Maastricht: Lieu de Passages? Towards European Capital of Culture 2018 has, on Friday 15 May, successfully concluded a two-day reflection on the candidacy of Maastricht. The attending international speakers, the audience and the representatives of the local academic world and cultural sector shared in the closing plenary the view that this symposium is an important and necessary step towards 2018.
The organizers (Maastricht University, Zuyd University, Jan van Eyck Academy and the Municipality of Maastricht) want to express their gratitude to all speakers, participants and everyone who have made this symposium possible. In particular the location and team of AINSI deserve all praise: AINSI proved to be the perfect environment for this international event!
Lieu de Passages? is in many ways a starting point. Maastricht University, Jan van Eyck Academy and Zuyd University have announced that they plan to actively use the organizing group behind Lieu de Passages? as a permanent sounding board for those responsible for the candidacy of Maastricht. A substantive and policy-oriented sparring partner who – with or without being asked for it – will raise questions and will try to formulate answers. Already on this website one can find extensive summaries of all conference sessions. Within three months we will also present a printed summary of the main conclusions.
With kind regards,
Paul Lambrechts (Gemeente Maastricht)
Bas Van Heur (Universiteit Maastricht)
Peter Peters (Hogeschool Zuyd)
Koen Brams (Jan van Eyck Academie)
Categories: A cultural DNA? · Between Centers and Peripheries · Cultural Capital and Institutional Change · Destination Maastricht · Mind the Gap! · Urban Laboratories
Tagged: AINSI, conclusion, Hogeschool Zuyd, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht University, Municipality of Maastricht
Short documentary on Maastricht as potential European Capital of Culture.
Directors:
Hanna Weck
Ivo Poulissen
Mieke Olde Engberink
Rianne Stijnen
First shown during the session ‘Mind the Gap! Student Cultures and Maastricht Life’ at the Maastricht: Lieu de Passages? conference on 14 May in AINSI, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Click here for more info on the Lieu de Passages? Vimeo page.
Categories: Mind the Gap!
Tagged: arts institutions, audience, Bonnefantenmuseum, carnival, creative industries, Europe, international, Maastricht, nightlife, students, superficiality, theater
The ‘Between Centers and Peripheries’ workshop, moderated by Matthias Pauwels, revolved around three papers. Three different speakers critically reflected on the topic of centres and peripheries, but each chose a different angle of approach. Discussions during this workshop were lively, but also very critical. The heat of the debate turned this workshop into a very interesting one.
Therese Kaufmann explained that the European Capital of Culture project originally was used to show the grandness of European capitals. The role of culture within the EU policy slowly became more important. The first time culture was mentioned was in the Maastricht treaty of 1992 according to Kaufmann. Then Kaufmann raised the question why smaller cities and their cultural actors want to be Capital of Culture. Arguments for this are tourism, city branding, city management, but also public money. The last reason stresses the relevance of the discussion. Is the public money spent in public interest? The downsides of the Capital of Culture project have been seen in cities like Istanbul and Patras. Here a so-called cultural hangover has been seen. A cultural hegemony turned into a potential counter-hegemony. Another critical argument is that the ECOC does not contribute to cultural policy, because culture is being politicized. By politicizing it, it will also be privatized.
When talking about peripheries, Kaufman talks about the periphery within the city. Here it is about those who are excluded. Then she elaborates on the post-colonial condition of Europe. This is Europe’s cultural heritage according to her. She sees the importance of cultural policies that reach beyond the European space. In this light events like the ECOC become laboratories. Furthermore her opinion is that Maastricht is a centre and not a periphery. Because there is great freedom for artists, which is not present in other parts of the world. There is a strong imbalance in the world, also on the area of culture. There were reactions about cultural policy, tourism and politics strengthening each other. The speaker however responded with the argument that culture cannot be measured in numbers. Furthermore the audience responds by saying that because of the ECOC project, connections are made and broad layers start moving. The speaker responds by saying that this will lead to disappointment in the end.
The second speaker is Olivier Kramsch. The main line in his story is about Walter Benjamin. He is a symbol of crossing a border at a wrong time. Kramsch’s opinion is that Euregions are a dream. They have no real borders and their reality lies in their logo. They are an example of what Eric Hobsbawm called invented tradition. They politicize space and exclude other regions. Another example of politicizing space is the former colonies. When a historical map of Holland is shown, the colonies are there too. Another remarkable observation is that the Euregions are on the map where all the migration camps in Northern Europe are. This is not a coincident according to Kramsch, because they are too in the periphery. The questions referred to the Maastricht region as patchwork, showing it is reality not just an invention. Also the issue of the colonial past showed up in the discussion. Arguing that “this is our common binding factor.” Some local Maastricht people however criticized this being not relevant to the topic. Others disagreed, because it is about who we are as Europeans. Paul Lambrechts concluded by saying this was about openness and what we want to become.
The third speaker was Angela Melitopoulos. She started talking about the periphery of Europe and that of Cyprus in particular. She talked about the green line in Cyprus and its attempts to become one again. Then she elaborated on migrants, which live along the borders in Cyprus. She openly questioned how the movement of migrants can be understood. This resulted in the autonomy of migration. The decision of the migrant on where to migrate is defining the power of the national state. She also explained that connecting to a certain space does not just mean living there. In an event like the Capital of Culture one should look for possibilities for locals and migrants. There should be itineraries which update the cartography archives. Reactions to this presentation talked about migrants being excluded in this project. Other people reacted to this by saying this is a different problem, not relevant to the topic.
So this workshop ended were it started – a division between locals and speakers. Speakers actively defending their standpoints. Locals not understanding the relevance of the issues the speakers talked about with respect to the Capital of Culture. Afterwards they reacted by saying: “They are hijacking the agenda for their own topics.”
Text: Ivo Poulissen
Categories: Between Centers and Peripheries
Tagged: boundaries, cartography, centers, colonies, competition, Euregion, Europe, exclusion, Maastricht treaty, migration, peripheries
Hans Mommaas (Tilburg University) started his keynote by remarking that he has an in-depth knowledge of this region which “makes it easy & difficult”. His presentation based on personal experience looked at the ECOC competition as a work in progress, a space and an opportunity. He advised not to “jump into solutions but to use it as a research project”. Reminding the audience of the fact that our world is enormously expanded, he stated that the increasing mobility (also in terms of communicative interaction has an impact on spaces that now become “globalized cultural spaces” leading to an increasing competition between cultural venues.
According to Mommaas, along with globalization, localizations are still going on. People are trying to define meaningful spaces they are living in, such as cities. The question with regard to the ECOC competition is, “what sort of space will that creative economy produce”? Mommaas sees the ECOC as a challenge that forces us to rethink our identity. Thereby, ECOC can be used to reinvent ourselves and our cities. In addition, he questioned the reason of Maastricht’s bid by asking “can Maastricht add something to the list of ECOCs”? Furthermore, Mommaas argued that especially the Ruhr 2010 project should be inspiring for Maastricht. He asked whether Maastricht will go for the title by itself or whether the Euroregion will present itself? In the case of the Ruhr (Essen), regional collaboration is essential to the whole project. Thereby, a new cultural map is created. Mommaas pointed out that our everyday mental map has increased due to increased mental mobility, we have to ask ourselves, “what does that mean for traditional ideas about space”?
Challenging our “old mental images”, Mommaas spoke in favor of creating new images while debating on urbanization processes “is very much a debate on taste”. Borrowing from Sassen, Mommaas defined space in terms of territory, authority and legal rights. He warned about the administrative discourse which “has its own, destructive, dynamism – the administrative jungle”. He said one should be careful that the project is not hijacked by administrative storylines but rather be used as an innovative transformational device. The challenge for Maastricht is ‘can we use ECOC to create new storylines’? Since there is an abundance of storylines, “the challenge for the region is to find a storyline that really matters”. Therefore, one should think about a new relationship between Maastricht, the region and its surrounding. Finally, Mommaas concluded by saying that “good storylines develop themselves from the grassroots” and “these sorts of processes take their time”.
Text: Ali Konyali
Categories: A cultural DNA? · Between Centers and Peripheries · Cultural Capital and Institutional Change · Destination Maastricht · Mind the Gap! · Urban Laboratories
Tagged: administrative jungle, competition, globalization, grassroots, localization, mobility, regional collaboration, research, Ruhr 2010, storyline
In her introduction of the workshop, the moderator, Nora Bieberstein stated that students in Maastricht experience and participate in the widespread student culture which offers e.g. music festivals, cinema, student theatre, organized parties and so on. However, as inhabitants of Maastricht it can also be observed that there is a local culture with its own traditions and cultural circles bearing cultural events like Carnival, Tefaf. These two different types of cultural offer and people who seem to make use of it seem to be separated from each other. The aim of this session was to discuss this potentially existent gap between student life and local Maastricht citizens in order to come to answers for questions like:
- Is it possible to define or characterize the University’s and its student’s relationship with Maastricht and its citizens in general terms?
- Can we argue that the integration of students to Maastricht’s cultural life is hindered by rather practical problems such as a lack of information and the rather pricy activities?
- Is Maastricht a special case or can we draw comparisons to other ‘college towns’?
After a short a video clip produced by students of Maastricht University, each of the four speakers was given time to give a general statement about his or her view on the cultural life in Maastricht regarding the gap between student body and local citizen culture.
Leo zum Vörde sive Vörding started the discussion by telling students to not bridge the gap. He said that a city like Maastricht cannot do without young urban professionals and students. Furthermore, there is always the controversy between a) the city should take care of us and b) these young urban people have to find there own way within the citylife. Therefore, he thinks that we need more commitment to each other and more public debate. According to him, the ECOC competition could be used as a framework that necessitates change in this aspect. Nevertheless, he repeatedly stated that the student body plays a very crucial role in the city since they think and feel ‘from the outside’. He concluded that we need more courageous students that speak out, act and dare to dream. He stated that this session is an excellent example that shows how crucial critical students are that produce interpretations. During the open discussion at the end of the session, he remarked that a city like Maastricht is a ‘public mental space’ with dynamics and movements and “if students adapt too soon, we lose the place for interpretation”.
According to Ruta Norvaisaite, student at Maastricht University, students come to Maastricht with one major goal – to study, or at least we should assume that. Therefore, we cannot expect from them more than minimum effort to find the cultural activities. No doubt, those who search – find it. However, those who would like to participate, but simply do not have time for searching (which includes not only Googling but learning Dutch, building up social networks, being part of various organizations and mailing lists) are left completely behind. Much of the information is either in Dutch or circulated through personal networks. Thus, she stated that the gap can be filled in by better and more thorough provision of information.
Rein de Wilde, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University pointed out that all university cities have experienced tensions between the student body and ”ordinary’” citizens. In small cities with a long university tradition, such as Oxford, Heidelberg or Leiden, it took centuries for students and citizens to realize that they really depend upon each other. Then, Maastricht is a small university city as Oxford and the like, but does not have this long history of cohabitation. Therefore quite some ‘locals’ still perceive the university as an alien element. Even the municipality does not quite know how to handle or approach the university. On the other hand, de Wilde said that most people studying in Maastricht or working in the university are not born in Maastricht or its region. They feel no incentive to integrate in what they perceive as a rather closed regional culture. “Yet there are signs of change” as is illustrated by the fact that the movie theater Lumière leads the way in taking students and foreigners serious by offering English subtitling on special evenings or that Studium Generale has become bilingual within just a few years. Concluding, de Wilde stressed that if Maastricht wants to welcome art projects and cultural initiatives of world class quality, its cultural (and economic) policies should be coordinated on the level of the (Eu)region.
Finally, Maike van Storch from ‘Weekin/Weekuit’, the weekly cultural agenda of Maastricht that is coupled to the website http://www.maastricht.net noted that she seems to be standing in the middle of the gap as a journalist with an informing role. She said that an English website is recently under construction and pointed to the existence of a magazine like ‘Crossroads’. She argued that they don’t get a lot of input from students who live in their own circle and that is why “it’s not easy to approach students” since they don’t easily react. Besides, she added that there is a new cultural initiative for new students at Maastricht University, the pimpas which gives students price reductions for cultural highlights in the region. Recognizing the enclosed character of Maastricht she affirmed that “you would have to marry a local to truly integrate yourself in the local culture”.
Summarizing the results of the discussion Nora Bieberstein argued that “there is a gap” and it has both its positive and negative aspects. Because, on the one hand, the gap leads to a greater cultural diversity that should not be changed but productively used, but, on the other hand, the gap produces separation and exclusion of students from Maastricht’s cultural life. Thus, integration and diversity are opposing each other and this is what constitutes the gap. Leo zum Vörde sive Vörding stated that self-organization is one part of the solution and Rein de Wilde introduced a new concept – an ‘urban campus’ that is a serious interest of the university. Evaluating the gap, de Wilde said that in the short-term the only solution seems to become bilingual.
Text: Ali Konyali
Categories: Mind the Gap!
Tagged: bilingual, Crossroads, cultural production, culture, diversity, Euregion, information, integration, interpretation, journalism, locals, Maastricht University, Municipality of Maastricht, outside, pimpas, students, university
The ‘Cultural DNA?’ workshop examined whether cities have a distinct cultural identity and if so, how it could be employed within the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) programme. Therefore Jorijn Neyrinck (tapis plein, Bruges) and Neil Peterson (Liverpool Culture Company) were invited as speakers. The moderator of the discussion was Sjaak Koenis from Maastricht University.
After introducing the topic and the speakers, Koenis stated that it is quite difficult to come up with a clear cut definition of a city’s identity. In her presentation, Jorijn Neyrinck briefly traced Bruges’ identity construction before, while and after being the European Capital of Culture in 2002. She reflected on the effects of Bruges 2002 in order to prognosticate what this could mean for Maastricht 2018.
Neyrinck pointed out that Bruges has not got the contemporary dynamics of the modern European city. The idea of bidding for the ECOC title was based on a strive for sustainable long-term consequences, as a new chance for Bruges to digest its identity. Inspired by the competition, the aim was to (re)think the rather medieval city of Bruges in terms of durableness. In contrast, Neyrinck claimed that Maastricht is dynamic already, that it is a city with layered identities. And therefore, according to her before setting out to become ECOC, Maastricht should be clear about the purpose of its bid – the crucial question therefore is: “what do you want to be tomorrow”? In Bruges they had to make the choice between presenting a programme for citizens and a programme for visitors. Neyrinck said that in the end “it was a programme for all”. The crucial dialogue between city officials and the public was kept up by conferences and a public call for proposals. More than 150 projects were chosen and realized “without forgetting to think about the day after”. Responding to a question from the audience about the changes on the cultural level, Neyrinck put forward that culture in Bruges is more institutionalised than before with a lot of new organisations and the emergence of contemporary architecture.
Then, Sjaak Koenis handed the word over to Neil Peterson from the Liverpool Culture Company who presented a case study on the European Capital of Culture programme in 2008 in Liverpool. According to him, Liverpool did not expect to win the UK competition; the actual purpose of bidding was “just to be on the map”. “Things were improving anyway”, Peterson argued. Thus, the ECOC title was employed by Liverpool to present itself with a sustainable strategy that went beyond the popular conception of having ‘merely’ football and the Beatles. Peterson claimed that the ECOC “is like a big experiment to use culture for different things”. Furthermore, he stated that unlike the successful process of regeneration of a working-class town, economically the whole project “was not very attractive”. Six big strands of organization made Liverpool to become one of the most successful ECOCs in history:
- 1) Liverpool Commissions
- 2) Cultural Partner Enhancement
- 3) Festivals and Events
- 4) Creative Communities
- 5) Talks, Conferences, Lectures
- 6) Intercultural Dialogue
Peterson illustrated his presentation with a lot of examples of how to use a city’s DNA as an inspiration for cultural innovation such as the ‘Tall Ships’ reminiscent of Liverpool’s history of slave trade. “Don’t be afraid to do different things” was his argument justifying the extraordinarily expensive ‘Giant Spider’ or the spread of 120 ‘Superlambanas’ that were afterwards sold for charity. Furthermore, he pointed out that it was the title as a major event that raised the international profile, so that underlying cultural events put it together. Liverpool developed and promoted the programme through ‘themed years’ since 2003. In his presentation, Peterson stressed the importance of public engagement and dialogue that should encourage citizens to “create, participate, debate and state” without regard to ethnicity or cultural background. Peterson remarked that as a result of the event, Liverpool became the third popular city of the UK after London & Edinburgh. He concluded by saying that Maastricht should build on its cultural strengths without limiting its ambitions.
During the open discussion after the presentations, Pieter Caljé from Maastricht University noticed that unlike Bruges and Liverpool, Maastricht enjoys the status of having an image that is already attractive at first glance. However, he added that it is an enclosed city that should look across the national borders of the ‘Euroregion’ as one way of repositioning regardless of the actual bid for becoming ECOC. Moreover, although Peterson said that a city like Maastricht does not necessarily have to have a number of problems to solve in order to profile itself, the discussion made clear that the project of Maastricht 2018 needs a compelling reason besides its ambition to become the European Capital of Culture. Until then, ‘knowledge transfer’ as it happened during this session has to be used in order to critically assess its bid even though it is clear that “you never gonna convince everybody” as Peterson noted.
Text: Ali Konyali
Categories: A cultural DNA?
Tagged: ambition, borders, Bruges, durable, dynamic, Euregion, identity, Liverpool, purpose, strategy, themes
The following workshop split into various discussions and issues expressed from the participants of the workshop. The workshop was opened with the idea that we should translate themes into storylines, and from there into projects, after which we can find institutions to manage these projects.
Pieter Calje started of the discussion stating that storylines are a brilliant idea and that we need to rethink a city/region which is in flux and needs a new identity. We need to discuss practices. A project would be to create identity not by living with the back to each other, but to plan together and create bottom-up projects and see what storylines we get out of them.
Jeroen Boomgaard jumps in here to say that he is allergic to the work storyline, at least in the way that it is so frequently used. Boomgaard states that we should open up discourse. The last thing anyone is waiting for is a storytale. We need to think about difference and work with them, thinking of culture in a layered fashion. If we start working with a storyline from the start, it will be a hopeless case.
Will Munsters throws in that we need to work with a process of co-creation. We need to deal with the inhabitants, visitors and entrepreneurs; these entrepreneurs being the (creative) industries.
So what about universities? Are they to be left out? Britta Riegel throws in. This question is followed by ideas from Susan Schaefer who states that the audience for whom this project is created must be looked at first. For whom are we creating what? Who are we doing this for and why? Petra Driessen goes further into this argument stating that there needs to be a compelling reason to change. We need to do research. We must talk to the people we are doing it for and find out what the underlying concept is that they are looking for.
Calje dives into the discussion saying that there is a crisis in Maastricht. Maastricht the beautiful is a façade, because there is a real socio-economic crisis going on and Maastricht is in dire need of reinventing itself. As Henk van de Voort explains, there is much crisis, there are many point of trouble, but this crisis is not totally visible.
If we really do need ECOC, how to go about it? Neil Peterson explains that we should not forget about competition and our strengths. By understanding where we have problems and where our strengths are, we can build on these to give things to Europe and ECOC. Other than just recognizing our strengths and weaknesses, Anne Lorentzen points out that we must also recognize for who we are doing it and what their needs and resources are. In order to get started, bottom-experts are needed. Calje fills in to say that, it is not just who I am doing it for, but also, who am I doing it with?
Jorijn Neyrinck adds a nice keyword to sum up a lot of the discussion: TRANSFER. In the making of Maastricht or for that matter in the making of Europe there is still a long way to go. We need to cross borders and open up minds. A difficult task awaits us.
Text: Sophie Kromholz
Categories: A cultural DNA? · Destination Maastricht
Tagged: audience, bottom-up, creative industries, crisis, discourse, entrepreneurs, experts, layers, storyline, transfer, university
In this session three speakers provided their views on the city as a destination which is supposed to be attractive not only to local inhabitants but as well to tourists. How can a city create a cultural environment that lives up to the expectations of both groups?
Jeroen Boomgaard (Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam) started his presentation with a short German documentation about Maastricht as a tourist destination, afterwards revealing that all the words describing Maastricht used in the film came from flyers from other European cities. According to Boomgaard, one of the dangers of becoming a cultural capital lies exactly in the search for a specific and unique image, which makes the competing cities look increasingly the same. Maastricht should be careful not to become a non-destination (“onbestemming Maastricht”), which it could become when taking the notion of mobility as its (only) hallmark in the competition for ECOC. The fixation on mobility should be abandoned, and the already ‘established’ image torn down, in order to be able to discover Maastricht’s real cultural value.
In the second presentation, Anne Lorentzen (Aalborg University) talked about the problems that small European cities face due to the economic stagnation. One of the solutions to this problem can be the implementation of place bound experience products. This suggestion is in line with the concept of the experience economy (Pine & Gilmore), arguing that it’s all about staging a vivid and compelling experience. Lorentzen described how the small Danish city Frederikshavn put itself on the map by taking quite remarkable actions such as creating a sand beach with palm trees, or inviting Bill Clinton and Al Gore to public talks. Due to these measures the city came into the limelight in Denmark, and hence noticed an increase in tourism as well as quality of life for the local people. The question that remains is however if these actions have a sustainable future.
The last presentation of the session by Zora Jaurová (Košice 2013 European Capital of Culture) gave an interesting insight into the planning of the bid and event itself of the ECOC in Košice, Slovakia. For Košice, the ECOC project was an opportunity to drastically transform the post-industrial city into a place fostering creativity. For the starting point the cultural diversity in the city was of great importance, being more homogeneous than in most Western European cities. However, most of the people living in the suburbs did not have a real sense of belonging to the city, and one goal of the project was to unite these people with the city. A campaign had to change the idea of the city, by inviting people to “Use the C!ty”. Borrowing from computer technology, the term interface was used to describe a city which enables all of its users to communicate with each other and express their creativity by changing their environment. Old empty Soviet buildings in the suburbs were revived as different cultural centers, leading to a decentralization of culture in the city and giving more people the possibility to engage themselves with cultural production.
Text: Nicolas Heinz
Categories: Destination Maastricht
Tagged: cultural production, decentralization, destination, experience economy, Frederikshavn, interface, Kosice, map, mobility, non-destination, suburbs, sustainable, tourism, use
As part of the first round of workshops of the conference, the Urban Laboratories session set out to explore questions of representation with regards to the new, new culture and experimentality. The three speakers, Marc Glaudemans, Pascal Gielen and Michelle Teran were introduced by Bas van Heur, post-doc at the Maastricht Virtual Knowledge Studio, Maastricht University. The three presentations were followed by short Q&A rounds.
The first speaker of the workshop, Mr. Marc Glaudemans, gave an extensive description of the School of Architecture in Tilburg, Netherlands, an institution which is rather professional than academic. Since 2006, one of the programmes of the university that he is involved in is Stadslab – the European Urban Design Laboratory. Stadslab is a consultancy organization that aims at being a knowledge centre supported by European experts. Cities can use Stadslab as an advisory tool for various urban problems they might encounter. The Stadslab team analyzes these problems in a laboratory or atelier environment with the goal of providing “strategies for the cities to develop,” Glaudemans explained. The end results are, therefore, conceptual frameworks that can be used for creative and sustainable urban development, as well as urban design scenarios and case studies. During the Q&A round, the issue of politics being intermingled with urban planning was raised, as well as the difficulty of integrating all the dimensions of an urban environment in the strategies developed by Stadslab. Nevertheless, Glaudemans acknowledged the fact that urban regeneration is not only a spatial problem, but also social, cultural and political.
The second presentation given by Pascal Gielen focused on the speaker’s research on visual artists in Flanders, Belgium. Mr. Gielen discussed how the art world is influenced by globalization. Supporting issues for that are numerous: acceleration of artistic careers, boom of creative cities, accumulation of artists, curators, etc., post-political ideology shifts and renegotiations of value regimes. The resulting global ‘meshwork’, as the speaker calls it, can be used to further analyze how the art world is currently differentiated. Two sets of oppositions were discussed in relation to each other: “high / low networked” art or artists and “development / product” – development seen as education, research, or academia, and product seen as market oriented art production. In the context of this four dimensional schemata, or the ‘Healthy art ecological system,’ Gielen sees smaller cities as weak passages in the global art world. Maastricht is one of these weak passages when it comes to art, and the speaker suggested that the city should take its spot on the graph in the high networked, development orientated corner. Furthermore, Maastricht should aim at being a “place to slow down, to reflect” Mr. Gielen said, going beyond the creative city idea.
The third and last speaker of the session was Michelle Teran, a practicing artist originally from Quebec, Canada, but active in urban art projects around the world. The artist gave the audience an insight into her work, which mostly consists of using media as guiding tools to explore a city and its narratives. Her works also contain a high level of performance, as she communicates with people on the streets in order to see how they create the meanings of their own city. In the first project described, Ms. Teran explored a city through two ways, a cartographic and a street dimension. She used different media to investigate the visual unity of a place, as well as spatial narratives that become part of the city’s fabric. The second project presented took place in Quebec, and it dealt with, as Ms. Teran put it “unofficial urban histories.“ The third and last work the speaker discussed was a project in Murcia, Spain, in which she used Google Earth to collect YouTube videos from a particular location, with the overall goal of creating a narrative.
In the concluding remarks of the workshop, the moderator emphasized the importance of experimental culture, and how hidden urban narratives are made visible through this experimenting process. However, the moderator said, we should be careful with “what we make visible and in relation to what.”
Text: Ana Maria Raus
Categories: Urban Laboratories
Tagged: arts, creative cities, development, ecological system, experimentation, hidden, media, narratives, networks, newness, performance, urban, urban design, visibility
Got Spaghetti, Waiting for the Sauce
In this session the intention was to cover the themes discussed the day before, practical ideas on possible projects and, finally, organizational structures necessary for successful implementation of the ideas. As an overarching theme of ‘Urban Laboratories’ discussion, Bas van Heur indicated that there was a need to acknowledge the ways in which cultural practices are not simply representative – i.e. belonging to particular groups (ethnic, national, gendered, etc.) – but also innovative and involved in the production of newness. This demands a sensitivity towards and promotion of spaces of experimentation.
Another prominent theme was the tension between official and unofficial narratives surrounding cultural events. According to Michelle Teran, there is often an official story presented by advertising campaigns and mass media covering up possibly very different picture as perceived by participants or other involved. The task of critical thinkers in this case would be questioning the official language.
The most important opposition considered by the group ‘Cultural Capital and Institutional Change’ was between so called ‘official culture’ or institutions and community. Although ‘community culture’ is often deemed to be naturally good and liberating, this group agreed that both of the sides should be problematized. Other themes which deserved mentioning were internal and external rationales for becoming ECOC as well as the position of artists in such mega events. Finally, the importance of networking was stressed.
In any case, both groups seemed to have very hot topics, because the overview of themes brought them further into discussion. The most prominent one was about the narratives surrounding ECOC. One of the speakers very rightly noted that narratives are by definition exclusive: someone gets to decide who will be involved in the dialogue. According to Bas van Heur, the negative effects of this exclusionary moment can be minimized through reflection and awareness of this unavoidable exclusionary dimension of narratives. Janicke Kernland added to this that, on the one hand, exclusion can be seen as positive because it signals a choice or position and, on the other hand, exclusion can be easily unmasked by a counter narrative which, in turn, should be encouraged.
Unfortunately, it was more difficult to turn the discussion along more pragmatic lines than this. Although the task of people working on Maastricht ECOC is to set the base for those who will implement the project, inventing and adding institutions does not seem the best idea. According to Paul Lambrechts, Maastricht and surrounding cities already possess necessary institutional components to successfully implement such mega-events as ECOC. However, communication and cooperation of these separate bodies is of key importance. He compared the institutions to spaghetti, which without connecting material – sauce – are tasteless and therefore useless. We have the spaghetti, now let’s work on the sauce, suggested Paul.
Actually, my favorite idea came from the public (Ruth Benschop): in any narrative we talk about, the focus is on the future and the progress. Reflection on past and present is submerged in plans and dreams, if existent at all. Are we not losing something very precious in this way?
Text: Ruta Norvaisaite
Categories: Cultural Capital and Institutional Change · Urban Laboratories
Tagged: arts institutions, community, exclusion, experimentation, inclusion, innovation, narratives, networks, newness, past
