Space Practices and Politics
serial of lectures, talks and events
September – December 2009, Ljubljana
The aim of the events under the title Space Practices and Politics is to present current researches and projects which cross the realm of art, architecture and urbanism and deal with diverse pressing issues of the contemporary urban environment. The program lays particular attention to critical analysis and creative suggestions which enable unusual and poetic uses and visions of contemporary cities; to the relation between city and nature, between art/culture and city planning/development; possibilities of reviving the public domain, re-claiming and re-thinking our spaces and empowering our decisions and actions within the city; critical rethinking of the notion of participation in art, architecture and urban planning; and to the possibilities of temporary uses of spaces and objects.
Wednesday 2nd December 2009, 7 p. m., Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana
Presentation by Helen Stratford: Not Building – Cambourne 2009
Helen Stratford will present her research on Cambourne, a new ‘village’ close to Cambridge, UK. While presented as a traditional English organically grown ‘village’, the development of Cambourne has been designed through a masterplanning process whereby elements of village life have been translated into measured environment. Helen Stratford’s research made visible the practices that produce and maintain the public spaces in that ‘village’. At the same time she has been intervening in these spaces to challenge centralised and fixed ideas surrounding public space and to propose other possibilities. In relation to her research she will discuss more general concerns about architecture and public space; exploring what is at stake for architecture and public space when they are rethought through the daily practices and processes that maintain them; proposing how they might be re-activated, misused or re-used through productive disruptions that allow for re-appropriation and re-invention.
Helen Stratford will present also artist book Mechanical Operations in Cambourne which she realized at the end of her research together with Lawrence Bradby.
Helen Stratford is an artist, architect and critical writer based in Cambridgeshire (UK). She has been involved in organising and participating in works and projects that facilitate creative ways of thinking about, working in and creating public spaces.
Presentation by Till Krause: Hamburg mapping project – Some examples of how maps can reflect and create reality through imagination
Since the beginning of the 1990s the work of the Hamburg based Galerie für Landschaftskunst (GLFK) has worked around the question of how we perceive space, city, landscape and nature. In his presentation, Till Krause will present some of the GLFK Hamburg mapping/cartography projects in which they develop new perceptions of places and metamorphose them through imagination. Through GLFK exceptionally endeavor the Hamburg mapping/cartography projects in a variety of formats bring mulifaceted observations and artistic interpretations of landscape/urban spaces and different phenomena connected to them. In doing so, they provide sources for alternative visions of the city.
Till Krause co-founded Museums Ferner Gegenden in 1993 and in 1996 Galerie für Landschaftskunst, both in Hamburg. As an artist he relates to the environmental art legacy and develops, among other, artistic investigative project and maps.
