RECLAIMING SPACES: events

Title: ÜberLeben in den »Creative Industries«
Location: Prater der Volksbühne, Kastanienallee 7-9, 10435 Berlin
Link out: Click here
Description: Zwischen Lust und Last des Informellen - Internationale Konferenz von Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung und »Helle Panke e.V.«

Die »Creative Industries« gelten als Schlüssel für die Metropolenentwicklung im 21. Jahrhundert. Stadtregierungen wie in Berlin rücken sie ins Zentrum von Image- und Standortpolitik.

Bei den Debatten steht vor allem der Nutzen für Wirtschaft und Stadtentwicklung im Vordergrund - selten werden die gewandelten Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen der Kreativen in den Blick genommen. Sie sollen auf dem Kongress zum Thema werden. Die digitale Revolution der Produktions- und Distributionsmittel, die Kämpfe um intellektuelle Eigentums- und Verwertungsrechte, flexiblere Unternehmensstrukturen und Arbeitsverhältnisse, die Projektform der Arbeit und die Privatisierung von Kultureinrichtungen haben Arbeits- und Lebensweisen wie Subjektivitäten verändert. Einer schier unübersichtlichen Zahl von Betätigungschancen steht eine enorme Konkurrenz um Jobs und Aufträge gegenüber, den gewachsenen Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten ein Druck zur Konformität des Marktes, einer freieren Selbstbestimmung die Selbstausbeutung in informellen und entgrenzten Arbeitsverhältnissen bei unsicheren Einkommen.

Kommerzialisierung und Gentrifizierung verdrängen das Kreative der Creative Cities, Widerständiges und Unangepasstes wird umgeformt und integriert. Doch die Stadt, die Arbeit, das Leben bleiben umkämpft. Das Überleben in den Creative Industries soll von unterschiedlichen Seiten und mit unterschiedlichen Formen gedeutet werden: Wissenschaftiche Analyse trifft auf zugespitzte publizistische Meinung und literarische, filmische und darstellende künstlerische Form.

Programm

Fr., 13. November: (Über)Leben, Arbeiten, Verwerten

15 Uhr: Be creative – das neue Prekariat
Angela McRobbie (Goldsmiths University of London)
Begrüßung und Moderation: Mario Candeias (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung)

16 Uhr: Creative what…?

• Jamie Peck (University of British Columbia Vancouver): »Struggling with the Creative Class«
• Alexandra Manske, (Humboldt Universität Berlin): »Prekäre Freiheiten«
• Jochen Becker (MetroZones): »SpaceTroubles«
• Moderation: Anne Steckner (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung)

18 Uhr: Kaltes Buffet

19 Uhr: Do and Undo
Tanzperformance von Baktruppen (Norwegen)

20:30 bis 22 Uhr: Streit am Abend
Zwischen den digitalen Fronten - mehr Geld, mehr Freiheit oder alles für alle?
Benni Bärmann (Keimform.de), Wolfgang Schimmel (Verdi), Matthias Spielkamp (iRights.info)
Moderation: Sabine Nuss (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung)

22 bis 24 Uhr: Creative Spaces im Foyer und auf der Bühne

• Döndü Kilic führt die Filmindustrie vor
• Captain Nofuture interveniert in den prekären Alltag
• Lorenzo Tripodi/Ogino:Knauss erkundet die globale Stadt
• Hito Steyerl spricht Spamsoc
• Sender Freies Neukölln dreht am Gentrifizierungs-Set durch

Sa., 14. November: Unterwandern, Widerstehen, Organisieren

13 Uhr: Rebellion for profit - wird Abweichung zur Norm?
Silke van Dyk (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena).
Begrüßung und Moderation: Mario Candeias (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung)

14 bis 16 Uhr: »Solidarität ist Selbstmord«? – Kooperation statt Konkurrenz.
Kathlen Eggerling (Connex.av), Eva Kiltz (VUT - Verband Unabhängiger Musikunternehmen), Catherine McKercher (Carleton University Ottawa).
Moderation: Johanna Maiwald (Die Linke)

16 bis 18 Uhr: Creative Spaces im Foyer und auf der Bühne

• Raul Zelik klärt die »Berliner Verhältnisse«
• Tim Stüttgen & Thomas Mahmoud geräuschen und texten zum geschundenen Arbeitskörper
• Karsten Krampitz geht dichtend heim
• Rosa Perutz bilden antinationale Künstler_innenbanden
• 9to5 kämpfen vernetzt

18 Uhr: Du hast die Wahl: Gulasch oder Gemüsepfanne

19 bis 20:30 Uhr: Creating City – privat, staatlich, öffentlich?
Jaap Draaisma (Broedplaatsen Amsterdam), Klaus Lederer (Die Linke Berlin), Ingo Bader (Technische Universität Berlin)
Moderation: Margit Mayer (Freie Universität Berlin)

21 Uhr: Ofrin Acoustronic Duo (Haifa/Berlin, Electro-NuJazz-Konzert)

22 Uhr: Bolschewistische Kurkapelle Schwarz-Rot (Abschlusskonzert)

ab 0 Uhr: Party

Start Date: 2009-11-13
Start Time: 19:00
End Date: 2009-11-14
End Time: 23:00

Posted on October 22nd, 2009 under Uncategorized, conferences & meetings. Comments: None

Title: Architecture & the City in the Financial Crises
Location: Bauhaus Dessau / Berlin
Link out: Click here
Description: International Conference on the influence the crisis has on architecture and urbanism. Explorind the close interdependence of financial markets and the building sector and the influence of them on the spatial design and social structures of the city.

The real estate and financial crisis is confronting the disciplines architecture and urbanism with the consequences of the close interdependence of financial markets and the building sector. In the 1990s these spatial design disciplines as well as many others were enticed by the triumph of neo-liberalism to step back from their responsibility for a sustainable spatial development in favor of the short-term profit of private investment firms. Still in the turn of the century the international URBAN 21 report had proclaimed in the mainstream of both disciplines the common goal to privatize municipal services, to offensively attract global financial capital and to predominantly follow global locational competitiveness.
The eruption of the financial capital now results in long-term distortions in socio-economic conditions, spatial patterns of regions and urban structures of utilization. After the mortgage crisis in the US vacant houses have started to announce the decline of entire residential streets and neighborhoods. In many cities camping sites have popped up, to which previous owners of housing property are taking refuge after thousands of foreclosures: They are no longer able to amortize the mortgage, that exceeds the value of their property. The living concept of suburbia is in question.
The financial crisis leads to far-reaching changes in the architectural practice and its urban fields of activity. Architectural firms around the world respond to the decreased demand with job cuts and closings of branches. Prestigious construction projects in previously booming cities like Dubai or Las Vegas are cancelled or scaled down. In the burst of the real estate bubble the building industry is suffering from drastic personnel and financial cuts. In addition massive geographic dislocations take place: Do architects and urbanists share the responsibility for the building boom in several world regions prior to the crisis?
Form Follows Finance:  How far do instruments of the financial market influence the direction of architecture and urban development? What is the impact of the financial crises on urban settlements and infrastructures worldwide? What are the long-term implications for the future of architecture and urban design?

Start Date: 2009-11-13
Start Time: 19.00
End Date: 2009-11-14
End Time: 19.00

Posted on October 22nd, 2009 under Uncategorized, conferences & meetings. Tags: crises finance architecture city urban development. Comments: None

Title: WHAT IS THE COMMON?
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Description: In the shadow of the global crisis of capitalism, the common, somehow obliterated in the recent past, has emerged as an indispensable and central notion. The conference addresses this notion both as a real movement and as an already present horizon, a dynamic principle, for societal life. It is a critical topic today, not only because the public, administrated by the state, is reduced to expendable assets for regulating a supposedly self-regulating machine called Market, but more importantly because the emerging forms of the common impose themselves with an unprecedented acuity and in opposition to the doxa of the private property.

The common refers not only to primary resources, such as water or ecological conditions on a planetary level, but it is at the same time a political force that traverses diverse fields of tension such as art and culture, law and gender relations. The question “What is the Common?” is addressed as a real agenda that conditions the thought. The conference is a program that extends over 4 years. Each year will treat two themes. The conference 2009 will welcome papers related to the following two axes:

1. The Common and the Economy
Which are the specific emerging forms of the common today and what defines its relation to the material conditions of production of values in contemporary capitalism? Under this axis, both theoretical discussions and case-specific investigations in areas such as autonomous popular organisations, regional movements or global changes in one specific economic sector are welcome.

2. The Philosophical Understanding of what the Common Is
The common has since Plato’s Republic been a central question for the philosophical thinking. What is the relation or non-relation between the common and the totality of social relations? In which form and based upon what ontological or existential categories does it emerge? What is the difference between the common as the name of a real movement and the nostalgies of the return to a simple life?

Start Date: 2009-10-10
End Date: 2009-10-11

Posted on September 19th, 2009 under Uncategorized. Comments: None

Title: Reclaim the Fields = European Camp To Cultivate Alternatives
Location: Minerve (France)
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Description: The young people of European Coordination of Via Campesina are organizing an European camp to gather people who wish to settle in agriculture, who are young peasants, landless peasants and/or who want to recover food sovereignty.

The growing global crisis on farming, climate, energy, biodiversity and societies has a great impact on billions of people’s lives. This crisis is tightly linked to the replacement of sustainable small-scale farming by industrial and corporate ways of production and consumption. Just as numerous billions have been given to the banks over the last year, the support of governments for neo-liberal policies continue to annihilate small-scale farming and peasantry all over the world. These policies destroy ways of life which have proved to maintain a harmonious link between human beings and their environment. In Europe these driving forces almost bring small-scale farming and peasantry to the point of extinction by making it difficult for settled peasants to survive and for young farmers to settle.

We want to be peasants to regain control over our lives and to put our values into practice. By cultivating we show our involvement in our land, environment and with the people, in our neighbourhood or in a faraway countries, with whom we share life on this little planet. In this way we help to secure a future for generations to come. We can put an end to the devastating process by strengthening the position of young peasants, re localizing the economy and using our creativity to create a vigorous and sustainable European countryside. A future in Europe is only possible if there are many new and young peasants!

There are a lot of struggles that we need to strengthen: for access to land, for fair agricultural prices, for the social recognition of farmers, against the domination of the industrial farming model and for fair agricultural policies. We want to gather to empower ourselves and make it possible for those who want to farm to do so.

The camp is open for young peasants and for those who are interested to become a peasant. You are warmly invited to come to exchange and share your experiences and to get inspired by those of others. There will be a wide variety of practical, political and theoretical workshops on access to land, urban farming, agricultural policies, agro-ecology, consumer-producer-alliances and more issues. You are welcome to contribute to the program with your own workshop: please let us know by filling-up the form on the website and by sending it to us before the 15th of September.

The camp takes place on a collective farm in southern France. It will be organized with the help of all the participants of the camp. A daily assembly will organize the life in the camp, like the collective kitchen, cleaning and announcements on the program. You will be asked for a small contribution for the meals and accommodation.

For further practical information please see the website www.reclaimthefields.org
If you wish to receive more information or get involved, please contact: camp2009@reclaimthefields.org
Date: 2009-09-30

Posted on September 18th, 2009 under Uncategorized. Comments: None

Title: PARK(ing) Day 2009
Link out: Click here
Description: Originally created by Rebar, San Francisco art and design collective, PARK(ing) Day is an annual, one-day, global event where artists, activists, and citizens independently but simultaneously temporarily transform metered parking spots into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public parks.

Anyone can participate in PARK(ing) Day, though it is strictly a non-commercial project, intended to promote creativity, civic engagement, critical thinking, unscripted social interactions, generosity and play.
Date: 2009-09-18

Posted on September 18th, 2009 under Uncategorized. Comments: None

Title: CALL-OUT DAYS OF ACTION 2009 Squat-meet-up
Link out: Click here
Description: This is a call out to people involved in squats and autonomous spaces for 2 days of direct action on the 18th & 19th of September 2009 around housing and the creation of more autonomous spaces at this time of crisis.

As the global economy grinds to a halt so too do the big capital development projects, luxury apartment blocks and shopping complexes that have threatened us with displacement for so long.

Meanwhile, this new round of crisis capitalism leaves thousands out of work, buried in debt and facing immanent home repossession. Instead of housing the homeless in these empties or canceling the debts of millions governments pump billions into the banks to save this rotten system and violently repress those that resist.

As a movement we have been on the back-foot for too long – now its time to start taking things back – to kick capitalism while its down and liberate the land from privatised enclosure; to take housing and create space where we can live outside of monetary exchange, share skills acquired through struggle thus far and reach out beyond our practiced modes of resistance to a proactive attack.

From Dijon to Berlin to the thousands of places where actions took place in defence of squats and autonomous spaces in April 2008 a process has begun, new groups have formed, networks grown, and more people have become involved. As a movement we recognise that power and domination must be contested at multiple sites – this is beauty of our mode of struggle and why we call for decentralised, coordinated and confrontational action on the on the 18th & 19th of September 2009.

ORGANISE YOUR RAGE – OCCUPY, RESIST, CREATE!
Date: 2009-09-19

Posted on September 18th, 2009 under Uncategorized. Comments: None

Title: Altercamp

Location: Liege / Belgium

Description: On October 11th, 2009, an Alternatives Camp will take place in Liege. During a whole day, we will occupy the public place in the city (esplanade St Léonard). This camp will be an occasion for us to gather, exchange on our alternative initiatives and coordinate our mobilisations. The aim is to lay the foundations for another development, breaking with the traditional model, being socially fair and environmentally sustainable.

Date: 2009-10-11

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Posted on September 15th, 2009 under Uncategorized, preparations, exhibitions. Comments: None

Title: The post-capitalist city

Location: PULA, CROATIA

14. – 16. August 2009

Description: The city is the space where the reproduction of social, political and economic forms of life takes place and where these forms of life confront instrumental political power or political diagonal. This reproduction of forms of life represents the central site of exploitation as well as of resistance. Resistance is manifested through production of common values and through cooperation. This complex environment can be the key force behind the making of democracy, justice, common values and free space. Cities can become places of post-capitalism.

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Posted on August 8th, 2009 under Uncategorized, conferences & meetings. Tags: Post-capitalist City. Comments: None

Title: The Right to Stay Put

Location: Manchester / UK

Description: Contesting Displacement in Urban Regeneration

Start Date: 2009-08-26

End Date: 2009-08-28

Preparation:

• First Call for Contributions

Posted on February 7th, 2009 under Uncategorized, conferences & meetings. Tags: gentrfication, housing, Manchester, movements, rights, UK. Comments Off