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RADICAL EXPLORING

Interdisciplinary seminar at the Berlin Summer University of the Arts

Date: September 1st - 6th 2014

Place: UdK Berlin & the city

Fee: 325 €

No. of participants: 12 to 15

Language: English

Application deadline: August 4th

Lecturers: Valentina Karga & Rosario Talevi

apply HERE!

“Commons are not simply resources we share—conceptualizing the commons involves three things at the same time. First, all commons involve some sort of common pool of resources, understood as non-commodified means of fulfilling people's needs. Second, the commons are necessarily created and sustained by communities. ‘…’ the third and most important element in terms of conceptualizing the commons is the verb “to common”—the social process that creates and reproduces the commons.” Massimo de Angelis

We use to speak of the commons meaning common land, whose resources (grass, soil, water) were available for common use. We lost contact with the conception of such commons, long time ago, since everything was divided in public and private property.

Two aspects that will be addressed and examined closely in relationship to Berlin's current shift in policy regarding the selling-off of publicly owned land (liegenschaftspolitik),are those of the urban commons -addressed by David Harvey or discussed between Massimo De Angelis and Stavros Stavrides - and the right to the city -term coined by Henri Lefebvre in 1968 and since a few years certainly having a renaissance. What are the key aspects to conceptualize and recognize the spaces of commonality? Can the right to the city be re-defined as the right to urban space? And if so, can that be understood as the right to participate in the transformation of common space?

In this workshop we will explore diverse approaches to the discourse of autonomy and the commons, and engage with activities within the urban environment, such as gardening, solar cooking and foraging. Field-trips, bike tours, walks and excursions will be fundamental part of the workshop as the spaces, zones and ecologies of Berlin become the classroom. Part of the seminar will be to design and produce together a publication containing the experiences and knowledge gathered at the workshop. By allowing practice to inform theory, we will be learning by doing.

PROGRAM (every day 10.00 - 16.00)

MONDAY

Contested Urban Spaces - Bike tour The tour explores the neighborhood of Kreuzberg connecting a series of ingenious urban interventions and radically different uses of the public space. We will visit alternative models of urban planning that are not only devised by architects and urban planners, but by a thriving creative scene and numerous civic platforms.

TUESDAY

Reading group* @UdK Presentation by Valentina Presentation by Rosario

WEDNESDAY

Illusion and Reality: Bike Tour The tour explores the reconstruction site of a seventeenth century Baroque palace, the Berliner Schloß and the former Tempelhof Airfield - Tempelhofer Feld- recently object of a momentous citizens referendum against the city government’s master plan for its redevelopment.

THURSDAY

Prototyping Publication @UdK

FRIDAY

Gardening, solar cooking, foraging, jam making @ Berlin Farm Lab - Ideenfarm. Presentation of the “Summer school for Applied Autonomy” Discussion

SATURDAY

Prototyping Publication @UdK Farewell drinks

* Bibliography

- Silvia Federici, Feminism and the politics of the Commons, from the commoner.org - Indy Johar, excerpts from Compendium for the civic economy, published from 00:/, London

Tutors

Valentina Karga, born in Chalkidiki, Greece, is an artist and architect based in Berlin. After she got her masters in architecture (University of Thessaly), she has been a fellow at the University of the Arts Berlin (UDK), Graduate school. Often through collaborative actions, her work addresses issues such as autonomy, education, sustainability, communication, the DIY, the commons and the role of engagement and participation in the contemporary society and the arts. She is the founder of the “Summer school for Applied Autonomy” in Berlin, a research initiative interested in capturing the technical know-how but also the social, political and affective aspects involved in autonomous living. She is also a member of Collective Disaster. Among others, she has shown her work at the National museum of Contemporary art in Athens and the Athens Biennial.

Rosario Talevi (Buenos Aires, 1983). Trained as an architect in the public university in Buenos Aires and Berlin. Her practice is focused on the role and the possibilities of architecture in its most broadest form. Her work spans academic and applied research, teaching, editorial and design projects. She is currently investigating the transformation of Berlin's undervalued, transitional and forgotten spaces that offer an alternative to the pregnant neo-liberal politics shaping our environment. Alongside her own work she has collaborated with different architecture collectives (a77, raumlabor) and has taught Urban Morphology at the University of Buenos Aires and Experimental Architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin.

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