Conference on Post-capitalist City, Pula - Croatia, 14.-16.8.2009.
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During three days, the Conference on Post-capitalist City will present the common experiences of European groups involved in mapping, planning and creating situations which escape both the capitalist logic of production of space and reproduction of life. Some of these groups will present their work in the form of lectures after which discussions will follow. - The goal of the Conference is to affirm an international network of individuals and groups exploring various forms of self-organizing in urban planning. The participants' experiences, their current projects and practices, will be collected in a catalogue/brochure which will be used for further activities. The catalogue is conceived as a theoretical elaboration of practices, sorted by the criteria of 1) method 2) tools/instruments 3) strategy and tactics. - Our intention is to share experiences as well as create a Document summarizing our conclusions into a general thesis to be used in further actions. The project's hypothesis: It is necessary to reread the processes of exploitation and resistance in the city as well as understand the curren relations of political powers in order to create a new urbanism, independent from the state and other political institutions. In other words, we propose that the separation of urban planning from the state is finally conceivable. The existing forms of production and life have already erased the border between the profession and its beneficiaries, between planners and citizens, architects and activists. To research new aspects of urban development is to reinvent them. Individual experience has become the key for describing the new urban dynamics. The Symposium will take place in Pula, a city on the Croatian coast. This environment should be inspiring for investigating the separation of planning and state because the state has been retreating from Pula for the last 20 years. An historical military port, the town was deserted by the army and now offers vast abandoned areas. Most of these spaces did not integrate into commodity markets and the accompanying system of political power, but were transformed instead into a laboratory for new forms of living, an informal economy and autonomous production of common values. At this moment, the size of the ex-military areas developing independently is ten times bigger than the ex-military areas officially integrated into the dominant economic regime. The process of demilitarization in Pula started as a minor issue, but has subsequently grown into the central process by which the city is transformed. As in other cities in a similar situation, here too the same question arises: What knowledge, methods and tools are needed to establish a new practice of city planning based on new forms of living, and to turn the existing political diagonal in its own advantage? The Symposium on Post-Capitalist City is a part of the Multimedia festival Media Mediterranea. Invited groups: Exyzt, Pariz Fram-menti, Treviso Hackitectura, Sevilla Krax, Barcelona Elena Marchigiani, Trieste, MetroZones, Berlin M.i.m.o. Lab, Milano Multilpicity, Milano Observatorio Metropolitano, Madrid Raumlabor, Berlin Salottobuono, Venice Self Made City, Rome Dustin Tusnovics, Vienna |
