tokyo wonder site talks and closing party

izmir yesildere etekleri

Urban Makers (forward)

Urban Makers_Foreword
The research presented here is part of the Cities on the Edge programme initiated and produced by the Liverpool Culture Company.1 The four case-study cities – Istanbul, Liverpool, Marseille and Naples – are in fact part of the Cities on the Edge network and were the starting point for the development of a multi-voice narrative that seeks to highlight the complexity of urban space and numerous problematic aspects of its production and representation. The city and urbanity are here understood as the sum of multiple, stratified factors that slowly come together, drift apart, clash and coalesce in continuous movement and transformation. Behaviours, stories, voices, dialects, relationships between diverse communities and cultures, the impact of migration, the utilization of urban resources, the negotiation of space and existing power relations, the difficult interaction of planning processes and unforeseeable events, improvisation, tactics, expedients, formal and informal economies: these are only some of the components at work within the ‘city system’. At the centre of this research are practices that remain largely invisible within dense urban fabrics but that produce and modify the city on a daily basis by (re-) configuring its structures and its image.
The artists, architects, urbanists, anthropologists, cultural planners and activists invited to contribute to creating this book have a profound understanding of the cities that they address – and, in the majority of cases, also live and work there. All share a common interest in the local dimension and in how it relates to the global dynamics that inevitably influence urban development today. In the course of their work, these experts often stretch or break through the confines of their professional field in search of innovative stylistic and methodological solutions. An interdisciplinary, holistic approach has been central to this research from the start for, in order to address the diversity and endless connotations of urban situations, it is expedient to move beyond narrow specialization and pay attention to the multiple clues, suggestions and suppositions that exist on different scales on the city’s varying planes; expedient to develop a perspective that cuts across the shifting borders between politics, sociology, culture and the economy so that, especially in the ‘city system’, these spheres can become interconnected channels of communications.
The selection of Liverpool as the European Capital of Culture 2008 presented a timely occasion to compare widespread perceptions of the city with the numerous factors that constitute it, to explore the discrepancies that exist between ‘realities’ and constructed ‘imaginaries’. All four cities dealt with here are major ports and therefore share as many similarities as differences.2 They “are cities at the edge of their countries and with an edge to their attitude”3 – for which reason they have often appeared in collective imaginaries as border towns, often dangerous ones; which is equally grounds for taking a common approach to them; to identifying in them the places and situations that have fuelled these common stereotypes.
With this premise in mind, we decided to operate inside informal spaces, the shadowy border areas strongly characterized by the activities that take place in them; areas that can usually be found on the edge of cities yet also downtown, in the city centre, precisely because they are a locus of temporary, precarious situations, closely connected to the needs of the moment. Such areas live on improvised sociality and evade control.
To paraphrase Henri Lefebvre, they are spaces produced by the practices and solutions of decisive urban communities that prevail over forms, structures and planned functions.4 Bloomfield and Bianchini emphasize: “Port cities are rich in informal spaces, as their immediate threshold, the docks and the port area, form a diasporic space of transience, mixing and settlement. [...] The lack of social stratification and rigid distinctions in informal spaces in the four cities produces a different, more open social geography. As there is no formal bar to entry, such spaces allow people to meet more as equals, despite differences in their respective civic and social status”.5 They are the place Saskia Sassen defines as ‘terrains vagues’: “[spaces] that allow many residents to connect to the rapidly transforming cities in which they live, and to bypass subjectively the massive infrastructures that have come to dominate more and more spaces in their cities”.6 In this sense, the practices employed by certain individuals or groups of people are direct, almost instinctive reactions to the system that surrounds them. They can be read as daily acts of resistance, as opposition to an ever-changing landscape in which opportunities for spontaneous and unfiltered dialogue with the city are being narrowed down day by day. Often, these actions are carriers of unheard (and perhaps even,unspoken) desires and needs that arise solely in response to economic and social emergencies such as homelessness, hunger and ill-health for, as Francesco Jodice suggests in this present volume, “…humankind 'performs' the surrounding urban landscape according to its desires”.7
Tactics employed to – often, quite literally – gain ground in urban space are thus usually ad hoc solutions implemented (without planning permission) by individuals or small, specific communities and of value only to them: short-term entrepreneurship that anticipates and ‘mis’-appropriates all the city’s available resources, be these public or private. We might say they belong to that which Yona Friedman defines as the quaternary sector:8 the self-service sector that develops parallel to the tertiary sector and occasionally mixes with it.
These activities cannot be justified in market terms but are carried out simply to benefit both those who enact them and a limited number of their immediate associates. A multitude of unofficial practices implicate urban territories in different forms and different typologies, from the temporary and solitary to the collective and permanent. Orhan Esen entitles his chapter ‘A retrospective survey of 'self-service' production of the built environment and public space in Istanbul’, in reference to Istanbul’s grassroots urbanization model, which began to develop gecekondu (housing “built overnight”) in the mid-twentieth century. Thousands of houses were built illegally on urban territory yet the authorities implicitly favoured and supported repopulation of the centre. “The major function of such informal, blurred public space is to facilitate the redistribution of social resources or, in other terms, to prevent a concentration of these”.9 The settlements described by Fabrizia Ippolito developed in a similar way. Her chapter traces a detailed mapping of stories collected in the foothills of Mount Vesuvius, from military barracks occupied by entire families and gradually converted into personalized residences to Patrizia’s Amusement Park, which, though nomadic by definition, found a permanent home there. These are obviously macroscopic examples that have modified and still characterize
the structure of the city – for better or worse. These are unplanned not top-down environments, born of necessity in accordance with autonomously established rules that exist in parallel to official regulations, which are in any case often ‘absent’ in these areas.10 The very precariousness of these housing solutions expresses a measure of fatalism: the risk of a makeshift house collapsing or a volcano erupting seems minimal in relation to immediate need.
Alongside these practices related to housing exist other, more temporary attempts to create a different form of spatiality, “an impermanent spatiality [that] appropriates but [...] does not persist. It does not produce a durable physical structure”11 but nonetheless becomes in the long-term an underlying part of the urban landscape. Insofar these re-configurations influence the perceptions people have of “living the city” and allow them to pursue alternative options, which often arise precisely because official policy has (not yet) penetrated every last inch of public space. This leaves a certain leeway for communities to improvise a livelihood. In any case, such practices unfold on the borders of legality and sometimes overstep them, which causes a variety of problems and tensions. One example is the massive occupation of Corbières Beach to
the north of Marseilles, which hundreds of residents of the nearby HLM12 regularly transform into a unique summer picnic location, “...simultaneously [as] a means of cultivating community bonds, an opportunity to reconnect with nature and enjoy life’s simpler pleasures, and a foretaste of the summer holidays”.13 These aspects of spontaneous community life are relegated to the background by permanent problems such as traffic and trash. Capitalizing on the spontaneity of this phenomenon and with a touch of irony, Bedu and Brenier propose new types of imaginaries and solutions that seek to make the community aware of recycling and environmental issues.
The same conviviality is found also in Turkey’s spontaneous Minibars, the public spaces in which young people gather to drink rather than going to commercial clubs and bars. Minibars exist in a state of continuously negotiated tension with local residents. As Can and Deniz Altay explain in detail, Minibars are invented, improvised and created anywhere young people find a sidewalk to sit on or a wall to lean against: “…young people find a means of nightlife where the service sector is spatially eliminated: so there are no longer bars but just bottles…”.14 With the same spontaneity and flexibility the children of Istanbul,15 like those of Naples 16, “occupy” and redesign the function of streets and piazzas – as evidenced by their soccer fields traced in chalk. These practices can be seen as appropriations of portions of the city, more or less temporary microprivatizations of urban space that stand in distinct contrast to the monumental ready-made public spaces that might better be described as “public-access spaces”.17 Contrary to the latter, micro-privatizations do not reduce the potential of urban space but are, rather, “cell membranes, both porous and resistant”, to use Richard Sennett’s term.18 They allow themselves to be penetrated and infiltrated and modify themselves 10 For other examples of illegal settlements, see Fabrizia Ippolito, Telling Stories – Urban Tactics beneath the Volcano from time to time. They do not reduce opportunities for other people to perform public space; rather, they enrich and enlarge it, populating it with single subjectivities that constitute provisional communities in a selfregulated equilibrium.
As previously indicated, these spaces and situations are places of integration and generate forms of solidarity made manifest by “sharing scarce resources within the group or being open to outsiders”.19 This concept of solidarity is, however, often guided by the logic of convenience, a “collectiveness of circumstance”,20 where an “exploitative attitude to the outside world”21 can emerge. Hotel rooms and customs houses in port areas – largely present in our four cities – become ‘free trade zones’, where the people of different nationalities who are waiting to cross the border can exchange information and goods. At the same time, such markets or bazaars live by the same rules that hold good in official trade zones and therefore become moral areas in which “actors accept, not to shed their social identity but to subject it to an economic grammar”.22 Space and the public dimension are widened by the potential of this direct communication between people, face-to-face contact and social ties.23
It is interesting to highlight the creative potential that ensues from these situations. The expression “arte d’arrangiarsi” (‘the art of getting by’)24 defines an ability to improvise solutions in emergency situations.
These practices operate at street level and reconfigure definitions of the utilization of public space; they construct it and increase its complexity. We are dealing here with spontaneous “intuition” that responds to spaces in which it is still possible to connect to, express, and satisfy a need, with acts that may have unexpected and often contradictory consequences: the tactics devised by street vendors to escape regulation and continue to offer “services” that are now an integral part of city life; the economic strategies developed by Papermen (garbage collectors), which – practically as a side effect – keep the streets clean and have an ecological impact;25 tenants’ manipulation and unauthorized adaptation of the architecture in which they live, transformations which make it more contemporary;26 endless layers of artists’ graffiti
stories27or billposters’ protests on the city’s walls;28 producing vegetables on the polluted beaches of Vigliena on the outskirts of Naples. As the post-modern farmer described by Capasso and Marrone says, “I get whatever I need from Vigliena, according to the seasons: tomatoes, figs, also apricots, rocket, spinach…” 29 Like him, these characters and communities draw on the resources offered by the urban landscape – whether good or bad – in a direct, (often irrational) and spontaneous way They both feed off and enrich the city, continuously (re-) negotiating power relations, of which they may or may not be consciously aware.
In this sense they can be defined as urban makers, for they are the producers of a fluid, invisible urbanity that stratifies day after day, changes the face of the city, and contributes to building its imaginaries. They are entrepreneurs who perceive their environment in the light of the “it’s make or break” logic, and either capitalize on the rules of the system or break them outright. They are the incalculable factor that evades statistical analysis and exists as an instance of street-level politics,30 in constant tension with official policies.
Top-down branding and place-making strategies do not generally take into consideration these informal practices, tending rather, to hide them and to direct people’s gaze – to paraphrase Can Altay – towards a constructed image that reflects precise promotional and commercial criteria.31
“A massive media and pr campaign is infiltrating every pore of society. It is officially designed to market the new world of real estate; in addition, it propagates the idea of the total worthlessness, uselessness and disfunctionality of the metropolis as it now exists – i.e. with its many informally developed areas”.32 On this subject, Bianchini declares that the goal of urban policy-making “should not be to construct a fake consensus by glossing over or denying the existence of real conflicts. Rather, it could become more effective by openly acknowledging conflicts, divisions and problems, and by exploring and problematizing them further, in an attempt to find alternative solutions”.33 In this context, it is important to ask the question
introduced by Cecilia Andersson – “Capital of whose culture?”34– a question that examines those cultural planning and urban policy strategies that reduce tension and “grotesque” cliché contradictions by privileging certain urban scenarios over others.35 City-branding campaigns of this type generally go hand in hand with concrete processes of urban regeneration that discredit and erase these cities’ past. “This is the opposite of attuning development to the history, narratives and popular attachments to places.” 36 “Diversity is what gives the street such character yet investors and the city council fail to grasp this.” 37 “The likely scenario sounds like a ‘reset the city' action… Established, productive multi-functionalities of space will be forcefully replaced by sterile middle class residential mono-functionalities.” 38 Istanbul and Marseille are observing out and out gentrification processes while the centre of Liverpool has been turned into an unbroken series of commercial malls. At the same time, outskirts are abandoned, cut off due to the complete absence of public transportation links to the city centre; and many local perators are forced to work with scarce resources, as demonstrated by the experience of Naples East. This is particularly striking also in the tour presented in Paul Sullivan's chapter, which maps those street systems in inner-city districts of Liverpool that have been dismantled or blocked since the early 1970s by successive closure policies: planning apparently based on military strategies, which – packaged as Traffic Management Policies – has led to the ghettoization of these areas, “with catastrophic effects on the communities”.39
The chapters by Derain and Sullivan testify to the fact that ambiguity and inadequate transparency and accountability characterize decisions relating to urban planning and regeneration schemes, which suggests the influence of private interests. Spontaneous, informal practices are not permitted the same largesse; in fact, official policy tends to stigmatize them. Even major social groups whose cultural and economic contribution to urban dynamics is patently substantial are subject to media slurs, such as this statement by the mayor of Marseille, Jean-Claude Gaudin: “The city centre has been invaded by foreigners; the natives of Marseille have left. My aim is to renovate, to wipe out the slums and to bring back the inhabitants who pay their taxes”.40
The decision to invite experts who stand out on account of their “insider’s view” of the city was influenced both by the desire to move beyond blanket generalizations, and the need to give back an individual dimension to contexts normally presented in terms of their collective connotations. “Immersion is the art of conversation” and “finding information signifies above all identifying its producers or its holder”.41 It is for this reason that we sought to “narrate” the sociality of these cities by acknowledging city dwellers as possible storytellers. As Ippolito clarifies in her chapter, “knowing their stories serves to reveal the mechanisms of the city's construction; and telling them serves to create a living portrait of this landscape, that is, above all, a social landscape, made up of the relationship between the physical characteristics of the land and the ways of life of its inhabitants.”42 The one-on-one voices and dialects compose a true audio soundscape that reconfigures perceptions of urban territory. In relation to this, we find the images of Imogen Stidworthy, which represent the physicality of language and use it to relate complex mechanisms of identification and integration.
Oral mapping of the city allows for encounters with characters that in recounting their experiences are able to transform themselves into passionate storytellers and guide the listener to the heart of the matter. It is they, rather than studied, (constructed), top-down narratives that create stories of the city, which can bring a subjective, critical eye to the public dimension of urban space.
The models represented in these stories often resemble the protagonists of urban legends and myths: the distant relatives that immigrants talk about, the self-made men who finally attained economic stability and in some cases, success;43 the yapsatci who, like “real heroes”, were able to direct and organize an unplanned, bottom-up urban model; the billposter who participates in the fight against speculative real estate with his direct means of communication and consciousness-raising among local residents; the prophet of doom, a person casually encountered in a café who, in a unique and intentional monologue, relates contemporaneous developments in the Joliette district to the destiny of the whole world.44
In addition to these protagonists exist other voices and other stories able to render visible the complex dynamics that regulate public space and the power games connected to it. Small episodes and anecdotes that resemble acts of vandalism can be key investigation points, for they reveal a state of dissatisfaction. At the same time, they have the potential to feed a more concrete and real imaginary: a group of residents in Secondigliano that removes flowers from a public lawn to beautify its own balconies; or the group of kids that repeatedly knocks down a wall (always rebuilt by the city council) to create a shortcut to a bus stop.45 Information circulates on city streets by word of mouth, via direct contact between neighbours, in cafés, at the hairdresser’s. Deniz Gül wrote a screenplay based on this type of information, for a film set in the Zeytinburnu district of Istanbul. Its protagonists are hidden behind stereotypical, anonymous masks yet narrate real-life voices: local commentaries on the process of gentrification taking place there, on incomprehension in the face of the dynamics that feed it.
It is important to highlight that often, we are dealing with knowledge of the city that is full of clichés and stereotypes. However, the stereotypes – from the hairdresser in Marseille to the graffiti artist in Naples – help to add meaning to certain places and to uncover their identity and contradictions. Can these urban narratives constitute the kernel or embryo of an alternative urban imaginary?46 The experts that contributed to creating this book utilize daily research strategies based on this type of narration. The imaginaries and proposals presented are “exercises” that attempt to capitalize on the potential of tactics and information collected in the field.
Some authors capitalize on the tensions and behaviours existing in certain environments, directing them in a positive way to create new imaginaries of the city. Bedu and Brenier use architectural tools to give an ecological connotation to an image of protest; Gül stages an almost neo-realist script in order to communicate grassroots information and people’s incomprehension in the face of urban policies; Derain fuels the myth of the Rue de la République as a street forever resisting the dynamics of gentrification; Altay brings into play a legend about Liverpool’s fans to suggest the participatory construction of a city monument.
Curatorial practices, sociological studies and mappings47 thus serve as a means either to trigger or render visible stories and points of view that would otherwise remain unheard and unseen.
The tactics and stories presented here are indeed able to transmit an urban dimension that, today more than ever, is fundamental to an understanding of the relationship between the local and global spheres. The people and communities presented here have a sound knowledge of their own cultural context and are insofar legitimate carriers of knowledge that is both “produced by” and the “producer of” the contemporary city.

Emanuele Guidi

1 Cities on the Edge (CoTE) is a collection of new collaborative projects on an international scale for 2008, led by Liverpool to
promote intercultural dialogue between cities and cultures and involving 6 ‘edgy’ partners: the European port cities of Bremen,
Gdansk, Istanbul, Liverpool, Marseilles and Naples. http://www.liverpool08.com/exploring/COTE/
2 See Franco Bianchini and Jude Bloomfield, Informality and Social Creativity in Four European Port Cities
3 From the introduction to Cities on the Edge
4 Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space
5 See Franco Bianchini and Jude Bloomfield, ibid
6 Sassen, Saskia, Public Interventions: The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition in lecture for SKOR (Foundation for Art
and Public Space), November 2006.
7 What We Want_Landscape as a projection of people’s desires, 2003 - ongoing
8 Friedman Yona, Continent City, Editorial in Domus 896, October 2006
9 See Orhan Esen, A retrospective survey of ‘self-service’ production of the built environment and public space in Istanbul. 11 See Altay, Deniz, Counter-spatialization (of Power) (in Istanbul). 12 HLM - Habitation à Loyer Modéré, which literally means housing at moderate (state-subsidized) rents 13 See Olivier Bedu and Stéphne Brenier, Corbières Beach 14 See Can and Deniz Altay, ibid 15 See Can and Deniz Altay, ibid 16 See Danilo Capasso and Diana Marrone, Digging Memory, Performing the Future. Once upon East Naples 17 Sassen, Saskia, Public Interventions The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition in lecture for SKOR (Foundation for Art and Public Space), November 2006. 18 Sennett, Richard, The Open City, newspaper essay published for the Urban Age conference, Berlin 2006
19 See Franco Bianchini and Jude Bloomfield, ibid
20 Peraldi, Michel, Marsiglia Bazar del Mediterraneo, Mogea, Messina, 2005, p. 16.
21 See Franco Bianchini and Jude Bloomfield, ibid
22 Peraldi, Michel, ibid, p. 23.
23 See Franco Bianchini and Jude Bloomfield, ibid
24 See Franco Bianchini and Jude Bloomfield, ibid
25 See Can and Deniz Altay, ibid
26 See Naples, 'The Public Thing' and Other Stories: a Conversation with Francesco Jodice
27 See Danilo Capasso and Diana Marrone, ibid
28 See Till Roeskens, Situation Map: Joliette (details)
29 See Danilo Capasso and Diana Marrone, ibid
30 Sassen, Saskia in Can and Deniz Altay, ibid
31 In August 2008, Can Altay was invited to spend three weeks in Liverpool, from which ensued his chapter, The Directed Gaze
32 See Orhan Esen, ibid
33 Bianchini, Franco "Introduction. European Urban Mindscapes: Concepts, Cultural Representations and Policy Applications" in
Weiss-Sussex, Godela with Bianchini, Franco Urban Mindscapes of Europe, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2006, p. 29.
34 See Cecilia Andersson, Curating Social Capital
35 See Franco Bianchini and Jude Bloomfield, ibid
36 See Franco Bianchini and Jude Bloomfield, ibid
37 See Martine Derain, In Word and Deed: Challenging Gentrification in Marseille
38 See Orhan Esen, ibid
39 See Paul Sullivan, Liverpool Labyrinth
40 See Martine Derain, ibid
41 Peraldi, Michel. Marsiglia Bazar del Mediterraneo, Mogea, Messina, 2005, p. 30–32.
42 See Fabrizia Ippolito, Telling Stories – Urban Tactics beneath the Volcano
43 See Michel Peraldi, Routes Are Not Roots
44 See Till Roeskens, Situation Map: Joliette (details)

open call Bains Numeriques

APPEL à PROJETS – danse et nouvelles technologies
BAINS NUMÉRIQUES #4 _ Festival international des arts numériques d’Enghien-les-Bains (France)

CALL FOR PROJECT PROPOSALS _ dance and new technologies
BAINS NUMERIQUES #4 _ International Digital Arts Festival of Enghien-les-Bains (France)


Dans le cadre de la 4ème édition de Bains numériques, festival international des arts numériques d'Enghien-les-Bains (6-13 juin 2009), le centre des arts organise une compétition internationale de créations mixant « danse » et « nouvelles technologies ». Première étape de cette compétition, cet appel à projets international vise à présélectionner huit formes scéniques hybrides qui seront ensuite auditionnées pendant le festival.

For the 4th edition of the Bains numériques digital arts international festival (6-13 June 2009), the centre des arts is organising an international competition for creations mixing “dance” and “new technologies”. This international call for project proposals is the first step of the competition and aims at pre-selecting eight hybrid stage forms. These selected pieces will be presented in a “condensed” form at the Bains numériques#4 festival from 11 to 13 June 2009.


Règlement et formulaire d'inscription disponibles en pièce jointe (cf. fichier pdf – français/anglais) et en ligne, sur le site internet : www.bainsnumeriques.fr ou www.cda95.fr


ETAPE 1. DEPOT DES CANDIDATURES / AVANT LE 9 JANVIER 2009
ETAPE 2. CONTROLE ADMINISTRATIF DES DOSSIERS DE CANDIDATURE / FIN JANVIER 2009
ETAPE 3. SELECTION ARTISTIQUE DE HUIT PROJETS PAR UN COMITE D’EXPERTS / MI FEVRIER 2009
ETAPE 4. PROGRAMMATION ET AUDITION DES HUIT ŒUVRES EN COMPETITION / 11_12_13 JUIN 2009

STEP 1. FILES MUST BE SENT BY 9 JANUARY 2009
STEP 2. ADMINISTRATIVE CONTROL OF APPLICATION FILES / END OF JANUARY 2009
STEP 3. ARTISTIC SELECTION OF THE EIGHT PROJECTS BY A COMMITTEE OF EXPERTS / MID FEBRUARY 2009
STEP 4. PROGRAMMING AND AUDITION OF THE EIGHT COMPETING PROJECTS / 11_12_13 JUNE 2009


Envoi du dossier
Les dossiers doivent être envoyés :
> par voie postale à l'attention du Directeur, Dominique Roland avec la mention : « Appel à projets – BAINS
NUMÉRIQUES #4 » à l'adresse suivante : CENTRE DES ARTS - 12-16 rue de la Libération - 95 880 Enghien-les-Bains – France
ET
> par courrier électronique avec demande d'accusé de réception à Sarah Faguer, chargée de projet : sfaguer@cdarts.enghien95.fr.

FILES MUST BE SENT BY: 09 JANUARY 2009
Files must be sent
> by mail marked « Appel à projets – BAINS NUMÉRIQUES #4 » to the attention of Mr. Dominique Roland, Director, at the following address: CENTRE DES ARTS - 12-16 rue de la Libération - 95 880 Enghien-les-Bains – France
AND
> by electronic mail with acknowledgment of receipt to Sarah Faguer : sfaguer@cdarts.enghien95.fr.


Contact :
Sarah FAGUER _ chargée de projet / compétition Bains numériques #4 _ sfaguer@cdarts.enghien95.fr

open call ID

Call for projects
Calaf / ManresaShared projects: Mataró (Can Xalant) / Priorat (Priorat Centre d’Art) / El Prat de Llobregat
IDENSITAT is an arts project that investigates ways to impact upon the public sphere through creative proposals that work in relation to place and territory and their physical and social dimensions.IDENSITAT positions itself as a networked production and research space, developed in the field of art, to experiment with new forms of involvement and interaction in social space.
ID #5. The fifth edition of the project will be developed between the end of 2008 and 2010. While in former editions a specific theme was proposed, the methodology that IDENSITAT has been rehearsing along its 10 years of life is now synthesized in the initials ID. The project, pioneered in Calaf in the year 1999, has evolved, spreading a network of collaborations throughout different locations, while seeking out methodologies for the interaction of projects of creation with social, cultural and political contexts of differentiated shades. In this way, IDENSITAT, originally a platform for the production of projects impacting upon public space, has been transformed into an itinerant production space, roaming throughout the territory with projects that promote analysis and proposals for transformation in their environment. ID refers to this transformation.
ID is Identity Density, a synthesis that initially gave its name to the project, but which could also mean Investigate Develop - Invent Discover - Involve Denounce - Interrogate Discuss - Innovation Decrease among other multiple combinations of terms.
ID #5 / Call for projectsID opens an international call for projects directed to creators with proposals in the sphere of public space. The involved contexts are Calaf and Manresa. ID #5 will also stage parallel activities in Mataró (Can Xalant), Priorat (Priorat Centre d'Art), and Prat de Llobregat. (Catalonia-Spain). The open call for projects has two categories:
Production projects
Public spaces as well as public domain are concepts for discussion and in continuous updating. ID is an open laboratory for investigating these aspects and the projects are understood to be research works in this area. Therefore, ID calls for projects that intervene in public space and seek for interaction among different social sectors; projects that outline contemporary strategies for creation, incorporating specific aspects of the context, and/or which display actions of communication in their environment. Projects are invited based on their medium or long term working processes. Others are projects that intervene in a more specific or ephemeral way while using the infrastructures, means or existing mechanisms in the territory.The open call for production projects concerns the cities of Calaf and Manresa. This edition in particular incorporates a project in Prat de Llobregat. The project will intervene in a specific space that the Town Hall plans to develop (For more specific information regarding each site please refer to www.idensitat.net).
Documentation-archive projects
ID also calls for projects carried out in other contexts, in progress or considered for publication, as well as theoretical works from parties interested in participating in IDENSITAT as a mechanism for diffusion and analysis of projects. This will be done through a specialized publishing work. The specific publication will take the format of a book, articulating a set of projects and theoretical essays.
Another important aspect of IDENSITAT is the display of projects which promote educational actions. This does not constitute a specific category since it will draw from the two proposed categories. It refers to projects or partial aspects of projects which may be developed in a medium-short period and rehearse forms of shared production through workshops or other dynamics based on exchange of knowledge. Preferably, these projects will be developed with local organizations and educational centres. It might be a matter of extending processes from projects under present development in other contexts, or even specific and partial activities of a project of production. From within its own organisation, IDENSITAT will encourage and develop more in-depth projects following this line.
ID #5 Economic endowment
The economic endowment for each selected project in the category PRODUCTION OF PROJECTS will depend on the specific budget of the proposals, up to a maximum amount of 11,000 €. With respect to DOCUMENTATION PROJECTS, the grant will depend on the format of presentation of the project, establishing as a reference a minimum of 400€ for publication of a project, and a maximum of 3.000 € for more complex formats, or the development of educational actions.
The final date for submission of proposals is January 9, 2009.
Information about material to be submitted along with the proposals is posted on our website, www.idensitat.net. For any further information, please contact: idensitat@idensitat.net
IDENSITAT #5 is a project by the non-profit organization Idensitat, Association of Contemporary Art. It is promoted by the Town Council of Calaf, the Town Council of Manresa, Generalitat de Catalunya, Diputacio de Barcelona and includes the participation of Can Xalant, Center of Creation and Contemporary Thought of Mataró, Priorat Centre d'Art, Town Council of Prat de LLobregat, La Capella (Institut de Cultura de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona) and Consonni.

Urban Makers / Book Launch, Liverpool

Urban Makers – Parallel Narratives of Grassroots Practices and Tensions
Thursday 11th December 2008
Static, Roscoe Lane, Liverpool, L1 9JD
5pm – 6pm
Book Launch of Urban Makers – Parallel Narratives of Grassroots Practices and Tensions, followed by Panel Discussion

Urban Makers – Parallel Narratives of Grassroots Practices and Tensions presents research based on the case-study cities – Istanbul, Liverpool, Marseille and Naples – through essays and projects by artists, architects, urbanists, anthropologists, cultural planners and activists. The four cities were the starting point for the development of a multi-voice discourse that seeks to highlight the complexity of urban space and numerous problematic aspects of its production and representation.
The project analyses the spontaneous and informal practices developed in the urban sphere which are affecting the imaginaries through which the four cities are perceived: parallel economies, temporary occupations of public spaces, unauthorized inhabiting solutions as well as the self-organized actions against gentrification processes. Individuals or small 'communities of circumstance' perform those everyday tactics and acts of resistance within an ever-changing landscape, in which opportunities for spontaneous and unfiltered dialogue with the city are being narrowed down day by day.
Thus, it is by understanding the city dwellers as potential storytellers that the research capitalizes on the specific knowledge carried by people who remain largely invisible within dense urban fabrics. A specific knowledge that, on emerging, is able to re-subjectivise and re-configure the territory.
In this sense these city dwellers can be defined as urban makers, for they are the producers of a fluid, invisible urbanity that stratifies day after day, changes the face of the city, and contributes to building its imaginaries. Moving outside of official circles and mechanisms, they escape statistical analysis and exist as an instance of street-level politics, in constant tension with official policies.
The project has been part-funded by Liverpool Culture Company under the Cities on the Edge Programme. Cities on the Edge (CoTE) is a unique partnership of six European cities: Bremen, Gdansk, Istanbul, Liverpool, Marseilles and Naples. It is a major strand of our cultural celebrations during Liverpool`s year as European Capital of Culture and our major transnational project. These six cities have come together to explore their roles as historic ports and their sense of themselves as city-states, as islands within their nation.

Contributors: Can Altay, Deniz Altay, Cecilia Andersson, Olivier Bedu, Franco Bianchini, Jude Bloomfield, Stéphane Brenier, Danilo Capasso, Martine Derain, Orhan Esen, Deniz Gül, Fabrizia Ippolito, Francesco Jodice, Diana Marrone, Michel Peraldi, Till Roeskens, Imogen Stidworthy, Paul Sullivan

Edited by Emanuele Guidi
Published by b_books Berlin . www.bbooks.de
ISBN 978-3-933557-92-6
Distribution: verlag@bbooksz.de; fax +49(0)30 618 58 10

Mama, stop! Koen Debyuu

MAMA, STOP! KOUEN DEBYUU
1' 20" video
Kamakura, Japan. 2008

Being first among the short films that focus on the relation between child and mother relationship Mama, stop! Koen Debyuu is set in Kamakura, Japan. Jumping over a rope with her sisters and mother, the child can not cope with the play as the tempo hardens.

Kouen Debyuu in Japanese is an expression used for bringing one's child to the local park to play for the first time. Taking this expression in its wider terms, the piece deals with the tension in
between the inner and outer space and how that space evolves over a parental control. The tension is to be developed through the rope with the play starting happily in consensus, it catches both the mother and the kids in an accelerating speed. The speed helps to dismantle the
social role of the mother in such environment. The notion of play changes along with the film, as the characters find themselves in the middle of systemic looping, where one can not escape.

Mama, stop! Hair Cut

MAMA, STOP! HAIR CUT
video
Tokyo, Japan. 2008

Mama, stop! Hair Cut is set in an old house in Tokyo, Japan. The film shows a mother giving a hair cut to her daughter, intimately challenging the control over two diverse feminenities, where the daughter is not a kid any more.

The girl is very quietly seated on a chair. As the mother cuts more, she starts to get uncomfortable and asks the mother to stop.