Starting from the Middle—Handshaking in Hökarängen
Art Projects as Working Methods for Producing the City Differently
Keywords:
contemporary art, gentrification, urban restructuringAbstract
This text analyses the project Home Works, an art program that took place in 2015–17 in Konsthall C, a contemporary art center in the Stockholm suburb of Hökarängen. The argument of the article is that Home Works can be seen as a socio-material practice of producing the city differently. I thus propose that Home Works provides an example of how art projects hold a potential as methodologies for enacting versions of the city that connect to contemporary social struggles as well as to the right to the city. The text applies a pragmatist, new materialist methodology and proposes that urban realities are enacted through practices and co-shaped by the spatial and architectural environment. Thereby I seek to discuss with an art discourse that has been preoccupied with defining socially engaged art as communicative (as a layer of reality that can be added or removed) and with a trend in urban studies which views temporary art projects as subservient to urban restructurings driven by gentrification.
References
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Farías, Ignacio & Bender, Thomas, (eds.): Urban Assemblages, How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies, Routledge, 2010.
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Nyström, Louise & Lundström, Mats Johan: “The Life and Death and Life of Great Neighbourhood Centres”, in Built Environment 32(1), 2006, pp. 32–52.
Massey, Doreen: For Space, Sage, 2005.
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Mumford, Eric: Defining Urban Design, CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline, 1937-69, Yale University Press, 2009.
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Richards, J. & Strandberg, J. (eds.): Home Works – A Cooking Book: Recipes for Organising with Art and Domestic Work, Onomatopee Publications, Eindhoven, 2020.
Rolnik, Suely: “The Geopolitics of Pimping” in Raunig, Ray & Wuggenig (eds.) Critique of Creativity, Precarity, Subjectivity and Restistance in the ‘Creative Industries’ 2011, pp. 23–39.
Sheikh, Simon: “Burning from the Inside – New Institutionalism Revisited” in Bismarck, Beatrice von, Schafaff, Jørn & Weski, Thomas, (eds.) Cultures of the Curatorial, Leipzig, Sternberg Press, 2010, pp. 361–372.
Sigler, Friederike (ed.): Work, Documents of Contemporary Art, London, White Chapel, 2017.
Virno, Paolo: A Grammar of the Multitude, for an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life, (trans. Bertoletti, I., Cascaito, J and Casson, A.), Semiotext(e), 2001.
Yaneva, Albena: Five Ways to Make Architecture Political, An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice, London, Bloomsbury, 2017.
Butler, Judith and Athanasiou, Athena: Dispossession: The Performative and the Political, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2013.
Bishop, Claire: Artificial Hells, Participatory art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London, Verso Books, 2012.
Boltanski, Luc & Chiapello, Eve: The New Spirit of Capitalism, (trans. Elliott, G.), London & New York, Verso, 2007.
Borén, Thomas & Young, Craig: “Artists as Planners? Identifying Five Conceptual Spaces for Interactive Urban Development” in Murzyn-Kupisz & Dzialek, (eds.) The Impact of Artists on Contemporary Urban Development in Europe, Springer, 2017, pp. 299–314.
Colomb, Claire: “Pushing the Urban Frontier, “Temporary Uses of Space, City Marketing, and the Creative City Discourse in 2000s Berlin,” Journal of Urban Affairs, vol, 34, 2012, pp. 131–152.
Coleman, Rebecca & Ringrose, Jessica (eds.): Deleuze and Research Methodologies, Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Dabaieh, M., & Alwall, J.: “Building now and building back. Refugees at the centre of an occupant driven design and construction process” in Sustainable Cities and Society, 37, 2018, pp. 619–627.
De Angelis, Massimo: The Beginning of History, Value Struggle and Global Capital, London, Pluto Press, 2007.
Deutsche, Rosalyn: Evictions, Art and Spatial Politics, Cambridge MA, London, The Mit Press, 1998.
Esche, Charles: “The Possibility Forum – Institutional Change and Modest Proposals” in On Curating, Issue 14, 2012, pp. 36–40.
Evans, Graeme: “Creative Cities, Creative Spaces, and Urban Policy” in Urban Studies, 46, 1003– 1040, 2009.
Frederici, Silvia: Revolution at Point Zero, Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle, Common Notions, New York, 2012.
Farías, Ignacio & Bender, Thomas, (eds.): Urban Assemblages, How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies, Routledge, 2010.
Foster, Hal: The Return of the Real, Cambridge Mass., London, The MIT Press, 1996.
Harvey, David: Rebel Cities, From the Right to the City to The Urban Revolution, Verso, 2013.
Kindgreen, Anna and Gunnars, Carina: “Konsten att sätta en plats på kartan och konsekvenserna därutav”, in Konsthall C, 10 år – en ofullständig historia, 2015, pp. 4–15.
Kwon, Miwon: One Place after Another, Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, Cambridge MA & London, The MIT Press, 2004.
Jensen, Ole B: “Branding the Contemporary City – Urban Branding as Regional Growth Agenda”, Regional Studies Association Conference, Aalborg, May 28–31, 2005.
Lacy, Suzanne: “Cultural Pilgrimage and Metaphoric Journeys” in Mapping the Terrain, New Genre Public Art, Seattle, Washington, Bay Press, 1995, pp. 19–50.
Laister, Judith, Lederer, Anton, Makovec, Margarethe (eds): The Art of Urban Intervention, Loecker Erhard Verlag, 2013.
Ley, David: “Artists, Aestheticisation and the Field of Gentrification” in Urban Studies vol. 40. No. 12, 2003, pp. 2527–2544.
Lund, Kristina: Tvättstugan, en svensk historia, Stockholm, Nordiska Museets Forlag, 2009.
Lippard, Lucy R.: Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, 1973.
Nyström, Louise & Lundström, Mats Johan: “The Life and Death and Life of Great Neighbourhood Centres”, in Built Environment 32(1), 2006, pp. 32–52.
Massey, Doreen: For Space, Sage, 2005.
Mol, Annemarie: “Ontological Politics. A Word and Some Questions” in Law and Hassard (eds.) Actor Network Theory and After, London and New York, Routledge, 1999, pp. 74–89.
Mumford, Eric: Defining Urban Design, CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline, 1937-69, Yale University Press, 2009.
Olney, Eve: “Collective Design: Moving Sovial Art Practice Beyond Representational Rehearsals Into Concrete Social Solutions”, in Mader & Meisner (eds.) New Infrastructures, Passepartout, Aarhus, 2020.
Petrescu, Doina, Trogal, Kim: The Social (Re)Production of Architecture, Politics, Values and Actions in Contemporary Practice, Routledge, 2017.
Pritchard, Stephen: “Place Guarding: Activist Art Against Gentrification” in Courage, C. & McKeown, A. (ed.): Place Making: Research, Theory and Practice, Routledge, London, 2018.
Richards, J. & Strandberg, J. (eds.): Home Works – A Cooking Book: Recipes for Organising with Art and Domestic Work, Onomatopee Publications, Eindhoven, 2020.
Rolnik, Suely: “The Geopolitics of Pimping” in Raunig, Ray & Wuggenig (eds.) Critique of Creativity, Precarity, Subjectivity and Restistance in the ‘Creative Industries’ 2011, pp. 23–39.
Sheikh, Simon: “Burning from the Inside – New Institutionalism Revisited” in Bismarck, Beatrice von, Schafaff, Jørn & Weski, Thomas, (eds.) Cultures of the Curatorial, Leipzig, Sternberg Press, 2010, pp. 361–372.
Sigler, Friederike (ed.): Work, Documents of Contemporary Art, London, White Chapel, 2017.
Virno, Paolo: A Grammar of the Multitude, for an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life, (trans. Bertoletti, I., Cascaito, J and Casson, A.), Semiotext(e), 2001.
Yaneva, Albena: Five Ways to Make Architecture Political, An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice, London, Bloomsbury, 2017.
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2020-12-11
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