Film director and researcher Joana Conill was invited to give a talk about her current reserach on sustainable and solidary economicies. Joana invited the audience to draw their dream house here some amazing drawings:
Homenatge a Catalunya II
A documentary, a research, a story of stories about the construction of a sustainable, solidary economics and decentralized. Weaving nets that overcome the individualization and the hierarchical division of the work. Thousands of persons every day all over the world. Here and now.
Film director and researcher Joana Conill was invited to give a talk about her current reserach on sustainable and solidary economicies. Joana invited the audience to draw their dream house here some amazing drawings:
Film director and researcher Joana Conill was invited to give a talk about her current reserach on sustainable and solidary economicies. Joana invited the audience to draw their dream house here some amazing drawings:
Last Session: Housing in Conflict - Alienation, Appropriation and the Social City
Christoph Schäfer, Recht auf Stadt, Artists at Occupying Amsterdam
Moderator: Ernst van den Hemel
Philosopher and activist Ernst van den Hemel introduces modes of urban re-appropriation through four examples that engage the question of activism and its relation to social housing, squatting, art and the free-party techno scene. How are these practices copying with the current economic and social situation?
"Music is under the same obligation as theory to reach out beyond the current consciousness of the masses." Theodor Adorno, from On the Social Situation of Music, 1932
Moderator: Ernst van den Hemel
Philosopher and activist Ernst van den Hemel introduces modes of urban re-appropriation through four examples that engage the question of activism and its relation to social housing, squatting, art and the free-party techno scene. How are these practices copying with the current economic and social situation?
"Music is under the same obligation as theory to reach out beyond the current consciousness of the masses." Theodor Adorno, from On the Social Situation of Music, 1932
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| Detroit |
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Detroit, Bellevue Avenue The City is our Factory: Politics of desire and the production of urban spaces. In the new urban fabric, subcultures, cultural workers, musicians and artists play a significant role as producers of collective spaces, places shaped by desires; as inventors of new perspectives and lifestyles. Christoph Schaefer introduced Park Fiction, a collective self-organised project that managed to break from the grip of real estate developers an expensive piece of land on the prestigeous riverbank of Hamburg St. Pauli. In a joint effort, a group of residents together with artists organized for the right to the city and against gentrification, winning a public park with a harbor view. The struggle for urban spaces is the struggle for the means of production: the city is our factory. What role can cultural workers play in this scenario? |
Pelin Tan: Conflict and Hospitality
Sociologist and Art Historian Pelin Tan discuss features of urbanization in Istanbul. How to create strong oppositional urban movements on common claim? (property, ecology, claiming the common...)What kind of tool can we use? what is the role of arts?
According to urban myths surrounding Istanbul’s Tophane district, murder and robbery are common, walking around in the evening is unsafe, and prostitution and drugs are rampant. This neighborhood, where I happen to live, is an area of the city near the main cosmopolitan cultural centers of Taksim and Galata; its residents are primarily Gypsies, Arabs from Anatolia and Kurds. Tophane represents the “Other” in the urban conscious of Istanbul’s residents; it is both uncanny and dangerous, a place to which urban cliches and notions of insecurity are readily attached. [...] Read more
http://www.ekumenopolis.net/
The Third Bosphorus Bridge is a planned suspension bridge located at the northern end of the Bosphorus, north of the other two bridges, in Istanbul. The bridge will be located between Garipçe (on the European side) and Poyrazköy (on the Asian side). Land prices in the northern, less urbanized spaces on both sides of the Bosphorus are already soaring in expectation of an urbanization boom thanks to the new cross river connection, according to Ekumenopolis, a documentary film of 2010 about the area. The green areas and wetlands in question are considered by some to be essential to the Metropolis' ecologic and economic sustainability.
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| map of Istanbul |
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| Istanbul |
According to urban myths surrounding Istanbul’s Tophane district, murder and robbery are common, walking around in the evening is unsafe, and prostitution and drugs are rampant. This neighborhood, where I happen to live, is an area of the city near the main cosmopolitan cultural centers of Taksim and Galata; its residents are primarily Gypsies, Arabs from Anatolia and Kurds. Tophane represents the “Other” in the urban conscious of Istanbul’s residents; it is both uncanny and dangerous, a place to which urban cliches and notions of insecurity are readily attached. [...] Read more
http://www.ekumenopolis.net/
The Third Bosphorus Bridge is a planned suspension bridge located at the northern end of the Bosphorus, north of the other two bridges, in Istanbul. The bridge will be located between Garipçe (on the European side) and Poyrazköy (on the Asian side). Land prices in the northern, less urbanized spaces on both sides of the Bosphorus are already soaring in expectation of an urbanization boom thanks to the new cross river connection, according to Ekumenopolis, a documentary film of 2010 about the area. The green areas and wetlands in question are considered by some to be essential to the Metropolis' ecologic and economic sustainability.
Afternoon Session: autonomous or Instrumentalised - Art and Social Housing
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| City Camp, Sabrina Lindemann |
Jeanne van Heeswijk, Roman Vasseur, Sabrina Lindemann
This session compares and contrsts the output of three artists who have produced works related to social housing, either through the location or through the conceptualization of the projects. How do artists participate to gentrification and how do they interfere in this project? Which role are artists playing in this process of transformation of the urban plan? The discussion starts with Sabrina Lindemann, who has worked on location on art projects in which the relation of the location with the historical context is the starting point. Lindemann is interested in the connection between indindividual stories and the general course of history. She introduces the art collective 'Mobile Project Büro' those members have experimented to find possible alternatives to the existing approach to urban development. The session follows with Jeanne van Heeswijk, a visual artist who creates situations in public places to provoke interactions between citizens. Her projects create new public places or else reshape existing spaces, to stimulate a collective cultural production. She works alongside artists, designers, and architects, as well as with members of NGOs. Jeanne addresses some of relevant questions on the perception of the concept of 'social', 'community', 'negotiation and participation', 'aesthetic and ethic.' et al. How do we mobile desires and energies in order to generate forms of action that affect the way we live and gather together? How do we produce space for the Community? How do we question our present and our future?
Last speaker artist Roman Vasseur. Working at the intersection between art, public space and urban re-development, Vasseur discusses the idea of 'community throuhg his work 'Let us Pray for Those Now Residing in the Designeted Area.'
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| Jeanne van Heeswijk, Dwaallicht, Rotterdam |
Yazid Anani: Contesting the Role of Art in the Public Realm
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| view of apartment blocks in Ramallah, Palestine |
Yazid Anani discusses the role of Art in the public realm of Palestine and his experience during the working of the exhibition 'Ramallah - the fairest of them all?' curated in collaboration with palestinian artist Vera Tamari. The exhibition investigated and explored social and cultural transformation of Ramallah. What does it mean to live in Palestine as a collectivity? What is the common? How does the City tranform and how do we create the condition for a re-reading of 'the common'? Looking at the details of what the society has become, how it is changing, how Neoliberalism reached Palestine and its capital, Ramallah, Yazid Anani addresses the problem of the destruction of Palestinian heritage, the death of the political project of liberation from the colonization and the shock of the growing new neoliberal cities in Palestine.
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| Projection, -Abi Fawk El Shajara- film posters in Al-Manara. Courtesy of Inass Yassin, 2010 |
Zoran Eric: 'Urban Feudalism' of New Belgrade
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| areal view, New Belgrade. |
How about Locality or is it worth to talk about Localization? How about the translation of the local?
Post-Western view: New Belgrade. How do we define self-organization? Curator Zoran Eric discusses New Belgrade and the idea of 'Urban Feudalism' in Serbia. What is New Belgrade? It's a borderline area between Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. It was the 'tabula rasa' that needed to be filled with Socialism ideology. But it represents the failure of the Socialist ideology and its project of 'New Belgrade'. After the '50s the project was abandoned and with it any cultural initiative. Lefebvre suggested that Ex-Yugoslavia failed in socialist project. How does New Belgrade appear today? How can such project trasformed into a space for the 'local' community? What is the social idea behind the definition of 'Block community'?How has the New Belgrade's project changed today?Zoran Eric talks about 'urban feudalism' a form of brutal neoliberalist appropriation of social life and public space through gentrification, social and racial segregation and economical and cultural inequialities.
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| view of New Belgrade |
Marjetica Potrč: Communities and Cities in Transition
Artist and Architect Marjetica Potrč discusses on the ad-hoc architecture and objects made by the residents of "informal cities," a name she has given to the impromptu residential areas that exist around the edges and in the shadows of global metropolises. She compares the model of the informal city in Caracas and the City Garden in Amsterdam.
What do the Community propose a model for living in the neighbourhood? How do we exit the empasse of Modernity? If we consider Society as Organism that generates new model of existence and coexistence. how do we practice and generate new model of existence? What, Where and Who is the local? Small communities and strong neighbourhood in Caracas have generated informal strategies of sustanability and participation. Informal City and the Informal Archtiecture produce village community ('barrios') based on forms of 'oral' regulation instead on 'written' regulation.
http://www.potrc.org/index.html
Day Two: Yes Men – Yes Lab Strategies of Empowerment
What kind of strategy could us develop to actively engage in the discussion of social housing? How can artists use their creativity to help activists and to develop strategies of resistance agaist urban speculators? Yes Men insight on social housing corporation Marketing Strategies...
Miguel Robles-Duran
Miguel Robles-Duran. Born in Mexico City, studied architecture at the ITESM in Monterrey, Sci-Arc in Los Angeles and The Berlage Institute, Rotterdam. In 1999 opened his office in the border region Tijuana-San Diego. In 2001 he was granted in San Diego the 2001 Honor Award of the American Institute of Architects and this year (2007) he won the “Designing Politics-The Politics of Design” Award given by the International Design Forum (IFG) in Ulm, Germany. His work is currently exhibited at The Architectural League of New York, World View Cities. He has taught theory and design at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Tijuana, Mexico, at "The new school of architecture" in San Diego, California, Woodbury University Los Angeles/San Diego, postgraduate urban design at K.U. Leuven, Belgium and architecture/urban design at The Berlage Institute. Presently he teaches a postgraduate thesis design studio and an advanced theory seminar,at TU Delft and the Berlage Institute, The Netherlands, where he is also conducting research as PhD candidate on contentious collective urban manifestations. Cohabitation Strategies is based in Rotterdam since 2004.
http://www.cohstra.org/CohStra/Home.html
Don Mitchell on TENT CITY: Lesson on the Right to the City from the Urban Interstice
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In the wake of the economic crisis, Don Mitchell’s intervention focuses on ‘Tent City’ as a central site for housing the social. Tent Cities have a long and important political history in United States. A tent city is a temporary housing facility made using tent. Informal tent cities may be set up without authorization by homeless people or protesters. As well, state governments or military organizations set up tent cities to house refugees, evacuees, or soldiers.   The talk examines the political history and the more recent evolution of Tent City. Don Mitchell proposes a reconsideration of the political potential of Tent City as a possible model of 'transition' toward an alternative forms of living which exceeds the Neoliberal model. |
First day symposium - November 4 2011
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Welcome by Director Fulya Erdemci the Social' by pointing to the recent riots in London as symptomatic signs of growing social inequalities produced by the current economics and political system. Drawing on Zygmunt Bauman's reflections on the London riots, the symposium curator highlighted the role and responsibility of political and social Institutions in securing better living conditions for their citizens. At the same time, London riots shows us a general dissatisfaction, but also an ever-growing form of collective consciousness. If the community is a heterogeneous and highly conflictual space of participation, then what is the role of the State? How can Governments safegarde these social spaces? How can we operate within the capitalist system? How can we envisage alternative modes of existence? The answers to this question are obviously not simple and cannot be solved in two days. Nevertheless, the discussion has just started.... you can follow us on: facebook |
The Lack of Words to Describe What’s Left is Almost Tangible
A small lexicon concerning an individual’s understanding of the current situation in the Netherlands.
by Ernst van den Hemel
Everywhere people are scurrying to find words to describe what is happening. Increasingly people are feeling that words are no longer suitable to reach either consensus or to express dissent. Those who want to express criticism can feel an active lack of words behind which one can rally. What follows is a very personal lexicon of words that fail to house the social.
‘Polder model’
What is left of the famous Dutch ‘polder model’ consists of one person in parliament. The technocrat head of the social-democrat party was hailed as the social-democrat answer to populist times, yet fails to revive old values. Stubbornly insisting on doing old-school politics, he speaks of respect and decency like reminiscent of an age in which it ensured the most common-sense definition of the polder model (the same one wikipedia offers): ‘a pragmatic recognition of pluriformity’. For anyone aware of the basics of current Dutch politics, charged as the situation is with talk of failed integration, notions of insecurity, and an obsessive fear for Islam, this model is clearly an anachronism. In a recent bout in Dutch parliament, the social-democrat leader Job Cohen was heckled, insulted and humiliated by populist politicians. This was certainly to much delight of the media, for which the combination of shame and amusement served to feed a public hungry for both. What we can see is not just the end of old politics versus new politics, it is also a display of the defunct status of consensus based politics, and thus of a form of dialogue. This type of politics traditionally pacified conflictual politics and in the past the polder model has helped to marginalize forms of politics that were aimed at dissensus. Now, ‘poldering’ as a way of doing politics is dead, and conflict is generated by criticizing its implied depoliticized tolerance. As a result the media reported on the heckling of the social-democrat as a sign of the declining moral standards in the political arena. While in fact it was the belated death of social-democratic ‘poldering' and the possibility for dialogue that we were witnessing. What was presented as a clash was in fact an embarrassing silence and the impossibility of breaching the single language of politics that is available at the moment. The result is a widespread feeling of unease amongst those who want to criticize the status quo. People wanting to criticize current developments are stuck in either appealing, in a conservative fashion, for an outdated model of consensus or in failed attempts to defend their ideals using the language of liberal democracy – a language that in fact might not be suitable or capable to accommodate them.
‘Art’
Defending art in a politicized society – one that is increasingly asking art to defend itself in terms that are alien to its practice - artists, curators and institutions are scurrying to redefine themselves. Or, the protests seem to come down to simple, conservative resistance: saying ‘no’. At a demonstration in the autumn of 2010, entitled ‘Nederland Schreeuwt om Cultuur’ or the ‘the Netherlands is screaming for culture’, a representative, Frits Bolkestein, of the ruling liberal party VVD, spoke to a mainly left leaning critical-of-the-government crowd. ‘I am not in favour of budget-cuts on culture. I am against these budget-cuts. I am in favour of an increase of funds for culture. And I want to finance these extra funds for culture… by taking money away from development-aid.’ After a short pause, the crowd roared with indignation.[1]
The moment and the triumphant grin on Bolkestein’s face was a clear indication of a lack of language that expresses solidarity, or that knows how to speak about language without relegating the discussion to a debate on dividing funds between ‘leftist hobbies’ such as art and developmental aid. Bolkestein presented a clear and dominant situation: politics consists of distribution of means within the status quo. The only answer was anger. A non-verbal roar that communicates very little.
‘Squatting’
With the criminalization of squatting on the 1st of October 2010, a number of things became apparent. First of all, the outlawing of squatting signalled a prevalence of the right to own property over the right to be housed, and the right for populations to claim empty spaces in crowded cities. At the same time it became increasingly clear that the language traditionally used to defend the practice of squatting had become insufficient. All-too often, defending squatting comes down to either cooperation with municipalities, proving that squatters are in fact good cultural entrepreneurs for the gentrification of neighbourhoods, or to retreat in an ‘outside of the State’ position, under the threat of increasing criminalization and evictions.
For a long time, it was possible to eat in one of the voku’s on each day of the week, squatters provided housing for precarious people, and free space for cultural activities that were marginalized in more commercial cultural spheres. How come this teach-by-example critique of society lost impact and momentum? In the period leading up to the ban on squatting, supporters invited cultural institutions, communal living spaces to place a banner on their building stated ‘made possible by the squatter’s movement.’ It was made visible in what way the history of squatting led to many mainstream cultural spaces. Yet, it became also visible how setting up and defending the appropriation of empty spaces was increasingly difficult. Why has it become increasingly difficult to defend a practice that provides housing in spaces that are not being used, that allows one to eat for a couple of euros every day of the week? That allows one to enjoy cultural activities without having to pay a high sum? That keeps a housing market troubled by speculation sharp? Whereas the polder model fails in making consensus as open to pluriformity as possible, the squatting scene fails to generate popular support for dissensus. Activists are holding out, and, indeed, as in Amsterdam, regional politicians and populations are against the ban on squatting, but they lack the language to defend those who appropriate space that is rotting away.
‘”Illegal” migrants’
In April 2011, Kambiz Roustayi set himself on fire on the dam-square in Amsterdam. This most visible and dramatic of act was immediately depoliticized in the media, as well in public debates. The news covered the item by stating ‘there is no reason to think that this act was politically motivated’. The harrowing footage of the event showed people shouting ‘What an idiot!’ and ‘Why don’t people do this sort of shit at home?’[2] At the same time, activists struggled to find words to connect the despair of a victim of Dutch immigration policies to the everyday life of an average Dutch citizen. They keep struggling to give words to the lived invisibility that is the result of policies whose goal is to criminalize the presence of ‘illegal’ migrants. They are right, it is outrageous that documented human rights offences in Dutch detention centres aren’t enough for massive protests against policies that push people to suicide. In light of the self-proclaimed respect for human rights in Dutch society, new words need to be found to connect an outward appearance with the actual indignation failing to provide human rights for humans on Dutch soil.
’Gay rights ‘
In a number of articles in recent years, Judith Butler stated that increasingly the issue of gay rights is connected to an intolerant form of islamophobia. We can see this problem clearly in the Netherlands. Once associated with the progressive avant-garde of Europe, the gay-rights agenda seems to have passed over in the hands of xenophobes and conservatives. Conservative as well as populist politicians promise to protect ‘our homosexuals’ from islamic intolerance. Interestingly, conservative standpoints moved from worries about homosexuality in public life, to an embrace of gay culture and stressing the need to defend gay individuals against muslim intolerance. It is one of many examples of left-wing language that has been hijacked by an agenda that favours identity politics and fear of foreign elements. The challenge is to formulate a discourse that accomodates ways in which notions related to gender and sexuality can be addressed without prefiguring an intolerant Western European notion of identity. There’s an Amsterdam movement of queer activists that are actively trying to align mainstream notions of gay movements with a broader political appeal. Their struggle, expressed in the Queeristan festival, should be seen as an attempt to reboot a process of progressive emancipation. Far from over, the struggle surrounding sexuality and gender should connect with the struggle against broader notions identity-politics, resisting those who want to claim their appeal to emancipation as an reason for oppressing a different minority.
The search for a common language: presence?
As someone who has been an active supporter of the squatting movement and who thinks that the treatment of illegal migrants is one of Europe’s central problems, as someone who thinks that art is important, yet also who is clearly convinced that the polder model and its emphasis on consensus has failed - in short, as someone who wrote the above, it becomes apparent that although the absence of words can be painfully felt. The coherence of these frustrations might be difficult to perceive, similarities are nonetheless beginning to arise, if only because there is an active lack of voice that offers people the idea that things can change.
A beginning of an answer might be found in the Occupy Movement, and in particular in the General Assemblies that are such a characteristic element of them. In Amsterdam, as in New York and in other places in the world, the human microphone method is employed, in which participants repeat the words of whoever speaks in the Assembly. Born out of necessity (the New York Occupants were not allowed to use amplification), the method has transformed into a symbol of a new style of doing politics. The public meetings are long, and the consensus-based model can be frustrating at times. Yet at the same time, the simple presence of people discussing and deciding political issues that address the 99%, and the active non-hierarchical participation enabled by the human microphone method might be more important than the representation of a group or the ideological outcome. This is what makes Occupy differ from regular demonstrations. They are not expressions of coherent opinions that one can negotiate with in order to quench unrest. They are not, in short, part of the polder model, but a presence of people united in frustration with the status-quo. The non-hierarchical democratic element in these protests is more important than determining which lobby-group or political party approaches the Occupy ideals most. As such the Occupy Movement can be seen as an exercise in democracy in times when representational democracies have failed to provide words for peoples’ problems. One should see the assemblies in Spain, New York, and during the Arab Spring not as expressions of a preference for a pre-existant flavour of the status quo. Instead the occupations of public space, and the assemblies held there should be seen as a new form of politics that might not be coherent yet, but as attempts to combine participatory politics with fundamental criticism, and as a univocal expression of the need to seek new words to bind different angers together. Far from being confused expressions of an ill-defined interest-group, the occupations should be seen as the disrupting presence of those who up until now have lacked words to explain what they are doing. The manifesto’s that arise from the different occupied squares and streets in the U.S, Spain and all over the world give voice not to a detailed pragmatic programme, but to an anger that lacks representation.[3] The manifestoes preemptively undermine the criticism that one needs to speak clearly in order to be heard.
In the Netherlands, at the moment of publication, the presence of masses is absent. The Occupy Movement is nonetheless is starting to generate responses, and according to various polls, it can count on the support of the majority of the population. Things are far from perfect however. A country whose entire recent political tradition consists of consensus, is now faced with its demise. The Occupy Movement is faced with questions like ‘show us your demands’, and ‘whose side are you on?’ and the participants struggle to keep their ideology open, and their action unclaimed by political parties without falling into obscurity. We will see if the Occupy Movement can resist these forces. But perhaps we should remember that, in a situation where speaking comes down to taking sides that are part of the problem instead of the solution, it is alright to resist the call to provide words. In a situation where potential critics are left with a one-sided linguistic scheme that favours a particularly zealous brand of neo-liberalism and conservatism - the question becomes how to rally around the silence before the storm. There is little coherence, but similarities are starting to appear.
What the themes adressed in the lexicon above have in common is that the lack of words to describe what’s going on is almost tangible. The moment it becomes tangible, all we need to do is grab it.
[2]See ‘Human Torch in Amsterdam’ on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSyNIgf9uwg&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fresults%3Fsearch_query%3Dkambiz%2Broustayi%26aq%3D
Architecture and its social responsibility?
To ask “what is new knowledge in architecture” today, one must ask or rather define what “architecture” means in the first place. Over the last two decades the role of the architect, at least viewed from a critical perspective, has been interrogated and developed substantially. Practitioners today no longer rely on the belief that it is the architect who produces the physical reality of space, but that “A”rchitecture is an a-disciplinary collaborative practice that questions and produces the mechanisms, which alter our reading and perception of and engagement with space – ranging from socio-political to cultural-economic parameters of consequence.
The question of what does one consider to contribute to the production of space is one that circulates around the potential effects on space and how those effects are and can be generated, amended and influenced – and who are the people and practices in charge of those proliferating changes.
Architecture with a big “A” can only be relevant again once it takes responsibility - in terms of negotiating, mediating and enabling relationships and conflicts that individuals and groups, whether public or private, can perform within space. Anyone interested in a subject of societal relevance will by default realize that any reality is based on complexity. “A”rchitecture deals with precisely this complexity; socially, therefore politically and spatially.
Where critical and collaborative research, first-person singular participation (i.e. “I contribute”), and individual dedication towards an ethical position question the modalities of practice, new sets of knowledge are being generated.
Architectural Space as Agent: Notes regarding The Winter School Middle East, Kuwait (2011)
A text by Markus Miessen (MM), Patricia Reed (PR), Zahra Ali Baba (ZAB) Kenny Cupers (KC), Magnus Nilsson (MN) and Ralf Pflugfelder (RP); introduction by Markus Miessen.
The Winter School Middle East is a localized, small-scale hub, which regularly performs cultural and educational activities in collaboration with local NGOs, schools, and individuals, and -– through its new, longer-term local presence – houses a critical platform for exchange. Being launched as an idea in 2007, the Winter School Middle East was set up as a roaming, mobile institution that has undertaken a series of workshops, seminars, mini-schools and conferences since its inception in January 2008: ‘“Learning from Dubai’” (2008, Dubai), dealing with the Labour Housing issue, and “Spaces and Scales of Knowledge” (2009, Dubai), dealing with the question of institution building, both in collaboration with the Architectural Association (London), The Third Line gallery (Dubai), and the American University of Sharjah. In 2010, the Winter School moved to Kuwait for a longer-term involvement and local engagement regarding the setting up of a platform for critical exchange. Combining the Winter School’s workshop methodology with local initiatives, this intensive workshop-based programme was and continues to be run as a design- and discourse-led curriculum that combines conceptual and spatial research in the process of criticism and the rigorous production of ideas. Students and staff work in teams of up to ten in which they develop individual and group projects. These projects are tested against the criticism of the group, but also against the knowledge and expertise of local protagonists.
When the Winter School was originally set up in Dubai, the driving force was clear: to establish a model for localized education, which would set itself clearly apart from the US model of franchised campuses, one in which major US universities started up foremost satellite campuses in the Middle East. This model was based on the post-9/11 reality and rationale that many Middle Eastern families would no longer send their kids to the US, hence creating a serious financial lack within the administrative structures of the universities. As a result, some of those universities decided to bring the campuses where the money is. Most of them simply replicated the source campuses, with academic staff from abroad only, who don’t know anything about the region, nor build up any long-term local knowledge as they tend to be on short rolling contracts. The dilemma is clear: the UFO has landed but does not really engage locally.
The Winter School instead aims to generate local knowledge with individuals and groups from the urban area and wider region that it situates itself in. Vis-à-vis the US model, the Winter School attempts to generate knowledge with locals, toolboxes that will remain within the region and are specific to the context in which they are situated.
In 2010, the Winter School moved from Dubai to Kuwait. In addition to the geographical shift, the new setting in Kuwait is also different and more ambitious, as its model aims both at a longer-term engagement as well as a specific place in which the school will build up a small institution and platform for exchange. This ambition regarding a visible and permanent local responsibility in terms of informal education further intends to generate a turf for the concept and reality of consequence when approaching a space for learning, support, and discourse.
Kuwait is of particular interest: tongue-in-cheek, it could be described as the most socialist-capitalist system that exists globally, with a democratically elected parliament, a benevolent ruler, free education, healthcare and housing. The political and cultural environment in Kuwait, other than in Dubai, is very liberal in regards to open discussion, with a tradition in platforms such as “Diwaniyah”: a spatial typology for political exchange. An open society driven by an “overdemocratisation”, the country is known for its vibrant society, in which all parliamentarians think of themselves as the prime minister, and everyone else – in the most positive sense of civil society – owns a non-expert expertise. Compared to Dubai, Kuwait has also been highly urbanized since the 1930s. This combination of liberalism and open politics presents an interesting starting point, but when it comes to public and discursive forms of education, Kuwait is only making use of classical and formalized structures, such as the centralized university. When it comes to education, especially from the point of view of spatial practices, urbanism and discourse, there is very little attention spent besides the formal and mostly outsourced planning of cities, as well as the classical architecture, mainly operated from within the discipline of engineering. So far, there has neither been an attempt to come to terms with alternative urban development, the serious outlining of problematic realities, and/or transparency in planning processes. There is an increasing need for the stipulation, development and growth of a local expertise beyond classical Western notion of urbanism, one that uses the specificities of the local context in order to generate new types of spatial practice.
The following conversation was recorded as a post-production of the January 2011 workshops in Kuwait.
MM The Winter School, which is now in its third year of programming, attempts to achieve to set up and offer a non-profit space that accommodates an opposition. An opposition not in the sense of necessarily being “against” something, but rather a space, which is based on the notion of both political autonomy within the context in which it is situated as well as to put forward an autonomous institutional framework, which is deliberately introduced from the outside, yet embeds itself within the actors, realities and questions of local and regional practices. The notion of Diwaniyah, as we have discussed it during the Winter School, could be read and interpreted both as a spatial phenomenon as well as a process. The Winter School – in the way it is set up, placed and structured – was meant to allow for a decentered perspective of politics, a re-understanding of everyday practice of the communal, even for locals, who are very familiar with the concept and everyday practice of Diwaniyah. In the sense of describing the School as an autonomous space, one could arguably compare it to the Diwaniyah as a “protected space”, a congregation space and lobbying device for political thought and opposition as the epicenter of constituency penetration into formal politics.
Patricia, in one of your seminars you explored the conception and understanding of what it means to set up a problematic as opposed to an understanding of the subject or object of investigation as problem. Could you please elaborate on this?
PR Firstly, I would just like to say, that I will refer to Diwaniyah, without an article in my contributions in this multilogue. The removal of the article treats Diwaniyah as a process rather than a thing. What became clear in our time in Kuwait was the ambiguity surrounding the definition of Diwaniyah, so it seems only apt to respond to this by apprehending Diwaniyah not as a static entity, but something quite malleable in fact, so in this sense Diwaniyah is always becoming. What I meant by introducing this more or less philosophical term of ‘problematic’ was not to suggest that we identify a problem of Diwaniyah per se, but rather that we form a particular approach, or angle on the complex issues embroiled within the notion of Diwaniyah itself. The basic maxim behind this discussion of establishing our individual problematics is to say that an interesting or relevant spatial intervention is wholly dependent on setting up an equally complex and novel problematic. So, for example, when we take up this term of ‘Protected Space’ coined by Marianne Tétreault in regards to the private/public dialectic at work within the spatial condition of Diwaniyah, we may possible start to approach the spatial problematics by further asking: From whom is Diwaniyah protected? Who is protected through Diwaniyah? How does Diwaniyah establish boundaries of inclusion/exclusion within the nomos of the everyday?
KC I think these are very good questions to begin unpacking the spatial agency of the Diwaniyah. For me, the notion of the “problematic” is less philosophical than simply analytical: it is about asking the right questions. The right questions here are the ones that open up the “black box” of the Diwaniyah. I think our position of outsider - which as Markus has mentioned shapes the politics of the Winter School - is crucial in this respect. The fact that the Winter School’s participants are either women or non-Kuwaiti, or both, undoubtedly shapes much of our questions - and the debates to which they have given rise. As a gathering of Kuwaiti men, the Diwaniyah is certainly a highly gendered practice. Its mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion are ambiguous to say the least: the regime of hospitality in the Diwaniyah generates both an explicit openness and an implicit closure. As outsiders, our approach to the Diwaniyah is shaped to a large extent by an imaginary rather than everyday experience. This situation I think reflects the nature of the Diwaniyah as a phenomenon in Kuwaiti society at large. As Mohammed Al-Ghanim - one of the invited public speakers and an officer in the national parliament - has suggested, the Diwaniyah structures Kuwaiti society not just as a concrete social practice, but perhaps even more importantly, as an imaginary. The Diwaniyah has given rise to political contestation at key moments in Kuwaiti history and as such has entered collective memory as a place of national success - regardless of whether many of these instances constituted actual political successes or rather failures.
MM Might the Diwaniyah in this sense be comparable to the Agora in Western culture?
KC This myth of an open public space of participatory decision-making - a myth which continues to entice the collective imagination and has led to the baptizing of “Agoras” across Europe... in spite of the fact that historians continue to inform us of the outright exclusion of women, slaves, and non-citizens was at its basis. The Diwaniyah seems to serve similarly as a locus of tradition in collective consciousness, yet at the same time, it might be a crucial agent of Kuwaiti modernization. Some of the current uses of the Diwaniyah - a Playstation room for youth, or a space to collectively discuss weight loss goals - attest to this hypothesis. For me, the most fascinating aspect of the Diwaniyah lies in such seeming contradictions. My main question is therefore: If the Diwaniyah is a “protected space” - a specifically designated space for politics - might it protect the political from entering the realm of the street and the spaces of everyday life? Or is it the opposite rather: the Diwaniyah makes urban life debatable and therefore becomes the agent through which political and other tensions can be channeled into more organized, rational discussion? Certainly Jürgen Habermas would be happy with the latter possibility. But to me, the Diwaniyah’s regime of inclusion/exclusion suggests otherwise.
MM In many ways, the Winter School itself acts as an Uninvited Outsider. Through its temporal structure and nomadic appearance, it questions both the normativity of the space of the “School” as well as, in the case of the 2011 Winter School in Kuwait, the normativity of those communal spaces and practices defined as Diwaniyah, a historically protected space, originating from tribal society, the leader of the tribe would offer a gathering space within his private areas. Let’s talk about Diwaniyah as a means to formally register a thought in an informal setting, a means of maintaining private and public social network. How can one think through the written and unwritten rules as to the use and protocols of space? How does it become a site outside of itself?
MN/RP Our studio took on the notion of the Diwaniyah in a deliberately literal and direct manner. The students were asked to design a full-scale subjective enabler/disabler of communication that was placed in an imagined Diwaniyah in one of the courtyards of the school. We wanted to create our Diwaniyah. The studio consisted of Kuwaiti women and Europeans. All involved in the studio were outsiders of the Diwaniyah. Although everyone was very generous and welcoming it was very evident that we all were aliens in this environment and that there really is no way to become part of it. This sense of being or feeling excluded was strongly felt by all participants and this was a theme that in different ways occurred in all projects. One can say that a sense of seclusion was a lowest common denominator for all projects. Many of the projects tried to establish individual spaces within the Diwaniyah in order to be able to withdraw from a perceived male dominated spatial and social pressure. Other proposals tried to destabilise the formality of the Diwaniyah by, from the outside, impose gestures that intended to shake up the perceived rigidity of the Diwaniyah.
MM In some of the seminars we discussed the notion of politics versus the political, both read through the goggles of Mouffe and Rancière. Would you agree if I called Diwaniyah the Mouffian space in which one agrees to disagree, a space of potentially oppositional, non-violent encounter, a network or scaffold of sense-making, a common ground, conceptual framework and shared space in which one meets to become a political community?
PR I would agree, I think Diwaniyah is a potentially space of debate, so very much in line (again possible so, not always the case) with Mouffian agonism. Important though to mention, is the very normative codes of conduct or common ground/ethos instantiated with Diwaniyah. For me this means Diwaniyah is still caught up within the established symbolic orders of ‘the police’ using the language of Rancière (and in that regard is not a political eruption). Again, it depends on your understanding of ‘The political’ in Mouffe’s language, for me it doesn’t go far enough since her toned down antagonism as ‘agonism’ requires that we agree on a common grammar of disagreement, whereas for Rancière real disagreement lies in the contestation of the very grammar used that is understood as making sense. Again referring back to the initial dialectic of ‘Protected Space’ we deployed as a potential problematic of Diwaniyah, setting up relations of inclusion/exclusion – I think Rancière’s conception of politics is useful here, seeing as a moment of dissensus (a doing of politics) is always initiated by a part that has no part in the sphere of perceptibility. Let me briefly elaborate – within a Mouffian paradigm as I understand it, it is true that Diwaniyah can gather together a particular group of people to debate and create a presence of an oppositional position to a particular hegemonic condition. They can gather and discuss because they already have consensus on a normative grammar of presenting, contesting and debating issues. So, in short, this potentially productive force of contestation is based on a fundamental consensus, a profound paradox. That said, we cannot have politics all the time, so Diwaniyah, as a space of consensual disagreement can still be figured as a fruitful space for the proliferation of opinions and ideas, albeit from a part of the population fully accounted for.
MM Is Diwaniyah a horizontally accessible space?
PR When we use Diwaniyah as an example however, it was often presented as a space open to all, yet this very notion of ‘open to all’ is of course determined by the normative grammar of who constitutes ‘all’ in the first place. We know that Diwaniyah is a particularly male dominated institution, and furthermore, one ‘open to all’, who are passport holders, and often those who are friends of friends. So the very normative grammar of ‘open to all’ is for me, is the potential site of politics, rather than debating objects within existing grammars of common sense. The larger question of politics, as such, would become rather how to renegotiate the normative grammar of ‘open to all’, in terms of who counts in making an appearance, who and what could be understood as being a part of the order of hospitality.
MN/RP We think it is probably fair to say that we are somewhat suspicious of the notion the Diwaniyah as a place where one agrees to disagree. The issue here is that the allowed or admitted participants of the Diwaniyah, at least the Diwaniyahs with some social and political gravitas are a relatively exclusive and homogenous group. In other words, male Kuwaitis that are economically well off. As this group share cultural background and have vested interests, the discursive openness is already from the beginning rather limited. In other words, there is a very strong underlying sense of consensus in place and the disagreements are, we suspect, more or less variations on the same theme. As pure nearly cartoon-like speculation, our impression is that when we as westerners talk about politics we more or less tend to refer to various strands of ideology whereas the Kuwaitis tend to think of politics as a from of wheeling-and-dealing. Western attitudes are tied up with a sense of rigidity and longevity whereas in Kuwait politics is much more flexible and perhaps even opportunistic. Thus, we should be very cautious that we don’t romanticize the Diwaniyah by projecting western frame-works on to something that is quite different in its operation.
KC I think it is important not to impose a theory which reduces the spatial and political complexity of the Diwaniyah. I don’t think it is at all possible to identify the Diwaniyah - as a space, a phenomenon, or an event - with either of the categories established by Mouffe (politics/the political) or Rancière (the police/politics). From the many invited speakers during the Winter School, we have been able to learn about an amazing diversity of potential instances in which the Diwaniyah became a political agent. I think the Diwaniyah can historically be both an institution of politics as “business as usual” (for a privileged group of Kuwaiti men), and an agent of political contention and social change, in which women and youth can begin to play a key role. Rancière’s redistribution of the sensible - the emergence of a new common sense - might already be taking place, yet whether the recent establishment of certain exclusively female Diwaniyahs can be seen as such a positive change is not entirely clear. The question about social change is perhaps a question of which regimes of hospitality are imaginable in Kuwaiti society.
MM Patricia, in one of your talks you unpacked the notion of de-skilling – or what I would call un-learning – as an unsettlement of normativity, an unsettling of the given coordinates and datums of convention. Could you please explain this further in the literal context of the 2011 Winter School?
PR The notion of de-skilling was brought up in the context of mapping the sorts of characteristics of an ‘Uninvited Outsider’ as a kind of aesthetical-political agent. In the field of visual arts, de-skilling – as identified by Boris Groys in Art Power – was mentioned as a residue of the gesture from Marcel Duchamp with his infamous ‘Fountain’, the purchased and signed urinal he submitted to the world as an art object, by authorizing it as art, by contextualizing it as art. So de-skilling has more to do with a downplaying of a particular ability with materials and techniques, craftsmanship and virtuoso capacities , in order to be a ‘professional’ artist. In the specific context of The Winter School I thought this was important to impart to students in terms of heightening the agency of non-expert abilities, that interventions and important contributions are also thinkable outside the realm of master techniques, and can also be forged through re-contextualizations. In regards to unlearning – I’m not sure if I would create a parallel between these two modes. I think un-learning is perhaps a result of de-skilling (we unlearn the definition of an artist, for example through the pervasiveness of ‘de-skilling’ in art – so that the artist cannot be defined as a master craftsman/artisan any longer). For me un-learning is always a kind of conceptual violence, a necessary violence and a struggle with ones own cognitive schema of the world. For Kant, the schema is the result of experience and intellect, transformed into imagination – so we can figure something without having it directly represented. I use this example quite often, but when I describe to you ‘a red pen’ we have a common schema in mind as to ‘penness’ and ‘redness’, so we can communicate about something without having it present, simple enough. The more complicated issues arise when we start to communicate about inclusion/exclusion, the human and even Diwaniyah! What is the schema of being human? I situate unlearning as a deforming of our schemas, what I like to call contaminating imagination.
KC I would like to connect this notion of un-learning back to Markus’ comment about how the Winter School’ temporal structure and nomadic appearance promises to unsettle and redefine the “School” as institution. I am wary of celebrating “un-learning,” because I think it might result from a misconception about learning. If learning is understood as the flexible adjustment to change rather than the encyclopedic collection of data, it comes much closer to a continual becoming rather than the attainment of expertise. Similarly, I think the current infatuation with the figure of the amateur is a dubious trend. Becoming someone else (whether amateur or expert) is of more interest to me, since it denotes an active process of engagement. Un-learning then threatens to equate a purely negative or expulsive approach. This relates back to the notion of an alternative school. The Winter School I think is unique not because of its temporal structure and nomadic appearance (study-abroad programs of similar structure abound in US and European university institutions), but because of the more reciprocal linkages it has forged between the local and the non-local. In this sense, the Winter School works through a different regime of hospitality. And this is also where its ethics lie. Markus’ notion of the “uninvited outsider” is useful to bring up here. I agree with him that the notion of the uninvited outsider has great potential. But it also brings with it a great responsibility. The questioning of certain state of affairs, accepted knowledge, or set of norms, often happens from a realm outside of or relatively removed from this relatively coherent yet closed condition. This is I think the positive challenge an outside perspective can offer. That said, the outsider, in its worst incarnation, is a ruthless colonizer. Whether the outsider is a respectful instigator of debate or its opposite depends of course on the concrete ways of engagement. But it also depends on the circulation of capital - whether it be economic or cultural. And it depends on the modes of reciprocity. Patricia in her seminar mentioned the words of art critic Jan Verwoert - and his suggestion that the artist’s ethics lie in inhabiting the consequences of her/his making. I think this is very relevant to the Winter School: to what extent can it live the afterlife of its own instigations?
MM Unlearning here is meant in a flexible and at the same time specific sense, moving towards the education of architects and other disciplines dealing with the conventional tools regarding the production of space, i.e. building buildings, infrastructure, devising master-plans, thinking about and directly acting upon the city. When we look at the way in which this/these disciplines are taught in many schools and universities, it seems to me that indeed one of the most important things to teach is how to not fall back into the default modes of practice how it is being transferred in many international courses. We need experts, yes, and there are many experts already. What I am personally interested in is the person, who is not so keen to be the expert, but manages to smartly manoeuvre between ‘things’ – not necessarily disciplines, but within the whole apparatus of a diverse set of practices, relations and social networks in order to pro-actively raise questions, which are usually not being raised, at least not in the environment in which they are now posed. Concerning your point about responsibility, Kenny. Yes, of course. The notion of this role, this Uninvited Outsider of course brings with it not only a great deal of responsibility, but also consequence. If this was not the case, I would also not be interested in it. I think that any practice that denies either responsibility or consequence – or even worse: both – should not be considered critical. I agree, as argued in my book, that one of course has to be careful as to how this role can be achieved. And it can also easily be misused. Since I am an optimist I tend to usually think about possibilities rather than problems, I guess we don’t need to use the example with the half-empty glass here. The future of the Winter School, in terms of its ongoing afterlife, mostly during the calendar year when no major workshops are taking place, is based on a relationship of trust towards those practitioners and actors in Kuwait, such as Zahra, who could potentially develop this further and elevate it to the next level. This was always the idea right from the start: that it would precisely not just occur in January every year, but that it would start to build an ongoing platform for critical exchange. After the final presentation this year, local architect and educator Ali Al-Khaled told me that he could not believe that this was the first time he actually saw all these locals together in one place. This is the point: to develop a shared space for criticality in a place in which such model does otherwise not exist. Call me a colonizer, but I think the moment that people were realizing this, it was already Winter School 2.0 and had nothing to do with me any more. The process had started, and this is what counts. With the little financial means we have, I hope that this also helped to have the Cultural Council rethinking its protocols in the future. This way, we can hopefully also have an active role in the reshaping and influencing of what I would call the institutional everyday. We should not forget that this is all happening in a context, where a female student getting a bank account at NBK (National Bank of Kuwait) can receive up to 5'000 KD (ca. 13’000 EUR) when opening a bank account, This money can be accessed only for plastic surgery. At the same time, there is not a single programme that the bank offers for educational loans.
MM The Winter School is a project of pro-active instigation, a localized, self-authorized trigger of sorts. If one was to assume such role of the Uninvited Outsider, one could describe the potentiality of such self-authorized project as one, which is based on an underlying principle of questions rather than answers, a destabilizing momentum, which attempts to contaminate the imagination of others. It as it were performs itself as an autonomous agent, enacting and producing in relation to the given context and its specific audience producing affect. As an agent for the instigation of dissensus, the Uninvited Outsider arguably opens up alternative avenues for the staging of new formats or frameworks of production by proactively generating and directing a set of unprovoked questions. Such practice of “opening up” is being enabled by, as Patricia called it, the “partial unpredictability” of a foreigner re-setting the rules of engagement. Patricia, could you please elaborate on your reading of Agamben in the context of a playful character that allows for what you named the practice of “inappropriating”?
KC I will insert myself as the uninvited outsider here and interrupt. First of all, I think we need to question the notion of the autonomous, “self-authorized” actor here. The success of the Winter School lies not in the way it acts autonomously, but in the way it engages contingency. I think what needs theorization here is not the actor or organizer, but the situation or the encounter that is created. How can we invite contingency and incidence instead of celebrating individual agency? That brings us back to Rancière’s notion of dissensus, which I think is less about intentionality then about the afterlife of an event. How can we make sure that what we think is dissensus is not just temporary transgression - which, just like the medieval carnival or the contemporary art festival, basically threatens to reinforce rather than challenge the status quo and the reigning normativity?
MM Exactly. This is why the issue of permanence and consequence in this context is so important.
PR I don’t want to be a stickler, but I think we have to be careful when using terms like ‘the foreigner’ in our discussion since they enter our imagination in a fairly specific way. I prefer the Greek term xenos since it has a multiplicity of meanings. It of course signifies a foreigner (someone from outside a given community), but also an enemy/stranger and a guest friendship. So xenos possesses all of these qualities simultaneously, a menacing, friendly outsider – rather that just being from the outside. In regards to the playfulness, another quality we attributed to the potential agency of xenos, Agamben discusses this in several texts from his prolific output, but in particular he sees it as a manner of determining other uses for things that have been locked down in a reified capacity for functioning within a given symbolic order. In the discussion of play in ‘In Praise of Profanation’ he cites the example of the child who takes an official legal contract and transforms it into a paper airplane. So the legal contract, something most of us would regard as precious or untouchable to some degree, becomes something wholly other by transforming its symbolic functioning. In our case of Diwaniyah, I am not suggesting that we are thinking within the coordinates of ‘Profanation’ per se, for Diwaniyah is not sacred or removed from the sphere of use. Nonetheless, if we think about play in general and as a political tactic, it is something that renders a reified use inoperative, the gesture of play is always about imagining other uses, not to mention introducing a certain lightness into the discussion of spatial politics. In play, one neglects a certain use, but a kind of neglect that opens up other possibilities of use. Play is always, in a sense inappropriate – if we consider appropriateness of use to set up a relation of memesis to a given order. Henri Lefebvre describes the body in space as that which appropriates codes and materials in space to produce (and reproduce) the spatial; interfacing this description of the Lefebvrian body and his project to revolutionize the everyday with the agency of play, we could further infer that to revolutionize our experience of the everyday requires an ethos of play through inappropriating the codes and materials of the spatial. Through inappropriation I think we open more possibilities of use and thusly experience, rather than through the reproductive of appropriation alone. Speaking of the body, its’ time we take a break and have some lunch!
Markus Miessen is an architect, consultant, and writer based in Berlin. He runs the collaborative agency for spatial practice Studio Miessen, is co-founder of the architectural practice nOffice, and director of the Winter School Middle East (Kuwait). Miessen has taught at institutions such as the Architectural Association (London), Columbia, and MIT. He is currently a Professor for Architecture and Curatorial Practice at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany, a Harvard Fellow, and completing his PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture (Goldsmiths, London). In various collaborations, Miessen has published books such as The Nightmare of Participation – Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality (Sternberg Press, 2010), Institution Building: Artists, Curators, Architects in the Struggle for Institutional Space (Sternberg Press, 2009), When Economies Become Form (Berlage Institute, 2009), East Coast Europe (Sternberg Press, 2008), The Violence of Participation (Sternberg Press, 2007), With/Without: Spatial Products, Practices, and Politics in the Middle East (Bidoun, 2007), Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice (MIT Press, 2006), and Space of Uncertainty (Müller+Busmann, 2002).
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