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

Detroit

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?