Afternoon Session: autonomous or Instrumentalised - Art and Social Housing

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.' 

Jeanne van Heeswijk, Dwaallicht, Rotterdam