the original flyer & the evaluation
quoted from souteastlondon.org:
The conference in Goldsmiths College marked the launch of the ambitious video project Deptford TV. The local online video database, initiated by Adnan Hadzi (Goldsmiths College), aims to document the regeneration of the area Deptford/New Cross, accessible on the internet and under a Creative Commons Licence. This means, the internet user can download local videos and use them for noncommercial purpose (more license details on the deptford.tv website).
The database for the local Deptford TV clips itself has been set up in the last weeks and months by Bitnik (picture above) from Zurich/Switzerland. Bitnik is an internationally experienced media collective with a proven record in regeneration and arts projects. Deptford TV uses only Open Source software. This is uncommercial software, which is developed by volunteers. This software can be downloaded from the web without charge, like eg Linux software.
In the last weeks, the database has been consistently filled up with content from local volunteers. All material is stored in h-264 format, an open source format, equivalent to the commercial IPod format. All material added to the database is stored with an Edit Decision List. This way all material can be re-assembled and re-edited at a later point easily.
The project will be ongoing for some 3 years at least and is still at an early stage. Though now basically functioning, more technical features and content will be added. Technical hickups at this stage should not surprise. Deptford TV has now uploaded first edited videos.
On Friday Deptford TV had invited to a local 5 hour walk to locations with public screens, like the Laban Centre, where the results of the ongoing video project were shown (distributed through the wireless network of Boundless Coop).
At the conference evening a video remix screening with industrial sound performance on the Boat in Deptford Creek marked the end of this local media weekend in New Cross and Deptford.
see also posts boundless.coop & deptford.tv
transcript from the bitnik.org presentation
MK2 CO-OP CITY – PRESENTATION IN LONDON (NODE)
Hello we are Bitnik Media Collective from Zurich. This is Doma,
Silvan, Carmen. We have been collaborating with Adnan and James for
the Deptford.TV.
We would like to give you a brief summary of COOP-CITY, a conference
held in Barcelona in 2004 on regeneration, oppositional architecture
and social conflict. COOP-CITY was organized and initiated by
Platoniq, a barcelona-based media activists group.
CO-OP CITY was the second part of a series of conferences and
workshops called MEDIA SPACE INVADERS (Invasores al Medio espacio)
organized by Platoniq throughout 2003 and 2004 on topics of public
space, urban environment, social media practices and architecture. The
MEDIA SPACE INVADERS conferences and workshops centred around the
topic of the repolitisation of public space through use of community
software and technology. The conference was intended not only as a
series of presentations where researchers would give an insight on
their work, but as an open community workshop where people involved in
different social struggles connected to the city of Barcelona would be
able to exchange experiences and find ways of collaborating.
The aim of CO-OP CITY, the second part of the MEDIA SPACE INVADERS
SERIES was to analize how the process of renewal in Barcelona had
drifted further and further away from citizens needs. In 2004
regeneration in Barcelona had reached a new climax with the FORUM
BARCELONA 2004 (http://www.barcelona2004.org/), an international Forum
on Cultural exchange initiated by UNESCO, which took place from Mai to
September 2004 and lead to the regeneration of a big portion of the
city (poble nou). Citizens had little say in this process and even
though there had been quite an amount of protests, the plans were not
changed or even discussed.
During the conferences these processes and struggles were also
compared to similar struggles in Berlin, Sao Paulo, Bogota and Buenos
Aires.
CO-OP CITY tried to give an answer to the question: what is a
cooperational City, how could community practices and decision-making
be combined and how can public space be repolitisized and used to
support social movements.
The answer was a public city tour, a militant investigation project
visiting all the social hot-spots in the different parts of the city,
bringing the local groups involved in social struggle a mobile
audio-streaming-station and retransmitting the talks and discussions
directly to the Platoniq Netradio.
The idea and especially the set-up of CO-OP CITY with panels,
screenings and a City Tour were intended as a form of guerilla
tactical research and were derived from the idea of „militant
investigation” (investigacion militante). Militant investigation is a
research method that was initiated during the autonomos movements in
th 80ies.
The understanding of „research” for CO-OP City was taken from a
research collectiv called Situaciones (www.situaciones.org) which uses
„militant investigacion” to discribe its form of social research.
Their research method implies an attitude of collaboration with the
groups or communities they study and exposes the role of the
scientific „impartial espectator” as a bourgeois notion of doing
social research.
The CO-OP CITY TOUR, organized by Platoniq and Sitesize.net, was part
of the community workshop.
The idea of the tour was to give the participants an in-depth insight
into the physical and social geography of regeneration and renewal in
Barcelona.
The seven stops of the tour were chosen for the urgency of the social
struggles connected with them and at the same time for the differences
in the types of struggles they stood for: The aim of the tour in this
sense was to give participants a broad insight into the various
struggles and their different natures by visiting each of the
communities personally. This very direct approach to the different
communities, to their concerns and their long-term engagements in
struggles to enforce their rights a network of struggles became
manifest as a sort of second layer to the city map. For the people
involved directly in the struggles the specific problems they were
facing began to form pieces of a much larger picture: The picture of
communities being marginalized and excluded from the city governments
vision of a Future Barcelona and of how these communities are driven
out of the city’s center towards the city limits by regeneration
processes.
The current and ongoing tranformation of the City of Barcelona is put
into practice by the city council through incoherent strategies that
are influenced by image or marketing considerations and speculation.
Instead of involving local communities into the renewal processes, the
government is more concerned with an outward image than with the needs
of the citizens. As a reaction to this, civil organisations, ngos and
community groups have spent a lot of energy in devising propositions,
initiatives and projects for a understanding of „city” or „urban
space” that is more focussed on the people than on marketing / tourism
and money.
Links
http://www.coordinadoraraval.org
http://www.poblenou.org/c22
http://www.forumperjudicats.com
http://www.bcn.es/22@bcn/
http://www.sitesize.net/poble9
http://www.asfes.org
http://www.compromis.org/Videos/video%20ecoparc1.mpg
http://www.compromis.org/Videos/video%20ecoparc2.mpg
http://www.compromis.org/Videos/video%20ecoparc3.mpg
http://www.compromis.org/comunicats/Dossier%20texto%20ecoparc2.pdf
http://www.compromis.org/comunicats/Dossier%20ecoparc.pdf
www.iespana.es/noalcalaix
PARC CENTRAL
BIOGRAPHIES:
Spanish urban planning acts on the placing of gaps in urban spaces and
define exactly what these gaps should be like: measurements,
materials, positions – but they do not define purpose because a gap is
for disposing rubble and rubbish, isn’t it? The design works in
different ways because people pay the local government for their
permit, and then do what they want, or need to, with it: an urban
reserve, breathing space, a meeting point, a children’s playground, a
tree plantation…
In the case of regulations on scaffolding , you can
obtain a permit to install one because you “need” to paint the facade
of the building you wish to contaminate. You can always produce this
need by scribbling some eye-catching graffiti on it. You then install
your scaffolding and build your new space, your own private refuge,
your architecture of silence, with whatever materials, style and
rneasurements you decide. The duration is up to you, because the
architecture of silence ought to be provisional and variable, because
these are the conditions which the other architecture (the regular
sort) does not have. In the same way, there are other loopholes or
“URBAN DESCRIPTIONS” we can employ to remind the institution of its
inabiltity to deal with plural realities, and to point out people’s
ability-and their need- to take part in urban drift.
URBAN PRESCRIPTIONS
Strategies for subversive occupation
All realities manifest themselves with a gradient of variable factors.
If I want to talk about urban phenomena, I have to do so in terms of
complexity and difference. The paths we have to pursue to understand
them cannot reproduce the paths of conventional urban planning, as the
invisible, mutant structures which interact in the urban space create
a complex fabric. We get the impression that the various levels of
complexity grow and die. The production system, and the political and
economic variables and mechanisms which predominate in architecture
make the idea of global, closed planning inconceivable.
The speed at which changes take place in urban space suggests specific
places and given epochs, so the design and construction of this space
constantly require regenerating mechanisms which address the
particular factors of the various places and their interaction with
global changes and systems. For institutions, the idea of a global
process is an attempt to simplify and control all possible forms of
behaviour and action. My proposal consists of perpetually redefining
global systems (urban planning and legislation), looking for possible
loopholes and uncertainties which allow the various human groups
freedom of action.
Biography
Santiago Cirugeda, born 1971, has produced architectural projects,
written articles and participated in different educational and
cultural contexts (master classes, seminars, conferences, workshops,
exhibitions, debates, etc.). He is currently preparing an
architectonic project in Seville, for a cultural and visual arts
centre, and is immersed in investigations regarding emergency
dwellings, developed in distinct forums such as the Barraca BCN – a
winter factory for the ETSA in Alicante. He occasionally acts as
professor in Bogota’s Javeriana School.
Since 9 years, Santiago Cirugeda has developed subversive projects
with distinct ambitions in urban reality which has allowed him to
endure a complicated social life. From systematic occupation of public
spaces in containers to the construction of prostheses in facades,
patios, covers and lots, he negociates legal and illegal zones, as a
reminder of the pervasive control to which we are all subject.
He was invited to the Venice Biennale where he critically demonstrated
socio-cultural differences which nourish interventionist projects in
distant urban surroundings, and which move through issues of
self-administration and precarity to stupid frivolty.
Architectos Sin Fronteras – Architects without Borders
ASF is an NGO funded in 1992 with the objective of using social or
opositional architecture for the development of community projects
such as housing, schools, health care centers, educational and
community centers.
http://www.sitesize.net
