Conclusions - Forum d`Avignon Bilbao

Transcription

FORUM D’AVIGNON BILBAO
THE CITY AS A
CULTURAL ECOSYSTEM
5-8 March 2014
INDEX
7
Introduction
AlhóndigaBilbao
Forum d’Avignon Bilbao
The city as a cultural ecosystem
Programme of activities
19 Conclusions of RAW
9
11
23
Manifeste Catalyse
29
The city as cultural ecosystem
University of the Basque Country
35
The artist as urban cartographer
University of Deusto
41
Bilbao, ecosystem of a city
José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec
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Forum d’Avignon Bilbao Graphic Story Pernan Goñi
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Online Contents
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Credits
Introduction
For two days, the Forum d’Avignon Bilbao was an effervescent space
where numerous complex citizen and cultural matters were tackled. The
premise was the city as a cultural ecosystem about which the guests
and attendees of the debates could put forward their considerations.
The intellectual field was open and diverse analyses served.
We were interested in gathering this diversity which at times was
contradictory yet always lively and contemporary. Biological
ecosystems are balanced, inter-related, fragile yet volatile. But cultural
ones? Well, given they are cultural, or rather social to be precise, they
are much more controversial than biological ones. And it is from this
very controversy where the drive of citizens comes to the fore, to create
cities.
This publication aims to be an epilogue to this Forum d’Avignon
Bilbao. These pages include the 2 main texts of conclusions drawn
up at the Forum, both the Catalyse document and the RAW summary
of conclusions. In addition we have attached texts from the university
departments we have been working with, i.e. Deusto University Institute
of Leisure Studies and the Civersity research group of the University of
the Basque Country. Both departments have followed the Forum with
interest with regard to what it could provide them either as students or
researchers.
We also have Professor José Enrique Ruiz Domènec’s summary of his
stint in the Forum.
We are including the graphic production Pernan Goñi did for the
speeches and debates. And finally, to complement all this information,
we include a series of links to a documentation folder created during
the RAW and for its development.
To put it in a nutshell, a series of documents seeking to enlarge upon
and complement the undoubtedly multi-dimensional experience in
terms of ideas, which was none other than the Forum d’Avignon Bilbao
of March 2014.
AlhóndigaBilbao
Introduction
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THE CITY AS A CULTURAL ECOSYSTEM
The city is a cultural ecosystem. But what exactly is a cultural ecosystem
made up of? Public and private stakeholders, institutions, spaces,
activities, citizens, visitors...
In our Western cultural ecosystems, the public/private dichotomy has
become one of the main vectors of cultural action. After having tested
out both private and public models of action, it would seem today that
the two sectors are tending to collaborate.
We wish to study this relationship through a look at some specific
experiences. We are interested in discovering what lies below this
symbiotic relationship between the public and private spheres,
particularly in a context where creativity has proved to be the essential
nutrient for the sustainability of any cultural ecosystem. A city that
does not nurture and regenerate its ecosystem is a city condemned
to collapse, and a city that does not create will be impoverished and
paralysed.
Placing creativity at the core of cultural policy also allows us to think of
the ultimate beneficiary: the citizens.
The aim of the Forum d’Avignon Bilbao is to become involved in this
debate.
A run-up event was held prior to the Forum d’Avignon Bilbao: the RAW,
a space for reflection, for warm-up and for trying out new ideas. RAW
will use a cross-cutting approach to look at local ideas and experiences
together with artists and cultural agents, and to generate debates and
activities on the subject of art and culture in current contemporary
contexts.
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PROGRAMME OF ACTIVITIES
5.3.2014
RAW (Research Action WorkshopS)
RAW is a space for reflection, warm-up and idea testing before the
Forum d’Avignon-Bilbao. The aim of RAW is to use a cross-cutting
approach to look at local ideas and experiences together with artists and
cultural agents, through debates and activities connected with art and
culture in contemporary contexts. Creativity goes above and beyond the
cultural sphere, but it always forms an essential part of the dynamics
of art, in whatever form. Artists are ‘actists’. They act in cities, where
the community needs them. They transform synergies and recreate the
citizens’ pact.
At a time of future uncertainty, a time when we are questioning the
established models, creativity is called upon to help drive our economic,
social and political activities. RAW aims to approach this driving force
from a cross-cutting, uninhibited perspective. It is geared to artists and
cultural agents, calling on them to build up accounts of how the present
can shape the future, bringing local involvement and contribution to
Forum d’Avignon Bilbao’s more globalised debates and discussions. In
short, RAW is a catalyst for ideas, impulses and tensions. It will be held
before Forum d’Avignon Bilbao, but it may well be both a ‘before’ and
an ‘after’.
As training, a few weeks before RAW, Ixi García will conduct a workshop
based on her project SOFT:
PLENARY SESSION
The results of the ideas lab currently being prepared by Ixiar Garcia
for the Forum Avignon-Bilbao on the basis of her work SOFT will be
presented at this session. It will be the starting point for a debate on the
balance between small and large projects and the tension conveyed
by the new cultural patterns. Cities are a living medium for experience,
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where art renews society and culture, turning it on its head.
Debate leaders:
María Mur Dean (Consonni), María Ptqk e Ixiar García.
Graphic documentation: Ane San Miguel
ITINERARIES IN THREE WORKSHOPS
1/ Art hybridization experiments and practice
Creative territories are always new and always surprising. Artists and
creators seek an impulse to get away from their comfort zones and
meet to exchange ideas. The results of these meetings are evocative
experiences, new territories waiting to be explored.
Moderators: María Arana / Gorka Rodriguez (Zaramari) 2/ From mistakes to learning, a useful methodology
We learn from our mistakes. When things don’t work, the best we can
do is to draw the relevant conclusions. We can create strengths from
defects and aptitudes from insecurity.
Moderators: María Salazar (Klinika de Proyectos) / Nani Soriano (La
Noria, Málaga) 3/ Over the last few years, artistic and social practice
Has transformed the way we organise ourselves, how we work and how
we make ourselves visible. But critical and evolutionary self-perception
has played a very important role, in spite of its short career. This space
is a way of advancing through group debate on these new agents and
projects.
Moderators: Ricardo Antón (ColaBoraBora) / Ixiar García (Pink Gorilas)
PLENARY SESSION
Drawing common conclusions from the workshops.
Pooling of observations, conclusions and projections for the day. These
conclusions will then form part of the debate tables and will be presented
on the last day of the Forum (march 7, 2014).
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6.3.2014 FORUM D’AVIGNON BILBAO
Bilbao is a cultural ecosystem where meetings and enriching, dynamic
interaction between citizens and visitors take place every day. Since the
extraordinary economic and urban transformation of the city, its name
began to be associated with concepts such as excellence, business,
knowledge, art, technology, design and creativity. This is a well-known
process: from the economy of industrial transformation to the economy
of intellectual value.
When we no longer depend on natural resources and begin to rely on
the abstract resources of ideas, culture is acknowledged as a vital,
versatile cornerstone. Culture helps drive economic development and
the citizens’ general wellbeing, it increases innovation and creativity and
is decisive as regards contending with the global competition.
With this aim in mind, Forum d’Avignon Bilbao 2014 wishes to explore
the potential of cities as cultural ecosystems.
Through positive activities, we can analyse the different ways in which
a city becomes a cultural environment that makes full use of its most
diversified resources. This process of comparison will help us to find out
how creativity can contribute to the symbiosis of perspectives of both
artists and urban planners.
The Forum was organised into 4 debates:
DEBATE 1:
Dialogue between what is public and private in the field of creation
In an environment where local government policy and private sector
action, both entrepreneurial and associative, provide a sound basis
for what we refer to as the city’s cultural ecosystems, global analysis
becomes a real need. Balance, inter-dependency, relationships and
transformation of resources are a captivating and complex process.
We present some experiences in approaching this complexity that
have achieved good results for their respective cities, experiences that
basically recreate the link between the artistic and creative community
and the general public, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of a common
asset: culture.
Moderator: José Luis Rebordinos, Director of San Sebastian Film Festival.
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José Luis Rebordinos, Director of San Sebastian Film Festival.
Address:
Jean Blaise, Director of “Le Voyage à Nantes: culture et
tourisme”.
Katrín Jakobsdóttir, former Minister of Education, Science and
Culture of Iceland.
María Mur Dean, Director of Consonni, Bilbao.
Gail Lord, Co-president of Lord Cultural Resources, Canada.
Joxean Muñoz, eputy Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports of
the Basque Government.
DEBATE 2:
Artists as promoters of cultural and social change in our cities
Artists are some of the most active agents in our cities, and the cities are
one of the best scenarios for artists’ work. Cities are not only physically
transformed by the imagination of artists, architects and urban planners,
but as a huge imagination tank in themselves they are also a combination
of ideas, images and concepts that are played with, moved around and
questioned by the artists as citizens skilled in the use of these tools.
Cities are the perfect local scenario for the artistic community, whose
work forms part of the dynamics that rewrite the city day by day.
For the citizens, the return of this artist-city relationship is not merely an
economic issue. An increasingly accepted, and increasingly studied,
impact is made on citizen wellbeing, social structuring, the maturing
of society, the assumption and solving of problems and intangible
approaches that structure the individual and collective networks.
And it is precisely this flow, this collaboration between the artist and
the city, that will be the focus of our debate.
Moderator:
David Trueba, journalist and film Director.
Address:
Vito Acconci, artist and architect.
Jochen Sandig, Artistic Director of Radialsystem, Berlin.
Txomin Badiola, artist.
Beatriz García, Director of Research in Cultural Policy,
University of Liverpool.
Alfonso Santiago, Director of Last Tour International, Bilbao.
Replaced by Stephan Cassan
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7.3.2014
Debate 3:
Cities as a driving force for cultural change in Europe
Europe cannot be understood without referring to the history of its cities.
Europe’s urban spaces have always been the great European hubs of
culture, a network of cities that is and always has been a cultural network,
a diverse, complex mesh that fashions the European cultural fabric.
In an age in which different globalising dynamics combine, in the domain
of culture as well as in many others, Europe is reaffirming and activating
this cultural fabric. The urban space, the city and the metropolis attract
artists and creators from all over the world, where they converge to forge
new territories and stir up thought and cultural ideas. Europe’s cities
continue to play a vital role in the transformation of European culture,
from contemporary radicalism to the curating aspect: the age-old
tension between what is created and what is conserved.
This debate will cover the challenges facing these European cities with
respect to cultural paradoxes: global/local; creation/conservation;
complexity/simplicity of identities…
Moderator:
Javier Gomá, Essayist, Director of the Juan March Foundation,
Madrid.
Address:
José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec, History Chair, Autonomous
University of Barcelona.
Guadalupe Echevarria, Cultural Director of Donostia/
San Sebastián European Capital of Culture 2016.
Patricia Brown, Director of Central, London
Corinne Hermant-de Callataÿ, European Commission,
Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy.
Evelyne Lehalle, Director of Nouveau Tourisme Culturel, Nice
DEBATE 4:
The city in progress, a future ecosystem
As living cultural ecosystems, cities are in a constant state of change
and evolution. But what will these changes be in the near future? We
wish to centre this debate on the lines of tension that can stake out the
cultural environments of the cities of the future, from both an artistic and
a cultural point of view.
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Moderator:
Pablo Guimón, Editor-in-chief of the weekend edition of El País,
Madrid.
Address:
Saskia Sassen, sociologist at Columbia University, New York. Tarek Cherkaoui, Chief Strategy Officer for the Qatar Museums
Authority
Beatriz Colomina, historian of architecture at Princeton
University, New Jersey.
Juan Diego, Secretary General of the Bilbao Bizkaia Design &
Creativity Council (BiDC).
Cristina Iglesias, artist.
Clausure of AVIGNON-ESSEN-BILBAO
Presentation of the conclusions of RAW (María Mur and María Ptqk).
Presentation of the conclusions of Catalyse Project - Forum d’Avignon
Bilbao.
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Conclusiones RAW
Maria Mur Dean y Maria Ptqk
We understand ecosystem as defined by the following factors:
I. Complexity of the (eco)system
It is important to be aware of where everyone is in the production chain.
Being aware of production conditions is essential. The creative process
must affect economic and communication decisions which also have
ideological importance.
The ecosystem is mutational, what was once a savannah may become
uncultivated land from one day to the next. It has often happened,
Arteleku, Montehermoso, Sala Rekalde, Santa Monica Art Centre, etc.
The roles within the ecosystem are mutational. Whoever acts like a
lioness may act like an ant. Moreover, whoever thinks himself the most
wolf-like may be seen as an ant. And beyond that even, there are hybrids
among species, like werewolves, centaurs, mermaids and satyrs.
[Alhóndiga: the fact that this is happening here today is a sign of that
complexity, interstitials, mutations, gaps, inertias, etc. We do not have
a fixed and abstract position, but a circumstantial and relational one].
II. Transformable capacity of culture
Capitalism instrumentalises culture and creativity, the maximum example
of this could be the so-called creative industries. This edition of RAW
means a leap in relation to previous editions, more focused on creative
and cultural industries and on the economicist discourse regarding the
value of culture as the motor for economic growth.
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Conclusions of RAW
Conclusions of RAW
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It is important to motivate the transformable capacity of culture beyond
the mere reproduction of the world as it is supposed to be, and beyond
the spectacle and constant recreation of success models. We should
try to transform the production apparatus.
precarity, but earlier…
It is not merely a question of making cultural projects with political
content, but of making them politically. Goddard dixit.
Connection between the defence of self-employment and embarking
on new projects (characteristic of cultural work), employment flexibility,
non-regularisation, and precarious employment conditions. The cultural
artist-agent as a model for precarious flexible self-employed worker.
Reform the self-employment law.
Art may propitiate the creation of a public sphere (space for debating
and discussing common interests)
The tricks of univocal discourses on creativity. We should and we wish to
take into account the shadowy areas and complexities.
Cultural mediators, artists, etc., different professionals within the cultural
framework assume the responsibility of affecting politics. Namely,
making a cultural programme is making cultural politics. This does not
correspond to public institutions without taking account of the citizens.
Moreover, the system of representation via political parties is obsolete.
Financing problems.
Cutback in public funds (“the crisis”) is added to:
Collaboration (!) with private bodies: control over critical contents,
hidden advertising, generalised privatisation of public services.
Limits applied to crowdfunding or collective financing systems: it is
compulsory to go through the bank system (with its regulations), only
authorised platforms may be created (control over initiatives susceptible
to being financed).
New cultural VAT.
III. Culture as a common asset
Culture as a common asset and right, not only as an economic resource.
Linked to forms of citizenship: everybody is an artist, everybody is
a citizen. Previously linked to “public service” but now related to
networked and horizontal forms of society.
Open licences and public dominion: cultural initiatives financed with
public money revert back to the public. Open code cultural practices.
Democratic crisis. Context of democratic weakness: how it affects our
work. The loss of rights and freedom, deterioration of freedom of speech
and the right to dissent. Citizen safety law.
IV. Ecosystem of cultural employment
We’re not (just) an industry. Or we are a very specific industry. 80% of the
Spanish State cultural fabric is self-employment and micro-companies
(less than 3 employees). What kind of industry is that?
Extreme precarity of cultural jobs, in line with general employment
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Conclusions of RAW
Conclusions of RAW
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Manifeste Catalyse
Conclusive document on the Catalyse project drafted
by the teams of Essen, París-Avignon and Bilbao on
6th and 7th March 2014
Bilbao, 2014, March, 06th. After the 2nd Forum dÁvignon Ruhr (in
Essen, June 2013, 27th and 28th), the 6th Forum d’Avignon (in Avignon,
November 2013, 21th to 23rd), the 1st Forum d’Avignon Bilbao (in
Bilbao, March 2014, 5th to 7th) is the third European scale event of the
EU-funded project CATALYSE.
After three day of interactive and transnational collaboration in Bilbao,
the CATALYSE partners call to place the attractiveness of cities at the
heart of the European elections. Without more engagement for cities,
the European vision cannot come alive - especially not for the European
youth. Examples as Bilbao, the Ruhr, Avignon, Metz, Lens or Liverpool
proved how culture revitalizes cities and thus CATALYSE calls to
European politics to mainstream the promotion of cultural and creative
cities.
Among the numerous perspectives sketched during Forum d’Avignon,
Forum d’Avignon Ruhr and Forum d’Avignon Bilbao, CATALYSE through their ‘Manifesto 2014: Reinventing a new creative European
urban space’ published on March, 7th - underlines three action priorities
to strengthen the attractiveness in our cities and societies:
1.To fight citizen scepticism about culture and change. Change is
inevitable for culture institutions if they want to continue to be a
driving force for culture in the new user-driven public emerging today
in the digital world. “A culture of openness and curiosity, adopting an
ethos which values debate, critical thinking and learning is essential
to establish a collective ‘thinking brain’ for the city able to monitor
the best initiatives of the world and trying to go beyond them” states
Iñaki Azkuna, Mayor of Bilbao. “The commitment on the European
‘cultural exception’ has sense only, justifies Laure Kaltenbach,
managing director of the Forum d’Avignon, if it favours the financing
of the creation and the strengthening of the social cohesion”.
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Manifeste Catalyse
Manifeste Catalyse
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2.Culture as catalyser of urban cities and creative territories’ energy.
They are ways to reinvest in culture in urban space when everything
seems gloomy, in times of nourished individual and collective
scepticism, to involve and bring citizens and politicians together.
“Today, we concentrate on the strategy and the strengthening of
the processes of development - before funding single projects and
having a return on investment. This increases sustainability - this
increases support for culture.” underlines Bernd Fesel, senior advisor
at ecce and Forum d’Avignon Ruhr. “Cities with the right strategic
focus, the skill of concentrating on the long-term future-oriented
perspectives will be able to excel in spite of global dynamics” adds
Iñaki Azkuna. Make culture accessible to act more, closer to home.
- Finally, simple and necessary, symbols in the everyday life should
appear, as icons of the European culture or history ; Mitterrand-Kohl,
De Gaulle-Adenauer, Pessoa, de Vinci, Cecilia Bartoli,… on European
bills and stamps chosen through an electronic vote among the
Europeans citizens…
Let’s rock the Europe of culture!
3.Finally, the importance of being earnest. Collecting reliable cultural
data constitutes an essential investment upstream to any coherent
policy of development of a creative economy; by strengthening the
environmental studies of ‘the cultural footprint’ (i.e. the positive
correlation between culture and local development), and on the
capacities of the culture to transform creativity into sustainable
prosperity for the urban populations.
Change is possible – even in the public budget crisis – if ambitions and
concrete actions are embodied in an integrative manner on a local basis
as well as on a European scale. The Catalyse network urges European
decision makers to address the role of culture as a strategic necessity for
the future of Europe and proposes in particular:
- Personalities, charismatic in their national cultures and embodying the
European culture, beyond the project 2020, should be chosen every
three years with the mission to advise the European Commissioners
on a cultural strategy for Europe.
- Public symbols for change should be created e.g. a “train for culture in
Europe” could connect regions and cities and their citizens.
- Open government methods should be introduced in cities in Europe,
supervised by a European civil society network, to make legal
frameworks on “change-ready” and thus “investment-ready” local
levels for culture and creativity – be it investment in creative ideas or
in private funds.
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Manifeste Catalyse
Manifeste Catalyse
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THE CITY AS CULTURAL ECOSYSTEM
CIVERSITY-City and Diversity Research Group
UPV/EHU
http://civersity.net
[I] More than anything else, the city is what we do with it and in it. In
Robert Park’s classical definition, the city is “a functional unit in which
the relationships between the individuals who inhabit it are determined
not only by the conditions imposed by the material structure of the city
but also by the direct and indirect interactions of the individuals with
one another”. Do modern cities offer opportunities for these interactions
to take place?
“All over America, urban planning has renounced its historical role as
an integrator of communities to promote selective development that
emphasises differences.” With this affirmation from the early nineties,
Michael Sorkin was denouncing the risk that, despite our best intentions
and desires, existing urban spaces were making the social interaction
that is critical to the construction of a citizen culture impossible.
Nowadays, cities are designed to be creative, attractive, entrepreneurial
and global… but urban planners almost never know what to do with the
locally-limited city (and its citizenry) or with the vulnerable and fragile
city (and its citizenry). The problems disappear or their disappearance
is planned and with them the real city disappears as well.
Bruce Bégout ingeniously captures the spirit of the post-modern city,
replete with non-places, when he analyses the American motel as an
expression of the non-city: “Motels, far from being just an example of the
American way of life, show what is happening nowadays on the outskirts
of almost all the world’s cities. They exemplify new forms of urban life
where mobility, drifting and vital poverty prevail. As Bégout notes,
the most obvious characteristic of motels is that “there is no exterior
or interior space for guests to meet”. On the contrary, “everything is
designed to favour one-way movement of people from their cars to their
rooms and vice versa”.
This urban space where social interaction and encounters between
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neighbours has become increasingly difficult is what Pietro Barcellona
calls the post-modern city, “an enormous, polished area on which one
can skate to infinity”. A space to be traversed as quickly as possible in
order to reach the new private places where the relational dimension
takes place virtually. We are reminded here of one of the icons of
contemporary art: Hopper’s Nighthawks.
To avoid clashes, which are inevitable in real life, we have ended up
making encounters practically impossible.
[II] The municipal or communal citizenry which began to flourish in
Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was created in urban
spaces that would today be considered toxic to the development of
civic virtues and citizen practices: heavily stratified, socially segmented,
noisy, dirty, chaotic and deregulated... It was there that the set of
practices, habits and values and the awareness that constitute the
foundations of modern citizenry were developed. “The city air makes
you free” says the medieval proverb, referring to the laws governing
cities which allowed the characteristic serfs of the feudal system to
gradually transition into citizens. In effect, there was a time when the
cities themselves, the urban fact with its peculiar dynamics, seemed
to be enough to generate that type of human we have come to refer
to over time as the citizen and that class of relations between people
which we now refer to as civics. It was enough just to breathe the city
air – contaminated and foul-smelling as it was – to feel and to know that
we were free, and to act accordingly.
The modern city, the industrialised city, also seemed sufficient to
produce a society with the functional layout of its space. Those times
have passed. Left to its own devices and contrary to what we would
have expected, “the city no longer produces society” (Donzelot). Cities
alone are no longer capable of producing citizens or civic-mindedness.
Today, cities demand new attitudes from their inhabitants – proactive,
purposeful attitudes – for urban life to flourish and to be manifested in
all of its exuberant and agonistic diversity. Citizens that are reclaiming
their collective rights to the city not as consumers of experiences,
not as entrepreneurs in search of an adequate land to develop their
creativeness, not even as merely reactive and demanding citizens, but
rather as social agents dedicated to the construction of democratic
powers.
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[III] When we talk about our rights to the city we must ask ourselves
what it means to “be” a city. The city as a collective space that belongs
to all inhabitants, where everyone has the right to find the conditions, the
tools and the resources needed for their own personal, political, social
and ecological development, assuming and making a commitment to
the values and duties of solidarity and equity.
However, experience has shown us clear violations of this right.
According to Saskia Sassen, the formal recognition of equality does not
preclude certain groups from being faced with forms of exclusion based
on class, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation or religion which
preclude them from personal development and political participation. In
other words, their citizenship is diminished.
Citizenry and the design of the city’s resulting needs and priorities
have been shaped by masculine standards based on a notion of the
term public which excludes all things domestic and/or feminine. The
construction of an inclusive city implies that caregiving be viewed as a
vital content of urban planning. Urban spaces are marked by gender,
which is why one of the greatest challenges of urban planning lies
in building spaces that go beyond the patriarchal order, spaces for
everyone where different perspectives, experiences and realities are
viewed as equal.
[IV] The city is not merely a physical, spatial, economic and/or social
entity but rather a scenario where processes, strategies and educational
experiences converge to develop the individual and collective autonomy
of the agents with which they interact. This idea is clearly expressed in the
Charter of Educating Cities. “Cities are educators when they recognise,
exercise and develop not only their traditional functions (economic, social,
political and service-providing) but also their educational function, when they
assume the intentionality and responsibility whose purpose is to educate,
promote and develop all of their inhabitants, starting with children and
youth”.
The awareness of the educational aspect must necessarily be accompanied
by action, according to the meaning assigned to this term by Hannah Arendt:
the city turns into an ongoing project to build citizenry and democracy. The
educational process which the city engenders (and upon which the city’s
very existence is based) is open and unfinished, founded on the continuous
practice of the values of recognition, inclusion, participation and deliberation.
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In this historical time of uncertainty, crisis and risk, cities must recover
the transformative potential they have harboured since the beginning
and become the privileged spaces where the utopian dream expressed
by Gabriel García Márquez can be advanced: “To make the most out
of our inexhaustible creativity and conceive an ethic - and perhaps
an aesthetic - for our boundless and legitimate desire for personal
achievement. […] To channel into life the immense creative energy
that we have wasted for centuries on depredation and violence and to
give us that second chance on earth which the unfortunate lineage of
Colonel Aureliano Buendía was denied”.
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THE ARTIST AS URBAN CARTOGRAPHER
REFLECTIONS AFTER THE FORUM DÁVIGNON BILBAO
Fernando Bayón, Cristina Ortega, María Jesús Monteagudo,
Jaime Cuenca, Ana Viñals.
“Leisure and human development”
University of Deusto
No metaphor is innocent; and the metaphor of turning the city into
a cultural eco-system neither. We live paying permanent attention
to the myth of sustainability. Cities more than any other reality. In his
classic work on the subject, entitled The city in history, Lewis Mumford
stated that the chief function of the city is to “convert power into form,
energy into culture, dead matter into the live symbols of art, biological
reproduction into social creativity” . Mumford seems to validate the
metaphor: cities are highly organised units suggesting and constructing
thousands of ways of mankind’s symbiotic co-operation with all other
elements of nature. However, at the same time, almost all specialists
agree that cities have historically been focal points of social change,
drivers of innovation, idea transmission points, scenes of major political,
psychological and technological breakthroughs which have shaped the
future -each future- of mankind.
Therefore, this is a very slightly engrossed ecosystem with high
transforming power, starting from the power of continuous self
transformation. To understand the city, balance should not be opposed
to precariousness as two opposites ready to eliminate each other for,
in its case, as in the case of any other ecosystem, precariousness is
the condition sometimes difficult to bear, for balance. Risk and volatility,
threat and competition, and the exposure to danger force us to live in
a permanent state of alert, develop potentially very creative defence
mechanisms, build networks, forge alliances, outline scape routes,
invent arts and produce cultures, as culture arises wherever the
certainty of the existence having stopped being something obvious is
acquired.
Recently voices have been heard, such as the economist Edwar
Glaeser , celebrating “the triumph of cities”, highlighting sometimes
controversially and loudly, the alliance between prosperity and urban
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planning. They – from Milan to New York, from Birmingham to Bangalore,
from Singapore to Bilbao - are the cradle of synergies, communication,
interactivity and diversification, which enables their re-invention over
and over again. Indeed, it is difficult not to follow Glaeser in his heated
praise to cities as places which make it easier for us to watch, listen and
learn. But it is also difficult not to diminish the importance of that praise
when other voices such as David Harvey or Edwar W. Soja , have
managed to portray the variable geometry of urban transformations
from new logics of work distribution, standardisation of inequality,
governability of metropolis centres and ill-fated mobility between
borders. Many decades ago, at least since the seminal work by Manuel
Catells or Henri Lefebvre , we were all warned of the fact that the
polychromatic urban fabric actually conceals a considerably fierce
battle for social production and organisation of a space which fails to
represent us all on equal terms. Artists know this too well. However, we
still carry too close to the skin that economic praise to cities: in that
regard, even the language we use knows things we do not even “know”
ourselves. For example, that power relationships already in the ancient
Greece mainly evolved around political differences between polites
(Greek term to designate those accepting society and collective urban
life) and idiotes (rural «independent» inhabitants, relatively isolated and
«idiosyncratic» peasants or, worse, barbarians) .
Unfortunately, nowadays talking about cities consists mostly of talking
about city urban planning. However, as the abovementioned Manuel
Castells taught us, urban planning spatial specificity is the result of
certain social processes and not an explanatory variable in itself. We
pay intense attention to how space is organised in our cities in order
to use it as an explanation for the most serious issues of our times
(time for planners), thereby forgetting and making others forget social
relationships of production, consumption, exchange and administration
which make up the actual weave of this space. Let us think again: How
can we currently set out the relationship between the artist and the city?
Let us think of artists as urban cartographers. Yes, quite often artists have
been instrumentalised, used as spear heads or white collar offenders
of slightly concealed gentrification processes. The emerging creative
class, according to this unfortunate rhetoric - and therefore, successful defined by Richard Florida, occupied deprived outskirts, impoverished
and dangerous areas of the post-industrial city, with a bohemian air and
a differential note of politically appealing urban eccentricity, meeting to
its regret the cost of land dossier, so as to be subsequently displaced
from there just when rent fees had reached convenient rates for major
real state agent firms, once city safety indicators and social “vibration”
standards had improved. There are too many examples of this, from
Hamburg to New York, from Beijing to Madrid.
In this context, what is the sense of a Forum going back to the city,
claiming it as a cultural ecosystem? What is the sense and the role
played by a Forum which aims to debate among other things, the role
of artists as promoters of the social change of cities? Perhaps it would
not go amiss to remember the first great philosopher of the cultural and
creative industries after the Modernity crisis, Theodor W. Adorno. In
his memorable Aesthetic Theory, Adorno emphasised that “no work of
art reveals a perfect unit; it has to pretend it, and therefore it crashes
against itself” . In this sense, the work of art shares the same nature
as cities, always pretending a perfect balance and always undermining
the perfection of their balances, always simulating to be reconciled with
themselves in the eyes of citizens and visitors and always refusing to
be totally reconciled with their identities. The artist and the city share
this sense of drift, which turns them in accomplices, co-creators of a
landscape with an unprecedented capacity to mutate.
But what does thinking about the artist as urban cartographer mean?
It means among other things, allowing true creative freedom to unveil
the myth of Art in the public space: scratching the surface of the
political discourse which lays behind the oppressive and emblematic
occupation of streets, walkways and squares of areas regenerated
by large international firms which offer the respectability required by
the “city branding”, and forcing local artists to get always involved at
the fringes, in eccentric spaces, as recycling, complaint and reaction
geniuses. The eternal “metaphor creators of the dominant order”, as
Néstor García Canclini would call them, graffiti artists on the public
space wall canvas, inherited from planners who (almost) always involve
the civil society at the most convenient time (for them). Claiming artists
as urban cartographers means to loosen up the rigidities of urban
planning politics, for their creativity reveals there is no need to look
for the truth of the city - and feel it - in structured spaces, no matter
how globally beautiful and titanic they may be, but rather in the social
36
37
structuring processes and in the narrative, common stories which
take place behind these spaces. Making the artist visible as urban
cartographer means conferring the artist with the power characteristic
of any truly “cultural” gesture: refraining from unconsciously celebrating
“what there is” to rescue in an inventive, communal and fair way what is
forgotten “in what there is”, proposing names for absences.
Notes
Certainly, the image of a cultural ecosystem is an appropriate metaphor
for the city today. As all ecosystems, cities have a rare capacity to
become incomplete, unfinished and unknown to themselves every so
often. In those times of crisis, art is one of the most creative and creating
forces when it comes down to help re-balance and self-regulate the city
image. But that homeostatic function so distinctive of any ecosystem has
occasionally turned art into an instrument used to maintain the social
environment which was intended to perpetuate. The smartest cultural
ecosystems already anticipate that, in those cases, art is never going to
conform. The artist opens breaches in the city borders, introduces drifts
in political tides, sows slight confusion in the map of social convictions,
maps the cartography of the stressful innovation ideology and makes us
see that any ecosystem is a community of small and large, visible and
invisible, forces.
4 Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis. Critical Studies of Cities and Regions, (first
1 Lewis Mumford, The city in history. Its Origins, Its Transformations and Its
Prospects, Trans. Logroño, Pepitas de Calabaza, 2012, pp. 950.
2 Edward Glaeser, The Triumph of the City, Trans. Madrid, Taurus, 2011.
3 David Harvey, Urban planning and social inequality, Trans. Madrid, Siglo XXI,
1989.
published in May 2000) Trans. Madrid, Traficantes de sueños, 2008.
5 Manuel Castells, The urban question (first published in French in1972) Trans.
Madrid, Siglo XXI, 1976 (second corrected and extended Spanish version).
6 Henri Lefebvre, The production of space, (first published in French in 1974)
Trans. Madrid, Capitán Swing, 2013.
7 E. W. Soja, ibidem, pp. 103.
8 Th. W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, (first published in 1970), Trans. Madrid, Akal,
2004, pp. 144.
4th June 2014
38
39
By José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec
Article which appeared in the Cultural Supplement of
La Vanguardia newspaper on 7th May 2014
Bilbao, 1980s midst a serious industrial crisis, several visionaries
decided to transform the city. The moved away from the classical idea
of manufacture being the sole source of wealth. Goodbye 20th century,
welcome 21st century! Such a decision meant big risks; one of which,
that the alternative to the industrial furnaces would end up being one of
those false awakenings so common in the years prior to the fall of the
Berlin Wall. It was a very difficult period, yet we walked towards a free
and imaginative city capable of overcoming the conservative messages
which ossify society denying it the dynamism of creativity. Opportunity
came along with the building of the Guggenheim Museum. This building
over the estuary in the Abandoibarra area near La Salve Bridge was
designed by Frank Gehry, and became the pivot for fostering redefinition
of the city as an ecosystem, where culture would be the launching pad
for economy to take off. In this respect public and private spaces were
remodelled, roads and side streets cleaned, even the estuary, giving
rise to an urban space full of life and pleasurable. We can see this today
on walking from San Anton Bridge near La Ribera market built by Pedro
Ispizua in 1929, to Deusto Bridge. Landscapes of the future. A system
of values was adopted which interested the young for it constituted a
new horizon of expectations.
Culture is not an expense but an investment and partly a merchandise.
The cost of the Guggenheim Museum was recovered in 5 years, leaving
a way of life as its legacy. However, that is all part of the past, of a recent
history which turned out well, with imagination and political conviction.
But now what? Now that Bilbao must face the challenges of the 2010
decade, its politicians have realised it must go beyond the mere
exploitation of this initial success, to cover the need for new guidelines
adjusted to the generations who have grown up in the shadow of the
building. What can be done with a view to the future? That was the
question tackled in March within the Forum d’Avignon framework.
40
41
The meeting was held in La Alhóndiga, a modern building designed
by the architect Ricardo Bastida and refurbished by Philippe Starck as
Javier Gomá magnificently told me as we crossed the beautiful hall of
columns heading towards the amphitheatre. We are going to debate the
future of cities without losing sight of the value of the past. Right from
the start, we have been aware that in order to prosper, it is necessary
to first define a theory of economic change applicable to human beings
in the 21st century, i.e. a series of consensus beliefs should be laid
regarding people individually, socially and in the material world where
they interact. In other cities creative tension has been abandoned in
favour of nostalgic dreams or simply converting the urban space into
a theme park with immediate profitability, but nothing more. Here it
is different. A psychological premise has been adjusted, whereby
prosperity is possible provided curiosity, inventiveness and competition
are not hindered by growing bureaucracy. It should be understood
that this desire for Bilbao to join the metropolitan corridors, as Jochen
Sandig, director of Berlin Radialsystem, has explained to me, not only
entails the mental agility to provide an answer to practical questions, but
also the imagination necessary to conceive other forms of wellbeing as
yet not visible which will affect the way of working above all, as Beatriz
Colomina, who has arrived from Princeton, has added.
is beautiful yet it does not impede us from viewing the city today as a
place of tension, of upheaval, as Saskia Sassen advised, emphasising
the extremely vulnerable character of today’s metropolis. This leads us
to the situation of the immigrant tragically divided by 2 worlds, ideas,
cultures, languages. It is a situation which I can contemplate live
walking along San Francisco Street. What will happen to them in the new
city looming in the distance over the estuary? It is impossible to know
exactly. However, what I am certain of is that the social body cannot be
divided. The way to pass to the unique must be found without having to
resort to assimilation, forced integration or immersion; and for that the
only way possible is to go for cosmopolitism. We must be on the alert.
Inter-generational dialogue will enable an enormous leap provided it
is not defeated by those wishing to avoid the ecology of institutions,
i.e. the principle that a city is an open space, of plural inter-cultural
interaction, and free from the tyranny of an invented historical memory
and an assumed Clash of civilizations. I commented on this point with
Laure Kaltenbach, ever attentive to the ideas methodically jotted down
on her 11” Mac, irreversible proof of the digital gap of our times. The
aim is to find a new language which in the long run will be a mutant of
the current social reality, as can already be seen in Berlin, Hamburg
or Nantes and which Jean Blaise showed us. Adaptation to the 21st
century way of life requires listening to the voice of 2 generations forged
in the rapid imaginative digital culture, who freely expressed themselves
in the Forum, in a preamble which staged the names of the future like
Maria Mur of Consonni and the avant-garde groups of Bilbao.
Artistic creation sets the trend, i.e. it is a gesture perceived in that which
42
43
FORUM D’AVIGNON BILBAO GRAPHIC STORY
Draws made by Pernan Goñi during the debates
on Mars 6th and 7th.
5/03/2013 Forum eszenatokia
5/03/2013 Cultura machine
5/03/2013 City cultural
5/03/2013 Europe
5/03/2013 Welcome
5/03/2013 Bilbao
6/03/2013 Jean Blaise
6/03/2013 Gail Lord
6/03/2013 Katrin Jakobdóttir
6/03/2013 Joxean Muñoz
6/03/2013 Maria Mur Dean
6/03/2013 Preguntas
6/03/2013 Preguntas
6/03/2013 Txomin Badiola
6/03/2013 Vito Acconci
6/03/2013 Beatriz García
6/03/2013 Jochen Sandig
6/03/2013 Cristophe Casan
6/03/2013 Intervención
7/03/2013 Javier Gomá
6/03/2013 Responde Txomin Badiola
7/03/2013 José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec
7/03/2013 Marca Ciudad
7/03/2013 Guadalupe Echevarria
7/03/2013 Guadalupe Echevarria
7/03/2013 Evelyne Lehalle
7/03/2013 Patricia Brown
7/03/2013 Saskia Sassen
7/03/2013 Corinne Hermant-de Callataÿ
7/03/2013 Tarek Cherkaoui
7/03/2013 Beatriz Colomina
7/03/2013 Debate A
7/03/2013 Juan Diego
7/03/2013 Debate B
7/03/2013 Cristina Iglesias
5/03/2013 Conclusiones Catalyse
Other Online Contents about
Other Online Contents
About the RAW
Click to download:
FROM ERROR TO LEARNING
Nani Soriano and Maria Salazar
VÍDEO
PDF
WORD
JPG
IXI GARCIA VIDEO
Pink Gorillas made in the workshop prior to the RAW
CONDITIONS FAVOURING A CREATIVE ECOSYSTEM
Pink Gorillas
AN ECOSYSTEM WHICH FAVOURS CREATION
Pink Gorillas
NATURAL AND CULTURAL ECOSYSTEMS
Felix Martinez de Lezea
SOFT DOCUMENTARY
Pink Gorillas
Documentary which includes an agitator research process which explores the needs to attend the quality and development of artistic
creativity in artistic and cultural creations. The research starts from
a network of creators set within the Basque Government Creation
Factories programme and questions whether cultural policies favour
the development of artistic creativity or not.
SOFT LABORATORY VIDEO
A SOFT laboratory held at Alhóndiga Bilbao (14th and 15th February
2014) to explore the ecosystem conditions which favour creation.
This time we have invited the biologists Felix Martinez de Lezea and
Miren Gabantxo, Jose Romero, Ricardo Antón, Marisa Lafuente,
Arantxa Mendiharat, Leire Vergara, Maria Mur, Itxaso Diaz, Muns
Brunet, Eneko Axpe, Pedro Salgado, Txente Montón, Ane San
Miguel and Ixiar García.
ARTISTIC HYBRIDIZATION EXPERIENCE AND PRACTICE
Nani Soriano and Maria Salazar
ROUGH NOTES OF THE 1 RAW TABLE CONCLUSIONS
ZARAMARI COMPOST MAKER FOR THE RAW
ONGARRIAK NAHASTEN, ZARAMARI
NEW COMMUNITIES IN ARTISTIC AND SOCIAL PRACTICE
ColaBoraBora Koop
ANIMALS IN ACTION
WAYS TO ORGANISE ONESELF - CBB RAW
RAW PROGRAMME
AlhóndigaBilbao
GRAPHIC RAW OF THE PROCESS
Ane San Miguel
RAW SUMMARY – FACTORS DEFINING THE ECOSYSTEM
THEORETICAL REFERENCES
Nani Soriano and Maria Salaza
PUBLICATION
Organizers:
AYUNTAMIENTO DE BILBAO
FORUM D’AVIGNON
CATALYSE (European Union)
Concept:
Equipos de ALHÓNDIGABILBAO
Coordinators:
Teams of ALHÓNDIGABILBAO
BM30
BILBAO EKINTZA
Project coordinator:
David Márquez Martín de la Leona
Communication support:
Ainhoa Alday Palacios
Technical secretary and registrations:
BM30
JOTAMÁS
OrganizerS:
Coordinators:
Coordination:
David Márquez Martín de la Leona
Graphic image:
George y Mildred, comunicación
creativa
Translation:
Irene Hitzek (basque)
Miriam Infante (english)
Sponsors:
UniversiTIES:
Supported by
© of this publication: AlhóndigaBilbao
© of texts: their authors
© of pictures/draws: their authors
Cultural partners:
All rights reserved
THANKS TO:
Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, grupo de
investigación CIVERSITY; University of Deusto, grupo de investigación
OCIO Y DESARROLLO HUMANO; José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec; María
Mur; María PTQK; equipo Metrópoli 30.
We would like to thank all the people and entities that have contributed
to this project, whose help has been fundamental.
Forum dÁvignon Bilbao is part of THE European cultural programme
named Catalyse:

Conclusions - Forum d`Avignon Bilbao

Transcription

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