Category: Public Space

Mapping labour : Participatory practices as mode of inquiry in reconfiguring work

TRADERS hosts its second International Autumn School in Genk from the 10th – 13th of November 2015. This AS will explore the role of participatory art and design in the reconfiguration of labor in the post-fordist era. The workgroup in Performative Mapping will discuss art and design practices as potentially interesting modes of inquiry, analysis and debate – ones that are more interested in the underlying and hidden data, than data derived from sterile inquiries in which a rational response is given. We will do this by sharing our own practices in participatory and performative mapping and related socio-spatial approaches, and apply it to the context of Genk.

Brief of this working table:

Immaterial, affective and intellectual labor are increasingly important for producing value in the post-Fordist system (Lazzarato, 1996; Hardt and Negri, 2000). As example many of today’s workers are expected to constantly improve their technological knowledge, they are judged on their affective qualities, and new forms of unpaid labor and practices that produce diverse forms of knowledge are valued. Because of the geographically diffused and temporally fluid nature of these kinds of labor, cartographic practices are needed to politically put them on the map; recognising the significant role that they can play in the overall economy.

The participants of this workgroup are invited to share their own participatory practices or ones that they are particularly interested in. We will discuss their value for data collection and visualisation as a mode of inquiry that allows for a ‘thick description’ and we will look at the role that visual/other forms of representations can play in putting new forms of labor on the map.

The full progamme for this AS can be viewed here: http://tr-aders.eu/…/uploads/2015/10/TRADERS_AS_PROGRAM1.pdf

Routes through the Roots

Routes (through the) Roots

Wanhua, Taipei (Taiwan)

 

Wanhua is the oldest district of Taipei. It was first built and purposed as a trading area in service of the port district of Tansui. Wanhua is the root(s) of Taipei. In the last years, the population of the district has been in decline. Businesses have been closing and the ones that still remain have seen their profits decrease.

 

Taipei has seen a process of rapid urbanization in the last 50 years. Since the 90’s there has been a special effort in the urban regeneration of Wanhua (Bangka). The focus has been on infrastructure, historical preservation and artistic and educational activities. “These programs have sparked conflicts and debates about the interpretation of the history and the images used to represent it”[1].

 

There are few organizations working in boosting the development of Wanhua from within. Homeless Taiwan is one of them. They train homeless people to become “tour guides” in the area. They organize tours called Hidden Taiwan. Another organization is The Urbanists Collaborative. They have an “open office” in the Bopilao block where they openly discuss with citizens about the development of the area. They also organize walks around the district to share its historical and cultural value. The two organizations share a practice, though with different goals.

 

Walking the city is a way to appropriate it and build a sense of belonging to the place. But walking through a route (tour) is an ephemeral action. It is also important to have something that leaves a longer-lasting memory of the place (souvenir).

 

We organized a first tour around the neighbourhood (September 4, 2015). At the beginning of the tour the participants received a passport (small journal). Throughout the route, had their passport stamped in the different posts. The passport has a space for participants to write their own ideas. It combines general history with personal stories.

 

By walking the neighbourhood and identifying its cultural and historical value, people build a sense of belonging to it and reinforce its identity. This is strengthened by the physicality of the souvenir, which has the traces of the places they visit in the form of a stamp and their notes. By doing this we connect different organizations that share similar practices and make them visible.

 

[1] HUANG, Liling. The Uneasy Partnership and Contested Meanings of Urban Form: Examining the Policies of Urban Regeneration in Bangka, Taipei. In Globalization and New Intra-Urban Dynamics in Asian Cities. National Taiwan University Press, 2014.

The City as Interface : how social networking services remediate the city

Where in the city do people hang out? What groups do they form? What do they talk about? Today, as we spend most or our time ‘online’ (and when in public space only half present) finding an answer to those questions involves the study of social networking services.

Naomi Bueno de Mesquita participated in a two week summer school of Digital Methods Initiative in July 2014. DMI is a collaboration initiated in 2007 between the New Media TEMLab, University of Amsterdam and the Govcom.org Foundation Amsterdam and aims at reworking methods for Internet research. DMI seeks to learn from the methods built into devices online, by subtracting the data (links, tags, threads, etc) and repurposing them for social and cultural research. The theme for this summer school was ‘on geolocation’ and the focal point was to analyse events as they unfold, by subtracting geo-located embedded data. Naomi participated in the group project The City as Interface (lead by Martijn de Waal). In this research she investigated the kind of Amsterdam that the social networking services Foursquare, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, Meetup and Geocaching, present and if different parochial (communities) and public domains (individuals) could be identified by looking at the places that are put forward by these platforms.

The data for this study was produced and published by Amsterdam based users, and subtracted from the networking services Twitter, Meetup, Pinterest and Geocaching. Through applying digital methods, the geo-located embedded links, tags, threads and pin-boards were mapped, demonstrating the places in the city where the different virtual communities talk about or ‘hang out’. For the Twitter dataset the keyword ‘Amsterdam’ was retrieved over a ten-day period (June 13th-22nd 2014). As for the datasets of Pinterest, the term ‘Amsterdam’ was searched for in ‘place’ boards. The dataset of Meetup gave 489 events over a four-month period in this city. And for Geocaching all the existing caches (718, of which 39 temporarily inactive) placed in Amsterdam were collected. As for the localisation of the communities of these social networking services, the map reveals that Twitter, Meetup and Pinterest are located in or around the city centre; Pinterest clearly represents the boutique view of Amsterdam (outlining the nine-streets, Haarlemmerdijk and Haarlemmerstraat), while the virtually constructed communities of Meetup consist of people with a common interest (for instance in technology, fitness or fine arts) who temporarily gather in bars (with a high concentration around the square of Nieuwmarkt). Of these four (social) networking services, only the users of Geocaching are likely to engage with places that are harder to get to, e.g. the city’s periphery. Geocaching is therefore the most widely spread community (of the ones that we studied) in Amsterdam in terms of physical range.

This research was further presented in a paper (publication forthcoming) that Naomi wrote together with Saba Golchehr, for the conference Design Social Media and Technology to Foster Civic Engagement (University of Hasselt). In the paper they introduce the study of social media data as a valuable resource for designers and researchers who work in (the context of) public space.

I’d be interested to find out if there are other examples of designers that make use of social networking services to recognise local communities and what the further potentials and limitations are of this approach.

Between Realities : Collective mapping of public space

Within​ ​the context of the theatricalisation of every day life, public space can be observed and studied as scenography. The multiplication of staged and imagined realities can be most intensely felt in urban public space where layers of tourism, entertainment, consumption,​ ​art, work, leisure, history, policies, and politics come together. It is precisely here where we can see how people live between realities and how they cope with its complexity.

The Dutch project Between Realities for the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space 2015, distinguishes​ ​between five different coping strategies: sheltering, fleeing, fighting, negotiating, surrendering. Each of these strategies/practices entails a particular attitude towards reality. Either a movement away from reality (hide or shelter), an engagement with​ ​reality (fight or negotiate) or a plunge in reality (surrender). For the SPACE exhibition at the Quadrennial (June 2015) the project Between Realities; collective mapping of public space (the Dutch entry of the SAPCE exhibition) consisted of a series of mapping sessions to visualise, negotiate and reflect upon imaginative coping strategies in public space, designed by Naomi Bueno de Mesquita. The exploration took place in Prague from 18th until 26th of June 2015 and was presented to the public on the 27th of June at the Clam Gallas Palace lecture hall together with Sigrid Merx (curator).

The research consisted of mapping sessions for which the participants of the Quadrennial could subscribe and for which they used a mobile phone app. Through this approach I wanted to make visible what imaginative coping strategies can be found in the public spaces of Prague 1 and to introduce the scenographers to a novel way of studying/ engaging with public space and its potentials. Observing a square from this perspective (where public space is presented as a work of scenography) allowed the scenographers to take a closer look at behaviours in relation to the spatial qualities of the square. This is a novel approach for their discipline, opening possibilities for scenographers to work in/with public space. In exchange it allowed me to closely work with scenographers and to explore how my research approach and tools could be potentially interesting entries for the field of scenography. I’d be interested to find out in what other context this mapping could be applied.

More about this two weeks research can be viewed here:

http://performativemapping.com/between-realities-collective-mapping-of-public-space-pq2015/

and

http://performativemapping.com/between-realities-dutch-entry-for-the-prague-quadrennial-of-performance-design-and-space-2015/

The Other Market

The Other Market is a platform, materialized in a meshwork of pushcarts and stalls, to trade products and services without money, using dialogue as a currency.

https://theothermarket.wordpress.com

The sociologist Manuel Castells, in the documentary from VPRo Time For Change, states how people accept capitalism, not because they agree with it, but because it is the only system they know. A market, one of the most inclusive spaces, seems like a perfect context to hint people with different alternatives, evident in the market itself, the products and services, and the way these are traded.

These interventions stage up events that unveil the true aim of the project: foster public dialogue about relevant issues. The objects, the cart, the actions, serve as an excuse, a platform, to engage ordinary people in public dialogues and amplify their voices through different media. The interventions also play with the ambiguity of the law and informality, for they imply trading things on the street (illegal), yet with no money involved (legal).

This project is a long term experiment around value, and finding ways of building new type of value that does not rely on traditional economics nor a monetary system. It does not attempt to fix the system, nor build a new one, but expose the flaws of the existing one, as well as hinting alternatives. In words of Tony Fry, we envision the formation of a critical mass of sufficient agency to make a major difference.