Introduction
Its talked about in the cafes, at the bus stops and down at the pub: Urban regeneration, is on everyone’s lips across London. While you might have associated this ‘crisis’ with #firstworldproblems [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=First+World +Problems], the reality is that as much as cities increasingly look the same the world over, so too is how some forces within them work. That includes the economic potentials that urban redevelopment holds in spaces of high concentration and demand - as well as the constant search for innovation.
The Maboneng district of Johannesburg city or Eko Atlantic City in Lagos are examples of such innovation & transformation of space. Are the approaches of urban regeneration and gentrification an inevitable - and natural - occurrence that world cities are inherently fated to engage with within the global economic system? How to deal with these pressures on spaces under immense demand? Can emerging African cities, with yet unrealised economic potential and unprecedented demographic projections, learn from the mistakes of how other cities deal with the demands and set their own agenda, trajectories and possibilities, demonstrating new approaches to vital urban concerns globally?
In this article Aminat Lawal Agoro, a fellow Ka’ssa co-founder, explores an alternative route to agency and transformation of urban space and what it could mean for cities in Africa.
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The London Festival of Architecture is a month long city wide festival in celebration of architecture and the built environment, presenting this great city as a global hub. In response to this year’s festival, Ka'ssa considered the work of urban planner and artist Theaster Gates, because of his devotion to the transformation of cities.
In this article I explore Gates’ work, its relevance for the here and now, and what it might mean in the African context, as well as some of the wider connections we might draw.
As a researcher interested in African and African diasporic culture and its intersections with development, I am intrigued by Gates’ work; by the possibilities for change in his artistic and social practice, and specifically the implications for cultural place-making and urban rebirth in the African context. Beyond his work though, what strikes me about the artist is his commitment to making room for those chance encounters, for public engagement and conversation, and this reflects strongly in his practice and his interactions with audiences.
As a world-renowned artist, Gates has had a relatively short trajectory, and he is set to become even bigger. This may be because his practice engages themes that are salient to the here and now, contemporary issues of space and place; gentrification, urban planning, urban decay and regeneration, cultural place-making; these are all themes that are playing on our minds in the on-going global discourses around urbanism. To this mix I would also add themes of heritage and memorialisation, which I expand on later in the article.
Gates’ work deals with transformation - of materials and of spaces; the transformation of neighbourhoods, not necessarily of the kind initiated by multinationals or developers, but of the kind initiated by everyday folk doing 'humble' work as a political gesture and personal statement to impact the spaces they inhabit and the way it functions. Such a practice is particularly poignant in this moment, in London, where it seems that increasingly local governments and private developers are colluding to define the agenda for how our neighbourhoods are transformed, with little consultation or consideration about how to get buildings and spaces to do more for more people.
So who is Theaster Gates? He is many things at once, as the diagram below illustrates.
As an artist, Gates makes gallery work (he completed a recent exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey) and he is also active in his South Side Chicago community, breathing new life into abandoned buildings, transforming them into cultural centres that house donated archives; the salvaged remnants of libraries, local schools, and shops that have closed down; and where communal dinners are hosted to foster conversation and ideas amongst a community of artists, philanthropists, and local people alike. Gates is trying to build a community and revive an otherwise decaying neighbourhood, for himself, fellow artists and those that live there already, by placing culture at the centre - as the end goal in the development of neighbourhoods. The de-facto western model for urban regeneration also places artists at the centre, yet those artists are themselves key to gentrification even though they are brought in initially as a local resource to revive and up-value an area (the ‘Shoredification’ of London is a case in point). Eventually however they, along with the locals, find themselves moving further and further to find more affordable frontiers (..Peckham, New Cross, Croydon… Berlin!) as the hipsters move in.
Theaster doesn’t view gentrification per se as problematic. He is more concerned that artists, and people that live in those neighbourhoods already, should have agency and benefit from it directly.
From what I gather, Theaster doesn’t view gentrification per se as problematic. He is more concerned that artists, and people that live in those neighbourhoods already, should have agency and benefit from it directly. His is a model of artist-led and artist-driven resurrection of urban spaces. Here the artist avoids becoming victim of displacement and instead has agency and a conscious long-term goal in the process of transformation. Gates’ format is expanding to other cities in the U.S., and is set to arrive on these shores by way of Bristol, in his first major public piece outside of the US.
The Archive House (before and after) is the genesis of Gates’ Dorchester Projects, which has, since Gates began acquiring buildings, evolved into an artist-activated ecology of formerly abandoned buildings. In his reconstructions Gates inserts used materials with a local history (such as wooden floorboards from a closed down factory or bowling alley) into the buildings, the transformed interiors of which house donated/reclaimed archive collections, gallery space, cinema, soul food kitchen, as well as artist studios… This process of inserting intentionality into the poetics and materiality of space has been described as ‘active place-making’.
Gates has his critics, who take issue with his socially engaged art practice, calling it 'conart', because it relies on wealthy collectors who wish to buy their way out of urban guilt. Theaster’s concept plays into their desire to own unique art, and simultaneously help those less fortunate. He's been described as a “Chicago institution”, a one man gentrification project deeply entrenched in the intellectual elite of Chicago (he is Director of Art and Public Life at the University of Chicago), and with the kind of network that sees the Mayor of Chicago as his most reliable patron.
Regardless of what you make of Theaster, whether you like or loath his work, one thing is clear; his social and spatial practice challenges us to think actively and creatively, and not necessarily in protest (or at least not overtly so), about the gestures and interventions we can make to impact the spaces we inhabit. These need not be grand gestures; on the contrary his work invokes the idea that we as city dwellers, as city-zens, can draw on our everyday practice of “making do”, as an art form - the “art of doing” and doing well - to claim responsibility for what’s outside our door and to transform our spaces.
I am curious about the potential of Gates’ practice in the African context. Can his philosophy translate to this part of the world…? The problems of post-industrial cities of the North aren't always the same as those in the global South. I might also add that the principle of always finding use for what seems discarded or broken, and for making do, both central metaphors in Gates' practice, is a way of life for many Africans, and they have something to teach about other forms of making, other modes of thinking, other modes of doing, as they are innovating in real time and inhabit cultures exploring things in the material that we wouldn't believe.
Theaster Gates’ ideology is work in progress, but nevertheless its one to be observed and potentially harnessed, globally, as a model for artist-inspired change in under-resourced urban neighbourhoods. How might it play out in places like Nairobi, Accra or Luanda – some of the fastest growing urban centres on the globe? What, if anything, can be leveraged from Gates’ philosophy as we work to alleviate issues of urban decay in rapidly growing African cities?
It’s true to say that urban decay does not necessarily mean the same thing in Lagos as it does in Chicago; it may manifest differently. But we can draw some parallels. In Ikorodu, a Lagos neighbourhood undergoing rapid economic and urban expansion, I see decay manifested in the physical neglect of the pre-colonial lineage compounds found in the old town and known locally as Atewo. These structures are deeply embedded in the rich cultural traditions of the area. Yes the context and urban history is different, this neighbourhood isn’t suffering the effects of a failed housing market or abandoned buildings, neither does Ikorodu share the same racial politics and relationship with capitalism that has for a long time entangled Chicago. But nevertheless both neighbourhoods bare witness to the challenges of blight.
Private developers on the continent are already taking the lead in up-valuing property in neglected neighbourhoods, as the Maboneng project led by Propertuity in Johannesburg - and soon to be Accra - illustrate. I have not followed the trajectory of these developments, but I imagine profit remains the ultimate goal, with creatives brought in to add gloss on top of construction. This format is not new, it is the global contemporary model, where galleries - and an arts university in the case of the massive Kings Cross transformation project in London - are the trophy acquisitions of construction, adding the stamp of creativity deemed so important, and bringing 'gritty real life' to an area that might otherwise have been filled with suits. Is this an opportunity or a cause for anxiety? It’s a question worth asking, as our cities begin to loose their distinctiveness in the hands of unimaginative developers.
I draw wider connections, although these remain questions: on issues of memorialising and modes of working with cultural memory in public urban spaces, what are the possibilities in art? How might art provide alternative solutions that might be productive to culture and the transformation of urban spaces?
In a recent symposium in London exploring memory and futurity constructed around the city, Naomi Roux considers memory, memorialisation and urban transformation in Port Elizabeth, South Africa (SA). She argues that existing regimes, where a formalised space (typically a museum or monument) is set aside for the containment of memory, and as the vehicle for transforming a space in a material and economic sense – this canon she explains, is sometimes contentious, as the Red Location Museum project in Port Elizabeth would appear to illustrate. The modern and imposing structure, built by award winning SA architects Noero Wolf, stands like a beacon in the centre of the Red Location township, a glaring contrast to the destitute and shanty corrugated iron structures that surround it. The museum was conceived to house the memory of the liberation struggle, a history that has a prominent association with the township. Yet the project raises some interesting questions about what it is we choose to remember, and how. These questions are especially salient in a contemporary context where people, especially the young, feel disconnected from a history that they consider to be far removed from their immediate struggles, a history whose pain they’d rather forget because it is at odds with their contemporary aspirations.
The Red Location Museum of Struggle (by SA architects Noero Wolf) seen in the distance and located in the middle of the Red Location Township. (Source: Image by Dave Southwood)
When these issues of memorialisation, of heterogeneous cultures, and urban blight converge, as they do in the above example, in the Afro-Brazilian structures of Lagos, and in the lesser known Atewo buildings of Ikorodu, I am curious about how artistic intervention might partner with other creatives, and agents of the built environment, agents of philanthropy, to act in tandem for a different kind of re-investment in urban spaces; to question what we designate as memorial space and how its marked; to reconstruct and reuse existing structures, existing archives of memory in the city in a conflation of the historical, social, and cultural. The character of our cities is indelibly bound up in the fabric of its streets and buildings, and we need to engage in conversation about whether this is heritage worth fighting for.
It is for this reason I am interested in Theaster’s work - it sparks a conversation about these very important themes. Through his work, Theaster is showing something of his world, which I’ve come to recognize in mine, be that in SE London or Ikorodu, Lagos. This isn’t to suggest that Theaster’s model is the answer to the (myriad) African contexts, it may not be, but certainly it is a provocation to think with and about the work, which extends beyond an art object into the social world. Regardless of what Theaster is doing though, these are conversations that need to be taking place on the continent. Perhaps the confluence and conversations I describe are already taking place on the continent, and resulting in new site specific occurrences as we speak… I’d love to hear about them.
Theaster Gates’ installation, Martyr Construction, is showing at the 56th Venice Biennale until November 22, 2015, in the Art Biennale’s Central Pavilion ARENA.
[Available in PDF here]
Bio
Aminat Lawal Agoro is an independent researcher interested in African and African Diasporic themes. She is co-founder at Ka‘ssa [www.ka-ssa.city] - a London based platform that engages a range of ideas to do with urbanisation in Africa and across the globe. Find out more at www.ka-ssa.city and ping her an email at [email protected].