Rethinking Public Space

Arte Publiku Timor-Leste 2006 Creativity to play instrument with what we can find around us by Stomp Band Bay © Arte Moris Artist
Left page: Lagos Open – Ajegunle Invitation Nigeria 2013 Performance platform on Goriola Street with mural works by Bob Nosa Uwagboe © Emeka Udemba
Last page: Lagos Open – Ajegunle Invitation Nigeria 2013 Residents of Ajegunle collaborate with the artist Uche Joel Chima to prepare his interactive installation Bubblegum Wall © Emeka Udemba
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Bachon Se Tabdili Pakistan 2014 Children’s map of Lyari, Karachi made in collaboration with artist-educator Madiha Sikander © courtesy of Shahana Rajani
Previous page: Public Acts South Africa 2014 Euridice Kala’s Arrival performance at Jeppe Station 04h30 © Akona Kenqu
Bachon Se Tabdili Pakistan 2014 Students advocacy create awareness about public spaces in Shireen Jinnah Colony, Karachi © courtesy of Shahana Rajani
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Dharamshala International Film Festival India 2012 Volunteers drawing designs at the entrance prior to the Opening Night of the festival © David Huang/DIFF
Casablanca By Night Morocco 2014 Cigognes Bellarej show by Théâtre Nomade © Kaja Kantlej
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Art & Markets Chile 2013 Estudios sobre la ilegalidad by Anónimo. Disguise of anonymous artist, used for performing acts presented in a video sequence © Nicolás Castro
Previous page: Land Art Mongolia Mongolia 2014 Equus by Heini Nieminen: site specific installation (textiles) © Injihnaash Bor
The Arena Of Change Egypt 2014, a repertory monthly performance of Nora’s Doors dance theatre production featuring Nora Amin and Mohamed Habib © Mohamed Samy Negm
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Lagos Open - Ajegunle Invitation Nigeria 2013 AJ City Haute Couture. A model poses with a dress by Lovelyn Sexy Fashion Home © Emeka Udemba
Previous page: Casablanca By Night Morocco 2014 What Do You Look At... by Yasmine Hajji © Yasmine Hajji
Dream Catcher Iran 2014 Mass of sculptures, part of the Bita Fayyazi’s narrative on Noah’s Ark, the story of man’s desperate quest for Utopia and the consequences © Sareh Imani
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Casablanca By Night Morocco 2014 Juste Ici show by Darja © Corinne Troisi
Public Acts South Africa 2014 Finding Love on End Street – site of audio installation featuring Joao Orecchia © Patrick Sudi
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Casablanca By Night Morocco 2014 Cas’en’scene show by S’toon Zoo © Anita Leurent
Previous page: Périféeriques Haiti 2013 Antoine Tempé’s Studio used for Visage de Caraïbes © courtesy of Chantiers Du Sud
A Walk In The Park Palestinian Territories 2013 Board member Mr. Adnan Abel Razeq at the Zalet Lisan opening night at Al Hoash Gallery © Al Hoash Gallery
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First National Graffiti Festival Afghanistan 2013 Graffiti saying “kocha haye Kabul” (Kabul’s roads) by Ahmad Zubair Ayoubi, Reza Amiri, Moez Popalzai, Mustafa Rahel, Ahmad Reshad Shirzai © Shamsia Hassani
Previous page: Cyber Theatre: Re-Thinking Web Theatre UK/Belarus 2013 Scene from performance of Merry Christmas, Ms Meadows featuring Kiryl Kanstantsinau and Siarhei Kvahonak © Nicolai Khalezin
Dança Sem Fronteiras Brazil 2014 Rehearsal of Olhar De Neblina (foggy gaze) Dancers from Dança sem Fronteiras Company © Ricardo Teles
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Geochoreographies Colombia 2014 Rehearsal with River Puppet at Paraguay community © Jaguos por el Territorio
Previous page: Art & Markets Chile 2013 Re-composición Periférica by Cristian Inostroza. Activation of sound intervention in the neighborhood, created with community participation © Betania Álvarez
In-Out Dance Festival Burkina Faso 2014 Kids performance about public space and peace with the choreographer and director Aguibou Bougobali Sanou © Paul Kabré
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Previous page: Les Recreatrales Burkina Faso 2010 Street design during the festival © Sarah Hickson
Street Studios DR Congo 2014 Suzana Namatomo, 65, poses for her portrait in Bulengo IDP camp. Suzana fled her village after her husband was killed by bandits © Alexia Webster
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Introduction
projects from twenty-eight different countries were
supported – ranging across the Prince Claus Fund’s
focus areas, from Tanzania to Tunisia, from Timor-Leste
to Brazil, Mongolia and Sri Lanka.
This Review first provides an overview of the themes,
the tools and the spaces encountered in the different
countries where the projects took place.This is followed
by a detailed summary of each of the projects and
the remarkable organisations and individuals behind
them. Of the thirty-nine supported projects, the Prince
Claus Fund conducted interviews with four partners
which are published in this Review. Finally, the Prince
Claus Fund asked six critical thinkers located in six
different countries, which have recently witnessed major
instances of turbulence in public space, for essay
contributions, namely: Zoe Butt, Robert Alagjozovski,
James Hakan Dedeoglu,Thiresh Govender and Katharina
Rohde, Gabriela Salgado and Raafat Majzoub.
This Review hopes to highlight the excellent work
the cultural organisations supported by the Prince
Claus Fund are doing, and thereby to underline the
vital importance of culture and its transformative
power to generate positive social and economic
change worldwide.
In this Review the Prince Claus Fund is proud to present
the results of the 2013 Thematic Call for Proposals,
‘Rethinking Public Space’. Through this call, the Prince
Claus Fund welcomed project proposals for cultural
initiatives related to public space. The aim of the call
was to support creative cultural initiatives that re-think,
re-appropriate and/or re-use public space in new
and innovative ways, and which are meaningfully
embedded in their local contexts.
Public space is a social space that is open and accessible to all. It can take many different forms. It can be
a gathering place defined by its social aspect, a civic
space, a community space, a virtual space. What we
endeavoured to understand through this call was the
impact and relevance of art and culture in re-configuring
our understanding of public space. The strength of
public space lies in its potential to reach out to a wide
and diverse group of people.
Authenticating freedom of expression is one of the
core principles underpinning the Prince Claus Fund’s
work. With this call the Prince Claus Fund attempted
to encourage creative solutions in the use of public
space, particularly in socio-political situations where
the use of public space is considerably constrained.
The events the world has witnessed in the last few
years, from the occupation of public spaces such as
Tahrir Square in Cairo and Gezi Park in Istanbul,
express the strong urge of people to re-appropriate
spaces that have become highly commercialised,
privatised and politicised. The aim of this call was to
reach out to projects in places where public space
is severely controlled and exclusive, and priority was
given to projects in extremely difficult contexts.
Through Rethinking Public Space the Prince Claus
Fund supported projects that impacted public space
by giving it new meanings, challenging artistic conceptions and involving local communities. The Call for
proposals closed on 15 May 2013. In total, thirty-nine
Christa Meindersma, Director, Prince Claus Fund
SELECTION PROCESS
Of the 712 proposals received during the Rethinking Public Space Call,
43 reached the research phase and thirty-nine projects were financially
supported. The selection of these projects was made under a number
of criteria, namely, quality, innovation, engagement and development
relevance, costs, contribution to freedom of expression, and rethinking
public space. The Prince Claus Fund researches the selected proposals
in detail, and gathers advice from independent experts in the local
contexts. Although all applicants provide references, independent and
objective opinions are always sought for each selected project. Based
on the results of this assessment, the programme committee approves
or rejects each project. Each grantee is then notified of the amount of
financial support they will receive. Upon completion of each supported
project, the Prince Claus Fund evaluates and documents the objectives
and successes. Exemplary projects are then shared on the website and
through the Fund’s international network.
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RE
Spaces and Artistic Disciplines
Artistic disciplines
In evaluating the proposals received for the Rethinking Public Space Call, certain spaces and cultural disciplines
emerged time and time again in the 39 grantee projects.The Review does not claim to conclusively categorise the
many current cultural, social, technological and artistic trends within this call. Nonetheless there are inter­esting
comparisons and connections to be made where similarities can be found in very different contexts. Furthermore,
the general focus of the call was on arts as a means to innovatively transform the access to public space and how
that space is used. This is evident in all of the grantee projects. We hope that the following brief summary of these
recurrent spaces and disciplines contributes to an overview of the projects that make up Rethinking Public Space.
Spaces
ARTISTIC AND EDUCATIONAL VENUES
STREETS AND URBAN CENTRES
THE INTERNET AND VIRTUAL PLATFORMS
Words, spoken or written, represent a powerful pres­
ence in public space.Whether proclaimed on billboards,
disseminated through newspaper headlines, or cried
out at demonstrations, they are a manifestation of
freedom of expression and have the ability to bring
people together. This potential of language in public
space was picked up by a number of projects. They
sought to revive old stories as well as to tell new ones,
using the critical engagement and imagination of lit­
era­ture and journalism entail as tools to empower
participants and communities. For example TRAVELLING
TESTIMONIES (Uganda), and ARCHIVE AS PUBLIC SPACE
(Sri Lanka).
Many of the supported projects illustrate how the
Internet has become a dynamic public space. It offers
innovative possibilities for arts and culture projects
to reach mass audiences, to archive, digitalise and pre­
serve historically relevant material, and to democratise
the use of media. The latter was especially important
for the Belarus Free Theatre’s CYBER THEATRE project
(Belarus), as the Fund supported them in establishing
a secure online portal to share their performances
without censorship. The project CHANTE: NARRATIVES
OF TEHRAN (Iran) established a virtual platform mapping
and narrating the lost stories of the city, bringing cul­
tural heritage to life for a wide audience and success­
fully using contemporary technology to preserve
local traditions.
PERIPHERAL AND RURAL SPACES
The call attracted a number of projects that chose
to go outside the privileged public spaces of commer­
cial and intellectual city centres, and organised them­
selves in rural or peripheral areas. Their aim was to
bring arts and culture to areas that are often ignored.
This meant facing the challenges of poor infrastruc­ture
and a lack of facilities. This took many different forms:
for example, the LAGOS OPEN-AJEGUNLE INVITATION
(Nigeria) staged exhibitions and artistic interventions
in the marginalised district of Ajegunle, which had
so far seen little of Lagos’ glamorous art boom, while
STREET STUDIOS (DR Congo) and RE-ACTIVATING THE
COMMON (Palestine) sought to offer stability through
art in the precarious spaces of refugee camps.
EVIEW
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CULTURAL HERITAGE AND TRADITION
Many public spaces are places of fascinating narratives,
historical footprints and incredible beauty – and yet
this depth of meaning is often ignored or taken for
granted. Some projects sought to raise awareness
of the rich cultural heritage that suffuses public space.
These projects show how signs of history and identity
are all around us, and how important it is for us not
to lose sight of them. For example REVISITING MEMORY
(Egypt), and CASABLANCA BY NIGHT (Morocco).
Streets and urban centres offered vibrant and diverse
settings for many projects.Whether this meant exploring
the forgotten heritage of city spaces, like the project
CASABLANCA BY NIGHT (Morocco), or re-appropriating
abandoned spaces within the city, like DREAM CATCHER
(Iran) and the FIRST NATIONAL GRAFFITI FESTIVAL
(Afghanistan), these projects sought to examine the
politics of public space and criticise power relations
and urban privatisation. For performing arts projects
such as IN-OUT DANCE FESTIVAL (Burkina Faso) and
ARENA OF CHANGE (Egypt), city streets became public
stages that replaced more tradi­tional venues,
emphasising accessibility and participation.
Many of the supported projects responded to the
theme of rethinking public space by extending or trans­
forming the function of established cultural venues,
both artistic and educational. Their concern was that
despite being open to the public, such spaces often
exclude certain audiences or have become limited
in their activities. DANÇA SEM FRONTEIRAS (Brazil), for
example, sought to introduce a dance curriculum at
a Brazilian public school that was inclusive of children
with disabilities.The VOLUMES project (Lebanon), on the
other hand, aimed to revive public libraries by turning
them into sites for temporary exhibitions and
participatory events.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND CINEMA
Photographs and films capture moments in time,
drawing the viewer in with their uncanny rendition
of reality. Many projects made use of the immersive
experience cinema offers and staged public screenings
in order to provoke critical engagement and dis­cus­
sion within, and beyond, communities. Photography
was similarly used to generate reflections on how
identities are shaped. For example DHARAMSHALA
INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2013 (India), and STREET
STUDIOS (DR Congo).
VISUAL ARTS
The visual arts offer many possibilities to reimagine
and revive public space. Many projects sought to ven­
ture beyond the established institutions of the visual
arts, such as galleries and museums, in order to reach
a less exclusive audience and experiment with unusual
curatorial methods. The visual arts represent a power­
ful method for project participants to voice traumatic
experiences within public space, enabling them to
become vectors of change on an individual as well
as on a social level. For example LAND ART MONGOLIA
2014 (Mongolia), and LAGOS OPEN – AJEGUNLE INVITATION
2013 (Nigeria).
LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM
PERFORMING ARTS
Dance and theatre were both popular disciplines
in this call. These projects transformed streets into
stages, reviving local traditions and empowering
people through free expression in the public sphere.
The projects demonstrate the potential of the per­
forming arts to explore the freedoms and restrictions
of different bodies within public space, as well as
bringing people of different ages and backgrounds
together in collective artistic experiences. Two of the
projects drew on the important work of 2007 Prince
Claus Laureate Augusto Boal and his Theatre of the
Oppressed. For example CYBER THEATRE: RE-THINKING
WEB THEATRE (Belarus), and IN-OUT DANCE FESTIVAL
(Burkina Faso).
Distribution of spaces
Distribution of disciplines
Artistic and Educational Venues
10
Cultural Heritage and Tradition 8
Peripheral and Rural Spaces
11
Literature and Journalism
Streets and Urban Centres
15
Performing Arts
The Internet and Virtual Platforms
3
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5
12
Photography and Cinema
6
Visual Arts
8
same time, we hoped to activate the community
to adopt the garden again and use it for their own
purposes. Therefore, we were interested in artistic
interventions that reach out to the community and
have a certain participatory approach.”
The Palestinian Art Court – Al Hoash is a Palestinian
organisation based in Jerusalem, which works in the
field of culture, specifically in visual arts. Its mission
is to provide and sustain a knowledge-based platform
for Palestinians to express, realise, and strengthen
national identity through visual culture.
Artistic & Educational Venues
Cultural Heritage & Tradition
www.alhoashgallery.org
http://tinyurl.com/ngxzqat
Project partner: Palestinian ART Court – Al Hoash
A WALK IN THE PARK!
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
A WALK IN THE PARK! is an art intervention and event
that took place in the Rockefeller Museum Park
in East Jerusalem. Artists and architects participated
in enlivening the park by engaging the local commu­
nity and starting debates and discussions.
Although the Rockefeller Museum Park is the only
green space in the area, the community around is cut
off from it. A WALK IN THE PARK! aimed to bring the neigh­
bourhood back into this public space, by “lighting up”
spaces that are in the dark for the local community.
Artists (and architects) were asked to brainstorm on
creative interventions to transform the garden into
a welcoming space for the community to spend time
in and enjoy.
“The idea of a public space in Palestine has been
crucial in the past – when every village had its court­
yard where the community met and had their cele­
bra­tions. This tradition has been forgotten and instead
people tend to reduce themselves to the private
space, which seems to be the only space where one
can be free and secure”, says Alia Rayyan, Director
of the Palestinian Art Court – Al Hoash. “With our
activities and intervention in the garden we hope
to stimulate the environment and attract visitors to
discover the area again. In the same time, we hope
to activate the community to adopt the garden again
and use it for their own purposes.”
The harsh political context has isolated the
Palestinians from the rest of the world for decades.
Marginalisation, repression and the denial of basic
rights for Palestinians continue. This is even more
relevant because public green space is extremely
scarce in East Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem is a very specific location with its own
circumstances and rules framework, which affect the
freedom of artists to work. Due to the fact that we
wanted to avoid asking for permission from the Israeli
municipality, we were reduced to guerrilla art activities,
with a temporary schedule”, says Rayyan. “With our
activities and interventions in the garden we hoped
to attract visitors to discover the area again. At the
ART&MARKET(S): LOCAL ECONOMY,
GLOBAL ECONOMY, CHILE
is a
programme of exhibitions, workshops and guided tours
that reflected on the relationship between art and
the market in the context of globalisation.
Galería Metropolitana is an art space in Santiago,
founded in 1998 by Luis Alarcón and Ana María Saavedra,
the directors of the space. The gallery is physically
connected to their house, which is located in the
working-class neighbourhood of Pedro Aguirre Cerda
on the outskirts of the city. This is a middle-to-low
income neighbourhood and the gallery caters to the
local population by bringing art and debates about
culture to the community. Galería Metropolitana par­
tici­pates in a range of cultural, social and political
organisations in the neighbourhood. Despite its popu­
lar outreach Galería Metropolitana attracts and is
connected to a number of international artists from
South America and Europe that participate in their
activities and exhibitions.
“Since its founding in 1998, Galería Metropolitana
has managed to modify the cultural paradigm in Chile,
dismantling and reconfiguring the system of local art,
ARTE PUBLIKU! is a multi-disciplinary public arts festival
that seeks to demonstrate the power and relevance
of art in the struggle for democracy. It was the first
event of its kind in Timor-Leste.
Arte Moris is the first and only Fine Arts School,
Cultural Centre and Artists Association in Timor-Leste.
It emerged in the aftermath of twenty-five years of
Indonesian military occupation. The initial aim was to
use art as a building block in the psycho­logical and
social reconstruction of a country devastated by vio­
lence and oppression, with special emphasis on helping
young people. Now one of the most enduring and
successful not-for-profit youth projects in Timor-Leste,
Arte Moris provides talented young people with
a direct means to the creative exploration of their
world – their unique history and heritage, their personal
experiences, and their dreams for the future.
Timor-Leste became an independent nation in 2002,
after more than four hundred years of Portuguese
colonisation, twenty-four years of Indonesian occupa­
tion, and three years of United Nations transitional
administration. The country faces the challenge of
building a strong democracy and vibrant economy
against a background of fragile institutions and limited
human capital. All of this has stifled the urge to publicly
criticise, or even question, the country’s leaders
through the past five Governments.
“The concept of a Festival is new here – a series
of exhibitions and events spanning a number of con­
secutive days with collaborations and workshops taking
place between the artists and participants.The logistics
of planning this are also new for many of the man­
agement team involved”, says Iliwatu Danabere, the
Director of Arte Moris. “By developing and delivering
the first publically accessible multi-arts festival in Timor,
we are exposing the work of these artists to the local
population and increasing collaborative opportunities
with artists from our neighbouring countries.”
A four-day public event followed a week of ex­
changes and collaborative workshops for artists and
facilitators making art accessible and inclusive to a
number of people. Artists were invited to showcase
their specific art forms to provoke the audiences’
imagination on social justice issues, such as Timorese
experiences since independence. The artists engaged
communities in lively urban areas, confronting and
delighting them in innovative ways. The challenge was
to get audiences to engage with critical social justice
issues that currently thwart the country’s develop­
ment process, and threaten the preservation of peace.
mapping new routes to a more democratic praxis
of art in Chile. This project, in particular, has allowed
us to review (and reconstruct) some of the history
of the municipality of Pedro Aguirre Cerda as a place
designed by its own neighbours (citizens)”, say Alarcón
and Saavedra. “Every project we develop with guest
artists, whether they are young or old, whether they
are Chilean or foreign, is always a new experience
of life bringing pleasure and risk.”
For this project, multi-disciplined artists worked
together with the local community, as well as with
local social organisations, to offer a new artistic dis­
course developed for the community that does not
follow economic or commercial logics. With the
munici­pality’s cooperation workshops were developed
in public schools, and students participated in the
activities of the gallery. This project developed spaces
between art and community outreach, in a collective
exercise of reflection and discussion.
The commercial art market in Chile is well devel­
oped in the national, regional and international sphere.
As a result a highly commercial and com­petitive artistic
market exists, which leaves little space for young talents
or for art to reflect on issues of social rele­vance and
development. This project questioned a common
tendency to overestimate Chilean com­mer­cial art
to the detriment of reflection and criticism.
In total the organisers were able to put together
nine exhibitions, each including workshops, guided
tours and meetings. The topics used for each of the
nine activities were interesting and provocative, and
brought together ideas from development and art.
The activities involved students and professors of sev­
eral universities and at least 50 artists. The series of
exhibitions attracted local artists and the community.
Artistic & Educational Venues
Visual Arts
ART&MARKET(S): LOCAL ECONOMY, GLOBAL ECONOMY
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www.galeriametropolitana.org
Project Partner: Galería Metropolitana
Artistic & Educational Venues
artemoris.org
Project partner: Arte Moris Arts Centre
ARTE PUBLIKU!,TIMOR-LESTE
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Performing Arts
public spaces, children transform ordinary places like
streets, plots, grounds and markets, into dynamic
public spaces for play and recreation.”
A series of workshops engaged ten to twelve
year-old children from public schools located in lowincome and violence-prone areas in the creative
process of mapping their neighbourhoods through
drawing, painting and photography. The exhibition and
the accompanying publication showed the positive
potential of public space in pushing for social change
and envisioning a future where social and ethnic
polarisations in the city can be overcome.
In presenting children’s views on public space, the
project allowed adults to rediscover the importance
of public spaces through children’s experiences. This
project addresses the urgent need for a visible dis­
course on the positive potential of public community
spaces. It aimed to cultivate a new appreciation of
public spaces by revealing the diverse ways in which
children still make use of them.
BACHON SE TABDILI – CHANGE THROUGH
CHILDREN, PAKISTAN
is a pro­
ject that proposed to re-envision public spaces in
Karachi, Pakistan, through the imagination of children.
The project consisted of a series of workshops that
allowed public school children to understand and
visualise their engagement with public space. During
the workshops the children initiated a small-scale
community-led transformation of a public space in
their neighbourhoods under the supervision and
mentorship of a number of art educators.
Shahana Rajani is an art curator and educator from
Pakistan whose practice centres on making art acces­
sible to marginalised audiences by means of crea­tive
engagement. As part of this project she curated an inter­
active children’s art exhibition fea­turing their art­works
as well as video clips of the children advocating for
active engagement with public spaces in the city.
Public spaces in Karachi have increasingly come
under attack as criminal gangs and political parties fight
over turf and territory. Spatially defined party politics
have contributed to an ever-increasing frag­men­tation
of urban space in the city. With recurring ethnic and
sectarian violence, most residents are searching for
security through segregation and retreating from public
space.Young children manage, to a great extent, to
escape these divisions, either unaware of, or uncon­
cerned by, city problems. For them, public spaces
represent infinite possibilities for play, adventure and
friendships, irrespective of ethnicity and religion.
“For children, there is no restrictive definition
of public space. Any space can hold the potential of
becoming a public space, wherein lies the beauty
of children’s interactions with the city environment.
They are not dependent on state-assigned public spaces;
instead they produce and sustain their own public
spaces for play and recreation”, says Rajani. “Children
continue to claim ownership of public spaces. For
them, the city holds out endless possi­bilities for play,
adventure and discovery. Children are active social
agents who carve out their own public spaces in their
neighbourhoods. In the absence of state-assigned
BACHON SE TABDILI – CHANGE THROUGH CHILDREN
Artistic & Educational Venues
Visual Arts
www.facebook.com/bachonsetabdili
vimeo.com/93381199
Project partner: Shahana Rajani
CASABLANCA BY NIGHT, MOROCCO
is a nightly walking tour high­
lighting the beauty of the historical centre of Casablanca.
The participants were guided along Casablanca’s rare
concentration of Art Deco buildings, animated by a
carefully choreographed light show as well as music,
dance and theatre performances narrating the history
of Casablanca’s urban development.
In Morocco during the 1970s and 1980s all forms
of public gathering were practically forbidden. As a
result public space is no longer treasured or linked
to collective history. In Casablanca, a city rich in cul­
tural heritage, public spaces have not been developed
and are rarely the site of cultural events. Almost
entirely built in less than a century, Casablanca is full
of excep­tional architectural heritage: from art deco
to modernism and neo-Moorish to neo-classic styles,
the city is an open-air museum. Indeed, public space
in Casablanca is highly fre­quented but rarely appro­
priated through spontaneous mani­festations such
as street art or simply playful actions.
Casamémoire is a Moroccan non-profit association
working for the preservation of twentieth-century
built heritage in Morocco. Its creation was sparked by
the demolition of the Mokri Villa built by the architect
Marius Boyer. Casamémoire promotes common values
such as the preservation of Casablanca’s built heritage,
valorisation of the city’s architectural heritage, develop­
ment of cultural tourism and collective memory.
Casamémoire’s main goals are to raise awareness within
local communities as well as political leaders to the
problem of built heritage, develop and support actions
in renovation and refurbishment, and encourage national
and international research on the topic of heritage
preservation.
The night tour on the Boulevard Mohammed V is an
opportunity to discover the rich heritage of Casablanca.
Once a central artery of the New City built in the
early twentieth century, the Mohammed V Boulevard
showcases a rare concentration of impor­tant Art Deco
buildings. However, as economic activities have shifted
to other parts of the city over the past twenty years,
the space has lost some of its splendour, and today
is largely unknown by Casablanca’s residents who
do not appropriate this space for either daytime or
night-time walks.
According to Casamémoire, “the main challenge of
the night-stroll was to reveal the beauty of the Boulevard
Mohammed V to the inhabitants of Casablanca that
deserted this area especially by night. The project was
a fantastic way to make them (re)discover the built
and urban heritage by night and how awesome it can
be thanks to the various artistic installations: dance,
music, theatre, improvisation.”
CASABLANCA BY NIGHT deals with public space
through a totally different angle: instead of identifying
the nocturnal strolls with a negative sentiment
(danger, fear…) it showcases the beauty of public
space and the rich heritage that it offers, beautified
through darkness and lighting effects.
CHANTE; NARRATIVES OF TEHRAN, IRAN
CHANTE; NARRATIVES OF TEHRAN narrates the lost
stories of Tehran’s public spaces. CHANTE is specifically
developed to make Tehran’s citizens aware of their
origins and their historical identity.
Tehran has many lively public spaces. However
there is a lack of awareness of cultural history in the
identity of many Tehranis. Modernism has changed
the physical face of Tehran and created a gap between
cultural origin and how new buildings, streets and
public spaces appear in the city. The historical urban
context of Tehran has its own potential to attract
people who value culture and history and influence
the atmosphere of these public spaces. Nowadays,
these sentiments are more or less oppressed and
forgotten. Recalling history and remembering origins
can improve social interactions.
“We believe that place narratives are an important
factor in attracting people to a historical values of a place
without evident signs”, says Behnam Aboutorabian,
project director of CHANTE. “One of the main pillars
of public space is the generation of energy and ideas
for creativity. Art and culture are the most effective
motives of meaning and socialisation, face to face
meeting, and opportunity to talk and think about
matters in common.”
This project is set up to create a medium that drama­
­tises the narratives of public spaces. Aboutorabian
believes that site-specific narratives can be an impor­
tant factor in attracting people to a place. He started
his career as an urban historiog­rapher for the city
of Tehran, five years ago. Since then, he has initiated
several projects, which focus on the relation of the
lost history and stories of Tehran and the city’s public
spaces. According to him, over the last century the
historical-cultural layers of the city have been ignored,
leading to the destruction of many parts of Tehran.
This process motivated Aboutorabian to start studying
and researching these lost stories in greater depth
in order to bring them back to the awareness of the
citizens of Tehran. Aboutorabian developed an online
space where anyone can read stories connected to
specific spaces in Tehran.
CASABLANCA BY NIGHT
38
Streets & Urban Centres
Cultural Heritage & Tradition
www.casamemoire.org
Project partner: Association Casamémoire
39
was designed around place, and thus shows
oral history by location in an attractive way.
In countries like Iran, with so many restrictions and
censorship on creating cultural material, it is a monu­
mental task to apply and receive a permit from the
Bureau of Guidance, however, his book that accom­
panies the project received that permit.
the city’s “traditional” groups, but not the new immi­
grants from different parts of the world who have
settled in Tbilisi in recent years. Research shows that
new immigrants to Tbilisi are not well integrated into
Georgian society.
The project consists of six public cooking events
involving members from six immigrant groups from
different nationalities or ethnicities living in Tbisili.
To follow up on this, six fanzines were made by local
and international artists, based on the outcomes of
the fieldwork.They were compiled into an artistic book
collection on the project and contained information,
stories, photos and recipes from the different partici­
pating cultures.
“After discussing projects and stories, we are
happy to see the motivation migrant groups express
for participation and contribution to the project. Also,
when mentioning issues migrants experience while
living in Tbilisi, it comes as a surprise to a lot of locals,
as Tbilisi has always been famous for its diversity and
hospitality. However, we see how valuable these dis­
cussions are, as after chatting about the challenges
migrants face, local people also get interested in seeing
the possibilities of integration”, says GeoAIR.
CHANTE
The Internet & Virtual Platforms
Cultural
Heritage &
Tradition
www.godarchitects.com/blog
Project Partner: Behnam Aboutorabian
Streets & Urban Centres
Performing Arts
geoair.blogspot.nl
Project partner: GeoAIR
COOKING IMAGINATIONS, GEORGIA
COOKING IMAGINATIONS is an artistic research project
into issues of multiculturalism in Georgia. People of
diverse communities were asked to cook food from
their home countries and to tell stories. The food
was served in public and artistic fanzines about the
cooking events were distributed.
GeoAIR is based in Tbilisi, Georgia. They imple­ment
collaborative art projects locally and interna­tion­ally,
with the aim of stimulating and raising aware­ness about
art and culture in Georgia and the Caucasus region.
They also hope to empower the Georgian and Caucasian
art worlds, bringing together artists and curators
from different cultural backgrounds and finding relevant
contexts for them to work in. A funda­mental part of
all GeoAIR programmes is interaction with the public.
Moreover, most of their curatorial projects have an
interdisciplinary character; they work closely with
architects, urbanists, and anthro­pologists, and give pri­
ority to socially engaged projects with a focus on
community involvement. From this perspective, GeoAIR
realised that food and food-related public activities
could be a creative approach for projects targeting
new immigrant communities in Tbilisi.
A common myth is that Tbilisi has been multicultural
ever since its existence and that people from differ­
ent ethnic and cultural backgrounds have always lived
there in peace. This might be true when it comes to
CYBER THEATRE: RE-THINKING WEB THEATRE,
BELARUS
is an online
portal for the Belarus Free Theatre (BFT) in English
and Russian. The project aimed to rebuild a more
robust website, more resistant to cyber attacks.
In December 2012, after the BFT launched a cam­
paign to lobby the British Prime Minister David
Cameron concerning the plight of Belarusian political
prisoners, the website of the BFT was hacked and com­
pletely destroyed by the Belarusian authorities. With
the support of the Swedish International Development
CYBER THEATRE: RE-THINKING WEB THEATRE
40
Agency, the BFT rebuilt the website specifically for
its Contest of Contemporary Drama. However, they
were unable to restore the destroyed portal to full
capacity.
The BFT therefore created a web portal with a number
of functions. Firstly it is an Internet theatre that over­
comes the limitations of censorship, distance and seating
capacity. Secondly it is an online theatre club which
provides access to live and recorded inter­views and
conversations with artists and theatre makers, thereby
giving the audiences insight into dramaturgical details,
materials and topics raised by the company (e.g. per­
se­cution of political activists, LGBT rights, climate
change).Thirdly it works as a platform for cam­paigning
through theatre, linking the BFT and other companies
around the world with active political campaigns.
Finally it is a creative hub for docu­mentary and political
theatre makers and a space for online publications
and networking opportunities.
“Ultimately we want the portal to be a key element
of BFT’s strategy to create a multi-national hub for
performing arts in the countries where freedom
of speech is under threat from political regimes, and
to engage theatre makers and audiences from geopolitical regions where theatre is raising voice for
human rights”, says Elena Kuryleva, Development
Director of the BFT. “The arts open public spaces
for people. But most importantly, the arts and culture
enriches public spaces by converting them into spaces
that inspire critical thinking and public debate.”
New digital technologies – the Internet in
particular – provide greater opportunities for free
expression. Online space is very important for an
underground theatre such as the BFT. A shared digital
platform contributes to promoting and sharing their
democratic ideals, exchanging creative ideas and uniting
audiences and artists. Online streaming makes free
democratic theatre accessible to the widest possible
audience in Belarus and around the world, especially
in countries where censorship and restric­tions on
the right to freedom of information are preva­lent. The
BTF currently attracts and connects a large network
that extends throughout Asia and Latin America
This project addressed the hostile media environ­
ment in Belarus and restrictions on the right to free­
dom of expression and freedom of information. The
project rethinks the Internet as a creative political
platform and a widely accessible public space.
The Internet & Virtual Platforms
DANÇA SEM FRONTEIRAS, BRAZIL
(dance without frontiers)
consists of community dance workshops for students
from the state school Tempo Integral Alfredo Paulino
in Brazil, where 99 per cent of the students come
from a dis­advantaged background.
Fernanda Amaral is one of the most engaged dancers
and dance educators in Brazil. Over the years she has
made it her mission to bring the world of dance to
people with disabilities.Through this project, the school’s
children and staff are offered the possibility to see
and experience new forms of expression and inclusion
through movement and dance, in an inclusive educa­
tion and art sphere. The project therefore brings a
pro­fessional dance residency to a poor disadvantaged
state school, addressing disabled as well as nondisabled children, and creating an inclusive cultural
space for everyone.
The pupils were invited to put on a small perfor­
mance at the end of the year during the Festival of
Culture to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the
school. The students were also invited to take part
in Encontro Criança Criando Dança (meeting of
children creating dance) organised by Escola Municipal
Integrade de Artes, which is the only arts state
school for children in São Paulo.
“I decided to write this project for a primary
Brazilian state school where most of their pupils have
never seen anything like the work we do, as a contem­
porary mixed ability dance company!” says Amaral.
“Our major challenge was that the great majority of
the staff and the pupils had never seen anything like
the work we do! They knew some Brazilian popular
dance but not much contemporary dance and had
never imagined a person with a ‘disability’ could dance.
This was an innovative project for Brazil because it
established a professional Contemporary Mixed Ability
Dance residency in a state school, something that is
not common in this country. 99 per cent of the young
students in this school come from a disadvantaged
background and this also included children with
‘disabilities’. Dança sem Fronteiras gave the children and
the staff the possi­bility to see and experience new
DANÇA SEM FRONTEIRAS
Performing Arts
www.belarusfreetheatre.com
Project partner: Belarus Free Theatre
41
goal of making the festival a non-partisan, cultural event
that all of the area’s residents – Gaddi tribes­people,
relocated Indians from the plains, Tibetan refugees
and expatriates from around the world – could partici­
pate in and be stakeholders. The arts and culture give
people a reason to come together in public spaces,
often within a context that has nothing to do with their
normal lives. This helps to create a neutral meeting
ground where, at least for the duration of an event,
barriers are broken and normal societal constraints
don’t apply, which, in a place like India, is very significant.”
DIFF’S programme consisted of the best of Indian
and international contemporary cinema, both fiction
and documentary, and also included short and experi­
mental films. Film workshops, lectures and master­
classes were an integral part of the festival. One of DIFF’S
priorities is to show films that highlight the impor­
tance of freedom of artistic expression and how this
is a universal concern rather than something localised
or happening far away.
DIFF offered the town’s residents and visitors
a window to the world of contemporary cinema and
enriched their knowledge and understanding of other
places and cultures. It aimed to provide a unique oppor­
tunity for Indian and Tibetan youth to work together
on a project that is not specific to either community,
as well as to foster harmony and cooperation among
the various people who call Dharamshala home.
forms of art expression and inclusion through
movement and dance.”
The activities included the creation of a weblog
reporting on the project, public dance performances
carried out in public spaces, and short film screenings.
Artistic & Educational Venues
Performing Arts
patuadanceability.wordpress.com
Project partner: Dança sem fronteiras (Dance without Frontiers)
DHARAMSHALA INTERNATIONAL FILM
FESTIVAL 2013, INDIA
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
Photography & Cinema
DHARAMSHALA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (DIFF)
showcased around thirty independent features,
docu­men­taries and short films from around the world,
alongside panel discussions and masterclasses with
leading independent filmmakers from India and abroad.
The film festival created a cultural space where Indians
and Tibetans, who share the same city but rarely ever
mingle, had the chance to interact and cooperate
with each other.
The town of Dharamshala is situated in the foot­
hills of the North Indian Himalayas, and is the home in
exile of the Dalai Lama and the capital of the Tibetan
diaspora, who co-exist with an Indian community with
whom they have very little inter-communications or
relationships. This division has resulted in misunder­
stand­ings and resentments, rarely discussed or acknowl­
edged, between the two communities. Furthermore,
as most major cultural events in India are restricted
to the major metropolitan areas, the rural town
of Dharamshala has no cinemas, libraries or contem­
porary cultural institutions.
“Most contemporary cultural events in India
are centred on the large cities and smaller towns like
Dharamshala are completely neglected,” says Ritu
Sarin, Co-Director of DIFF. “The primary aims of DIFF
were to redress this imbalance, celebrate independent
cinema and offer Dharamshala’s multi-cultural and
multi-ethnic community exposure to good quality films
from around the world. Equally important was the
www.facebook.com/diffindia
www.facebook.com/whitecranefilms
www.dharamsalafilmfestival.com
Project partner: White Crane Arts & Media
Interview with Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam t page 66
DREAM CATCHER, IRAN
DREAM CATCHER is a site-responsive monumental
installation of plaster sculptures in an abandoned building
in Tehran, produced by Iranian artist Bita Fayyazi.
42
Fayyazi is considered a pioneer in the field of Iranian
public art projects. She became internationally known
in the 1990s for her installations of thousands of out­
sized ceramic cockroaches. She incorporates sculptures,
installations and site-specific performances into her
work and reflects upon the state of society in modern
and post-modern conditions. She rose to prominence
as one of the driving forces in post-revolutionary
Iranian art.
Old buildings in Tehran are being systematically
demolished and replaced by apartment complexes
and commercial spaces.The relationship of the individual
to these historic sites of memory is scarified in the
process. This project responds to loss, identity crisis
and emotional strife in Iran. In DREAM CATCHER, trauma
is given shape and made visible through the grotesque
sculptures occupying the abandoned house.
In DREAM CATCHER Fayyazi collaborated with her
extended network of artists and cultural practi­tioners,
their friends and families, to create plaster husks that
resemble cast-off exoskeletons and symbolise sacrificed
dreams associated with times of conflict, socio-political
upheavals and economic uncertainties. Members of the
local community were invited to share their experi­
ences of loss and to mould husks to symbolise their
abandoned hopes and deferred dreams. Participants
were then invited to “excavate” their personal experi­
ences of trauma, and to confront the past by removing
or destroying these sculptures on-site. The project
was also published, which situates it within Fayyazi’s
broader artistic practice, while the video artwork lives
on as an independent art piece which captures the
ephemeral experiences of the participants within the
confines of the house.
“Given our current social and cultural circumstances
I realised that the production and announcement of
such a hitherto unfamiliar art project on a public plat­
form would lead to serious complications, interfer­
ence and possible restrictions by the city authorities,”
says Fayyazi. “So, I decided to use some discretion and
pursue a more subtle approach to the whole project.
I gave the project a little twist, by locating a private
space and bringing the public domain into it instead.
Having to work with people from different walks of
life and backgrounds yet all from one society served
as a catalyst. The participants differing thoughts and
norms develop and translate into the art and culture
of DREAM CATCHER.”
The project capitalises on human connections within
and across communities to cultivate a safe space for
dialogue. Fayyazi hopes to encourage the participants
to confront traumas which have long been submerged
but whose legacy continues to impact their lives. Unlike
the traditional museum environment or institutional
cultural spaces, the interaction between the artists,
the visitors and an accessible, familiar space introduced
a level of engagement, which facilitated the practice
of storytelling, as well as interaction with the sculptures.
Streets & Urban Centres
Visual Arts
ivde.net/artists/bita_fayyazi
Project partner: Bita Fayyazi
FIRST NATIONAL GRAFFITI FESTIVAL,
AFGHANISTAN
The FIRST NATIONAL GRAFFITI FESTIVAL was organised
by three young female artists (i.e. the Berang Collective),
and brought together Afghan graffiti artists and art
students to investigate the possibilities of graffiti and
art in a public space, in the form of a festival.
Art in public space in Afghanistan is highly uncom­
mon and graffiti in Afghanistan is even less common.
Through a workshop abroad, contemporary Afghan
artist Shamsia Hassani began to explore graffiti, which
she then started to paint on walls in her own country,
first inside and then outside. With graffiti she hopes
to paint over the bad memories of war on the walls
of Afghanistan.
“I was most surprised by people who said ‘why
are you making the walls dirty?’ Some people are also
concerned that I am doing something that is not
allowed in Islam. Others think it is not very good for
ladies to stand in the street and do this kind of art.
At the same time, I see a few people do like my work”,
says Hassani.
The bilingual festival (in Pashto and Dari) took place
over two weeks in a rented house, hosted by the collec­
tive Berang. Graffiti artists from other parts of the
country as well as ten students from the Faculty of Art
in Kabul were invited to participate. The general public
was invited to watch the art being made and, at their
own request, to participate. Graffiti pieces were made
in public space and on boards so they could be exhibited.
The young artists involved are representatives of
a generation that has, so far, known mostly war and
violence. As artists, they feel the need to come together
and get to know each other and the need to forge ties
of friendship and mutual understanding across ethnic
lines. They have a message for their country that is
grounded in human rights, social justice and peace.
43
This project aimed to raise awareness about public
rural spaces and ecosystems as intrinsic to the develop­
ment of Colombia. It focused on a specific region, the
Magdalena River, and on a specific “colonisation” – the
El Quimbo Dam, which has already resulted in killings
as well as the migration of over 400 families.The project
set up a model for community emancipation and
creative re-appropriation of territory, which not
only counterbalances the negative (social, cultural, eco­
logical, archaeological) impacts of the construction of
El Quimbo Dam but also inspires other communities
nationwide. It engaged a wider population in the
col­lec­tive processes of challenging dam construction
in Colombia in an effort to decentralise creative
manifestations around geographical cultural centres
and cultural elites.
“We are constantly misinformed,” says artist Carolina
Caycedo. “Art can work towards the recognition of
power structures, like nation-states and transnational
companies, that monopolise concepts such as sustain­
ability, progress and development. This infrastructure
is turning a public body of water, a public rural space
into a privatised resource; a process of rural, geo­
graphical, and ecological corporatisation.”
The project envisaged a catalogue booklet and
a DVD (in Spanish) and to be distributed for free among
local participants and performers as well as nationwide
in academic, cultural and environmental contexts.
A translated print version was made available on
demand. Images and videos were assembled and
exhibited at community centres to make the commu­
nities and territories under threat visible.
As Afghan women, they want change to come to Afghan
women’s lives.
The festival creates an opportunity for these artists
to work together, to exhibit their work and to teach
and share their knowledge amongst each other, with
other young Afghans and reaching out internationally
by using Skype. At the same time the festival provides
an opportunity to spread views about peace and
women’s rights through art. The Festival shows Afghan
people that they can create beauty in their country
and that positive things can happen. They want to
show the world that Afghanistan is not lost. ‘We are
living here and we have found our voices’.
Streets & Urban Centres
Visual Arts
www.facebook.com/BerangArts
Project partner: Berang Artists’ Collective (represented by artists
Shamsia Hassani, Malina Suliman and Nabila Horakhsh)
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
Performing Arts
Project partner: Jaguos por el Territorio, Carolina Caycedo and Jonatán Luna
carolinacaycedo.wordpress.com
descolonizandolajagua.wordpress.com
GEOCHOREOGRAPHIES BETWEEN WATERS,
COLOMBIA
is a project that
highlighted the significance of public, accessible rivers
and riverbanks in Colombia. It presents choreog­raphic
performances, which are the outcome of regional work­
shops conducted with the local youth in locations
where traditional, everyday activities associated with
riverbanks and rural life take place, and are threatened
by geographical and ecological privatisation processes.
Rural spaces and their natural ecosystems are the
basis for the Colombian economy and culture. Over
the last two decades, Colombians have experienced
the dire consequences of massive privatisation proc­
esses and seen public rural spaces and natural resources
conceded to multinational corporations. Such policies
have contributed to an increasingly aggressive milita­
risation of rural space, leaving the indigenous popu­lation
with little or no access to ecosystems. As a conse­
quence, community displace­ment and segregation have
resulted in the gradual crumbling of rural lifestyles
in Colombia.
GEOCHOREOGRAPHIES BETWEEN WATERS
THE HUMAN RIGHTS HUMAN DIGNITY INTERNATIONAL FILM
is a travelling festival
in fourteen cities throughout Myanmar. Dedicated
to Aung San Suu Kyi, the festival focused on human,
social and political issues and used the power and
creativity of documentary filmmaking to educate and
encourage the Myanmar public to understand and
demand freedoms, human rights and democracy.
In last two years Myanmar has gone through
important political change. After decades of harsh
military rule, the current government has started
implementing cautious political and economic reforms.
This opening and liberalisation has woken up long
suppressed activism, creativity, desires and demands
of the people in the country. This is visible in many
different spheres and particularly in the sphere of docu­
mentary filmmaking, which is attracting a lot of young
people.With a new sense of freedom and opportunity,
local filmmakers have started to make films with
revived enthusiasm.
The Human Dignity Media Organisation’s core
mission is to promote human rights awareness in
Myanmar using the power of film and the persuasive
strength of audiovisual communication. They aim to
create a space to encourage human rights discussions
amongst the general public in Myanmar.The first edition
of HRHDIFF was successfully held in June 2013 and
attracted an audience of 6,000 people.
This year the second edition took place, with one
major film festival in Rangoon, and all film screenings
in the national programme followed by discussions
between the audience and filmmakers.The festival was
advertised through Burmese and English websites,
social media, radio,TV and a festival catalogue.Thirteen
travelling film festivals took place in the capital of each
of the other states and divisions of Myanmar, and a tour
of the films through all states and divisions of Myanmar
was organised. A human rights documentary film
library in Yangon, a monthly documentary screening,
an open call for local filmmakers and workshops
were also organised as part of the festival.
“We believe that creating public space in our country
is essential in order to practise basic human rights
such as freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
Which is why we organise public debates after film
screenings. This is a way to expand public space from
movie theatres to other places,” says Mon Mon Myat,
the Executive Director of the Human Dignity Film
Institute. “The most valuable thing we learned from
the project implementation is that we could reflect
human rights situation in our country through the
films we produced and we selected for screenings.”
FESTIVAL IN MYANMAR (HRHDIFF)
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
HUMAN RIGHTS HUMAN DIGNITY
INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, MYANMAR
44
IN AND BETWEEN THE (RE)PUBLIC, ARMENIA
is a bilingual (Armenian
and English) hardcopy and an electronic publication
and catalogue of art happenings and events that was
organised by the Queering Yerevan Collective in the
public spaces of Yerevan.
The Queering Yerevan Collective is a loose net­
work of artists, writers, activists, and cultural critics
who use Yerevan as a virtual and experimental space
for cultivating a queer gaze. All of Queering Yerevan
Collective’s happenings, including this one, aim to create
a visibility of non-heterosexual and non-mainstream
expressions of culture, be it recovering heritage from
the past or inventing new modes to express diverse
forms of being. They collaborate with artists, activists
and cultural workers from abroad, which enriches
their experiences and cultivates dialogue in Armenia.
In Yerevan, as in many other post-Soviet cities,
public spaces and the commons have been brutally
privatised, effectively alienating citizens from their
every­day rituals and routines and minimising spaces
dedicated to cultural production. In the absence of
institutional or artist-based exhibition spaces,Yerevan,
and its public spaces, have become a central focus
for creative discourse in Armenia.
The Republic can be viewed as a phase of transition
from communist rule to a post-communist state, espe­
cially with the emergence of new (in)dependent nationstates after the break-up of the Soviet Union. A publica­
tion on works directly related to the LGBT community
in Armenia and abroad, seen in the local context of
Yerevan, is innovative, unique, courageous and extremely
socially developmental.The human rights situation for
LGBT people in Armenia and in most post-Soviet coun­
tries is extremely critical and difficult to say the least.
“In a society that actively erases and silences queer
voices, whether from the past or the present, our
activities create spaces for queer voices, help members
of the society to revise their exclusionary views, and
propose ways to co-exist in a post-Soviet Republic that
we all helped create after the Soviet Union collapsed,”
says Shushan Avagyan, a member of the Queering
Yerevan Collective. “Public space is unreservedly
IN AND BETWEEN THE (RE)PUBLIC
Photography & Cinema
www.hrhdiff.org
www.facebook.com/HRHDIFF
Project partner: Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi on the behalf of Human Dignity
Media Organisation (HDMO)
45
mascu­line and heteronormative in Armenia; what
we tried to do with our project was to offer a new,
interrogative and diverse perception of public space.”
IN AND BETWEEN THE (RE)PUBLIC looks at the public
spaces of Yerevan which have undergone a traumatic
transformation during the post-Soviet transition. It is
unique and important because it does not rest simply
on gentrification issues but attempts to link conditions
of queer existence in the present with histories and
process already marginalised or erased from public
space in the past.
The Internet & Virtual Platforms
The implementing partner, La Compagnie Tamadia is
the only contemporary dance company in BoboDioulasso that strives to offer a quality, different and
refreshing culture to the city’s population. Tamadia,
“the happiness of adventure” in Bambara and Dioula,
combines different dance styles, such as Bobo Mandingo
folk dance, contemporary African dance, and – for the
first time in Burkina Faso – capoeira. Tamadia offers
dynamic dance performances, and is a promising
emerging dance company.
IN-OUT DANCE FESTIVAL is an international festival
that combines dance, music, video projections, instal­
lations and capoeira in shows that were performed
in public spaces of Bobo-Dioulasso. The festival was
accessible to a wide audience, reaching almost 8,000
visitors over the course of three days. The theme
was Culture, facteur de l’unification, de rencontre et de paix
(culture, creator of unification, encounters and peace).
In the week before the festival, local and inter­national
participants were brought together for work­shops
in theatre, dance and capoeira, led by high profile, inter­
nationally recognised trainers. The performances
created during these workshops made up the pro­
gramme of the festival. These performances, in the
streets and squares of the city’s popular neigh­bour­
hoods, were brought to a wide variety of people who
together make up the city’s population.
“By performing outdoors the festival is reaching
out to the local population, not just the people who
habitually attend art events”, says Aguibou Bougobali
Sanou, the festival director. “The International Dance
Festival gives us, as young artists, opportunities to
express ourselves, create an international bridge and
an international network, and at the same time make
public space more alive.”
Literature & Journalism
queeringyerevan.blogspot.nl
Project partner: Queering Yerevan Collective
IN-OUT DANCE FESTIVAL, BURKINA FASO
brings an extraordinary mix of
dance and capoeira to the streets of Bobo-Dioulasso,
the second-largest city of Burkina Faso. Professionals
in dance, capoeira and theatre worked together to
create innovative performances, which placed BoboDioulasso on the country’s cultural map.
Cultural events are very centralised in Burkina
Faso. Although Bobo-Dioulasso is demographically
the country’s second city it has no main cultural events
apart from a storytelling festival that has been taking
place for over seventeen years. The situation is such
that most artists, dancers and other cultural practi­
tioners need to move to Ouagadougou to be able to
develop a career. Indeed it is a city that has undergone
a profound change over the past ten years, both socially
(urbanisation, a demographic boom with precarious
social consequences) and politically. In this city, which has
lost its function as a village, it is important to recreate
social spaces for cultural and artistic events.The festival
is very much in line with this philosophy, as it brought
Capoeira, an African dance from Brazil that is almost
non-existent on the African continent, back to Burkina
Faso and worked to develop cultural exchange.
IN-OUT DANCE FESTIVAL
Streets & Urban Centres
Performing Arts
Project Partner: Association et Compagnie TAMADIA
www.tamadia.com
LAGOS OPEN – AJEGUNLE INVITATION 2013,
NIGERIA
46
LAGOS OPEN – AJEGUNLE INVITATION 2013 is a contemporary
art project aimed at re-inventing selected public spaces
in the Ajegunle community of Lagos with artists’
inter­ventions. The project critically explored the
Ajegunle slum as a space for cross-cultural experiences
that transcend ethnic, tribal and social differences.
Nigeria in general is saddled with various social,
economic and political challenges and unrest. This
project focuses on the particularly troubled area of
Ajegunle, which is probably the biggest slum in Lagos.
Like most communities in Lagos, Ajegunle is devoid
of well-thought-out public spaces. As a consequence
most public places are spaces that are unofficially appro­
priated by the public and tolerated by local authorities.
Over the years, Ajegunle has metamorphosed into
a “mega-slum”. Fondly called the “Jungle City”, it is
considered explosive due to its diversity, dense popula­
tion, poverty and crime. At the same time, the “Jungle
City” is a true melting pot of Nigeria’s ethnic groups,
home to the Igbos, the Hausas, the Yorubas, the Ijaws,
the Itsekiris, the Efiks, and the Isokos.
“Some people wonder if and how poor people
understand and appreciate art. They see art as some­
thing more at home with the rich and influential”,
says Emeka Udemba, Artistic Director, LAGOS OPEN –
AJEGUNLE INVITATION. “Well, this project in Ajegunle
demonstrated the universality of the human existence.
What is lacking is opportunity in these challenging
communities. Forums for contemporary art like
museums and galleries are mainly situated in highbrow
areas of our cities. As a consequence, accessibility
to most cultural institutions is somewhat remote for
the majority of the people in the city.”
As one of the few urban art projects in Nigeria,
this project developed artistic strategies that facilitated
communication between various social strata, where
boundaries fade between the marginal and the central,
between the alternative and the mainstream, between
the high and the low, between the perfect and the
imperfect. A series of encounters in this project
explored the public spaces in Ajegunle as foundational
sites for a conscious process in reframing the identity
and clichés associated with Lagos as a city in general.
Aspects of this project included performances, instal­
lations, photography, murals, graffiti, and music, as well
as discussion sessions with visitors and the residents
of the Ajegunle community.
The project consisted of artists’ interventions
that transformed spaces in Ajegunle into cultural hot
spots, even if only for a short time. Street corners
and bars became exhibition spaces, churches became
reading corners, and thematic round tables. Members
of youth groups from Ajegunle worked as guides to
the entire project, and the interventions were collabo­
rative and interactive in nature and therefore the
local community was actively involved in original and
innovative ways.
With a belief that art belongs to public spaces
for general consumption, the staging of this project
in selected public spaces in Ajegunle opened the possi­
bility for the community to experience the various
creative encounters without inhibition.
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
Performing Arts
project-space-lagos.org
Project partner: Project Space Lagos
LAND ART MONGOLIA 2014, MONGOLIA
The third edition of LAND ART MONGOLIA, or LAM 360°,
was guided by the theme “Men and Animals” and
included international and Mongolian artists, and work
made in collaboration with local nomadic people. It is
intended that the artworks will remain permanently
in situ and therefore consistently create permanent
exhibits throughout the country.
About forty per cent of the Mongolian population
lives out in the steppe in nomadic groups or little vil­
lages.These people, living with and from nature in a dense
and sensitive ecological balance represent the most
vulnerable sector of Mongolian society. In fact, nomads
are in danger of discrimination in the capital. Mongolia
has one of the highest worldwide ratios of animals
to people. For the nomadic people of Mongolia, the
conditions that affect animal husbandry are of para­
mount importance. Illegal wildlife trade and export
to China is a major problem of animal protection in
Mongolia and directly related to respect, knowledge
and wealth.
In more abstract terms, looking at relationships
between men and animals evokes questions regarding
ethics, politics and power, but also subjectivity.“Becominganimal”, a concept of Deleuze and Guattari, is both a
process and a method. “To become”, writes Deleuze,
“is not to attain a form (identification, imitation, Mimesis)
but to find the zone of proximity indiscernibility, or
indifferentiation where one can no longer be distin­
guished from a woman, an animal, or a molecule
– neither imprecise nor general, but unforeseen and
non-preexistent, singularised out of a population
rather than determined in a form”.
47
The third Biennial LAM 360° (2013/14) explored issues
of overgrazing, desertification, poaching and illegal
wildlife trade, decentralisation and general speciesappropriate questions of animal husbandry. The main
activities were an Art Camp in Uvurkhangai Aimag
about 250km west from the capital Ulaanbaatar.
During two weeks in August 2014 around twenty
international and Mongolian artists created artworks
in the rural wildlife near Elsen Tasarkhai. A documentary
exhibition at the National Mongolian Modern Art
Gallery in Ulaanbaatar presented the realised projects
within the critical perspective of the thematic issues.
In August 2014 a public symposium brought together
different speakers (Mongolian and foreign experts)
discussing and illuminating essential questions regarding
the theme.
“Land Art Biennial Mongolia was founded to create
a new chapter in the artistic Land Art tradition since
its beginnings in the U.S. American West in the late
1960s”, says Marc Schmitz, initiator and co-director
of LAM 360°. “Following the idea of a nomadic ‘walking
museum’, the biennial develops formats and procedures
not only to use the various natural and urban places
of Mongolia as a venue for international art, but to
initiate and to reflect on mutual learning processes.
LAND ART MONGOLIA does not aim at shaping public
space permanently. It aims to critically reflect on both
the Western art historical canon of Land Art with its
iconic works as well as on biennials as international
art institutions.”
MNG 360° is an Ulaanbaatar based registered
organi­sation (NGO) with the purpose of raising aware­
ness about issues such as sustainability, nomadic culture,
ecological decentralisation and democracy through
contemporary art as an impulse generator for civil
society in Mongolia. Constituting LAM 360° is its main
activity. LAM 360° focuses on Land Art as a form of spatial
visualisation of the relations between nature, culture,
and social policies. It strongly promotes freedom of
expression in joining people and institutions from all
sectors of Mongolian society by meshing their respective
backgrounds and perspectives through collaboration
and networking actions of regional and global scope.
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
MOBILE CINEMA,TUNISIA
MOBILE CINEMA consisted of a cycle of mobile screenings
(twenty-four screenings across eight enclosed, dis­
advantaged villages) covering a large part of the Tunisian
territory and organised in open and public places
such as local markets, public places, cafes, primary
schools, children hospitals, and abandoned fields.
By moving away from the cities, MOBILE CINEMA
visited regions where cinema is inconspicuous and
the cultural space is absent. Hence, the public spaces
of disadvantaged areas in Tunisia are re-thought and
transformed into cultural spaces. This project focuses
on the decentralisation of access to cinema; restoring
the relationship between Tunisian citizens and culture;
stimulating openness and a sense of collectivity through
mobile cinema; and encouraging people to enrol in
art in their social, cultural and economic environment,
to have a critical and profound artistic vision and to
become active participants in the defence of their
cultural achievements.
In 1973 there were 114 cinemas in Tunis. By 2012
this number had shrunk to a mere twelve, a mind­
boggling decrease of over 80 per cent. Furthermore
the Tunisian regions (especially inland areas) still
suffer from a lack of cultural spaces, theatres and
cinemas, and have access to neither culture nor film.
The non-profit organi­sation Association Tunisienne
d’Action pour le Cinéma (ATAC) defends “the Free
Cinema” and the requirements of its development.
This project is inspired by the idea of circuses and
fairs that used to travel from village to village and
bring festivity among the villages. Through the project
the inhabitants of remote Tunisian villages were able
to experience three high quality films on big screens,
whereas they normally do not have access to cinemas.
Besides the films screening, the programme contains
a carnival and a theatrical part, which is animated
by two actors.
“MOBILE CINEMA has totally redefined the concept
of public spaces in our country, specifically in disad­
vantaged regions. People started to see it as a space
for social interaction, a way to encourage more out­
Visual Arts
landartmongolia.blogspot.nl
www.facebook.com/landart.mongolia
Project Partner: Land Art Mongolia
48
energy of light bulbs or neon light. Once the installation
is in place, the pier will become the setting for a series
of talks on the use of light in the public spaces of
Cachoeira – one of Brazil’s many fast developing urban
centres, where social life takes place mainly outside,
once the heat of the day has subsided.
After a period of economic recession the city
of Cachoeria, a national monument because of its his­
torical architecture, is now benefiting from Brazil’s
growing economy. However there is no discussion about
the use of light in public spaces in a city where social
life takes place mainly outside and in the evening. The
discussion on the use of artificial light in the public
domain, linked to an artistic presentation, is of artistic
and social importance.
“In our project we focus on light after sunset”,
says Danillo Barata, coordinator of Coletivo Xaréu.
“In Cachoeira the sunset starts early, around 18.00.
The climate is hot and our social contacts happen
in substantial part after sunset in artificially lighted
public space. Art and culture are fundamental elements
for humanising public space. We need to take owner­
ship and constructively discuss and rethink cities.
Certainly, the impasses accumulated over time make
this task more exciting. Public space is a very sensitive
place for transformations and aesthetic interactions.
It is a field to enhance a more interactive dialogue
between art, sustainability and, above all, a public ethics.”
The project aimed to stimulate a discussion about
the use of light in public space and contribute to the
drafting of a “light plan” for the city of Cachoeira, which
might draw attention to the use of an ecologically
friendly light system. The project illustrated the use
of art in promoting a better integration between
the city’s public spaces and the city’s population.
door lifestyle and a place to share debates between
different groups in the society. Through hosting screen­
ings in public and open places we gave the spectator
a feeling of collective sharing and common right to the
public spaces”, says Emna Taboubi, Executive Director
of ATAC. “After the 14 January Revolution, a change
touched all fields and all areas in Tunisia. Art has played
an important role in this transition. From that moment,
art started to occupy streets and public spaces, to
move outside galleries and enclosed spaces in order
to reach the ordinary citizen in his daily life and not
only the elites in specific events and specific places.
Today in public spaces we find, the artist, the intellec­
tual, the activist and the ordinary citizen, all in a single
place. Now in Tunisia, public spaces are seen as places
where people from different genders, ideologies and
generations, can gather to meet eachother, to discover,
to connect and discuss all kinds of subjects.”
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
Photography & Cinema
Project partner: Association Tunisienne d’Action pour le Cinéma
www.facebook.com/cineact
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
Visual Arts
coletivoxareu.wordpress.com
http://tinyurl.com/p9hq3jn
Project Partner: Coletivo Audiovisual Xareu artist collective (Danillo Barata)
PAISAGEM DE LUZ, BRAZIL
PAISAGEM DE LUZ is a visual arts project in the Brazilian
city of Cachoeira. Literally meaning “landscape of
light”, the project consisted of a light sculpture on
a pier in the Paraguaçu river, which runs through
the city, and a series of lectures aimed at igniting
a discussion on the use of light in the city’s public space.
The idea for PAISAGEM DE LUZ comes from the
Colectivo Audiovisual Xareu, an artists’ collective in
Chachoeira that creates audio-visual performances.
The collective’s four members, Claudio Manoel, Danillo
Barata, Fernando Rabelo and Jarbas Jacome, are all
musi­cians or artists affiliated with the Federal
University of Bahia.
For PAISAGEM DE LUZ, the collective has asked a group
of local artists to create a sculpture on a centrally
located pier using Light Tape, a newly developed, sus­
tainable light source, which uses only a fraction of the
PÉRIFÉERIQUES #3, HAITI
49
The third edition of the PÉRIFÉERIQUES festival focused
on the exploration of new artistic practices in urban
peripheries around the world. This third edition, which
took place in November 2013 in the Haitian city Jacmel,
brought together local and international artists to
develop cultural projects in ten shipping containers
transformed into public galleries.
The festival is organised by Chantier du Sud, a cul­
tural organisation based in Haiti that supports projects
related to culture and development in the global south.
Their aim is to become a think tank that allows oper­
ators to expand their horizons and artists to innovate
in their practice. Education is at the heart of Chantiers
du Sud’s actions. Previous editions of PÉRIFÉERIQUES
have taken place in Senegal and Benin, where the
organisation has developed a significant network
of artists and cultural organisations.
For PÉRIFÉERIQUES #3 ten artists from diverse back­
grounds were asked to reflect on this year’s theme
of ’Rêve / Dreams’, and to develop artistic projects such
as exhibitions, performances and screenings. These
were then featured in one of ten shipping containers
adapted by Beninese designer Franck Houndegla.
By using shipping containers as public galleries, the
project highlighted Jacmel’s creative potential in
an inventive and highly accessible way. The project
examined ways of rethinking public space through
through a conference about the impact of artistic
practices in public space on the city’s population.
For visual artists in Haiti, one of the main challenges
is the lack of facilities and infrastructure to practice
their art, something that was worsened by the earth­
quake in 2010. With the government mainly focusing
on promoting Haiti as a business-friendly place,
Chantiers du Sud considers it important to keep on
offering “an alternative to this business logic”. This
refers specifically to the city of Jacmel, one of Haiti’s
most popular tourist destinations because of its
distinctive cultural heritage.
“To boost investment in the country, the Govern­
ment created the official slogan: ‘Haiti is open for
business’. Chantiers Du Sud went against this dominant
discourse and offered an alternative to this business
logic, saying, ‘We are open for dreaming’,” says Giscard
Bouchotte, Artistic Director of Chantiers du Sud.
“We involved city residents in setting up the project
and demonstrated that public space is their space
and not only for politics. The Mayor of Jacmel said
during the opening, ‘Without PÉRIFÉERIQUES, this public
place would be in the dark.This team has brought light
to our city.’ We were so happy to hear that. Culture
and the presence of artworks in public space can
make culture less elitist, accessible to everyone.”
The project has mobilised the public to engage
in the discussion on the future of their city by showing
the potential of public space. Furthermore, it attempted
to appropriate and create a sense of ownership of
the city by the artists and the public.
Streets & Urban Centres
Visual Arts
www.chantiersdusud.org
www.facebook.com/chantiers.dusud
Project partner: Chantiers du Sud
Interview with Giscard Bouchotte t page 65
PROGRAMME RÉCRÉÂTRALES-ELAN,
BURKINA FASO
PROGRAMME RÉCRÉÂTRALES-ELAN is a project that aimed
to provide a boost to theatrical activity in Franco­phone
Africa, supporting professionalism and collaboration.
The programme carried out activities in West and
Central Africa supporting training, production, creation
and distribution and management.
The project supported the creation, production,
editing and distribution of quality theatrical works in
Africa, and the training of actors in the theatre industry.
This was undertaken by involving theatre in social
debates and in democracy building. This project is one
of the few initiatives that deliver high quality theatre
productions to the African public, contributing to the
social, political and cultural discourse of modern Africa.
PROGRAMME RÉCRÉÂTRALES-ELAN initiated and stimulated
reflections and discussions about culture in Africa,
as well as enhancing the exchange of theatre artists
within Africa.
Compagnie Falinga organised the programme,
in collaboration with Acte Sept (Mali), the Sokan
Theatre (Ivory Coast) and Les Bruits de la Rue (Congo).
Etienne Minoungou, an actor, playwright and theatre
director, set up Compagnie Falinga in 2000 in
Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.The essen­tial
idea behind Company Falinga is to keep traditional
aesthetic values while opening up to contemporary
and experimental forms of theatre. It achieves this
by focusing on three essential axes: creation, training
and research.The core of Compagnie Falinga’s artistic
research concerns the theme of oral tradition,
an essential element in African culture.
50
by the question, “how does a city constitute its own
identity today and how do its citizens interact and
make of their cities?” with a focus on the neighbour­
hood of Jeppestown, in the inner city of Johannesburg.
Johannesburg’s inner city contains many contested
spaces brought about by the diverse actors and con­
sumers in the space. The migrant nature of the city’s
current and historical users presents a challenge for
these transient hosts of public space. Further­more,
informal trade on the sidewalks contrasts with the
development of formal structures by the city (public
spaces for leisure, meant for business people moving
back into town). Formally informed public spaces show
a tendency of being exclusive to certain cultural and
social classes and are often narrow in its interpretation
of usage.
The project takes the form of a one-day Urban Safari
(Festival) consisting of temporary art interven­tions
and performances that activate spaces and dialogue.
The work commenced in December 2013 and culmi­
nated on 22 March 2014 in a 24-hour event.The Urban
Safari developed in collaboration with established and
emerging artists and art students and the greater com­
munities of the specifically chosen sites. It investigated
various topics, temporary artistic interventions and
performances that emerged during the festival in
different spaces all over the city of Johannesburg.
“The project reaffirmed the role of creative
expression in our cities”, say Thiresh Govender and
Katharina Rohde, curators of the project. “More impor­
tantly, it demonstrated a more nuanced, relevant and
critical way of creative expressions. It argued for a crea­
tive expression which is intrinsically linked to the
wicked social-spatial challenges of the city – and to
test what can come out of this coupling. It also allowed
us to think more critically and holis­tically about
aspects of city making, particularly about emergent
spaces and creative collaborations.”
The activities of the project explored the use
of space in new ways and initiated a dialogue between
different people in the city of Johannesburg. Through
this project, participants recreated a new image of the
African city that differs from its reputation of being
chaotic and dangerous, and focused instead on cultural
diversity and flexible potentials of spaces and people.
RÉCRÉÂTRALES (created in 2002) is the Compagnie
Falinga’s main activity, which is the only existing plat­
form in Africa for professional African theatre artists
to meet, train and present theatre. The dynamics of
RÉCRÉÂTRALES help to affirm the importance of theatrical
creation at a local, regional and international level.
The final beneficiaries are the audiences in cities and
communities in the villages affected by the activities
of the programme. Access to the theatre is a citizen’s
right and it should be promoted in terms of access
to practice and enjoyment of theatrical works.
“The desire to give African theatre professionals
the time and place to meet, exchange, research and
create is what originally sparked the idea for the project”,
says Marie-Hélène Urro Assistant AdministratorCoordinator of La Compagnie Falinga. “Soon after,
we felt the need to strengthen the social dialogue
with the residents of the neighbourhood where the
festival was held as we needed their help to succeed;
this led to the increasing participation of the residents
in vari­ous aspects of the project and the develop­ment
and implementation of a neighbourhood organising
com­mit­tee and a contract of local development. Our
project rethinks public space both physically (through
landscaping and public works) and conceptually: it
turned the entire neighbourhood into a meeting place,
where local, national and international artists and
festival-goers intermingled intensively with neigh­
bour­hood residents over two months of creative
residencies and festival performances.”
Artistic & Educational Venues
Performing Arts
www.recreatrales.org
www.facebook.com/recreatrales.recreatrales
Project Partner: La Compagnie Falinga
Streets & Urban Centres
Cultural Heritage & Tradition
www.urbanworks.co.za
www.publicacts.org
Project partner: Thiresh Govender on behalf of Urban Works
Architecture and Urbanism
PUBLIC ACTS, SOUTH AFRICA
Reflection by Thiresh Govender and Katharina Rohde t page 73
PUBLIC ACTS is a project that aimed to create a com­
mon identity for the city of Johannesburg and a sense
of belonging for its citizens, by exploring different
interpretations of public spaces. The project is framed
51
play. Furthermore, the debate regarding private and
public space is especially controversial in the context
of refugee camps as there is legally no private owner­
ship but a right to use the land. This leads to first, an
informal real estate market where land is being sold,
bought and claimed, and second, a public space that
in order to be collectively owned it has to be collec­
tively defined. As there is officially no ownership of
land, public spaces become fragile islands that require
social consensus in order to exist.”
The proposed interventions are the result of a col­
lective effort made by Campus in Camps participants
in dialogue with community members, associations
and collaborators. The organisers are intellectuals who
have been active on the ground for a long time and
who continuously reinvent and question themselves;
they are also a 2010 Prince Claus Laureate.
RE-ACTIVATING THE COMMON,
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
RE-IMAGINING THE COMMON is a project that consisted
of public space interventions in refugee camps in the
Southern West Bank in the Palestinian Territories.
The project aimed to re-activate unused common
spaces, preserving and giving new value to architec­
tural heritage, and to establish a collective awareness
of common spaces. Through various cultural activities,
the organisers turned unused public spaces into lively
community hubs, thereby re-activating the common
in the context of refugee camps.
Campus in Camps is an organisation that engages
young women and men from refugee camps in the
Southern West Bank in a two-year programme to
address alternative forms of visual and cultural repre­
sen­tation of refugee-hood.The aim is to provide young
motivated Palestinian refugees, who are interested in
engaging their community, the intellectual space and
necessary infrastructure to facilitate these debates and
translate them into practical community-driven projects.
Palestinian refugee camps are a context in which
it is nearly impossible to delineate private, public and
common. The public in camps does not have a political
body responsible for the collective interest, because
no formal state and authority exist. A core component
of Campus in Camps’ work proposes a critical under­
standing of the public by re-imagining the notion of
the common, re-activating it in the context of refugee
camps. Through critical debate, participants have now
designed initiatives in common space through which
to articulate these developed ideas.
“This project has evolved into something bigger
than we had anticipated, namely the discourse about
heritage in Palestinian refugee camps”, says Daniela
Sanjines, Head of Communication and Coordination
at Campus in Camps. “The public discussions that are
arising around this unique plot that carries the sole
physical witnesses of the early history of Dheheishe
are inspiring and important: they question the way we
remember and preserve in such a complex historical,
social and political space like the refugee camp as well
as address the role that architecture and public space
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
Cultural Heritage & Tradition
www.campusincamps.ps
www.facebook.com/CampusinCamps
Project partner: Campus in Camps
capturing that space. In this historical moment of poten­
tial change, the Egyptian society at large is questioning
its own relation to the public space, and the rights
and limits to the freedoms incumbent to each citizen.
Access to this historical patrimony remains extremely
limited due to security restrictions and institutional
bureaucracies, which continue to tightly control who
and what part of any national archive can be visited.
Yet there are many independent films and home movies
hiding in private houses or places nobody knows about.
The project gives the wider public access to their
archive collection, by organising a curated exhibition.
The archive is comprised of unique films in different
formats, forty hours of raw material from the 1960s
and 1970s that were shot in 35mm for news spots
screened in cinemas ahead of feature films, covering
two decades of state propaganda; as well as printed
material, and personal artefacts such as diaries, manu­
scripts, correspondences and notes belonging to
prominent Egyptian personalities, related to cinema.
The project facilitates the sharing and discussion
of the citizen’s relationship to public space and the right
to film it, by exploring a rich collection of cinematic
historical material. A curating team composed of the
librarian and three film curators were invited to explore
the indexed archive and draw common themes out
of the collection.
“In Egypt public space is problematic”, says Hana
Al Bayaty, Co-Founder of Cimatheque. “No one is
responsible for it; there are fences around all parks.
Cars are parked on the sidewalks. There are fences
around houses.The private life of people is quite hidden
to strangers. It makes quite an impression if you happen
to find ordinary pictures of people in their home,
or on holiday, in a junk shop in Cairo. Will people
really bring their 8mm films to Cimatheque? And thus
renounce to the rights? And agree that this will be
included in an archive, also to be seen online?”
The project venue Cimatheque is a multipurpose
space dedicated to celebrating film and supporting
the needs of independent filmmakers in Egypt, a private
space that has been set up and transformed by individ­
uals into a centre dedicated to alternative cinema.
It is conceived of as a dynamic workspace for inde­
pend­ent filmmakers to collaborate, research and
network, while addressing essential needs: education,
screening and resources.
make it apparent that there is a lack of spaces dedi­cated
to art in the whole country. Many Cameroonian cities
lack museums, public libraries, concert halls and cinemas.
“First of all, arts make the space beautiful.
Secondly, by taking its place in public space, art calls
pupils to awareness of their life and helps them to
forecast and prepare tomorrow”, says Parfait Tabapsi,
Editor-in-Chief of Mosaïques. “For a long time, public
space was not a place to play with. During the early
years of our independence, people often had to run
from these spaces and hide themselves either in houses
or in the bush where they couldn’t be arrested or
found by administrators or public powers. For two
decades, public space has opened and slowly, artists
have started to occupy it.”
As a specialised magazine, Mosaïques exposes
and specifically criticises the art in public spaces of
Cameroon’s cities and urban areas. They raise ques­
tions and discuss the role of traditions brought from
the villages to the city, and how these traces of rural
culture are transformed and incorporated into the
urban culture of Cameroon’s cities. The supple­ment,
RETHINKING PUBLIC SPACE, includes reports, interviews
and presentations of the main actors dealing with
these issues.
Streets & Urban Centres
Literature & Journalism
mosaiquesafrica.com
www.facebook.com/Mosaiquesmag
Project partner: Mosaïques Magazine
RETHINKING PUBLIC SPACE, CAMEROON
RETHINKING PUBLIC SPACE is a supplement to Mosaïques,
a monthly magazine dedicated to the arts and culture
in Cameroon, consisting of reports and interviews
focusing on art in public space.
Mosaïques is the only regular magazine in Cameroon
dedicated to art. Mosaïques promotes cultural dia­
logue, cultural exchange and provides a platform for
artists working in public spaces who have hitherto
not been recognised by the state and media and who
lack the cultural spaces to exhibit (such as museums,
concert halls and cinemas).
For more than a decade there has been a ten­dency
among Cameroonian artists to make art in public
spaces. This is because their art is generally neglected
by the media and with most art critics, due to a lack
of specialised magazines or programs on radio or TV.
The increase of these art works and happenings also
52
Artistic & Educational Venues REVISITING MEMORY, EGYPT
is a platform where individuals are
invited to share and revisit their personal archives.
It is based on the conviction that archives are a public
space in people’s collective memory.
In Egypt, access to public space has been con­trolled
for decades by the police state apparatus. However,
since the 1950s, cameras were widespread amongst
the Egyptian population resulting in the production
of a huge amount of analogue, video and digital material
Photography & Cinema
cimatheque.org
cimatheque.tumblr.com
www.facebook.com/cimathe
twitter.com/Cimatheque
Project Partner: Cimatheque – Alternative Film Centre
REVISITING MEMORY
53
the implementation of RUE DANCE in the neighbouring
countries of Niger, Benin and Cameroon, increasing
the impact of contemporary dance in the region, and
with the aim of establishing a pan-African dance network.
Streets & Urban Centres
Performing Arts
www.ruedance.zzl.org
Project Partner: Studio Maho (Florent Mahoukou)
RUE DANCE FESTIVAL,
REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
RUE DANCE is an annual contemporary dance festival
on the streets of Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo.
The festival responds to a strong demand for cultural
events in the city, especially amongst the young audi­
ences. The Prince Claus Fund supported the fifth edi­
tion of RUE DANCE in 2014 which consisted of work­
shops, dance performances and discussions, and had
a special focus on female choreographers and dancers.
RUE DANCE is an initiative of Florent Mahoukou,
dancer and choreographer and founder of the Studio
Maho dance company in Brazzaville. The idea for the
festival came from his realisation that there is little
aware­­ness of contemporary dance in the Republic
of Congo.
Congo’s population is estimated at 4.04 million.
Rural exoduses since the twentieth century and a sparse
population have meant that three quarters of the
population lives in urban areas, thus making Congo
one of the most urbanised countries in Africa. Music
and dance are central to Congolese culture, which
makes the Rue Dance Festival accessible to most of
its audience, rather than relegating contem­porary
dance to a limited number of cultivated spectators.
“The street has always been a place of inspiration,
especially in African countries where most daily activi­
ties happen outside”, says Mahoukou. “Some­times
we are not aware of the values, the achieve­ments that
surround us. Street dance, for creators and the public,
re-examines our daily use of public space. Often,
these are spaces that are nothing either historically
or aesthetically. By appealing to designers and choreo­
graphers to rethink these areas allows them to develop
differently in the public eye.”
Organising a festival on the city’s streets has proven
to be both simple and effective at reaching a wide
variety of people. Taking contemporary dance perfor­
mances out of conventional areas and onto the streets
of Brazzaville for an audience of some of the city’s
poorest, the RUE DANCE festival expanded the reach
of their performances in Brazzaville. Drawing on the
festival’s success Mahoukou is now working towards
A major outcome of the project was the Dushanbe
City Log, an inventory of the city’s public space and
the artistic projects. The project aims to identify the
structural determinants of the shaping of public space
in this city, and how these relate to the dominant activi­
ties both of the state and of business and commercial
interests.
“In the Central Asian context the exclusion of
certain groups from public space affects not only the
quality of their everyday life but also, in a more general
way, the quality of their citizenship and their status as
citizens”, says Stefan Rusu, Curator of Dushanbe Art
Ground. “SPACES ON THE RUN is challenging hegemonic
narratives, consumerist and private interests by reappropriating, re-imagining and re-activating public
space through contemporary art and social practices.
SPACES ON THE RUN will lead to mapping, developing
and creating new type of public spaces, to the empower­
ment of the local community and participation of new
public in the process of reclaiming and creating access
to public spaces in Tajikistan and in other cities in
Central Asia.”
The most significant result of this project was the
production and articulation of the needs of society
in the form of art in public space, which is an under­
developed practice in Central Asia and especially
Tajikistan. The project opened up public spaces to the
creative community, students and young intellectuals
and created concrete mechanisms for their inclusion,
as well as empowered local communities through
their participation (as a new public) in the process
of reclaiming and creating access to public spaces
in Dushanbe. It has created a model for organising
artistic workshops focused on the critical examination
of urban areas and public space in Central Asia which
can be applied and replicated throughout the region,
and influenced decision makers and the existing public
policies in terms of protecting, developing and creating
new public spaces in Central Asia.
country, this city now looks fragmented and unstruc­
tured, isolating the occasional visitor or tourist from
the reality of its poor neighbourhoods. Currently,
the city is undergoing a process of speculation, displace­
ment and privatisation for the sake of private interests.
“To intervene in public space means subverting,
interfering, distorting and expanding the inherent
dynamics of a street, a public square or a neigh­bour­
hood, enabling people to understand the city as a malle­
able and mutable space, susceptible to appropriation”,
says Javier Gamboa, co-founder of Sonema. “Public
space is also soundly built environments where voices,
noises and vibrations of very different types overlap.”
Claiming public space through active experimen­
tation with sound gives the community tools and
empowers them to redefine existing values and strat­
egies and to undertake the necessary reflection,
recognition for a positive and critical transformation
of their city.
Streets & Urban Centres
Cultural Heritage & Tradition
www.sonema.org
Sonema in one minute: vimeo.com/42750188
Project partner: Sonema
SONEMA 4, COMMUNITY NOISE & HANDMADE
SOUNDCRAFTS, COLOMBIA
SONEMA 4, Community Noise & Handmade Sound­crafts
is a project that investigates the construction of
public space through sound. The purpose is to achieve
a democratic spatial and symbolic appropriation of the
city of Cartagena from a daily perspective, working
with handmade sound crafts and the commons.
SONEMA is an open cultural management group
and artistic collective, based on an interdisciplinary
method, which approaches sound in a dynamic and
experimental way. Their goal is to promote recognition
(listening), exploration (research) and intervention (work)
in public space. They believe that working with sound,
whether artificial or natural, has a huge cultural and
social impact, and therefore has to be made as public
as possible, in order to find, rescue or produce ideals
and values related to identity, heritage, public space,
democracy and equality.
The project is a combination of a collective creation
workshop and an artist residency program. The project
was held in several neighbourhoods of Cartagena
de Indias; and was based on dialogue and joint experi­
men­tation through sound, involving sound artists,
students as well as the common citizens of Cartagena.
The event was accompanied by parallel activities
such as lectures and an art exhibition.
Cartagena de Indias is a Colombian city in the
Caribbean with a very complex social situation where
economic inequality and social exclusion prevails.
UNESCO declared its Walled City a World Heritage
Site in 1984. An epicentre of luxury tourism in the
54
Artistic & Educational Venues
SPACES ON THE RUN,TAJIKISTAN
Cultural Heritage & Tradition
www.facebook.com/dushanbe.artground
Project partner: Stefan Rusu on the behalf of Dushanbe Art Ground
(Public Foundation “Sanati Muosir”)
SPACES ON THE RUN is a project that brought together
local and regional artists for city walks, artistic projects
and theoretical sessions in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The
project engaged local audiences in rethinking public
space in their city.
Sanati Muosir Dushanbe Art Ground is a public
foundation and art space based in Dushanbe, with
a strong focus on research-based artistic production.
The centre develops programs and public forums that
focus on the production and presentation of art works
and provide venues for critical reflection and debate.
It also provides a space for artists, cultural activists,
and intellectuals to collaborate in the development
of multidisciplinary and experimental arts projects, thus
strengthening Tajikistan’s independent cultural sector.
55
photography is an exchange and images are not only
taken but also given to everyone who would like to be
photographed”, says Webster. “Arts and participatory
activities in public space allows for a sense that ever­
yone is equal in public space and that it is also a space
in which people can play and express themselves, that
it is not just a realm controlled by those in power but
also a space that is informed and shaped by the people
and society.”
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
Photography & Cinema
www.alexiawebster.com
instagram.com/alexiawebster
alexiawebster.blogspot.nl
Project partner: Alexia Webster
STREET STUDIOS, REFUGEE ALBUMS – THE
BULENGO STUDIOS, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
OF CONGO
Interview with Alexia Webster t page 64
STREET STUDIOS, REFUGEE ALBUMS – THE BULENGO STUDIOS
is a participatory photography project, which offers
people who do not have the resources to have por­
traits taken, the gift of a free formal family portrait.
Despite the circumstances, be it war or success,
poverty or wealth, the images we seem to treasure
the most are those of our loved ones, our ancestors
and ourselves. A family photograph is a precious object,
especially if you do not have the money to print
photo­graphs or even own a camera. Refugee camps are
often spaces of uncertainty and transience and
because of this the family object has an even more
powerful value.
Alexia Webster, a freelance photographer, Johannes­
burg, South Africa, has worked for numerous magazines
and newspapers including The Guardian, the New York
Times and the Sunday Telegraph. She has travelled widely
through South Africa and the African continent on
assignments. This project was inspired by West African
portrait photographers such as Seydou Keïta from Mali
whose outdoor studio photo­graphs from the 1950s
and 1960s are beauti­fully inti­mate and tender portraits
of family and community.
This project involved developing street studios
in refugee camps equipped with a portable photo printer,
where anyone who wanted to could sit and have
a formal family, individual or group portrait taken.
During her time several refugee camps on the African
continent Webster interviewed some of the families.
The most engaging images and interviews are compiled
into a photographic series which was sent to numerous
online and print magazines and social media plat­forms.
Webster compiled the most power­ful and striking
portraits and stories into a body of work entitled
A Family Album. This photo series adds to a growing
archive of Street Studios across the con­tinent.The final
collection of portraits from numer­ous countries
was complied into a book and website.
“The project allows for a photographic space that
is not exclusive or exclusionary, a space where public
of public space in a city where the built environment
was heavily destroyed during the civil conflict. No other
cultural form has had an impact as far-reaching as that
of a book.Yet the proposition of a book as a form of
public space has rarely been explored.
Raking Leaves, the implementing organisation,
is a curatorial publishing organisation whose mission
is to commission, publish and internationally platform
contemporary artists to produce new bodies of work
in book form. “This project added another important
milestone in that it gave us a permanent space from
which to base the Archive and to begin to create a public
space in Jaffna where people could come and congre­
gate, listen to a talk or watch a film and take part freely
in a discussion”, says Sharmini Pereira, Founder and
Director of Raking Leaves. “For the moment we are
the first space of this kind.”
On January 25, 2014, the Sri Lanka Archive of
Contemporary Art, Architecture & Design opened
to the public. The new space was inaugurated with
the installation of over 500 materials, which include
books, exhibition catalogues, periodicals, monographs
and more. The venue is open to the elements (it is
housed in a traditional Jaffna courtyard house), which
is not conducive to mounting exhibitions. In its current
form it is, however, an ideal space for gathering groups
of people in a convivial and intimate atmosphere. Since
the opening, the Archive has increased its student
audience, particularly those from the University of Jaffna.
The students demonstrate an eagerness to become
more involved with the program, to generate a dis­cus­
sion, and to peruse the collection following each event.
Artistic & Educational Venues
THE ARCHIVE AS PUBLIC SPACE, SRI LANKA
THE ARCHIVE AS PUBLIC SPACE is a project that created
the first physical space for a fast-growing collection
of important materials related to the development of
visual culture in Sri Lanka. The project brought these
materials to the attention of the public through a year­
long programme of thought-provoking events, screen­
ings, talks and exhibitions. This project was the first
initiative to create a public space focused on contem­
po­rary visual culture in Jaffna.
In Jaffna the idea of “public” and “space” have
become contested, and to some extent, contested
territories as the city continues to be administered
by military rule. Jaffna is a city where the association
of public and books was once embodied by one of the
region’s most important cultural institution’s – the
Jaffna Public Library. In 1981 the library was burnt to
the ground by government-sponsored paramilitaries,
destroying over 97,000 books and manuscripts.Though
the library has since been re-built, its transformation
into a truly active public space hangs in abeyance.
THE ARCHIVE AS PUBLIC SPACE sets out to use the archive
as the basis from which to experiment with the idea
56
in Egyptian society. The project included indoor and
outdoor events, experimental aesthetic performances
and street forum plays.
One of the most profound results of the Egyptian
revolution has been the re-appropriation of public
spaces by citizens, since under the old regime it was
difficult for theatre to be part of urban space and
an element of street culture and activism. Once the
revolution happened and everybody was on the streets,
also theatre was liberated and claimed its rightful place
among the masses, interacting not only as a form
of entertainment but as a tool of dialogue and a plat­
form of debate and resistance and education. The
current situation and violence justifies the importance
of this project, which aims to make theatre a platform
of public debate and participation and hereby raise
critical thinking, feed the imaginative mind, empower
the individual, and expand the systems of knowledge
to stimulate cultural and social change.
The project engaged 100 Egyptian performers
and theatre activists who, over the duration of a year,
presented indoor and outdoor performances taken
from the repertory of the National Project For Theatre
Of The Oppressed and Lamusica Independent Theatre
Group. The contributing theatre activists came from
five different cities in Egypt, and the project took the
form of an on-going festival moving between different
locations every two weeks or every month, before
culminating in a mini festival in Cairo.
“Arts and culture shape public space by helping
the citizen to re-appropriate the public space by per­
forming in it or attending a performance, they help
better communication between citizens and spec­ta­tors
by presenting them as a collective unity”, says Nora
Amin, artistic director and founder of the Lamusica
Independent Theatre Group.
The National Project for Theatre of the Oppressed
was founded in 2011 and is the first national move­
ment for theatre for change in the Arab world. The
Theatre of the Oppressed describes theatrical forms
that the Brazilian theatre practitioner and Prince
Claus Laureate Augusto Boal first elaborated in the
1960s, initially in Brazil and later in Europe. The initia­
tive is based on training activists in this type of theatre
in order to have groups of practitioners in all gover­
nor­ates of Egypt, and to have regular performances
in the street and in non-theatrical spaces to engage
the average Egyptians from all the walks of life in change
through theatre. The initiative now includes 500
theatre activists from thirty cities in Egypt.
Cultural Heritage & Tradition
www.rakingleaves.org
Project Partner: Raking Leaves
Streets & Urban Centres
Performing Arts
www.facebook.com/LamusicaIndependentTheatreGroup
Project partner: Lamusica Independent Theatre Group and
The National Project For Theatre Of The Oppressed
THE ARENA OF CHANGE, EGYPT
THE ARENA OF CHANGE was a yearlong series of theatre
and dance performances presented to empower change
at a moment of strong transformation and conflict
57
and three concerts with Colombia’s popular bands
were scheduled.
“We wanted to transform this deteriorated her­
itage building into a public cultural space for the city”,
says Natalia Guarnizo, Director of Fundación la
Quintaporra. “We believe that art is a fundamental
element in the creation of social networks within
com­munities. We agree with the contemporary con­
ception of art as a place for dialogue, where theory
and practice become a journey as well as a desti­nation.
Colombia’s social problems require immediate action
to help communities in the creation of specific means
of interaction and collective therapies to overcome
the negative effects of violence, poverty and war.”
THE TRAIN OF MEMORY, SECOND STATION,
COLOMBIA
Streets & Urban Centres
Performing Arts
www.facebook.com/pages/Quinta-Porra/144965275552336
fundacionquintaporra.wix.com/laquintaporra
Project partner: Natalia Guarnizo on behalf of Fundacion La Quinta Porra
was the second
edition of a creative carnival made up of exhibitions,
performances, workshops, food and a market. The
project presented a creative and innovative point
of view on new possibilities for urban transformation
of the Mártires’ neighbourhood in Bogota.
The initiative was created in the Sabana de Bogota
Train Station, led by La Quinta Porra and the Escuela
Taller de Bogota. The Los Mártires area in which the
train station is located has deteriorated significantly
as it is the centre of the distribution of drugs and arms
trafficking. The young population living in this area is
constantly exposed to the risks of mafia rule and to
drug consumption. The performing arts study centre
Fundacion La Quinta Porra-Laboratorio Teatral was
established by the Colombian director Omar Porras.
In 2006, he decided to acquire the Teatro El Local
in Bogota’s historic centre La Candelaria. The idea
to create a study centre for the performing arts was
born from the desire to recover this theatre, which
is part of the city’s cultural patri­mony and had been
abandoned. The organisation is based on the belief
that art is a fundamental element in the creation of
social networks within commu­nities.They are convinced
that art is a place for dia­logue, where theory and
practice become a journey as well as a destination.
Colombia’s social problems require immediate action
to help commu­nities in the creation of pacific means
of interaction and collective therapies to overcome
the negative effects of vio­lence, poverty and war.
The project has created an interactive and playful
exhibition that tells the story of the railway in Colombia
to young people, children and adults. The project has
also undertaken the restoration of an old train where
the students of Manufactura Teatral created a drama
based on the testimonies of the employees and pen­
sioners of the Rail and a cinema club featuring a selec­
tion of films from the interna­tional repertoire related
to the railway, trains and stations. Memory workshops
were held in order to collect the testimonies of neigh­
bours and former workers of the railways of Colombia,
THE TRAIN OF MEMORY, SECOND STATION
consisted of a conference, trainings and tour, focusing
on the promotion of the Theatre of the Oppressed
as an aesthetic tool for social and political change.
The conference is focussed on public space and
public expression for creative youth communities and
involved renowned contemporary art experts. This
included a public event, an open lecture and discussion,
and closed events, including a ten-day workshop, tar­
geting a small group of creative young people. The
out­come of the workshop was to allow active, creative
youth of Tajikistan to be involved in the artistic and
intellectual discussion of the socially important issues
for their country. During the workshop they formulated
their own critical ideas and built their attitudes towards
various issues (such as nationalism, gender equality,
religious radicalism and others), which will hopefully
be followed by actions in the communities.
The Theatre of Oppressed is a method created
by the Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician
Augusto Boal (2007 Prince Claus Laureate) that teaches
people how to change the world around them by
addressing different social issues in a perfor­mance
form. Theatre of the Oppressed is a theatre for nonprofessionals (young people, minorities, oppressed
social categories) trying to solve different social issues
by picturing them through theatre performance. The
audience is actively involved in the performance as well.
In Tajikistan large groups of the population lack
a voice and are thus marginalised in the democratic
process.These include cultural and artistic stake­holders
(including young artists both male and female) who
have limited space and funding with which to express
themselves.The Bactria Cultural Centre was established
by ACTED in 2001 to address the lack of access to
culture, information and vocational training in Tajikistan.
Today the Centre is a fully Tajik organisation that
supports a wide range of cultural activities.
“The participants of the workshop from Dushanbe
and regions of Tajikistan were able to reconsider
social problems that exist in Tajikistan and define
modern theatre methods in order to address those
using contemporary artistic practices”, says Rustam
Tursun-zade, Project Manager at the Bactria Cultural
Centre. “During the workshop, the participants
were able to formulate their own critical ideas and
build their attitudes toward various social issues.”
The project used the Fort to display giant printed
photos of children from the North and the South,
with one child from each region in each picture. The
artist and collaborators took pictures of children from
the North to the South and there children picked
their friend from the images. They then put the two
together in one picture and printed them in a book.
The best and most artistic pictures were printed and
displayed around the Galle Fort.The goal of the project
is plant the seeds of unity and camara­derie in the
hearts and minds of these children in a way and begin
a dialogue between the Sri Lankans of tomorrow.
Vimukthi Jayasundara, who initiated this project,
is a Film Director who has always been fascinated by
spaces and their unending multitude of uses. His first
feature film, Forsaken Land, was supported by the
Rotterdam Film Festival and won the Prince Claus Fund
Film grant. It also won the 2005 Cannes Film Festival
Camera d’Or.
“TOMORROW FRIENDS, is about using a public space
to inspire and fuel thought that will eventually, if suc­
cessful, aid in the peace process”, says Jayasundara.
“It is important to get children not directly affected
by the war involved in the reconciliation process. It
is easier for children to make friends because of their
lack of prejudice.The idea was to facilitate the creation
of friendships between children across different parts
of the country through the project, with the simple
goal and hope of uniting the future citizens of Sri Lanka
at an early age.”
Streets & Urban Centres
Photography & Cinema
www.facebook.com/pages/Vimukthi-Jayasundara/14625617597
Project partner:Vimukthi Jayasundara
TOMORROW FRIENDS,
SRI LANKA
TOMORROW FRIENDS brings together the children of
North and South Sri Lanka through photography.
The project used the grand and heritage-rich Galle
Fort, a 400 year-old Portuguese, Dutch and British
colonial building, one of the oldest living Forts in Asia.
In this location in Southern Sri Lanka, the project
displayed 500 photos of 1000 children from Sri Lanka’s
North and South, in the hope that it would “spark a
thousand more bridges that will bring the historically
divided North and South together”.
Sri Lanka is recovering from three decades of civil
war, which has created a cultural rift between the North
and the South. Strong nationalist sentiment in the South
was a big contributor to the conflict. While it might
be hard for adults to put behind them everything that
has happened, it is easier for children to make new
friends, so that tomorrow and in the years and genera­
tions to come, they will be friends and the country
can prosper united.
58
Streets & Urban Centres
Performing Arts
www.bactriacc.com
Project partner: Bactria Cultural Centre
TRANSFORM PUBLIC SPACE INTO PUBLIC
STAGE,TAJIKISTAN
addresses
a lack of freedom of expression in Tajikistan by bringing
together artists from different parts of the country,
in order to become actors for change. The project
TRANSFORM PUBLIC SPACE INTO PUBLIC STAGE
59
Without neglecting the potential of oral histories
and storytelling, the travelling exhibition challenges the
idea that one must always talk about an experi­ence.
Perhaps, communities prefer to dance, paint or drama­
tise their ideas of conflict.
“We have learned that Ugandans are willing to share
their stories about war, peace and reconcilia­tion; they
appreciate art, archiving and cultural dia­logue as a means
to express the past”, Kara Blackmore, Curator at the
Refugee Law Project. “Arts and cul­ture redefine spaces
in acts of owner­ship. Cultural practises, both modern
and traditional, illustrate identity, while artists question
and display the world around them.”
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
Literature & Journalism
TRAVELLING TESTIMONIES, UGANDA
www.refugeelawproject.org
www.facebook.com/pages/Refugee-Law-Project-RLP/149718461759529
Project partner: Refugee Law Project
is a community-led exhibition
that documented and displayed ways in which Ugandans
experience conflict.This project took objects, archives
and audio-visual materials to parts of the country
that have been affected by various conflicts, and cura­
torial staff, local artists, a docu­mentation officer and
counsellors worked together to create events for
collective memory documentation in public spaces.
Over the course of eight months, a dynamic
exhibition with film screenings, audio booths with
testimonies, objects, photographs, talking murals and
contemporary art visited five community spaces
across Uganda. The exhibition moved from the north­
east of Uganda to the northwest and eventually to
the capital, Kampala. The target audience and partici­
pant groups included the war-affected communities
within Uganda. The scope of this exhibit followed the
spread of the Lord’s Resistance Army conflict and
included other significant struggles, like those of the
Karamojong, Teso, and Lugbara.
New stories emerged from the five different dis­
tricts and up to nine different ethnic groups. These
newly collected stories, as seen through images, art
and objects, were displayed in the capital, Kampala,
with parallel film screenings at the Peace Film Festival.
By the time that the travelling exhibition reached
Kampala, it had changed from the initial exhibition
to include these stories from every corner of the
greater north, so that a holistic picture was provided
of a part of the country which is severely under­
developed compared to the rest of Uganda. All of Uganda has been affected by violent conflict,
which has thus far remained largely undocumented
and unacknowledged. The real work of understanding
these conflicts and their long-term impacts has not
been done, and the true scale and horror of the various
conflicts remain unaddressed. Most of the docu­men­ta­
tion done in war-affected com­munities is academic or
for develop­ment purposes. There are very few cultural
represen­tations of conflict in Uganda and the ones
that do exist are confined to portraying clashes between
the Government and the Lord’s Resistance Army.
TRAVELLING TESTIMONIES
Freedom of expression is a difficult subject in Uganda
as journalists, opposition leaders and activists critical
of the authorities continue to face intimidation, harass­
ment, arbitrary arrest and trumped-up charges.
At least 70 journalists reported physical attacks and
arbitrary detention during the last year.
“Some of the students were ecstatic to learn that
the celebrated author Beatrice Lamwaka went to the
same primary school as them”, says Hilda Twongyeirwe,
Executive Director of Femrite. “The team went on to
Lira Main Prisons where they interacted with prisoners
in the male section. The prisoners were very enthusi­
astic about writing their own stories of their prison
experiences and asked about issues of copyright and
publishing. In Jinja we visited Wanyange Girls School
where the girls were visibly excited to see the writers,
especially those whose books they were studying
in school. In preparation for the visit, more than ten
students wrote and completed stories which they
passed on to the team to read and give comments.”
The writers’ caravan aimed to demystify the space
of literature in a community. The project promoted
writing as a tool of freedom of expression. It is expected
that the project will reconnect writers to their com­
munities and create a public space for engagement.
It is hoped that this interaction will inspire new ideas,
foster new understandings and inspire new writers
and new thoughts. It was the first event of its kind
in Uganda, a new and interesting project and relevant
to the country in terms of rejuvenating creativity.
Peripheral & Rural Spaces
space is studied in the University of Ramallah and
to propose a new approach for learning in the archi­
tecture department at Birzeit University.
Around twenty to twenty-five students from the
Department of Architecture at Birzeit University,
together with students from the International Academy
of Art Palestine, organised a series of temporal inter­
active public interventions aimed at investigating the
political particularities of public spaces in Ramallah
in terms of power relations, actors and visual material.
Workshops were carried out at Birzeit University
within the studio space and were aimed at inviting
stakeholders and users of public space (from the police,
to retailers and intellectuals) to discuss their under­
standing of public space, its meaning, its regula­tion
and control, its visual materials and representations.
A series of five organised and planned walks in the
city explored marginalised spaces, narratives and
explored the visual material and processes in public
space. On the basis of ideas that came out of research
and discussions, groups of students built architectural
and artistic structures which formed part of a public
parade through the city. Together these structures
formed a new interactive structure to reclaim space.
A book was made from all research material, images,
transcripts of conversations, and documentation of
the events to show the methodology and the processes
of the project and to unpack the meaning of public
space in Ramallah.
Public art is proliferating in the Palestinian Territories,
not only due to the current active contemporary art
movement, but also due to the recent Arab revolts
and the utilisation of public art and intervention as part
of the resistance movement. Accordingly, this project
promoted temporal interventions in public space not
only to examine the power relations and structure
in public space, but also to reclaim a niche for culture
inside the public realm and instigate public discourse
on social and political issues outside the traditional
form of demonstrations.
“It is of prime importance to introduce art and
cultural expression to the curricula of universities
and schools in Palestine”, says Yazid Anani, Department
of Architecture at Birzeit University. “These cultural
forms of public engagement and expression allow the
students to recognise that art and architecture can
become a language of communication with different
social groups and actors as well as a form of expression.”
In this project university students learned how
architecture can function as a tool for investigating
public space and stimulating social and political dis­
course outside the traditional understanding of archi­
tecture as a utilitarian engineering discipline. Birzeit
University used the project as an example for other
departments at the university on the important role
of the university in the political and social realm and
the need to take education beyond the enclosure
of the campus.
Literature & Journalism
www.femriteug.org
http://tinyurl.com/ll4nqz9
Project partner: Femrite – Uganda Women Writers Association
UGANDA WRITERS’ CARAVAN, UGANDA
The 2013 UGANDA WRITERS’ CARAVAN brought together
twelve writers from around the country to meet with
different audiences in ten districts of Uganda. In each
town, the writers made a stopover and interacted
with their audience.
The Writers Caravan included public readings
and dialogue on writing and freedom of expression.
Femrite, the implementing organisation, showed
short documentaries aimed at inspiring writers and
raising awareness about community-related issues.
In some Universities and schools spontaneous street
poetry readings took place.
Whereas other artists might be well known in their
communities, writers are often seen as elitist and do not
take active part in the discourse of their communities,
as most of the time they are published outside those
communities. However, writers bring to the public arena
that which is private but communal, voices, feelings,
hopes, experiences and aspirations. Most Ugandan
writers do not live in their home communities due
to dislocation caused by rural to urban immigration.
60
URBAN CLASS 101, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
is a series of temporal interactive
public interventions aimed at investigating the politi­
cal particularities of public spaces in Ramallah. The
main aim of this project was to redesign how public
URBAN CLASS 101
61
After two decades of civil war (1975–1990)
contemporary Lebanon is defined by sectarian fragmen­
tation. The fragmentation provokes a partition of geo­
graphical structure, access to education, information
and knowledge. The situation of the country embodies
a plurality of identities and narratives that lead, for
instance, to the impossibility of writing a single unified
Lebanese contemporary history. Besides the lack
of a common history, Lebanon is also witnessing its
public spaces vanish, and likewise, its public sphere.
“VOLUMES. questions disciplinary, societal, political
and religious boundaries”, says Zeina Assaf, the director
of 98weeks. The establishment of an open platform
for exchange and communication between different
generations and sectarian affiliations was the project’s
main challenge.The project is also trying to raise aware­
ness about the Lebanese National Library, which was
destroyed during the civil war. Arts and culture can
provide inputs and means to imagine different ways
of using and shaping the functions of public space.”
The library’s collections and archives offer a site
to reflect upon the relationship between censorship
and the unwritten, and a place that can give new voice
to the unspoken and the unheard.
Visual Arts
www.birzeit.edu
Project partner:Yazid Anani, Department of Architecture at Birzeit University
VOLUMES. LIBRARY LABS IN LEBANON,
LEBANON
in Lebanon reactivated libraries
in Lebanon through contemporary artistic interventions.
The project investigated the potential of libraries as
open sites for artistic creation and the production
of knowledge. It encouraged cultural creation in librar­
ies in Beirut and across Lebanon, through inno­vative
and participatory artistic and critical interventions.
98weeks is an artist’s organisation and a project
space that was founded by visual artist Marwa Arsanios
and writer and curator Mirene Arsanios in 2007. It is
conceived as a research project that shifts its attention
to a new topic every 98 weeks. Focusing on artistic
research, 98weeks’ projects take multiple forms such
as workshops, community projects, seminars, reading
groups, publications and exhibitions in a context where
traces of old and surrounding conflicts constantly
threaten freedom of cultural expression. 98weeks
hosts a library and a reading room presenting the
research archives as well as an archive on historical
and contemporary arts and cultural publications.
Twelve Lebanese and international artists, contem­
porary artists, writers and critical thinkers were
commissioned to develop a contribution to a specific
library, according to its location, collection history,
and current use; thereby creating opportunities for
silenced voices to speak in a zone marked by conflict
and war. This aimed to engage directly artists and
cultural actors to implement poetic aspects in the
library that are textual, but also visual, conceptual
or performance-based, thus allowing silenced voices
to speak in a zone marked by conflict and war. In
order to reach a broader and more general public
and therefore to bypass sectarian distinctions, a per­
formance event took place to connect the libraries,
the site-specific projects and the local communities.
VOLUMES. LIBRARY LABS
Artistic & Educational Venues Literature & Journalism
www.98weeks.net
www.facebook.com/98weeks
Project Partner: 98weeks Research Project
62
Lagos Open – Ajegunle Invitation Nigeria 2013 Orodu Street in Ajegunle featuring a photograph by Adeola Olagunju © Emeka Udemba
Streets & Urban Centres
63
Interviews
That left an impact on me, and I thought about it for
a long time. I thought about the role of a photo­journalist,
and the fine line between bringing an issue to light
and at the same time exploiting people. I thought more
and more about my role as a photojournalist and
what the images meant. That lead to thinking a lot
about what images meant to me, and what I thought
were valuable images. The images that really mean
something to me are images of my family.
So that was basically the idea. Because it came from
an experience in a refugee camp, there was always
a consideration of how, in that space in particular,
important a family photograph would be, in a space
where people are so disconnected, where their past
has been so violently disrupted, and their future is
so uncertain. In that kind of space I felt like a family
photograph would have an even bigger, richer value.
STREET STUDIOS
Alexia Webster is a South African freelance photographer from
Johannesburg. Alexia sees photography as a powerful tool through which
she can explore and agitate. She works as a freelance photographer for
numerous magazines and newspapers and has travelled widely through
the African continent as a documentary photographer for over a decade.
She is currently based in Cape Town where she continues to use her
camera to explore the visible and the invisible. In 2013 Alexia won the
Artraker Prize for Art in Conflict and the Piclet.org POPCAP ‘13 Prize
for Contemporary African Photography.
QQ
QQ
ou have said that after years of working
Y
as a photojournalist, you began to struggle
more and more with the actual value and
importance of your photographs. Do you
feel like STREET STUDIOS has helped you
create genuinely valuable photographs?
It’s not that the photos I took were completely
valueless – or meaningless – it was more about the
value of the pictures to the people that are in the
photographs. As a journalist you go in and there’s this
expectation that because you take a photograph you
can end suffering or somehow help the people you
shoot. That doesn’t feel like it’s the truth or like it’s
an honest interpretation of the situation. Doing this
project, I got over 800 images, and the majority of
them will never be seen by anybody else; they are
just for the people that are photographed. And that’s
quite a special thing. It was a really beautiful experi­
ence doing something for people, and they really
enjoyed it, but nobody else will ever see those images.
Considering that you started STREET STUDIOS
on regular street corners, how was the setting
of the refugee camp different, and why was
it important to carry out the project in this
specific setting?
Well, there was always big mix in the kinds of street
corners I was working on, and some of them were
in areas where there was a lot of poverty. It became
more and more obvious that the images meant a lot
more in that context. When people don’t have the
space to have their own family photographs, the ones
that they do have are really valuable and important.
And also living in poverty, life is quite precarious,
quite uncertain, so also the family photograph took
another kind of depth because of that.
I’ve worked a lot as a photographer over the past
eight to ten years, in different contexts, and a lot also
in different refugee camps. UNHCR had hired me to
document life in the camps as one of their projects,
and I was walking around taking photographs and a man
came up to me and asked me what I was doing, so
I told him. He said, “when can I see these pictures?”
I had to tell him that he wasn’t going to see them.
He got really upset and he said that he had been living
in the camp for over ten years, and that there had
been hundreds of journalists, photojournalists, that
had come through the camp. He had had his picture
taken quite a few times, but he didn’t have any photo­
graphs of himself, he didn’t have any photographs
of his family, he felt like he was being exploited.
QQ
o how do you make the selection of those
S
images you do make public?
Generally the images that I choose are those that
move me, and that I find speak to something greater,
and capture something quite significant about what­
ever I was photographing. With these images of the
Street Studios, there are a lot of images I would love
to show, but some of them just really capture a sense
of people’s own lives, their own struggles, just through
the way that they present themselves, or the way that
they pose. So they are the images that really moved
me, and which, I feel, speak very honestly about life
and experiences.
64
QQ
I lived in France for eight years and I decided to
come back to Haiti two years ago. When I was in
Port-au-Prince, the slogan of the government was
“Haiti is open for business”. Everyone agreed with
the government because they were still waiting for
investment in the country after the earthquake.
Everyone was dreaming, everyone was thinking about
how they could become a businessman. I tried to say
to my friends and family that there’s a different way
to live, a different way to organise their lives, but they
kept repeating the government’s slogan “Haiti is open
for business”, and said that I should be open for
business too. After that I decided that the theme of
PÉRIFÉERIQUES would be “We are open for dreaming”.
It was conceived first in reaction to the government’s
slogan, but it was important for me to show to
people, my friends, artists, the local community, that
there’s another way of thinking, there’s another way
to do things, there’s another way to dream. Because
without dreaming of your business, we cannot be
open for business. That was the point.
PÉRIFÉERIQUES #3
Giscard Bouchotte is a consultant in cultural engineering and a curator
based in Haiti. He holds a degree in Political Science and a Masters
in Cultural Management from the University Paris-Dauphine. He worked
for ten years at the Transcultural Forum of Contemporary Art in
Port-au-Prince, and is a member of AICA Southern Caribbean. In 2011,
he was the curator of the Haiti Kingdom of This World exhibition,
which was the first Haiti Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He collabo­
rates with many international public and private institutions such as
agnès b, the French Institute, the Musée du Quai Branly, and Revue
Noire. His recent exhibitions – Somewhere in Paradise (2013),
Devices (2013), Our Stories (2014) – reflect the regional and
international dimension of these initiatives.
QQ
QQ
o you think PÉRIFÉERIQUES had an impact
D
in Haiti? Do you think Haiti will be more
open for dreaming in the future?
You know what… it’s funny. I was there and we got
a lot of t-shirts. And I decided to give t-shirts to the
local community. All of them wanted t-shirts, t-shirts,
t-shirts. And there was this slogan, “We are open
for dreaming”, this great slogan, on the t-shirt. I came
back to the city a couple of days ago, and I saw a lot
of people had kept this t-shirt, with this slogan,
“We are open for dreaming”. I asked them: “Why is
this important for you? Is it just to have a t-shirt, or
is it the slogan?” And they said: “No no, I have a lot
of t-shirts, it’s this slogan ‘We are open for dreaming!’.”
Yes, that was very funny, because they saw the t-shirt
not only as a t-shirt, the slogan was important to them.
ow did you try to make the festival
H
as accessible as possible to the local
community?
took place in the city’s main square,
and all of our activities were free. So we mostly
focused on performances in public spaces in Haiti.
In 2010, following the earthquake, all the public spaces
were occupied. Since then, they have emptied, and
the government has innovated in many places. The
only places in the city where we have twenty-fourhour electricity are the public spaces. So, students,
all people, are there. This is the meeting place, so
for me it was symbolic. In fact, PÉRIFÉERIQUES was for
every­one, the local community, the visitors, because
it was in the main square of the city.
PÉRIFÉERIQUES
QQ
ell us about the theme of PÉRIFÉERIQUES #3,
T
“We are open for dreaming”. Why was this
important?
an you tell us something about what you
C
were doing on the main square?
We brought seven containers there, and as a curator,
I asked the artists to use the containers. So some
artists transformed the containers into an artwork,
and some of them used these containers as the
support for photographic artwork or video artwork.
The people who came to the square were able to
see these artworks for free. The main square was
illuminated, so there was electricity, there was light,
there was artwork, so it was a festival for them.
65
they watched the film there was a very good question
and answer session with the film­maker, Nagraj
Manjule, who himself comes from a low caste. The
audience said, “we have never seen a film like this,
we’ve never seen a film that expressed our own
lives”. They had only ever seen television, or seen big
Bollywood films on DVD. For the first time they saw
a film that sort of expressed their own experience,
and had a filmmaker talk to them about it – that was
an incredible moment last year.
QQ
QQ
I had anticipated that working with government
schools would be a daunting task, however the school
administrations were mostly very supportive of our
art workshops. The few school staff who were initially
dismissive of art, quickly came around, realising the
potential of art to develop children’s creativity and
critical thinking. The Principal at a very conservative
school in Lyari did not allow figurative drawings for
religious reasons. While at the beginning he was wary
of art (and suspicious of our presence), by the end
of the project he was one of our biggest supporters.
It was this process of engaging with school staff and
the possibility of changing perceptions about the value
of art that was the most challenging, but also the
most rewarding.
Halfway through our workshops, one of the schools
we were working at in Gulshan-e-Iqbal shut down
unexpectedly. We showed up on a Tuesday, at the
scheduled time for our workshop, only to find the
school empty of students and teachers.The gatekeeper
informed us that this school property had been taken
over by a political party and was being turned into
their office space. The school staff and students had
been dismissed for the rest of the semester. He
advised we should leave immediately. We later found
out that government schools, which are unable to
secure private sponsorship, frequently suffer this fate.
Learning that a school – taken for granted as a stable,
secure space of learning – can just disappear over­
night, was a terrifying reality. Not only are children’s
public spaces vulnerable, so are their schools. Wit­
nessing the precariousness of their lives, and seeing
how they make the most with what they have, was
a truly eye-opening experience.
Another challenge was that girls had limited access
to the outdoors in comparison to boys. They faced
greater restrictions from their parents and as a result
negotiated their spatial freedoms very differently
from boys. Their drawings reflected their unique and
different engagements with public spaces.
hat is special about organising a film festival
W
in the remote town of Dharamshala?
Why did you choose to do it there rather
than in a larger town?
The two of us have lived in Dharamshala for the
last eighteen years. Prior to that we were living in
England, and before that in America, so we’ve been
nomads for a long time. When we decided to come
back to India we decided to make Dharamshala our
home for a number of reasons. One, I’m Tibetan, and
Dharamshala is the capital of the Tibetan diaspora,
where the Dalai Lama lives and the Tibetan govern­
ment in exile is based. So it seemed kind of appropriate
for us as filmmakers to move to Dharamshala because
a lot of our films are on Tibetan subjects. At the same
time, Ritu’s family was originally from Dharamshala
so she had a family connection to the place as well.
But it’s still a small town, with no cinemas, and very
little contemporary cultural activities. So that’s some­
thing we felt as filmmakers that we could contribute
to the town. Ritu and I have been to many interna­tional
film festivals around the world, so we have a good idea
of what a film festival can do, and we thought, “why
not start a film festival in our town?”, so we could give
something back to the town that we live in, but at the
same time introduce contemporary cinema. And with
that, an introduction to cultures around the world,
different opinions, different ways of looking at the world,
different issues, highlighting all these things through
cinema, which is a language that everyone understands.
RS The other reason is that this town has a population
that is partly Tibetan refugees, and of course there are
Indians that are native to this area. There are many
Indians that came with the partition from Pakistan in the
forties. And then we have a growing population of inter­
national people, who might be interested, for many
reasons, in this region.The Tibetan community, being
a refugee community, lives a kind of parallel life to the
Indian community.There really is very little that the
two communities have in common, and their inter­action
is very limited. So we thought that for the long-term
relationship of these communities it would be great to
do an event where both can participate, and contribute.
So we have volunteers and partners from both
communities.
TS
DHARAMSHALA INTERNATIONAL
FILM FESTIVAL
Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam are an Indian-Tibetan filmmaking couple
based in Dharamshala, India. They have been making films together for
more than 25 years through their company, White Crane Films, and are
currently also the directors of the Dharamshala International Film festival.
QQ
ow would you characterise the reactions
H
of the general public towards your project?
Did you receive interesting feedback?
I guess one of the main aims of our project was
to introduce some contemporary alternative cinema
to this region, and as you may know, there is no
cinema in Dharamshala, so the idea of starting the film
festival was really to bring good cinema to the town.
In this sense we had a pretty amazing response from
the local people. Both last year and the year before
we’ve had really good audiences, local audi­ences, and
surprisingly we had a lot of people from other parts
of India, like Delhi, Bombay or Bangalore, and of
course there are always foreigners or tourists that
are in Dharamshala, so we had a fair sprinkling of
international audiences as well. I would say the
response has totally surpassed our expecta­tions. For
instance, we had Guy Davidi, who is an Israeli film­
maker, who made a film called Five Broken Cameras
along with a Palestinian filmmaker. The film was actu­
ally nominated for an Oscar last year. His film had a
very, very successful festival run, it showed all over
the world. But he told us, and it’s on record, that the
DIFF the festival that he felt was best suited for his
film, and he was happiest to have been at our festival.
RS I think also for the audience here, they’ve never
seen a festival, so it’s the biggest event in this town
in terms of contemporary culture. People are just sur­
prised and amazed. Last year we screened a film
beautiful Marathi feature film [Maharashtra is a part
of India near Bombay] called Fandry that dealt with caste.
We had invited a lot of students from Dharamshala,
and of course caste is a major issue in India. When
TS
66
BACHON SE TABDILI – CHANGE THROUGH
CHILDREN
Shahana Rajani works in Karachi as a curator, educator and activist.
She received a BA in History of Art from University of Cambridge
in 2009, and has recently completed an MA programme in Critical and
Curatorial Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is now
part of the faculty at the Visual Studies Department, Karachi University.
Rajani uses curatorial strategies to generate counter-geographies and
alternate discourses in her home city of Karachi. She has worked exten­
sively on community-based projects exploring urban space, violence
and the politics of grief, using printed matter and the Internet as sub­
ver­sive mediums to reach diverse audiences and create cross-place
connections on a global scale. She also conducts radical tours of Karachi
that explore subjective community narratives and mobilise the potential
of storytelling to stake a claim in spatial politics and urban narratives.
QQ
hat were the challenges in carrying
W
out your project?
hy did you decide to undertake
W
this project?
In Karachi, discussions about public space are often
negative and narrow in scope. As adults, we complain
about the lack of public spaces; about corrupt politicians
usurping our park spaces; about urban violence taking
over our beloved city; and the forceful retreat from
public spaces. In contrast to our passivity and bystander
tactics, children continue to claim ownership of public
spaces. For them, the city holds out endless possi­
bilities for play, adventure and discovery. Children are
active social agents who carve out their own public
spaces in their neighbourhoods. In the absence of state
assigned public spaces, children transform ordinary
places, like streets, plots, grounds and markets, into
dynamic public spaces for play and recreation.
BACHON SE TABDILI enables children to creatively visu­
alise their stories and experiences of the city, which
are routinely marginalised. It addresses the urgent
need for a visible discourse on the positive potentials
of public spaces. It aims to give new impact and
appreciation to public spaces by revealing the diverse
ways in which children still make use of public spaces.
QQ
hat is the most valuable thing
W
you have learned?
Children play an important role in sustaining Karachi’s
public spaces. Children and young people – whatever
their age, culture, ethnicity or social and economic
background – need and want to play outdoors in what­
ever way they can. In the absence of state assigned
public spaces, they transform ordinary places like streets,
plots, grounds and markets, into dynamic public spaces
for play and recreation. Children are therefore active
social agents who carve out their own public spaces
in their neighbourhoods. They love, cherish and value
these spaces, and are invested in a civic ownership,
which adult residents of the city have long forgotten.
67
Bachon Se Tabdili Pakistan 2014 Student advocacy project to create awareness about public spaces in Shireen Jinnah Colony, Karachi © courtesy of Shahana Rajani
Reflections
In Zagreb a network of cultural and urban planning
activists launched an initiative called Right to City.
They undertook a range of public actions, from creative
protests and cultural events to legal initiatives. They
worked to prevent the mayor of Zagreb from turning
the main pedestrian street, which had been one of
the city’s most beautiful public spaces for decades,
into the garage entrance to a City Mall. Their fight for
this street developed into a more ambitious attempt
to halt the neoliberal agenda across Croatian cities.
PUBLIC SPACE IN TRANSITIONAL
SOCIETIES
Robert Alagjozovski
In many of the transitional, ex-communist societies
of Eastern Europe the fight for public spaces has
become a proxy for the contemporary struggle for
democracy. This is due to the challenges these new
democracies faced after the fall of communism and
the incapabilities of post-socialist political elites
to establish free, fair and fully functional democratic
societies. Instead, the political players, regardless
of their side of the political spectre, embraced neo­
liberal agendas, which led to the growth of injustice,
corruption, non-democratic practices, and dysfunc­
tional institutions.
A more cultural action in Sofia, Bulgaria, reclaimed
the capital’s streets, which had turned into spaces of
fear after several assassinations, political murders and
gunfights occurred among the local mafia clans in the
mid-2000s. The movement happened as part of Sofia
Dance Week, gathering massive support and responses
from civilians through a Flash Mob dance action in 2009.
The event was a turning point in changing the image
of Sofia and regaining public space for ordinary people.
Part of this bad governance were different approaches
towards public space: the negligence of existing public
spaces, their transformation into profit-making units
(office and apartment buildings, shopping malls, garages),
their rebuilding to glorify new social constructs and
regimes, and the wilful ignorance of demands for the
creation of new public spaces. The diminishing of public
space was the first indicator of trouble with democ­
racy. In situations where official institutions like
political parties, local halls, national parliaments, and
even the courts lost their credibility, the democratic
struggle moved to the streets. It was carried by new
democratic and liberal groups from the civil sector,
with many of them originating from the artistic world
and cultural organisations. Their struggle focused on
demands to secure and preserve existing public
spaces or to establish new ones.
Sometimes in desperation, civic and cultural activists
complain about the global scale of the neoliberal
practices. They condemn the fact that bad govern­
ments receive international support or escape
international pressure for non-democratic actions.
We should, however, bear in mind that it is due to
globalisation that democratic movements have spread
in so many different regions around the world,
becoming global phenomena that are hard to isolate
and suppress. Struggles for democracy and civic par­
tici­pation today know no boundaries, or economic,
regional, religious or ethnic preconditions.
There is no greater proof to this thesis than the
results of this thematic call by the Prince Claus Fund
under the title Rethinking Public Space. So many inno­
vative projects are trying to regain, recreate and
re-use public space all over the world. In the great
majority of cases they are connected with the struggle
for democratisation and increased freedoms. The
majority of the projects are transcultural, using arts
and culture for wider social struggles. These projects
show the power of culture to transform itself.
The actions of extreme right-wing groups in the
region reflected the importance of public space for
political action. Thus, among the first fights over
public space were bans or the restrictions placed
on Gay Prides across the region, whether in Skopje’s
central square, Belgrade’s central avenue or Split’s
Riva. Similarly, counter-protesters attacked the
symbolic Architectural Uprising of a student group
called Archi Brigade that objected to the trans­for­
mation of a neutral Skopje square into a religious
site dominated by a huge new cathedral.
Robert Alagjozovski is a freelance writer, researcher, cultural
manager, and art and culture critic. He works at the Brussels-based
Marcel Hicter’s European Diploma in Cultural Project Management.
Since the 1990s he has been involved in many projects related to
cultural decentralisation, inter-culturalism, regional and international
cooperation.
In Belgrade an umbrella network of cultural NGOs
called Independent Cultural Scene has protested
against the transformation of the banks of Belgrade’s
river Sava into a futuristic “city on water”, a luxurious
residential quarter where the access for ordinary
citizens would be limited. The development would
destroy the vibrant cultural life of the whole area,
which has become a hub for many independent
cultural centres, studios.
68
69
San Art particularly benefited from the power of
social media as a public space of information dissemi­
nation. San Art’s online community has grown
tremendously with Conscious Realities lectures and
workshops, due to our establishment of key strategic
relationships with other educational and commercial
organisations as host venues for these activities.
Our programme partners, such as the Tri Viet Institute
of Social and Educational Research, Hoa Sen University
and RMIT University, feel equally responsible in building
this cultural community, aware that supporting and
investing in creative ideas and methods can only benefit
the young inheritors of this country’s fledging economy.
Tools like Facebook and Instagram are essential
arteries for event notices to be posted and shared
– a virtual platform that the authorities have not yet
succeeded in censoring.
Zoe Butt
Walking through the residential neighbourhoods of
Ho Chi Minh City in the early morning you will observe
the ground floor of each family home spilling out
onto the street. Motorbikes are maneuvered out of
the living room-cum-garage; a Buddhist shrine will
beam outward with its incense; the smell of coffee
and chatter will waft enticingly as these private dwellings
become public cafes by day. Such informal economies
are a wonder in Vietnam, where street vendor culture
is innovating design, products and strategies of sale.
This language of profit and loss is greatly cultivated
in Vietnam where commercialism is perceived as a
necessary feature of public space.
Public spaces around the world are rife with social
and cultural restrictions, whether in the mandatory
wearing of a specific religious garments such as the
hijab; or prohibition against kissing your gay lover
in a public square, such acts are coded as forbidden
or permissible according to context. As a curator
who has facilitated numerous artistic projects in
“Communist” contexts (China and Vietnam), I am
constantly reminded that the creation of cultural
communities often demands a rethinking of how public
space is represented. As cultural producers we must
take care to understand the landscapes in which
we live and work, to learn of their weaknesses and
strengths, to work between these thresholds to
conjure new means and methods of distributing our
messages. Within restricted artistic communities, it is
necessary to encourage honesty and openness within
our networks, to balance activities between public
and private in order to nurture criticality amongst
an impressionable yet influential few. Creating and
emboldening awareness of the value of culture to
society is about valuing content, nurturing leadership
and possessing long-term strategies for survival.
Working in the public sphere today requires mastering
both on and offline worlds.
As Executive Director and Curator of San Art, I am
often asked why we invest so much time and energy
into a not-for-profit organisation that initiates and
facilitates public artistic events which bring no personal
monetary gain. That question, if asked by government,
is often laced with suspicion. San Art is a cultural
organisation that focuses on the discourse, production
and showcasing of contemporary culture. In the eyes
of the Communist authorities, the realms of art and
culture are historically perceived as channels for state
propaganda. For them, anyone operating outside
govern­ment or commercial motives (like San Art)
is considered a threat to the status quo and placed
under substantial scrutiny from the Vietnamese Ministry
of Culture, Sport and Tourism. Government licenses
must be sought for any public event of more than
five people at a physical site that is promoted by the
national press. Such a law reflects a system fearful
of independent critical social thinking, particularly if
it generates a cultural community following. Organising
activities such as exhibitions, lectures, workshops
or seminars on contemporary interdisciplinary art and
culture is a tricky business – they are perceived as
educational and thus aimed at persuading a group within
society. Cultural events across Vietnam – from visual
art to popular music to experimental theatre – often
take place without official permits. Proactive indi­viduals
take the risk of their events being shut down rather
than applying for permission because the timeconsuming paperwork far too often results in failed
applications, largely due to bureaucratic mismanage­
ment and ignorance, as opposed to a belief the event
is damaging to the state. Regardless of how authority
seeks to control our physical landscape the virtual
highway of information is where ideas of public space
are being dynamically re-written.
Public Acts South Africa 2014 Public seating at Mai Mai Market © Jhonno Bennet
THE FUNCTION, PERCEPTION
AND USE OF PUBLIC SPACES
UNDER CENSORSHIP
Zoe Butt is Executive Director and Curator of San Art, an artist
initiated, non-profit contemporary art organisation committed to the
exchange and excavation of cultural knowledge within an inter­
disciplinary community in Vietnam. www.san-art.org
During the initiation and implementation of Conscious
Realities, a three-year project enabled by San Art’s
Network Partnership with the Prince Claus Fund,
70
71
Lagos Open – Ajegunle Invitation Nigeria 2013 Project grand opening on Goriola Street, Ajegunle. Fashion designers from Ajegunle show their creations © Emeka Udemba
72
FINDING COMMON GROUND
IN AN UNCOMMON TERRITORY:
A JOHANNESBURG PERSPECTIVE
In an environment where public trust is rare, we find
glimpses of it in interior worlds; such as that of a public
taxi where people of different origins share a com­
mon space for a given time, subscribing to a particular
set of rules and behaviours. Similarly, a popular neigh­
bour­hood bar in a wealthy suburb brings together
patrons of various ages, classes and backgrounds in
a rare moment of integration. In both of these sce­
narios the character and atmosphere of the spaces are
a direct result of how users occupy space. Abandoned
or leftover spaces, such as traffic islands and under­
passes, are quickly appropriated and occupied by city
users as places for trade, residence and socialising. As
the public authorities have little capacity to enforce
regulations, these spaces adopt their own logics as the
occupants exploit them to suit their purposes – giving
rise to new contracts and new rules of how space
is occupied and used.
Katharina Rohde, Thireshen Govender
While it may be reasonable to expect public space
to be shared by everyone in society, this is seldom
the case in South Africa. Our tumultuous history has
bequeathed us a distorted and conflicted geographical,
demographic and emotional landscape virtually devoid
of common or communal ground. As a consequence,
we seem to have forfeited our claim to a collective
public life. Looking deeper at the South African context,
we might be able to come up with alternative ways
of imagining what a genuine public space might be.
Twenty years of democracy have arguably not done
much to resolve the historic damage; and yet, there
are occasionally moments when it is possible to get
a glimpse of a promising and exciting parallel reality.
These moments of compromise come about when
we see how exclusive and desperate our urban spaces
have become. If this alternate reality can arise in the
imagination, like a mirage, isn’t it our responsibility
to try and determine how it might be rendered real?
If so, where do we identify it and how do we recon­
figure it? It is not difficult to see Johannesburg as
a divided city, both spatially and socially. Twisted into
shape by history and contemporary market forces,
the city continues to enforce apartheid geographies
in its infrastructural development so that unlocking
spatial boundaries is more difficult now than ever.
In response to the harsh and violent public exterior
world, private homes in informal settlements are con­
verted into drinking taverns to provide vibrant social
spaces for locals. Here the interweaving of private and
public worlds through an interior is signifi­cant as it
creates the space for radical and audacious re-imaginings
of space beyond the imposition of regulations. Impor­
tantly, these new interiors also involve envelopes of
constructed security. More privileged citizens create
bubbles of security in entertainment and commercial
enclaves such as casinos and shopping centres, which
increasingly assume roles that are increasingly public.
Despite differences in race and class, the inhabitants
of Johannesburg do have common interests. We all
need to work, shop, relax, be mobile and, of course,
reside in safe and secure homes. But class and race
inflect how we go about satisfying these needs in South
Africa and leads to a diversity of separated, alienated,
public spaces. Here public life exists in frag­ments that
occur differently across class and geography, exag­
gerated by history and contemporary circumstances.
Class extremities, as spatially and aggressively played
out in Johannesburg, are useful sites to examine alter­
native manifestations of public life where they are
premised either on excessive financial means or shear
survivalist logic. A recent investigation of Johannesburg’s
emergent public spaces attempted to understand
better the current public conditions and provide
a more informed basis for speculating and imagining
what the city could become. (PUBLIC ACTS page 51)
By scanning Johannesburg’s diverse and distorted public
spaces, it was possible to identify some of the funda­
mental attributess of public life present across classes
and geographies. These fundamentals including trust,
security, social contracts – manifested in unfamiliar
and peculiar ways that were direct responses to their
immediate circumstances – opportunity, fear, social­
isation, entertainment, movement and safety.
There is a vibrant but fractured and contorted com­
mons in South African cities. The exploded views of
these disparate spaces offer insight into the exciting
possibilities for provoking a genuinely collective public
life, despite our complex diversity. These spaces can
be proto-sites for the exploration of a more common
public realm. Our challenge is then to find and manipu­
late the commonalities and intersections of these
different commons. The architect – both as an ethnog­
rapher and a provocateur – is well placed to imagine
and speculate on how these new and integrated
alternatives can manifest and arrange themselves.
Katharina Rohde is a curator, social designer and urbanist based in
Berlin, Germany. In her practice she designs and realises projects about
structures, phenomena and processes of urban spaces and their associated
narratives. Her field of work ranges from Berlin to Africa and includes
small-scale local happenings as well as international major events.
www.katharina-rohde.com
Thireshen Govender is an architect and urban designer practicing
in Johannesburg, South Africa. His deep curiosity in emergent spatial
patterns, particularly in new democracies, informs the nature of projects
he undertakes through his practice, UrbanWorks,
www.urbanworks.co.za
Both authors initiated and curated the project Public Acts Johannesburg,
which was supported by this call.
73
could have ended in many different ways. With the
Gezi Park events many things have changed for the
people. The people of Turkey have learned to unite
around a cause; we have learned to be organised,
learned how we can change things and learned that
if we don’t take action we will loose what we have.
And high on the list are these things are our last
public spaces.
James Hakan Dedeoğlu
Perhaps the best way to start this article is with
some simple dates and numbers.
Istanbul, 1980
Istanbul, 1985 Istanbul, 1990 Istanbul, 2000 Istanbul, 2014 population 2.772.708 population 5.475.982 population 6.629.431 population 8.803.468 population 14.160.467
yearly growth 1.70
yearly growth 14.58
yearly growth 3.90
yearly growth 2.88
Our aggressive economic system determines shopping
malls to be public spaces, forcing people to spend
their time and money in them. In 2013 Istanbul has
114 shopping malls. Compare this to London’s seven,
Paris’s three, Tokyo’s twenty-two. Human nature
requires more than a shopping mall. Since the Gezi
Park events the city’s parks and squares have become
increasingly important places for people. Any attempt
at new construction on a public space has been con­
fronted with protests, with campaigns, with people
organising each other on social media. This year, in
Edirne, a 75-year-old woman sat in front of a bull­
dozer to stop it tearing down a park that was slated
as a development site. The park had been part of her
daily routine for the past twenty-five years. She would
go there with her kids and grandchildren. The next
day, half of the city was standing with her. Today the
park is still there and named after her. Incidents like
this are taking place throughout the country. People
have understood that if we don’t take action, if we
don’t organise one another and make a stand to
protect our public spaces, we will all be locked into
shopping malls. As I write this article, a struggle is
going on in my own neighbourhood. One of the last
remaining open spaces in this area, a small park, is
being sold to a car park company. But the tents are
ready. People will not leave until it the space given
back to the public.
So, since I was born, Istanbul’s population has increased
by 12 million people. And I’m only 35.
The massive migration to Istanbul from the rest of
Turkey started in late 70s. Back then Istanbul was called
“the city where the soil and the stone are gold”,
referring to the idea that whoever came to Istanbul
would be rich, or at least would make a living, as
Anatolia, especially rural Anatolia, underwent an eco­
nomic meltdown. But the migration wave was too
much for any city to handle. Istanbul grew rapidly,
without any urban planning, its structure destroyed
and unable to embrace newcomers. People who came
to the city formed their own neighbourhoods with
others from similar areas, rather than creating new
cultural and social interactions. The city lacked public
spaces for people from different backgrounds to meet
and to come together. The new Istanbul had no room
for public squares or parks. The infamous events of
2002 in the Esenler district of Istanbul are a case in
point. Two neighbouring areas, one area inhabited
by people from the city of Sivas, the other inhabited
by Roma, erupted into street fighting that went on
for days, leaving one dead and thirteen wounded.
So the concept of public space was something distant
for the inhabitants of Istanbul. But human nature
needs space; it needs interaction. Since 2002, with the
ruling AKP regime’s aggressive capitalist politics, Istanbul
has gone through yet another process of destruction.
The last open spaces and green lands within and sur­
rounding the city have been slated for development.
New shopping malls, gated communities, skyscrapers,
and residences have been added to the skyline of
Istanbul, leaving its inhabitants even more discon­
nected from one another.
During the twelve days of the occupation of Gezi Park,
people from all kinds of different cultural, political
and racial backgrounds came together. Maybe for the
first time they talked to each other, understood each
other and learned from each other. Cultural inter­
actions and dialogues are vital for the health of the
city, and for this we need our public spaces.
Geochoreographies Colombia 2014 Performance workshop with members of Jaguos por el Territorio in the community of La Jagua © Jaguos por el Territorio
ISTANBUL AND PUBLIC SPACE: A
CASE STUDY
James Hakan Dedeoğlu is an Istanbul based publisher, writer and
musician. Together with Aylin Güngör, he is the co-founder of music,
art and cinema magazine Bant Mag. Hakan is also an active musician
with his solo project TSU!
The Gezi Park incidents were, in a way, a natural
reaction from people who felt and saw how the city
and its last spaces were been taken away from them,
and how the government, was doing this in such an
unquestioning and aggressive way. What happened
during and after Gezi and why it happened exactly
requires another article. Gezi was a movement that
started to save a park and turned into a nationwide
riot which could have gone in any direction and
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75
Arte Publiku Timor-Leste/Australia 2014 Tais Ocean representing Timor-Leste across the world by Tony, Alfe and Etson © Arte Moris
RE-THINKING PUBLIC SPACE
in most of the planet’s urban centres is a motivation
of many biennials and exhibitions, and the concern
of urban planners and architects, cultural thinkers
and members of civic society alike.
Gabriela Salgado
Advocating for others and making ethical choices seem irrational,
but they are good signs that one is de-linking from the old age systems
of control that dehumanise our global society. Walter Mignolo.
When I worked as part of the curatorial team of
La Otra Bienal in Bogotá (2013), the intention was
to develop an art project in three neighbourhoods
of the Colombian capital that, by virtue of social and
class divisions, were deeply disconnected despite their
proximity. The frictions-fictions that such class divide
produces among the local communities is manifest in
the prejudice and stigmatisation of large sectors of
the population, generating a high level of violence and
exclusion as well as avid corporate-based speculation.
“De-linking” is an idea with multiple facets. Firstly,
it proposes an ideological option that supersedes the
out-dated binary opposition of capitalism and socialism
and the related First Second and Third World con­
structs. Secondly, it enables the politicisation of civic
society, which, employing imaginative solutions to
acti­vate a sense of the “common” starts to take owner­
ship of its voice by occupying public spaces, such as
the Indignados and Occupy movements.
La Otra Bienal attempted to decolonise the concepts
of high culture and entitlement and to re-signify social
relations by following a number of strategies. Namely,
by activating unused plots of land with vege­table
gardens cared for by unemployed inhabitants of the
most deprived areas; by presenting video art projec­
tions in abandoned buildings; by producing a local radio
and newspaper; and by artists’ interventions such as
the creation of a museum holding personal objects
selected by the neighbours of La Perseverancia neigh­
bourhood. Under the title Control Mechanisms and
Emancipatory Practices, the public art biennial pro­
posed to extricate invisible borders marking the
symbolic and territorial exclusion of people and the
memory of designated groups.
All of the projects supported by the Prince Claus Fund
under the Rethinking Public Space Call articulate an
activation of poetics existing outside the realm of high
culture, while simultaneously building capacity through
education and motivating where there was a lack of
hope, of vision, of a sense of belonging.If public space
is defined by our individual understanding of the rights
and obligations that bind us together as communities,
culture plays a powerful role in setting the tone.
The cultural sphere is often mistaken for a place of
activities for the privileged; it should in fact be under­
stood as is a repository of diverse collective memories
that determines how we deal with the present and
with each other.
In the process of “de-linking”, artists and cultural
activists stand on common ground: the utopian impulse
to mobilise opinion, reawaken the history of the city
and provide a platform for the re-elaboration of
notions of citizenship. At the same time, by estab­
lishing a public sphere that aspires to be less exclusive
and less threatening than the institutional realm of
the museum or the theatre, it displaces artistic practice
to an unstable stage from which it can develop in
a more experimental manner.
Education and capacity building workshops were
offered by national and international artists in part­
nership with neighbour’s associations and university
students along five weeks of intense activity.
By consolidating a decentralised platform for art, viral
open source activity through radio and locally generated
press, and the erasing of frontiers between “educated”
and “uneducated” artists and publics, La Otra also
destabilised the notion of the vaunted authority of the
curator and the myth of artists as privileged social actors.
Putting in motion experience, and decolonising poetics
over static hierarchies of knowledge, La Otra embraced
the notion of curating as coined in ancient Rome:
curare means to take care of, to heal, and set out to
look after that neglected creature called “public space:.
Cultural thinker Néstor Garcia Canclini has suggested
that “the uncertain localisation of many cultural proc­
esses contains a poetic and hermeneutic potency for
art production and its communication”. His view of
the relation between art and politics and the critical
possibilities that art can offer while delegitimising not
only institutions such as museums and biennials but
also the barriers that separate it from work, brings
to the fore the creative potential of everyday life.
Gabriela Salgado is a curator specialised in Latin American and
African art. She holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the
Royal College of Art, has curated a large number of exhibitions, and
has lectured in over twenty countries. She curated La Otra Bienal in
Bogota, Colombia (2013) and the 2nd Biennale of Thessaloniki, Greece
(2009). She is currently directing a programme of artistic exchanges
between African and Latin American countries.
But how to define everyday life and public space,
two commonplace concepts both in art and in the
rhetoric of local authorities and governments, without
falling into an immense abstraction that nobody seems
to be able to grasp fully? To reactivate a sense of “the
common” amidst the gentrification of public space
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77
ourselves violently against the other. Who are these
public domains for? Who is willing to share what?
Somehow, everything loses its vivacity when it becomes
a trend. Hyper-consumed ideas and objects become
shells of their past glory. A friend of mine, for example,
developed an intense hatred towards iceberg lettuce
and balsamic vinegar, both separately and together,
due to market currents. I think such alienation could
be applied to my current taste for public space.
The thrill of it in the media, its transformation into
a sudden necessity, and adaptation as an essential
buzzword has privatised public space within formal
urban discourse.
To take this debate to a necessary extreme, the logical
first step to tackling shared objects in Lebanon is the
sad state of our passport, of our citizenship. We share
this land because we are confined within it, not because
we want to.We are still negotiating definitions, meanings,
identities and ownerships of this geopolitically labelled
stretch of land from different points of view, refusing
to meet each other halfway. Halfway is a form of shared,
public space, yet we will not agree to the simple pre­
requisite of its all-encompassing identity. Our citizen­
ship does not unite us. We have no base to start
working on public or private space. Our defini­tion
of private space is a place that does not belong to
others, and not a place that is essentially ours.
Raafat Majzoub
After Lebanon’s urban dwellers started realising what
they have brought onto themselves via disheartening
real estate developments that create homes not
designed for people, and cities designed for elites,
the shining idea of public space seemed like a way
out. Didactically speaking, we are in desperate need
for more than a way out, we need methods to under­
stand, create and perform within these public spaces.
We live in fortresses. Spaces around fortresses are
not as important as their walls. As long as we cannot
figure out what binds us to others, all that we care
about is making these walls thicker, and our sur­
roundings more uninhabitable. I believe that work
on mainstream public space is interesting as a com­
muni­cation tool that declares the existence of this
“halfway”. Projects in the public realm identify the
presence of a world that exists between our privacies.
By their mere existence, they hint at an uncontrolled
space. They remain loopholes into potential under­
standings of our habitats.
Like everything else that is given, not earned, cities
will not be sustainable if not built through the work
of their people. They are landscapes of living that
represent their status. For that reason, Beirut is
becoming one of the most despicable cities in the
Arab world. We, modern Beirutis, are people that
do not know how to deal with things that do not
have our names on them.Yes, we lack public spaces,
but what is more notable is our ignorance of any
form of communal ownership.
Yet I think that the most fertile manner by which
we could deal with the public realm is to widen its
scope, to make it a study of the possibility of sharing,
before it materialises into anything. Our public parks
remain inaccessible. Our public art pieces tend to be
easily forgotten. We are all trying our best to acquire
alternative nationalities and prefer to leave our lives
behind than to look at each other. As exciting as the
public realm is, for whom are we making it? Right now,
a scholastic course that teaches sharing to students
could prove more important as a public space project
than another green, eco-friendly, open, beautiful, and
completely misplaced garden.
Our streets are junkyards. We allow ourselves to litter
them while we keep our homes clean. It is not rare
to see tree pots used as garbage cans on our sidewalks.
It is common and acceptable for private security per­
sonnel to ask people to refrain from using certain public
spaces. My first floor neighbour complained that one
of the trees I had planted in front of the building
was bothering her. I could have been confused, but
in a previous project, one of my clients had asked
me to cut a centuries-old tree from the lot in front
of his because it was blocking his view.
In-Out Dance Festival Burkina Faso 2014 Opening Ceremony performance © Paul Kabré, all rights reserved to In-Out Dance Festival
THE PASSPORT AS A PUBLIC SPACE
Raafat Majzoub is an architect, author and artist living in Beirut.
www.236m3.com
Both trees still stand. Unfortunately, both people
do too.
Before we get into a real discussion regarding public
space in Lebanon, it is vital to communicate the concept
and benefit of shared objects. What does it mean
to communally own something or somewhere? I prefer
the term “shared” to “public” space. At least within
my local context, we battle everyday with people
creating more areas of conflict, more buffer zones
separating one another. It is a local pastime to dan­
gerously coagulate around the likeminded and propel
78
79
2013 Number of Projects per country
Distribution of grantees
Applicants712
Grantees39
First time grantees 77%
New organizations
(founded in or after 2010) 38%
DIVISION OF PROJECTS RETHINKING PUBLIC SPACE BASED ON THEMES
BELARUS
MONGOLIA
GEORGIA
ARMENIA
LEBANON
MORROCO
TUNISIA
EGYPT
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
IRAN
HAITI
TADJIKISTAN
AFGHANISTAN
PAKISTAN
INDIA
MYANMAR
BURKINA FASO
NIGERIA
CAMEROON
COLOMBIA
PUBLIC ACTS SOUTH AFRICA
CASABLANCA BY NIGHT MOROCCO
REVISITING MEMORY EGYPT
PROGRAMME RÉCRÉÂTRALES-ELAN BURKINA FASO
STREET STUDIOS, REFUGEE ALBUMS
RETHINKING PUBLIC SPACE CAMEROON
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
RUE DANCE FESTIVAL REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
TRAVELLING TESTIMONIES UGANDA
BACHON SE TA BDILI PAKISTAN
ARTE PUBLIKU! TIMOR-LESTE
SPACES ON THE RUN TAJIKISTAN
THE ARCHIVE AS PUBLIC SPACE SRI LANKA
PÉRIFÉERIQUES #3 HAITI
TRANSFORM PUBLIC SPACE INTO
ART&MARKET(S): LOCAL ECONOMY,
PUBLIC STAGE TAJIKISTAN
GLOBAL ECONOMY CHILE
TOMMORROW FRIENDS SRI LANKA
SONEMA 4, COMMUNITY NOISE & HANDMADE
A WALK IN THE PARK PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
SOUNDCRAFTS COLOMBIA
VOLUMES. LIBRARY LABS IN LEBANON LEBANON
UGANDA
THE TRAIN OF MEMORY, SECOND STATION
SRI LANKA
COLOMBIA
CONGO-BRAZZAVILLE
GIVING VOICE TO WAR ARTISTS,
STRENGTHENING CULTURAL
AND CULTURES IN CONFLICT
INFRASTRUCTURE
28%
AND SOCIAL PARTICIPATION
23%
BRAZIL
EAST-TIMOR
CHANTE; NARRATIVES OF
CHILE
TEHRAN RE-ACTIVA TING
SOUTH AFRICA
THE COMMON PALESTINIAN
EMPOWERING LGBT AND
OTHER SOCIALLY ENDANGERED
TERRITORIES
COOKING IMAGINATIONS GEORGIA
CYBER THEATRE: RE-THINKING WEB
SUBCULTURES
FACILITATING ARTS IN RURAL
13%
AND PERIFERAL AREAS
THEATRE BELARUS
IN AND BETWEEN THE (RE)PUBLIC
ENABLE TALENT
ARMENIA
DEVELOPMENT, AND
21%
EMERGING ARTS
15%
IN-OUT DANCE FESTIVAL BURKINA FASO
MOBILE CINEMA TUNISIA
THE ARENA OF CHANGE EGYPT
LAGOS OPEN – AJEGUNLE INVITATION 2013 NIGERIA
FIRST NATIONAL GRAFFITI FESTIVAL AFGHANISTAN
UGANDA WRITERS’ CARAVAN UGANDA
DREAM CATCHER IRAN
DHARAMSHALA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2013 INDIA
URBAN CLASS 101 PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
HUMAN RIGHTS HUMAN DIGNITY INTERNATIONAL
PAISAGEM DE LUZ BRAZIL
FILM FESTIVAL MYANMAR
LAND ART MONGOLIA 2014 MONGOLIA
39 Projects from 28 different countries
DANÇA SEM FRONTEIRAS BRAZIL
were supported
GEOCHOREOGRAPHIES BETWEEN WATERS COLOMBIA
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81
In Belarus the government controls
all public spaces, physical and digital.
Therefore this question is not
applicable to Belarus.
hat is your favourite public space
W
in your country?
ELENA KURYLEVA
The pavements.
RUSTAM TURSUN-ZADE
etlemi Quarter, the historical district
B
in Tbilisi, which was revitalised with
the involvement of the local community.
The Quarter holds an annual festival
with ICOMOS Georgia.
NINI PALAVANDISHVILI AND
DATA CHIGHOLASHVILI
STEFAN RUSU
The Tehran Bazaar.
BEHNAM ABOUTORABIAN
The square in front of
Yerevan State University.
abib Bourguiba Avenue is not
H
an ordinary public space; it is actually
a mirror that reflects our history,
civilisation, tolerance and our
openness to the outside.
A space without any religious or ideological
barriers, a space where all communities
can express themselves.
Nature.
BITA FAYYAZI
SHUSHAN AVAGYAN
EMNA TABOUBI
he Gobi Desert, because
T
there are no fences or walls,
only natural boundaries.
The area by the Pamir cinema.
SHAMSIA HASSANI
MARC SCHMITZ AND
VERA TOLLMANN
In Casablanca, “Le Parc de la ligue arabe”
a public garden was one of the first large
urban planning projects in Casablanca.
The Martissant Park in PortauPrince is unique in a city where
open space is so scarce; social
space as much as green space.
Sea View Beach.
SALOMÉ DELILLE AND SAKINA CHOUKR
SHAHANA RAJANI
GISCARD BOUCHOTTE
Tiefo Amoro Place, the square of the
Train Station.
AGUIBOU BOUGOBALI SANOU
Our national equivalent of the Irish
pub: the maquis. Maquis are places
of social encounter and debate,
networking, community bonding,
and team building.
The people’s park near Shwedagon Pagoda.
MON MON MYAT
he corniche, variously utilised
T
for leisure, entertainment,
commercialism, and exercise.
MARIE-HÉLÈNE URRO
ZEINA ASSAF AND
SARA GIANNINI
The streets in our communities are
(...) a no-man’s-land, (...) open common
arenas that sometimes twist the
mind’s ability to understand.
The Septimazo area (...) is a real
mix of cultures and social classes,
everybody has a place there.
NATALIA GUARNIZO
There are no public spaces in Palestinian
territories, but there are common spaces
that can be activated.The ambiguity in
definition between what is public or private
in this context, allows for the momentary
appearance of the common.
EMEKA UDEMBA
The
Magdalena River. Natives call
her Yuma, which means the Land
of Friends, Guacacayothe River of
Tombs, and Arli or the Fish River.
Yuma is the golden thread that
connects the southern territories
with the Caribbean coast.
S ometimes I like to sit at the Monument de la
Réunification in Yaoundé and admire the works
of artists and reflect on my country.
Marketplaces.
RITU SARIN
DANIELA SANJINES
The Karm al Khalili garden and the
Damascus gate.
PARFAIT TABAPSI
ALIA RAYYAN
The Galle Fort.
VIMUKTHI JAYASUNDARA
CAROLINA CAYCEDO
Natural parks, public markets,
public squares in general.
atural parks, public markets,
N
public squares in general.
The beach is the most
desired public space (here...) there
are no hierarchies.
JAVIER GAMBOA, SONEMA
DANILLO BARATA
The open squares – little praças (...)
F
FERNANDA
ERNANDA AMARAL
The parks and open spaces (...) in
Sea Point, Cape Town. Also the street
corners where people gather, sit, and
watch the street life and share news.
he streets around Johannesburg’s
T
inner city and townships where
public life fills itself in the most
vibrant and eclectic way between
two kerbs. THIRESH GOVENDER AND
KATHARINA ROHDE
82
SHARMINI PEREIRA
DR.YAZID ANANI
There isn’t one because (...)
it is about the way people use it.
KARA BLACKMORE
LUIS ALARCÓN AND ANA MARÍA SAAVEDRA
The Jaffna Public Library.
FLORENT MAHOUKOU
ALEXIA WEBSTER
The Andre Jarlan park, in the centre of our
neighbourhood, a former landfill recovered as
green space, functions as a place of memory
and recreation. It is a hypothetical location
for our imagined ‘First Biennale of Arts’ in
the community of Pedro Aguirre Cerda.
I view public space in a dialectical manner.
It’s impossible for me to regard only the
physical form of public space. Therefore,
I would say I have no preferences.
he public market Total Brazzaville,
T
which is the central market of the city.
When you go dancing there, you are
treated like you are crazy, and I like
to challenge my fellow citizens.
Public space is everywhere!
One can be very interesting today
and tomorrow it’s another space.
HILDA TWONGYEIRWE
Cairo’s alleyways (...) represent transitional
passageways between different areas in the
city (...) “borderline” spaces in which the
intersection betweewn the public and private
effectively represents the dual nature of
urban landscapes in Egypt.
The streets that lead to our beaches,
at 17.00 every day.
HANA AL BAYATY
ILIWATU DANABERE
Public squares and the coast.
NORA AMIN, LAMUSICA
83
Following page: Lagos Open – Ajegunle Invitation Nigeria 2013 Volunteer mounts a photograph by Aderemi Adegbite on a wall in Abukuru Street, Ajegunle © Emeka Udemba
A Walk In The Park Palestinian Territories 2013 Bubble activity at Karam Al Khalili Garden © Eduardo Soteras Jalil
END WORD
places; places to share, to think and to become influ­
enced by others within common space. Unfortunately,
in many countries this political significance creates
problems for individuals wishing to openly voice their
opinions and opposition within the public domain.
The political dimension therefore means that public
spaces are a place of power.They are dangerous spaces
for people to dwell in and voice private opinions.
Bertan Selim
This Review has deliberated on the ambitious achieve­
ments of the Prince Claus Fund’s partners in rethinking
public spaces. At the Prince Claus Fund we constantly
seek to identify important spaces where contribu­
tions are being made to critical discourses around the
world. Our aim is to connect to these spaces and
to the people who are doing inspirational work in
rethinking social engagement using arts and culture
as a driving tool. It is the people who ulti­mately attribute
meaning to space, based on its purpose and function.
It is therefore these very people who are portrayed
in this Review.
Public space resonates beyond communal shared
spaces.This is why rethinking public space goes beyond
the usual city squares around the world. Public space
enters the private domain, and our lives outside of
the public. The supported initiatives in this Review
inspire us to think differently about our own private
surroundings, and how others regularly interfere and
tamper with it. Rethinking public space also implies
reassessing our own efforts to fight political pressure
and social hegemony. It allows us to develop new
forms of commonality, the the “I” within the “we”.
This is the basis of individual development and thus,
the development of society. This focus on individual
develop­ment is an ideal that Prince Claus himself
stood by firmly.
Artists have been instrumental in redefining space
in this sense. Arts not only engage the public, but also
give narrative to physical space. Culture manifests
itself in public spaces where people can associate
with it. These are the spaces where creativity is free
to roam; the space where a diversity of opinions,
people and philosophies come together and are able
to coexist. Creating and enabling these spaces to exist
means that culture and the arts are given a central
role within social discourse and public opinion. It is
this social inclusion that creates cohesion and novelty.
Rethinking public space there­fore explores further
the role of arts and culture as agents of positive change
in spaces where freedom of expression is limited or
condemned. It therefore gives voice to local people
in their own environments who wish to create openness,
inclusivity and freedom in restricted spaces.
Throughout life, as individuals, we teach ourselves
to understand our own reality, and also learn from
each other and from shared memories, experiences
and knowledge. It is this reality that artists question;
this is the reality they attempt to redefine. The arts
and culture are key to rethinking public space, as they
offer new perspectives and confront societies with
a truth not apparent from the surface. We have com­
mitted to supporting initiatives that focused on rede­
fining this standard approach to the use of public space;
the attribution of new meaning and function leads
to appropriation of the space in question. In public
spaces people interact and engage with each other.
This interaction enables continuous redefini­tion
of how and why a space can function differently.
Though public spaces are inherently social, sociality
is, in many places, often still defined and controlled
by political gatekeepers who, by and large, execute
partisan political beliefs. Such political limitations have
encouraged many activists to move their culturerelated work to a virtual space. The Internet there­
fore is increasingly seen as a space for all. However,
countries like Iran, where certain online social plat­forms
such as Twitter are forbidden illustrate the political
control of all manner of public spaces. In Turkey like­
wise, the user-generated plat­form,YouTube, has been
banned off and on for a number of years, as the govern­
ment policies deems its content “offensive” for the
general public. A bizarre claim, given that YouTube’s
content is public user generated. Such censorship
is therefore not only an attempt to limit one’s possi­
bility to freely express opinions to a wider public,
but also an invasion of one’s private space; restricting
freedom of expression in the private realm.
The theme of public spaces continues to inspire and
motivate our work around the world, and we continue
to support excellent artists undertaking groundbreaking work in the most difficult of circumstances.
We are proud of these initiatives which are creating
change and development through arts and culture.
Bertan Selim is Programme Coordinator at the Prince Claus Fund.
He has previously worked for a number of international cultural
foundations, and as a consultant in strategic management. Bertan
is currently pursuing a PhD at the Erasmus University Rotterdam
in Cultural Economics under the supervision of Arjo Klamer.
The examples given by the projects in this Review have
also shown that public spaces are social places. These
same examples illustrate public space as a social concept
with an increasingly political connotation. Due to this
political significance, public spaces become meeting
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COLOPHON
Forthcoming Review
2014
Culture
in Defiance
Editors Thomas Roueché & Bertan Selim
Assistant editors Emma Bijloos, Brenda Guesnet,
Slavica Ilieska, Willemijn Rijper & Sean Rowlands
Content Statistics Caro Mendez
Design Irma Boom and Julia Neller
© 2014, Prince Claus Fund
Prince Claus Fund
Herengracht 603
1017 CE Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
princeclausfund.nl
First published 2014 by Prince Claus Fund
Printed in the Netherlands
ISBN / EAN 978-90-76162-29-4
The Prince Claus Fund’s February 2014 Thematic Call for
Project proposals focused on cultural initiatives related to
Culture in Defiance.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any forms or by any means
electronic, mechanical or otherwise without prior
written consent of the copyright owners.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders
but if any have inadvertently been overlooked, the publisher
will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements
at the first opportunity.
The Culture in Defiance Call was aimed at projects where
artists, photographers, musicians, dancers, writers, or bloggers
(amongst others) are working in the most difficult of conflict
areas, or societies in transition from war. The call hopes to
generate attention within the international community to the
conditions under which they are living and working.
Around the world, artists and cultural activists play a critical
role in conflict areas by continuing artistic initiatives, many
of which are threatened by transition and social unrest.
They analyse the causes and consequences of the conflict,
they document abuses, promote tolerance and mutual under­
standing of cultural diversity and bring the conflicted sides
closer together. Art and culture have always been important
and unifying in conflict areas. The next Review will detail the
projects supported by the Prince Claus Fund in this call.
The photos throughout the Review
were provided courtesy of the project partners.
p 40 © GeoAIR, Nicolai Khalezin
p 41 © Beto Amorim
p 44 © Human Dignity Film Institute
p 46 © Emeka Udemba
p 47 © Marc Schmitz’
p 49 © Darya von Berner
p 50 © Tinka Rodriguez
p 53 © Malanda Loumouamou
p 54 © Sonema
p 55, P64 © Alexia Webster
p 56 © Raking Leaves
p 59 © Kara Blackmore
p 60 © Femrite
p 61 © Marta Bogdanska
p 66 © Antoine Tempé
88