011. JPG file. N.d. Microelectronics. 2013. Photograph.Vasarely International Public Art Contest, Pécs-Aix-enProvence. Page 55 Kovács, Szilvia. »Karlskirche and Karlsplatz, Vienna.« 2011. JPEG file.
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Kovács, Szilvia. »Café Kunsthalle, Vienna.« 2011. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »Albertina Museum, Vienna.« 2011. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »Gasometer, Vienna.« 2011. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna.« 2011. JPEG file. Kovács, Szilvia. »Herzig, Wolfgang: Die grosse Gesellschaft 1971. Oil on canvas, 250x313 cm. Essel Museum, Vienna.« 2011. JPEG file. Page 62 Vormann, Jan. Dispatchwork. N.d. <http://www.thevandallist.com/jan-vormann-street-artist/> Photograph. 10 October 2013. Page 69 Fülep, Márton. »Széchenyi Square, Pécs.« 2013. JPEG file
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CONTENT Foreword Charles Hoch: Forward...................................................................................................................3 Introduction Anamarija Batista, Rudolf Giffinger, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky, Iván Tosics: Marginalia on the Lettre »ARTISTIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE CITY SPACE«.................5 Anamarija Batista, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky: Art in Dialogue with Spatial Planning Practice.............................................................................................................................................9 Collection of Studies City Space: Contribution of Cultural and Artistic Practice to City Reconfiguration Anja Steglich: Stepping into the Pubic Sphere. Aproaches to Spatial and Artistic Planning Practices.........................................................................................................13 Iván Tosics: Art and the Regeneration of Deprived Public Spaces.....................................17 Spatial and Artistic Practice: Artistic Methodology as Part of Planning Processes Anamarija Batista, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky: In Pace with Metropolis: Artistic Practice and the Forming of Public Space........................................................22 Angelika Schnell: What Ever Happened to What Ever Happened to Urbanism?..............28 Csaba Árpád Horváth: New Genre Public Art. The Democratization of Art in Public Areas............................................................................................................ ..............30 Dušica Dražić: Constructed Landscapes..............................................................................35 Balázs Kovács: Questions to Sound Art on Public Spaces...................................................39 Sven Anderson: Toward a Minor Architecture: Manual for Acoustic Planning (MAP)....................................................................................................................................44 Site Specific Practices: Cultural Policies and Imaginaries Zoltán Bencze: 4 Motivations and Objectives Behind Art Contest in Pécs...............47 Johannes Suitner: Inner City Symbolics: the Politics of Art-Led Public Space Transformation in Vienna.....................................................................................................52
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Barbara Rief Vernay: ÂťImperial ViennaÂŤ: Postmodern Staging of Urban History and Heritage as Competitive Factor.......................................................................56 About the Authors...................................................................................................................................59 Appendix.....................................................................................................................................................63 Content........................................................................................................................................................67
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