documentation from Purchase of the Plot at Corner Tibusstraße/Breul, Province Muenster, Hall 5, No. 672 (1997) - Maria Eichhorn (see separate text)
Polly II: Plan for a Revolution in Docklands – Anja Kirschner, 2006
dvd, 29:50
Set in the not-so-distant future POLLY II – part satirical sci-fi, part soap opera and Brechtian ‘Lehrstück’ – portrays the lives of pirates and outcasts surviving in the flooded ruins of East London, a lawless zone set to become the latest in luxury waterside living according to government plans and venturing developers’ wet dreams.
The film imagines a future insurrection coloured by the legacy of dispossessed peasants, political radicals, whores, sailors, pirates, and former slaves whom once inhabited East London and fought a daily battle against their subjection to poverty, displacement and judicial terror.
“To some extent the plot of Polly II was based on actual events from the 18th century (...). But I'm not depicting or referencing these moments so they can be measured against so many subsequent defeats or presented as easily digestible celebrations of ´heritage´ or downright nostalgia (and I have little sympathy for re-enactments on that level); rather, I use them because they penetrate the present like so many callings and loopholes whose explosive potential still speaks to us. “
NEW, Novi Beograd 1948 - 1986 - 2006 US: Urban Subjects (Sabine Bitter/Helmut Weber), 2007
dvd, 20:00
ASCI print: Where Neither The Public Nor The Intimate Find Their Place - Sabine Bitter/Helmut Weber, 2007
Ink on paper, 120 x 75 cm
In the video NEW, Novi Beograd 1948 - 1986 - 2006, young architects, urban planners, artists and curators, all of whom live and work in Belgrade, read an unpublished text by Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre's text was submitted as part of a proposal with French architects Serge Renaudie and Pierre Guilbaud for the International Competition for the New Belgrade Urban Structure Improvement in 1986, sponsored by the state of Yugoslavia, and was discovered and translated by architectural historian Ljiljana Blagojevic. In his urban vision for Novi Beograde, Lefebvre emphasizes the processes and potentials of self-organisation of the people of any urban territory to counter the failed concepts of urban planning from above. For Lefebvre, at this late point in his life, the promises of both modernist capitalist, as well as state socialist, architecture and city planning had failed. Yet, Lefebvre viewed Novi Beograde and Yugoslavia as having a particular position in what he had elsewhere called “the urban revolution.” As Lefebvre states, "Because of self-management, a place is sketched between the citizen and the citadin, and Yugoslavia is today (1986) perhaps one of the rare countries to be able to pose the problem of a New Urban." In NEW, Novi Beograd 1948 - 1986 - 2006, the young architects, urban planners, artists, and curators read excerpts of Lefebvre’s text in architectural sites and urban landmarks in Novi Beograde such as the Sava Centar, The Museum of Modern Art, as well as places like the Genex Towers, the New Belgrade West Gate. The interior shots of these locations represent the architectural spaces of state modernism in Yugosalvia, the sites made from “urbanism from above”, that Lefebvre was suspicious of. These places highlight New Belgrade´s representative role in the history and development of a the nation state and the Non-Aligned Movement during the Sixties and Seventies. These sites are historical & present “urban facts” of New Belgrade and Lefebvre’s text both aligns and collides in terms of what New Belgrade was and can be. While the Video New is narrating the viewer through interior spaces of New Belgrade´s particular architecture and buildings, the accompanying ASCI-print, “Where Neither The Public Nor The Intimate Find Their Place” is based on an aerial view of Novi Beograd. The tension here is between the modernist scopic regime and Lefebvre's ideas of citizenship, self-organization, and spatial processes. By revisiting the urban sites of New Belgrade in 2006 - the capital of former Yugoslavia founded in 1948 - through Lefebvre’s concepts of 1986, both the video and the print look for productive forces (aligned to new emerging concepts of citizenship and new concepts of self - organisation from below) which produce the urban territories and neighbourhoods today.
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The video NEW and Asci print Where Neither The Public Nor The Intimate Find Their Place were produced as parts of the ongoing research project "Differentiated Neighbourhoods of New Belgrade" initiated by Zoran Eric, Center for Visual Culture, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade.
Untitled - Alessandra Chila, 2007
photographic collage on A3 poster, 400 copies
Alessandra Chila is a photographer living in London. Her socially constructed topographical views focus on the organization of space as a site of specific ideological attitudes, underlining the correspondence/division between nature and culture, leisure and labour.
http://www.alessandrachila.com/
She is currently working with Anthony Iles on a series of collages relating to Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price's proposals to site a 'Fun Palace' in the Lea Valley Regional Park, the current site of the 2012 London Olympics. In the collages the more surreal aspects of the plans (past and present) for this area are countered with the direct experience of people living, working and playing in this maligned area. Rather than seeing the Fun Palace plans as an earlier utopian moment the collages examine the outcomes of 'radical' ideas carried as the farcical regeneration: the collapse of the boundaries between 'leisure', work-discipline and policed consumption imposed as part of the current effort to turn the area into a Olympian mega-event sacrifice zone. (see http://saladofpearls.blogsome.com/olympics-flame)
A fire is a fire is not a fire - Claire Fontaine, 2005
dvd, projection
A fire is a fire is not a fire is a visual meditation on the power of the media during periods of insurrection. The video was produced in November 2005, while an uprising was taking place in the suburbs of Paris and quickly extending to the whole of France. At the time, for Parisians the experience of the conflict was entirely based on the images that they were watching on television. Burning cars and buses, devastated and carbonized landscapes were constantly depicted in the news, in total contrast with the actual perception of the inhabitants of the capital cities. The revolt appeared systematically meaningless and barbaric in these visual excerpts of violence continuously shown by the media. This phenomenon fuelled hatred and resentment all over the country and ended up generating more riots and more fires. At some point the television stopped showing these selected scenes of devastation and even ceased to report the countdown of the burnt vehicles, that was turning into a competition between the different towns of France. The sudden disappearance of these images prooved that they were as fake and artificially constructed as any capitalistic fairy tale. They were reversible through the mechanical process of rewinding, whether the oppression endured by the excluded and the accidental deaths of Bouna and Zyed caused by the police are irreparable. The fires that we see burning on a screen do not warm up anyone and the revolts that we watch from our armchairs are no longer revolts but a visual poison to keep us still and quiet.
Dehors – Haegue Yang, 2006
slide projection
Dehors is a slide projection with approx. 162 images, projected (fade in and out) with the time interval of 5-6 sec. in loop. All the used images are cut-out-advertisements for various real estate from different kinds of daily newspapers in Korea. The illustrated buildings range from commercial as well as luxurious high-rise residential building, holiday bungalows, attractive shops, etc. No matter what type is illustrated, the advertising shows mercilessly and shamelessly exaggerated representations of not-yet-built dream buildings. This real-estate imagery is the imagery of wrong-utopian, which is propaganda-like and manipulating.
But in the morally exaggerated and allusive representation of the future, we could see the reality, which is not necessarily utopian. Somehow these illustrated imageries can be proper documentation of the metal mapping we make of our habitat in most urban areas. Again, these images demonstrate a direct reality, real qualities of our civilization, such as speculation, vanity, ignorance, which we don’t want to accept, but are impossible to ignore.
I was fascinated by various layers of inherent social implications and significant aspects to be read out of these advertising graphics. I started to collect them. After the amount became enough to create a cinematographic order, I photographed them with back light so that the printed news shines through lightly. The overlapping effect re-enforces the contradictory but incredibly close relationship between the mechanism of finance and production of truth and fact in our contemporary society.
The perspective varies from flat front to bird-view perspective, and the light in the images ranges from bright beautiful day light to romantic sunset as well as to night scenes, while various news are slightly boasting about their messages and urgencies.
Somehow the juxtaposition between news and advertisings seem quite proper, because it is all dealing with the ethical aspect of civilization as part of very complex cosmos, reflecting our urban life and its performances.
Metaphorical Homelessness:
I take a gaze of ‘Metaphorical Homeless’ whenever I face this kind of material, which conveys severe reality in most hidden and ordinary moments. I feel lost in the civilization, but at the same time see so many similar destinies, which I sympathize with. This moment of being ‘outside’ creates the very place where these ‘Metaphorical Homelessness’ could dwell.
Building Codes – Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), 2001-2008
dvd compilation, 45:00
Building Codes Points of Interest, 2001
In the setting of a programmable city, CUP displayed a series of works on the regulation and construction of the built environment. The Programmable City is a part of Building Codes, a series of projects that also includes “Building Codes, Coding Communities” and “Important Housing Rights”.
http://anothercupdevelopment.org/projects/detail/13/
The Cargo Chain, 2008
The Cargo Chain is an organizing tool for longshore workers that shows the players and pressure points in today’s globalized shipping network. How do commodities get from factory to shopping mall? Who really has the power to move today’s global economy? This publication was produced through a collaboration between the Longshore Workers Coalition, Labor Notes (a quarterly journal of labor journalism and research), cartographer Bill Rankin, and the graphic design office Thumb.
http://anothercupdevelopment.org/projects/detail/55/
Social Security Risk Machine, 2006
Growing out of research on risk management as a contemporary form of planning, this publication was initiated after President George W. Bush announced his plans for partially privatizing Social Security. Using the straightforward graphics of a user’s manual, the fold-out poster depicts the basic financial mechanisms of the system, and the means by which they may be adjusted.
http://anothercupdevelopment.org/projects/detail/52/
Important Housing Rights, 2001
Stella Bugbee and Rosten Woo from CUP worked with Dave Powell from the Metropolitan Council on Housing to produce this door-sized poster that outlines basic tenant rights in New York City, including information about the regulation of heat, subletting, eviction, and rent. Printing was partially financed through poster sales at Storefront for Art and Architecture and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Posters were distributed free of charge through Met Council on Housing, Indymedia, and Nontraditional Employment for Women.
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If you are interested in working on or financing an updated bilingual English/Spanish version of the poster, please get in touch at info [at] anothercupdevelopment [dot] org!
http://anothercupdevelopment.org/projects/detail/19/
Public Housing Television Episode 1+2 , 2004
PHTV is an ongoing collaboration between CUP and the Public Housing Residents of the Lower East Side (PHROLES). PHTV uses a mix of animation, sketch comedy, and direct address to inform and activate the public about issues facing public housing. Recent episodes deal with tenant participation, anti-eviction training, and the Community Service Requirement.
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You can catch PHTV on Brooklyn Community Access Television, Manhattan Community Access Television. Or, email us at info [at] anothercupdevelopment [dot] org about buying a copy on DVD or VHS.
http://anothercupdevelopment.org/projects/detail/20/
Olympic Stories: Clays Lane – Noemi Rodriguez, distr. by Spectacle, 2006
dvd, 11:00
Clays Lane housing co-operative, situated in the future Olympic Village in Newham, is facing an inevitable eviction. This is the story of Clays Lane residents and their claim for fair treatment.
Additional information on London Olympics 2012:
Lammas land grab - Olympics strike again in east London http://www.metamute.org/en/node/7200
Hardly Heroes: Olympics Housing Plans http://www.uel.ac.uk/risingeast/archive03/essays/vaujany.htm
The Regeneration Games http://www.metamute.org/en/The-Regeneration-Games
Also see:
London Olympic Tour Spectacle Archive