13-14.11.20108

 

Curators: Jakub Szczepański, Lucyna Nyka

Assistance: Agnieszka Kulazińska

 

Revitalization, that is a process of bringing life back to the districts of the cities, combines most of the human knowledge disciplines, from an ability to solving technical, communication, ecological, medical problems through social studies to the theology or art history.

How to describe the relationship between the culture and the revitalization? The culture regarded as a set of actions including e.g. art., history or monuments preservation may be treated as a tool for cities revitalization. The situation can be reversed and we can claim that the revitalization is an activity on a field of the broadly understood culture. While revitalizing, we revive districts of the cities which can be defined as a kind of a culture product.

In our conference we would like to exchange experiences about both of these points of view and both actions: application of the culture for the revitalization as well as revitalization as a product of the contemporary culture.

Jakub Szczepański

13 November
9.00 a.m – 9.30 am Register of participants

9.30 a.m – 1.00 p.m
Jadwiga Charzyńska
Maciej Brosz
J. Krzysztof Lenartowicz
Leo van Loon

Jadwiga Charzyńska
The Outdoor Gallery of the City of Gdansk

The Outdoor Gallery of the City of Gdansk is a long-term project aiming to create a permanent collection of works of art in urban space as well as at social (simultaneously our gallery develops a wide educational programme) architectonic transformation of the neglected Lower City district. The project is a mile stone in the long-term process of revitalization and changing the character of the district where Laznia CCA is situated.  The works assigned for realization are chosen by international jury in regularly announced, closed competitions. So far, two editions of the competition took place: the first in 2005 and the second in 2007. The third edition will be held in 2009.

Maciej Brosz
Activity of CCA LAZNIA in the perception of Lower Town`s inhabitants?
The Results of Sociology Students` analyses

J. Krzysztof Lenartowicz
Participation, Culture, Revitalisation

A lot has been said about revitalisation, culture and their mutual inter-relations. Both terms have become well embedded in EU countries and in EU official language. Many projects have been commissioned and performed, many conferences have been organised, many papers have been published. Krzysztof Lenartowicz in his presentation is going to present a draft of relations between culture and revitalisation from the perspective of his thesis on the role of social participation – participation which is a necessary factor for building a civic society, and on the other hand a factor which may refresh ways of carrying out revitalisation. Well perceived revitalisation is not only about hardware projects – restoration of buildings and infrastructure (roads, squares, sewage systems, etc.) – but also (or maybe mainly?) about software projects – rebuilding or sometimes building from scratch healthy relations in local communities. In Poland the participation would be a medium carrying new culture of relations between social life and civic culture and also new culture in managing revitalisation processes.

The idea of social communication which is expressed in participation in the planning and design process has been promoted worldwide for at least forty years. It is now more widely understood and accepted although the planning process is still dominated by so-called instrumental rationalism. In Poland, where civic society is making its very first steps, this issue is very clearly visible.

Leo van Loon
Creative Factory, Rotterdam

 

Creative Factory was opened on 15th May. It is located in the former grain silos in the southern part of Rotterdam. The renovation and adaptation of the building to its new purpose was financed by the city of Rotterdam. Factory inauguration was part of a project called Kansenzones (zones of possibilities) – a programme of revitalisation of neglected parts of Rotterdam from the initiative of Dutch politicians and local government. The main activities under the programme aim to provide a good environment for investors.

Creative Factory is consisted of many spaces for artistic businesses – for offices, design workshops, recording studios, which are available for new businesses and for established companies. Creative Factory is also a space for meetings, conferences and shows.

Companies and designers working in the building make up a specific business network, complementing one another. The offer covers comprehensive services, such as architectonic design, interior design, logotype design and corporate clothes.

Media, fashion, design, music and services for business are the main areas operating in the Creative Factory. Leo van Loon will present the concept of the Creative Factory – giving a holistic perspective on this meeting place for different worlds and not just the concept of how to fill square metres with renters

4.00 p.m – 6.00 p.m

Adam Jeanes
Ludwika Ogorzelec
Adam Jeanes

Art Doesn’t Change the World, but Helps the World to Imagine Change: (Revitalisation of Cities through Contemporary Culture)

Adam Jeanes is a project manager within a wide variety of international cultural fields. His main interests are activities in public space, in often unconventional places. Since 2006 he has been managing the Black/North SEAS Platform project funded by the European Union, stimulating co-operation of artists representing different areas and all coming from the Black Sea and North Sea regions. The works developed under the project are presented in harbour cities, in coastal areas. The events are organised in co-operation with local partners and local governments. Since 2003 the SEAS platform project has visited over 20 places, including Gdańsk (in 2004). More information at www.seas.se.

The title of Adam Jeanes’ presentation, `Art Doesn’t Change the World, but Helps the World to Imagine Change`, is also his personal motto. Art, artists with their intuition, attitude and activities may redefine and change familiar places. They may also interpret them in a new way which is often surprising to the local community, local leaders and government. The typical artists’ attitude is of existential nature starting from creativity and vision rather than observation and empiricism. SEAS uses a method called `dating`, which is about using the creative potential of art to work with an existing place which has become a direct inspiration for the artist.

Ludwika Ogorzelec

She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw (Leon Podsiadlo’s Academy Studio) and L'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (César’s Academy Studio). She has presented her works at many individual and collective exhibitions in Sweden, USA, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Costa Rica and Poland. She has won many prestigious awards, including Prix du Conseil National, a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and her works are in many collections all over the world (the Art Museum in Lodz; Mamidakis Foundation in Greece; Memorial Park, Louisville, Kentucky, USA; Slogo island, Lisekil in Sweden; and also in private collections in France, Germany, USA, Italy and Spain). She lives and works in France.

Ludwika Ogorzelec creates monumental installations `in situ` entitled Space Crystallisation, composed of inter-crossing lines. She uses wood, metal and glass. Her works derive often from the local context, place and culture. They cross architectonic barriers, making their way through the walls.

The artist’s ambition is that her compositions have an impact on human beings, and as she says, she wants to walk people from their everyday live, undress them from rigid stereotypes and offer a very special experience – similar to experiencing a holiday.

14 November
10.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m

Halina Taborska
Elena Tsvetaeva
Jakub Szczepański
Lidia Makowska

Halina Taborska
Artistic Value in Revitalisation Processes of the European Metropolitan Cities

The place and role of artistic culture in revitalisation processes is discussed through the presentation of major European projects at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries – three cultural centres in Paris, London and Vienna, two art and science villages in Paris and Valencia, and the cultural district Temple Bar in Dublin. The objective of the presentation is to highlight so-called `hardware revitalisation` – making permanent architectural and urban structures as the foundation for diverse artistic cultural programmes and also providing a constant flow of millions of tourists and local visitors.

Elena Tsvetaeva
National Centre for Contemporary Arts branch in Kaliningrad

The National Centre for Contemporary Art in Russia was established at the beginning of 1990, and its Kaliningrad branch opened in 1997. Contemporary art is the main focus of this institution.

The Gallery has its office in the centre of the city, but from the revitalisation perspective, its future facility is much more interesting – a 19th century tower which remained from the German city fortifications, with all the activities around it.

The building, requiring huge construction and conservation efforts, was taken over in 2003. The reconstruction and conservation works are in progress. The artistic activities have already been initiated, aiming mainly at involving the local community and local artists in the building’s revitalisation programme.

Many projects have already been performed (including open international competitions), which helped to analyse the place from many perspectives. The projects began the actual revitalisation of the building, helped through art to update its context, return it to the local community and make it visible in the European environment.

2.00 p.m– 5.00 p.m.
Jeremi T. Królikowski
Piotr Winskowski
Lucyna Nyka

Jeremi T. Królikowski

The culture of space is a result of a value hierarchy by which humans have been transforming and protecting their environment; it is expressed by signs made in space and it refers to such values as care for other human beings, solidarity, the sacred, admiration for beauty, and respect for heritage. The text describes the cultural sources of urban space and its practice in the examples of Lublin, Belchatow and Warsaw. The role of space culture is to solve existing or possible threats and conflicts in the city through dialogue in a variety of forms.

Piotr Winskowski
Examples of Revitalisation as the work of Post-Art?

Following the concept of Stefan Morawski – who over twenty years ago diagnosed the evolution of artistic creation in the second half of the 20th century as entering the post-art stage1 – it is worthwhile to look from this perspective at contemporary revitalisation activities and at buildings, open spaces, i.e. creations, to understand what are the effects of revitalisation. Putting the focus on historical and critical and not on philosophical and theoretical aspects of the problem helps to show ideological complexity, formal heterogeneity, disproportion of origins and the present status of the artistic and functional quality of such specific places. The discussed examples of projects and their realisation are about revitalisation: (a) which overcomes the ideological one-sidedness of communist Poland, and (b) which transforms artistic values of abandoned buildings and industrial sites into `reflection potential` for uniquely developed post-industrial style.

1 Compare: Stefan Morawski „Na zakręcie od sztuki do po-sztuki”, Wydawnictwo literackie, Kraków 1985