Crossing the borders: Mapping Common Spaces in South-East London
Angeliki Zervou - Eleni Tzirtzilaki
Angeliki Zervou - Eleni Tzirtzilaki
guest tutoring in the Urban Transcripts 2012 International Workshop on the city, London
Intro
This workshop
is related to the project “Il cammino commune. The song” which was performed in
Rome in the
context of Urban Transcripts 2011 and it aims to take the discussion around the
notion of “common” (and common spaces) a step further.
It will focus
on the area of Hackney Wick, one of East London’s post-industrial ‘wastelands’
and poverty stricken neighbourhoods with a wide range of ethnic groups,
immigrants and a large number of low-income families and individuals.
The
neighbourhood’s character during the last decade has brought artists,
alternative artistic spaces, street art and rock bars, allowing the new
artistic community to interact with the older one and giving the area a new
character related to the notion of “common”.
The broader
regeneration plan of East London in the
context of the Olympic Games, the plans of the Olympic Park Legacy Company and
the will to take advantage of development opportunities for the Games has led
in building demolitions, displacement of residents and raises in rents.
Parallel to the Games, the Cultural Olympiad has also affected East London’s art scene, with an unfamiliar, officially
accredited programme of culture which fails to originally designate the local
identity. These developments have resulted in the appearance of conditions of
gentrification, uncertainty, instability and alienation in the wider area of East London.
We are
interested in this critical moment of Hackney Wick after the Olympic Games and
we aim to work on new urban tactics, encouraging collectives of
inhabitants to appropriate space in the city through different activities. This
workshop aims to empower minor cultures, minor languages and minor urban
practices to validate local tradition and personal abilities to resist dominant
forms.
Aims and objectives
The workshop
will deal with urban spaces, focusing on those spaces where “common” practices
take place in the area of Hackney Wick.
The basic
key-words that will be examined during the workshop are:
Hospitality: The
workshop is turned into a community which will “host” the neighbourhood’s
inhabitants through actions and performances in the area, reversing the meaning
of “hospitality”. Besides researching
the characteristics of the area, the urban spaces and their common uses, the
workshop will create maps and ephemeral situations of cohabitation. This
working method (which Network Nomadic Architecture has used in its previous
projects) is based on different meanings of hospitality that have been analysed
in “Displaced, urban nomads in the metropolis(Tzirtzilaki, 2008). This analysis
is based on Massimo Cacciari’s (1997) work on the meaning of “hospitality”,
where emphasizing on the volatile nature of the given circumstances, one can
transform from host to guest and vice versa:
“The host
becomes a possible “hostis”, constantly facing the possibility of turning into
a foreigner, a flaneur who could need to be hosted. Within the “hostis” there
is always the “hostes” and vice versa. This is about two interconnected dynamics
rather than two separate situations” (Cacciari, 1997).
The “foreigner” who in this case with be hosting, has a
different view of the urban content and during the workshop undertakes the task
of hosting in existing common spaces, or of creating temporary common
spaces, in an area whose inhabitants are mostly foreigners/immigrants or
feel alienated within the urban context.
In this
context, the writings of Derrida(1997) about hospitality are also important:
“We want to
propose, under the old word, a new meaning of hospitality, the duty of
hospitality and the right to hospitality. In what way could we include it in
the urgent needs that haunt or draw us over? How can we give it the possibility
to answer to specific situations or coercion to unprecedented tragedies and
orders?”.
The
approaches of Hanna Arendt(1998)about the human condition(“la vita activa”) and
the human as a social and political being, the writings of Sygmunt Bauman(2011)
on urgent needs and their creation, and those of anthropologists like Marchel
Mauss are also of great relevance.
Common: The
workshop will focus on mapping commonwealth (Hardt& Negri 2009),
created beyond the distinctions between private and public in the chosen area,
designating their importance in a period of economic crisis like the present
days. This approach is based on the theory of Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri(2009) about commonwealth created beyond material common goods(water,
earth etc) and the turn towards characteristics of human communication. The
notion of “common” in this case will be searched in social centres, cooperation
zones, artistic spaces, spaces of exchange, squares, squats, in-between spaces
and platforms and the mapping of these spaces will bring out the life and
dynamics of the area. David Harvey (2008) speaks about the Right to the City as
a right to change ourselves by changing the city. The workshop aims to create
the awareness about the necessity of reclaiming and reinventing the commons in
the context of the neighbourhood. The city, thus, can be produced through
encounters that make space for new meanings, new collective experiences.
Urban
context/problematic
During the
late 18th century Hackney Wick began to industrialize, due to its
prime location near the Lea Navigation canal. Until mid 20th century
Hackney Wick continued to thrive as an industrial hub, which caused an influx
of migrant ex-rural workers and a demand for cheap housing solutions. Severe
damages by bombing during World War II forced many industries to relocate or
close and a sectoral shift in industry during the 1970s contributed to the
area’s further industrial decline.
Since the
decline of industry, artists and light industries of the creative
sector(printing) have gravitated towards Hackney Wick due to the area’s stock
in big empty spaces and low rents.
These
characteristics combined with abandoned industrial spaces, have attracted
artists and creative groups who since 2003/4 inhabit old warehouses, and have
led to the formation of “cultural clusters”(Mommaas: 2004). By 2005 a vibrant creative community was
emerging in Hackney Wick and in 2008 this community first staged Hackney Wicked
arts festival, an artist-led initiative to celebrate the creative output of the
area.
The
"regeneration plans" of the Olympic Park Legacy Company to transform
the area into a “Media City” and “Creative Hub” caused growing concerns over
displacement, increased rents and accelerated gentrification that would push
economically precarious communities out of the area. However, the number of
artists in the neighborhood continues to grow and contrary to their
expectations the artists have not been displaced but instead have turned into a
component of the regeneration plans being set out for the region.
Gentrification
is an urban phenomenon starting from the real estate market and the
governmental spatial policies, and the role of art and artistic communities in
this procedures have been analyzed by David Ley(2003)and Sharon
Zukin(2005,2010) . It is also interesting to look into the analysis of this
phenomenon by urban geographers like David Harvey(1996).
In the
opposite direction, there are artists whose actions deals with the community, the
displacement of inhabitants and their problems. Useful writings on these
matters can be found in the work of Miwon Kwon(2002) Mouffe Chantal(2008),
Bourriaud Nicholas (2002) and Papastergiadis(2010).
What remains
to be seen here, is whether Hackney Wick will be another case of culture-led
gentrification which will erase the neighbourhood’s past and original artistic
expressions.
Working
methods/Tools
The workshop will be based on city walks through the chosen area, allowing the participants to create a personal re-construction of the experience and record experiential data, resulting in a mapping of an itinerary with specific stops-reference points. These points will refer to commonly used spaces or spaces capable to develop a “common” character.
The workshop will be based on city walks through the chosen area, allowing the participants to create a personal re-construction of the experience and record experiential data, resulting in a mapping of an itinerary with specific stops-reference points. These points will refer to commonly used spaces or spaces capable to develop a “common” character.
The choice of
these spaces opens the discussion of space (private, public and particularly
common space, collective use) and time (present, past, day, night) in the city.
During the workshop, several walks (derive) will be held in the selected area
in different times of the day. Public spaces, loose spaces, graffiti and other
forms of the local (public) art scene, conversations with inhabitants and local
artists and their stories, will be the guides to these itineraries, through
which we will try to appropriate and reclaim the commons.
Through photo
documentation, video, discussion, reading of relevant texts, participant
observation and engagement with inhabitants and users of the area, we will use
participatory methods to produce a series of visual, audio and written
recordings of these spaces and of the workshop’s outcome.
A research on
texts, songs, poems or images related to the area, its history, its urban
geography and public issues before the workshop starts, would be useful for the
participants, while similar material will also be provided by the tutors.
Participants
will collectively engage in a discussion on methods and tools used to
investigate and share their experiences and perspectives, with a wider aim to
create temporary situations that will allow the development of a common use,
and the formation of a common space for the different communities in the
neighbourhood.
We are
particularly interested in the existing spaces of the community of current
inhabitants and artistic spaces that operate there (such as Mother Studios,
Elevator, Decima), which can constitute interest points of the workshop. The
current artistic dynamics of the area is one of the reasons for choosing
Hackney Wick and the workshop will try to underpin them and collaborate with
people of the area(inhabitants, artists, fotographers etc).
The ultimate
goal of the workshop is to create new spaces and times conditions in the urban
context, crossing the borders of nationality, gender, race and equivalent
socio-economic segregations. Through the performance of temporary situations on
the last day of the workshop, the participants will attempt to create a
condition of cohabitation for the different users and inhabitants of the area
in the chosen spaces-reference points. While the tutors have combined
experience in the previously described approaches (Network Nomadic
Architecture: “Il cammino commune. The song”, “Apolis” in Lavrio, “Emigrant
tree” in Lower East Side-New York)
these methodologies will be devised within the workshop, in order for tutors
and participants to work individually and collectively to produce responses for
the selected neighbourhood.
The workshop
will develop in three phases:
• Walks
around the area in order to collectively decide on a chosen itinerary and
reference points
• Mapping
of chosen itinerary and reference points, contacts with inhabitants and communities,
artists, architects, and other local communities/groups, musicians, graffiti-makers.
• Discussions
and planning of actions which will be held on the last day of the workshop.
• Last
day: actions in different urban voids, squares, places
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Key Words:
hospitality
derive
commons
immigrants
cultural
cluster
participatory
planning
mapping
community
collective
work of art
neighbourhood
everyday life
detournement
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References
and suggested reading:
-Arendt,
Hanna [1998], The Human Condition, 2nd edition, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
-Βauman, Ζygmunt,
[2004], Wasted Lives. Modernity and its Outcasts, Cambridge: Polity
-Bourriaud,
Nicholas [2002], Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les Presses du Reel
-Cacciari, Μassimo
[1997], L’ Αrcipelago,
Milano: Αdelphi
edizioni,S.P.A
- Deleuze G.,
Guattari F. [1980], A thousands Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: Continuum
-Derrida,
Jaques, [1997], Cosmopolites des tous le pays encore une effort, Paris: Galilee
-Hardt,
Michael & Negri Antonio [2009], Commonwealth, Cambridge
Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Pres
-Harvey,
David [1996], Justice, Nature & The Geography of Difference, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
-Harvey D. [2008], The Right to the City, New Left Review
53, September-October, p.23
-Κwon, Μiwon [2002], One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational
Identity, Cambridge: The MIT Press
-Ley, David
[2003], “Artists, Aestheticisation and the field of Gentrification”, Urban
Studies vol. 40 nov.2003, Carfax Publishing
- Mommaas, Hans [2004], “Cultural Clusters and the Post-Industrial City:
Towards the Remapping of Urban Cultural Policy”, Urban Studies, Vol.41, No 3:
507-532
-Mauss, Marchel, “Essai sur le don:
forme et raison de l echange dans les sociétés archaïques”, Année Sociologique
- Mooffe,
Chantal [2008], On the Political, London:
Routledge
-Papastergiadis, Nikos [2010], “Spatial Aesthetics:
Art, place and the every day”,
Institute of Network, cultures
issues no 5, political meanings.
-Tzirtzilaki, Eleni [2008], Displaced- Urban
Nomads in the Metropolis, Athens: Nissos
-Traganou-Mitrasinoch
[2009], Travel space Architecture (Edit)Tzirtzilaki, Eleni ,City of The Displaced: Notes From the Field,Ashgate
- Zukin, Sharon [2010], Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic
Urban Places, Oxford: Oxford University
Press
-Zukin, Sharon [2005], Gentrification in a global context. The new
urban colonialism, London: Routledge
-“Artists behind the Wall: Regeneration Games in East
London” –Talking gentrification at Germany’s
Documenta Art Fair. Available from: http://hackneytours.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/hackney-tours-hits-germanys-documenta-art-fair/
