BABEL 2 – indipendent biennale of critical housing from tea guarascio on Vimeo.
BaBeL supports The Draftsmen’s Congress
Congresso dei disegnatori
The Draftsmen’s Congress
For the 7th Berlin Biennale, the curator Artur Żmijewski has created a political space in which to explore the effects of art in the society and the connections with today’s social and political situations. In this setting, the Istituto Svizzero di Roma and other European art institutions that share this approach have been invited to activate “solidarity actions” in keeping with the theme of BB7, with the aim of making a network of organisms operating in different countries visible, in solidarity between them and with the Biennale. From 4 June to 20 July, in the context of the Solidarity Action undertaken by Istituto Svizzero di Roma, the Draftsmen’s Congress will be presented. The launch of the Draftsmen’s Congress, on the 4th of June, from 6.00 p.m. to noon at Istituto Svizzero di Roma at Via Liguria 20.
The 7th Berlin Biennale takes place from 27 April to 1 July 2012, and is curated by Artur Żmijewski together with the Associate Curators Voina and Joanna Warsza. The Biennale is organized by KW Institute for Contemporary Art with the support of Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).
BaBeL2 talk – Questions
Questions
1_ What theoretical processes underlies the strategies of territory parcels squatting?
2_ In what way the right to the city is expressed through these forms of appropriation?
3_ What kind of participation induce in the metropolitan life the action of intrusion, of squatting ?
4_ How these actions may be considered expressions of society rather than places of utopia?
5_ In what way these forms of activism and consistency opposition can claim the right to the city and reveal it as a countercultural practice?
6_ Do the strategies of appropriation fulfill the need of participation to the metropolitan space order and planning?
7_ What other synergetic connections can be undertaken with the theoretical claim of the right to urban life and its fulfillment through territorial interaction practices?
BaBeL 2 – Workshop
Marking borders
Marking borders workshop with Thomas Laureyssens/MAP.it
A workshop with Thomas Laureyssens/MAP.it in which you walk around the city and look for all kinds of ‘borders’ which you mark with tape and pen and thereby identifying and visualizing them. Its up to the participant to decide which type of boundaries to look for.These can be social, aesthetic, conceptual, architectural…Participants are challenged to look to the city in a creative but critical way.
appointment H 16.00 at Forteprenestino
join us and write at:
babel.forteprenestino(at)gmail.com
Thomas Laureyssens
flickr.markingborders
BaBeL2 – Workshop
Metropoliz
SCIATTO produzie workshop
Three days design workshop with SCIATTO produzie. The workshop will produce conceptual design for socializing and meeting intended to be realized in the squatted centre ‘Metropoliz’, via Prenestina. The workshop will focus on the disused area of purifiers to suggest self- construction and increase spatial re-appropriation practices. It’s definitely an intentions project: the ludic production of a thematic map that will spread conceptual TAGS towards the inception of a processual transformation of outer spaces of Metropoliz.
The workshop is meant for architecture students.
PROGRAMMA
Workshop in Metropoliz 15-17 maggio from 11 to 16
to partecipate write at:
babel.forteprenestino@gmail.com
sciattoproduzie
BaBeL2 ospite del FSU, Napoli 3-7 settembre
Foro Sociale Urbano
Foro Sociale Urbano dal 3 al 7 settembre, Napoli
Il Foro Sociale Urbano invita BaBeL 2 a parlare di diritto all’abitare.
Il FSU è una piattaforma dove si confronteranno lotte comuni dei movimenti degli abitanti, le organizzazioni e le reti nazionali ed internazionali che si muovono per il diritto alla casa, alla terra, ai beni comuni e alla città.
L’evento si svolgerà a Napoli dal 3 al 7 settembre. BaBeL2 con SCIATTOproduzie parteciperà aprendo un tavolo di discussione con l’idea di andare oltre la semplice speculazione teorica per inoltrarsi verso percorsi concreti di ricerca e attivismo su rinnovate dinamiche di lotta e di “insurrezione” contro sistemi e logiche neo-liberiste.
BaBeL2 – We are the city
Jola Brzeska illustrazione Mp5
Noi siamo la città
In Warsaw, the right to the city belongs to whoever pays the most. The city’s authorities represent not the people but the interests of speculators, whose money speaks louder than the needs of the city’s residents. Thus, Warsaw’s most important element, its people, struggle for their basic rights: to live in dignity, to co-create the city, to make decisions about it. This tragedy unfolds itself in the story of Jolanta Brzeska, tenants rights activist, who’s fight against rent increases ended abruptly: on March 1, 2011 her burning body was discovered in the forest on the outskirts of Warsaw. Like thousands of the city’s tenants, Jola Brzeska’s building was reprivatized.
For the past 20 years, buying up titles to the city’s tenement buildings, parks and squares has proven especially lucrative thanks to the good grace of the highest ranking authorities: to this day, no legal regulation managing the process of reprivatization and guaranteeing protections for the people who’s homes are reprivatized exists in Poland.
Jola Brzeska knew from her own experiences that Warsaw authorities manage the city like a corporation, in utter ignorance of the rights of residents. Her building given away by the city to the aristocrat duo Mossakowski/Massalski- the first antiquary, the second lawyer, both infamous for tormenting their ‘acquired’ tenants across Warsaw- Jola quickly fell into the hole of suddenly rising rent and soaring debt. Despite her hopeless situation, she fought battles in the courts with Mossakowski and was the last remaining tenant in her building, that the developer couldn’t remove.
Jola also fought for systemic change in Poland – the only postcommunist country, in which tenants have been literally thrown into a shark pool; nowhere else are real estate ownership claims settled at the cost of tenants. Instead, rather than paying compensations to expropriated owners or their descendants (in other countries 10-20 percent is compensated), “poor” Warsaw drains its budget paying 100 percent of the property market value, or as occurs more often, simply gives away real estate worth millions along with people living inside, as if they were meat stuffing with a tag, “do with them what you want”. Jola realized that changing this situation would require solidarity and initiated the Warsaw Tennant’s Association (Warszawskie Stowarzyszenie Lokatorów).
Jola’s situation was similar. Mossakowski and Massalski broke into her apartment by cutting the door hinges with an angle grinder. They would come to harass her late at night, they would threaten her, often in the presence of police officers. Such stories are countless, but the authorities’ reaction is always the same: “That’s private property, it doesn’t concern us.”
Officially, Jola’s case remains ‘unsolved’, although the truth about her death is no mystery: Jola’s murder was a hired job, paid by those with the biggest interest in her removal. Mossakowski is not under investigation by the prosecution and takes special care to make sure that neither his name nor face are associated with Jola’s murder.
The dramatic call raised in March 2011 by Jola Brzeska’s friends, “You can’t burn us all!”, is today turned into practice. Reducing the city to a ‘limited liability company’, and its residents to ‘human capital’ paves the road to social darwinism, not democracy. To reclaim the city, we must reclaim its meaning.
Human capital says enough!
We are the city.
BaBeL2 – Workshop
Metropoliz
MAP-it / a participatory mapping workshop Metropoliz
Thomas Laureyssens of MAP-it
After a first experience of participatory map in the previous edition of Babel, leads the residents of Metropoliz to explore the space of the squat. With the help of Thomas they can express and view their considerations on a map through a set of icons stickers, overcoming all the difficulties of communication in a heterogeneous group. The reflections of this workshop, as already happened in the first MAP-November it will be compiled into a summary map that can be used as a guideline for future interventions.
The workshop will be in May 18 h11.
map-it.be
BaBeL2 – Reworkshow
ReWorkShow
Laboratorio Urbano ReWorkShow
Urban ReWorkShow Laboratory is a group of architecture students who intend to study and to intervene in those urban areas often forgotten and denied to the citizens, the goal is to encourage the re-appropriation through laboratory design and construction, aiming for a reactivation of space expressed in terms of collective participation and communicated through a new spectacular scenery. Through collaboration with community and social centers, which act every day in these critical situations, it is possible to develop alternative responses to those (not) provided by the official circuit of Land Management. The methodology of the group is to start from the analysis of the specific characteristics of the place and then realize the answers in a shared process of reconfiguration and redevelopment through AutoRemounter and sustainable design, seen especially in textural and economic terms. The hope is to offer good conditions of living and sharing the urban environment and at the same time sensitizing the community to participate and a conscious use of the places where we live and relate. Urban Reworkshow Laboratory consists of: Cora Fontana, Mark DiDonato, Julia Mangiafesta, Murgante Louis, Julia Murialdo Poma, Andrea Swifts, Alberto Saccà, Gabriel Salvia
BaBeL2 suggerisce Field studies 10-13 settembre 2012,Londra
Field studies workshop
Field studies 2012 – London Metropolitan University
Quando si parla di suono facciamo riferimento a un fenomeno di percezione umana, all’atto di udienza, a un aspetto dell’ambiente, o alla musica. Il suono è oggetto di legislazione e manifesti, e del dibattito filosofico: abbiamo sentito rumori o oggetti? Il suono è come la luce o il colore? Si tratta di un evento o di una proprietà? Come si fa annotare e comunicare il suono? Come possono gli esercizi all’ascolto e al suono registrato completare il repertorio creativo della scrittura, del disegno e degli schizzi, o della fotografia? Come può qualcosa che è effimero, e in continua evoluzione, comunicare significativamente la produzione di cose che hanno permanenza?
Field studies è un workshop che introduce gli studenti ad una vasta gamma di competenze pratiche e teoriche in questo campo. Ed è anche l’occasione per partecipare a un vivace dibattito critico.
Il workshop si svolgerà a Londra presso la London Metropolitan University ed è aperto a tutti coloro che hanno un interesse per il suono e per l’ambiente. Attraverso masterclass paralleli guidati da tutor diversi, si esplorerà il tema del suono e dell’ascolto da prospettive diverse.
info sulle iscrizioni al Workshop Field studies
BaBeL2 – Right to the City
illustrazione di Veronica Felner
BaBeL2 – Diritto alla Città
BaBeL 2 – Workshop
Urban hacking
Urban Hacking workshop con Thomas Laureyssens/MAP.it
In this 2 day workshop with Thomas Laureyssens/MAP.it we use Arduino (http://arduino.cc/) and Waveshield (http://www.ladyada.net/make/waveshield/) to build interactive urban hacks that augment public spaces (bus/tram stops, benches,…) with simple interactions and sounds. Can we evoke interesting social interactions among people in public space by adding interactive interventions? Can the users of public space be made more conscious about the state of the urban space they passively or actively engage in? After an introduction the technology, projects are developed by group collaboration. The last day we install and test the prototypes on location.
Who?
Designers, (street)artists, architects, DIY-fanatics, technologists, performers… who are not afraid of some hands-on building, hacking or urban performance. No prior knowledge of programming Arduino is required, but it’s good to have one or more skills that you can bring to the workshop.
Timing
18/5 18:00-20:00: Introduction and technology overview
19/5 10:30-18:00: Concept development and construction
20/5 10:30-18:00: Construction and testing in public space
What to bring
- If you want to try programming Arduino: a laptop and USB cable.
- Optional: Electronic equipment like soldering iron, multimeter, sound recording equipment,… but this is not a requirement.
- Tools of your favorite form of expression or that can be used for the hacks. For instance: Old speakers, toys that make noise, other interesting objects to take apart or re-use, spraypaint,…
join us and write at:
babel.forteprenestino(at)gmail.com
Thomas Laureyssens
flickr.markingborders
BaBeL 2 movie – Topographixx
Topographixx
Sunday H19
TOPOGRAPHIXX: Trans in the landscape
An international program of video art concerned with landscape, border, zone and territory, in a transgender spectrum
Curated by Tobaron Waxman. Introduction by Francesco Macarone Palmieri aka Warbear
1.Chris Vargas (USA)
Have you ever seen a transsexual before? _ 2010 (04 min)
“The first half of the video records a guerilla performance, and through repetition, becomes a declaration and a campaign for Female-To-Male (FTM) transsexual visibility. When the campaign proves futile I enter a magical animated world where I observe and am greeted by colorful and flamboyant wildlife. Dedicated to friend Sam Lopes.” – Chris Vargas
2. Barbara de Genevieve (Chicago)
Out of the Woods _ (08 min)
Una scena di sesso nel bosco tra FTM (Female-To-Male) e MTF (Male To Female), girato durante il Camp Trans.
Vincitore del Paris Post Porn Film Festival Award 2010.
3. Del LaGrace Volcano (London/Stockhölm)
The Passionate Spectator
_ 2004 (10 min)
An elegantly costumed genderqueer apparition traverses a European urban landscape. Inspired by Baudelaire and the late Brixton Brady,
this short embodies the magic of the flaneur who
sees but does not buy, who is in constant movement across borders which s/he refuses to recognize.
(note: both the late BriXton Brady and Del are ‘herm’ identified. This film may be the first non-narrative example of an ‘intersex cinema’.)
4. Raafat Hattab (Jaffa)
Bidun Unwaan _ (06 min)
In much of his work, Raafat performs in a non-traditional drag as ‘Arouse Falastin’ (The Bride of Palestine) عروس فلسطين. The Bride of Palestine is a traditional Palestinian reference to the ancient port city of Jaffa. In ‘Bidun Unwaan’ (untitled) the refrain of the soundtrack is “I leave the place”, and in Arabic the title also means ‘without mailing address’. As the loving caregiver to the tree, both Raafat and the olive tree as symbol for the Palestinian village are two figures who have never left the place. When the camera zooms out, the context for this nurturing is revealed to actually be in the middle of Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, and the source of the water is the fountain pool by City Hall, at the centre of Zionism’s largest city.
Raafat Hattab: “For me, the tree that represents my Palestinian identity, is planted in a place that, on one hand, it was Palestine, the original land of it. And now it’s planted in a place that is framed, so its not its natural place, its not an olive grove and it’s lonely. It represents me, that’s how I feel.”
5. Mirha Soleil Ross (Quebec) _ 2002 (13 min)
Allo performance _ 2002 (13 min)
From May 2001 to February 2002, artist Mirha-Soleil Ross, who is a trans woman, appeared pregnant every time she was in public as part of her 9 month long performance art cycle “The Pregnancy Project”. Ross’ seemingly innocuous dress is inspired by Shulamit Firestone, in this carefully layered performance video. “My mother never used spiritual terms related to Christianity. In this video she uses words that to me, go across culture and are related to Aborginal Culture, and come from 500 years of old, converted Anusian religion (Anushim are crypto-Jews forced to convert in Portugal and Spain who escaped to be early settlers of New France.) Her spirituality is in terms of ‘destiny’ and that is very Aboriginal. Those are things that most people wouldn’t understand, but we didn’t care. So much of the content is to render and recodify a sense of who the woman is. At the end of the video I fall in the water, I collapse, I fail in the water, to be a woman who can reproduce, can reproduce either Jewishness or Aboriginalness, on foreign territory.” – Mirha Soleil Ross
6. Raafat Hattab (Jaffa)
Houria _ (07 min)
In “Houria” (Mermaid/Freedom), Hattab interviews Yousra, his aunt, who tells him generations of stories she has inherited, about where they lived, and where parts of the family dispersed to in 1948. The image of her storytelling is interwoven with imagery of Hattab dressed as a mermaid on the shore of Al-Manshiyeh, the northern Palestinian neighbourhood that borders the sea and Tel Aviv. Hattab, who ID’s as (what is in English codified as) genderqueer, is perpetually between contexts, not unlike the beached mermaid.
7. Rémy Huberdeau (Canada)
Au pays des esprits (Home of the Buffalo) _ 2009
(04:26 min)
Constructed from Canadian prairie archival images taken between 1920 and 1940, this film lyrically explores a son/daughter’s relationship with his/her father and the family’s relationship to their land.
8. Yossi Yacov (Berlin/Tel Aviv)
The National Erection _ 2007 (04 min)
Referencing a historic cannon-monument from 1948, Queer activists create a giant pink cannon-cock, to squirt giant cumshots on Tel Aviv’s military and Zionist monuments as a protest gesture, thus ‘dragging’ the national ethos as a squirting pink satin penis. Locals report that the police felt compelled? justified? jealous? enough to destroy the ‘national erection’ with clubs, castrating the queer phallus, in response to the activists perversion of the landscape of national myth.
9. Jacolby Satterwhite (USA)
Reifying Desire _ 2011 (7min)
3D animation / Digital Video. A Queer Creation Myth Story based on the artist’s mother’s drawings and vocals. Jacolby described “Reifying Desire” to me as a “queer, non sensical, psychosexual landscape….built from drawings made by a schizophrenic, and her son vogues around the material culture she drew.” He went on to define ‘Queer’ as “queer in the definition of outside of normativity”.