{"id":5732,"date":"2022-07-01T11:16:12","date_gmt":"2022-07-01T09:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/?p=5732"},"modified":"2024-12-19T16:03:17","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T14:03:17","slug":"who-owns-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/blogje-tematike\/who-owns-the-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Owns the City?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"news-up\">\n<p>Reclaiming public space in Palermo, Marseille and Prishtina<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"news-down\">\n<div class=\"img-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"news-down\">\n<div class=\"news-left\">\n<p>Life today seems increasingly unpredictable and the current media discourse shows a future threatened by polarisation, climate chaos, rising economic inequality and the impact of the pandemic and the Ukrainian- Russian war. I am writing this essay at a crucial time, for Manifesta, the European nomadic biennial and for our next host city Prishtina, the capital of Kosovo, one of Europe\u2019s youngest sovereign countries. Why is this moment so essential for Manifesta and Prishtina? At present, the Ukrainian-Russian war marks an exceptional geopolitical moment in Europe, as we experience another cruel war on our continent. Putin\u2019s invasion has been condemned globally as the worst violence in Europe since the Second world war. However, we must realise that similar atrocities were committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina thirty years ago, unleashing carnage in Sarajevo, amongst other places. Only twenty-three years ago, NATO intervened in Serbia to put an end to the atrocities in Kosovo. This present moment could not be more crucial in terms of re-imagining the stories of the past that are twined into the future of the Balkans to regain meaning and a sense of the now.<\/p>\n<p>Around the globe, citizens and public administrations are trapped in a shattering experience, as the world becomes increasingly fragmented due to the destruction of the ecologies and social bonds that have enabled humans, to thrive on this planet. However, recent protest movements resist the bewildering condition and discontent with the destruction of nature, culture and everything in-between. From the global\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/rebellion.global\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Extinction Rebellion<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blacklivesmatter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Black Lives Matter<\/a>\u00a0protests to the French Yellow Vest movement, a sense of discontent and fear is voiced by citizens. People are critical of the unsustainable growth-and-debt economy and reviving demand for cooperation and shared autonomy. These struggles for equality and direct democracy bring with them the historical perspective that was claimed to have disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and which coincided with the inception of Manifesta.<\/p>\n<p>These new activist movements raise my hopes enormously. In this essay, I would like to investigate how they have influenced Manifesta in our past editions as well as in our upcoming edition in Prishtina. Manifesta has always been socially engaged, producing experimental artistic programmes and public events. Born in 1996 in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/m1.manifesta.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rotterdam,<\/a>\u00a0just after the end of the Cold War that divided the European continent, Manifesta originated from an initiative exploring the histories of contemporary culture in post-communist Europe. Subsequent editions followed in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/m2.manifesta.org\/e\/manifest.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Luxembourg<\/a>\u00a0(1998);\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/m3.manifesta.org\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ljubljana<\/a>\u00a0(2000);\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/m4.manifesta.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Frankfurt<\/a>\u00a0(2002);\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/m5.manifesta.org\/eng\/manifesta\/manifesta5ensansebastian.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Donostia-San Sebastian<\/a>\u00a0(2004);\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/manifesta.org\/manifesta-6\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nicosia<\/a>\u00a0(2006);\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.manifesta7.it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trentino and South Tyrol<\/a>\u00a0(2008);\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/arpa.carm.es\/manifesta\/manifesta8.home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Murcia and Cartagena<\/a>\u00a0(2010);\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/m9.manifesta.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Genk<\/a>\u00a0(2012);\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/manifesta10.org\/en\/home\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">St. Petersburg<\/a>\u00a0(2014);\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/m11.manifesta.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Zu\u0308rich<\/a>\u00a0(2016);\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/m12.manifesta.org\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Palermo<\/a>\u00a0(2018),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/manifesta13.org\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marseille<\/a>\u00a0(2020) and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/manifesta14.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Prishtina<\/a>\u00a0(2022), opening this summer.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>From Signals to Substance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nomadic by origin, Manifesta has always adapted itself every two years to new contexts, mapping the geopolitical framework and changing its organisational and artistic models to embed itself into the social and cultural realities of the host cities. Manifesta mobilises local actors, organisations and institutions, investigating and reviving new models of collaboration, co-production, coexistence and cultural policymaking. The recent protests happen in a historically specific moment marked by the new walls that are being built: land walls in the European enclaves in North Africa, Nordic Europe, the Baltic republics and the Balkans; virtual walls, such as biometric border surveillance systems; maritime walls and mental walls, which emerge as a result of rising xenophobia, politics of fear and the increasing securitisation of the European Union<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>During the preparation for Manifesta 10, in St. Petersburg\u2019s State Hermitage Museum in 2014, repression of dissidents and minorities already increased dramatically when Vladimir Putin implemented the infamous gay propaganda\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/report\/2018\/12\/12\/no-support\/russias-gay-propaganda-law-imperils-lgbt-youth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">laws<\/a>. In spring, some months before Manifesta 10 would open, the Ukrainian Revolution caused an unexpected watershed moment and Putin ordered the illegal re-annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine, followed by the unlawful war in Donbass. Amid this escalation of violence, Manifesta\u2019s presence in St. Petersburg was highly discussed regarding the critical autonomy of biennials in general. An international group of artists and curators called for a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/chtodelat.org\/b9-texts-2\/chto-delat-withdraws-from-manifesta-10\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">boycott<\/a>\u00a0of Manifesta 10, which they argued should not take place in an increasingly despotic Russian state. Despite this specific critique, most political activists in St. Petersburg wanted Manifesta to stay, convinced that the biennial would provide a support structure and a critical platform for Russia\u2019s dissident voices and even be a strategy of resistance.<\/p>\n<p>In the midst of this challenging Manifesta 10 edition, Leoluca Orlando, Palermo\u2019s well-known anti-mafia Mayor, and Andrea Cusumano, Palermo\u2019s Councillor of Culture, expressed their wish to host Manifesta in Palermo in 2018 as an incubator of social change. They hoped Manifesta could become a means for Palermo\u2019s citizens to reclaim their city, which was decaying under the violence of criminal and corrupt systems. I was unsure whether Manifesta\u2019s model, as a travelling organisation commissioning site-specific contemporary art, was equipped to handle such an intricate yet moving request. In response to the challenges in St. Petersburg and the invitation to come to Palermo, I pushed for a transformation of Manifesta, turning the organisation from a monodisciplinary, curated series of art exhibitions into an interdisciplinary, knowledge-and-research-producing platform, focusing on local co-creation rather than international audiences. Manifesta 12 worked with a more inclusive, pragmatic and sustainable methodology to transform Manifesta into a platform of actual substance, offering value to the citizens of the city. From signals to substance thus indicates Manifesta\u2019s aspiration to become a meaningful partner to envision a sustainable and more inclusive society for the citizens of our host cities.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Atlases, Puzzles and Commons: Opening European Horizons<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>How did Manifesta actually turn signals into substance? Manifesta can be best described as balancing between an autonomous artistic biennial in which symbolic, real-time interventions and aesthetic expressions are produced towards a multi-actor initiative and producing a civic instrument to stimulate citizens to reclaim their city. With the introduction of a pre-biennial urban study functioning as a blueprint for the curatorial team to better understand the context in Manifesta 12, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli and his team from the Rotterdam-based architecture office\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oma.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">OMA<\/a>\u00a0were commissioned to conduct an interdisciplinary urban mapping of Palermo, resulting in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.humboldtbooks.com\/en\/book\/palermo-atlas-english-ed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Palermo Atlas<\/em><\/a>. The introduction of an urban study had several motivations. It was a direct response to our transformation from an exhibition machine to a urban-focused platform, reacting to a wider discussion of neoliberalism and ownership of cities. It was also a reply to the challenge in Orlando\u2019s invitation, concerning Manifesta 12 as a direct instrument to help the citizens of Palermo to reclaim ownership of their city after 50 years of being occupied by a criminal organisation.<\/p>\n<p>By fusing different specialisations in a multidisciplinary team of creative mediators including journalists, filmmakers, architects and critical theorists and rooting the curatorial effort in holistic urban research, Manifesta 12 tried to extend its impact beyond engaging audiences with contemporary art, to provide Palermo citizens with tools to imagine the future of their city. Thanks to its success, Manifesta 13 presented a study for Marseille, France\u2019s second-largest city:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/manifesta13.org\/pre-biennial-urban-study\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Le Grand Puzzle<\/em><\/a>. The research was commissioned by Manifesta and produced by Winy Maas,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mvrdv.nl\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MVRDV<\/a>\u2019s leading architect, and his team from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thewhyfactory.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Why Factory<\/a>, in collaboration with the National Higher\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marseille.archi.fr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">School of Architecture<\/a>\u00a0of Marseille, the Marseille-Mediterranean\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/esadmm.fr\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">College of Art and Design<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tudelft.nl\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Delft University<\/a>\u00a0of Technology. This study of Marseille aimed to achieve stronger and more intimate ties with often invisible communities and mediate their unheard narratives and complex histories of Marseille. The study offered a reflection on this French mainly working-class port city and revealed the city\u2019s possibilities, dreams, necessities and complexities, resulting in a mosaic-like grand puzzle. From these findings, several spatial interventions were suggested, illustrating a path for a new, more inventive sociocultural and geographical way of running the city. Ultimately,\u00a0<em>Le Grand Puzzle<\/em>\u00a0was a tool for citizens to rethink the potential of their city and surrounding area without aspiring a fixed conclusion or singular view of this complex city.<\/p>\n<p>In realising Manifesta 14 Prishtina, we drew on our recent experiences working in Palermo and Marseille. Leaning on lessons learned in those editions while immersing in the conditions of Prishtina, we conceived the urban vision, symbolic interventions, participatory and long-term artistic transformations, and public surveys focusing on the relevance of culture for the wellbeing of communities. The City of Prishtina\u2019s motivation to transform and revitalise public space captivated our team, informing our narratives and practices as well as our capacity-building efforts, especially in education and mediation. For the urban and architectural part, Manifesta 14 was inspired by Turin-based architectural office\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/carloratti.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CRA<\/a>-Carlo Ratti Associates, our first Creative Mediator. Ratti and his team created an urban vision with MIT\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/senseable.mit.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Senseable<\/a>\u00a0City Lab, based on field research. This vision resulted in the programme pillar\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/manifesta14.org\/news\/cra-presents-manifesta-14-prishtinas-urban-vision\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Commons Sense<\/em><\/a>, focusing on participatory urbanism to create sustainable urban solutions. Considering Prishtina\u2019s lack of accessible public space, Manifesta 14 is dedicated to creating not only new public spaces but also to reclaim existing and privatised ones, to act as meeting points and incubators of change.<\/p>\n<p>Manifesta 14 is developed through a series of urban interventions, revolving around several sites across Prishtina based on this urban vision, including Grand Hotel Prishtina and a former brick factory. Manifesta invited the citizens of Prishtina in the summer of 2020 to visit and interact with these urban interventions in different areas of the city. The first intervention was at the previously discarded space of the Brick Factory, Prishtina\u2019s most important post-industrial site. By creating an \u201curban living room\u201d, the intervention triggered a debate about how space can be used, how it can be accessible to the community and how it can become part of the city\u2019s infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>What the\u00a0<em>Palermo Atlas<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Le Grand Puzzle<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Commons Sense<\/em>\u00a0show, is how unruly horizontal analyses of uncovered (hi)stories, data-infused facts, myths and fictions can become a horizon to imagine another future for a city. These studies support the claim that contemporary cities around the Mediterranean and in the Western Balkans face ecological crises, but also show that ecologies are increasingly entangled with long histories of social and human conflict, or possibly democratic crises. As a source of data, images, genealogies and stories about the cities, the research creates a \u201cmosaic of fragments and identities emerging out of centuries of encounters and exchanges,\u201d as Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli wrote in the\u00a0<em>Palermo Atlas<\/em>. The studies show how the future of a city can be made by civic imagination and courage. I am convinced that our urban studies produce an aesthetic of the real and thus can be considered a form of commonism, as elaborated by Nico Dockx and Pascal Gielen in their introduction to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.valiz.nl\/en\/publications\/commonism-a-new-aesthetics-of-the-real\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Commonism<\/em><\/a><em>: A New Aesthetics of the Real<\/em>. Producing a multiplicity of narratives and a methodical fragmentation of viewpoints on Palermo, Marseille and Prishtina is \u201ca way of thinking of a better, more beautiful world that manifests itself in the liminal zone between fiction and non-fiction, imagination and reality, utopianism and realism,\u201d showing how \u201cfiction can become reality and [how] reality is constructed in the shadows of human imaginations.<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a>\u201d slogans<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Real for Whom?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Besides\u00a0<em>Le Grand Puzzle<\/em>, we introduced another research project in Manifesta 13 to support an inclusive and in-depth study of Marseille.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/manifesta13.org\/le-tour-de-tous-les-possibles\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Le Tour<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0de Tous les Possibles<\/em>\u00a0brought citizens together to explore alternative means of determining their existence in the city and winning new grounds for solidarity, or unexpected alliances. New possibilities for life in the city have been imagined and formed in more than 22 Citizen Consultations, uniting people from Marseille from all walks of life. Around 500 people from Marseille participated in exchanging and producing alternative narratives and unorthodox ideas and projects, both in live sessions and online. To stimulate discussion, the meetings were based on excerpts from\u00a0<em>Le Grand Puzzle<\/em>, inviting citizens to discuss the role that they as individuals together with the city and Europe could play in the transformation of their city.<\/p>\n<p>Developing these citizen workshops for Manifesta 13 Marseille as a form of direct democracy was a response to a series of events taking place in the city. These events related to Marseille\u2019s complex infrastructure and the sometimes precarious living conditions, pollution and mobility issues that are felt in most of Europe\u2019s larger cities. In October 2018, during the preparations for Manifesta 13, the grassroots Yellow Vest movement took shape. In Marseille, a tragedy marked the birth of unprecedented solidarity between citizens. In November 2018, two poorly maintained buildings collapsed on rue d\u2019Aubagne, in the heart of the city, killing eight tenants.<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a>\u00a0In the wake of this tragic event, citizens came together, uniting in various collectives. Our citizen workshops in Marseille, constituted what Jacques Ranci\u00e8re describes as an aesthetic, rhetorical and reasoned \u201csystem of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions in [the common]\u201d.<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_edn4\" name=\"_ednref4\">[4]<\/a>\u00a0The encounters took place in prisons, schools, shops and public spaces and made the political join with the social, which according to Antonio Negri is the fundamental concept of an assembly: Now, today, we have the opportunity to transform the assembly into a force. Because that is politics: lending force. Or, that is aesthetics, if one wishes to use that term: lending form and force.<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_edn5\" name=\"_ednref5\">[5]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For Manifesta 14 Prishtina, we created cross-sectoral Citizen\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/manifesta14.org\/education\/citizen-consultations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Consultations<\/a>\u00a0in urban and rural areas to understand what people mean by their culture and the relevance of their culture. We translated these findings in our education, artistic and other programmes, but also in the composition of the team, venues and allocation of long-term projects. The future of a city can be created by civic imagination, transformation and courage. This perspective is only functioning by involving diverse communities and the public through a series of activities both in focus groups as well as in quantitative studies.\u00a0The Open Forum, which we organised in February 2022 to interact with the cultural sector, was an opportunity to collectively explore and reflect with the citizens on the complexity of the cultural landscape of Prishtina.<\/p>\n<p>It is in the pendulum-like swinging between form and force described by Negri that I propose to position Manifesta\u2019s reinvented model, which embraces the sociopolitical movements and divergences found (again) today in our host cities and Europe at large, which in their turn inspired Manifesta\u2019s methodologies that hover between art and sociology. To extensively analyse the conceptual borders and differences between art and sociopolitical structures is in my opinion not appropriate, as they are both aesthetic-constitutive practices. Rather, Manifesta is interested in the synthesis of the collaboration between Manifesta and the public institutions in the host city and its citizens, finding ways to allow the production of artistic and political practices that have become one and many at the same time, showing common ways of working, caring, living and dying in a city.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Programming Alliances<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In Marseille, Manifesta\u2019s early collaboration with local partners and citizens also shifted the attention to a different audience. Instead of the international audiences who have traditionally populated the biennial, Manifesta started prioritising the slower, less visually spectacular relationships that can be formed between local communities from the metropole region. This new audience requires alternative forms of mediation and demands more intimate co-productions and structures between Manifesta and the city. This change further amplifies a structure in which several models of artistic programming and engagement function next to each other, opposing any form of hierarchy.<\/p>\n<p>In Prishtina, we abandoned hierarchy by becoming radically local, learning, and giving voice to, the people of Prishtina. There will be no main or parallel programme, but simply stories that explore the different venues, places and histories of the city. Therefore, for the first time,\u00a0Manifesta has stimulated the inclusion of non-institutional and sub-cultural activists and artivists movements representing the vast amount of Kosovar talent inside the biennial next to multiple series of influential institutions that define Prishtina\u2019s rich and dynamic cultural ecosystem.\u00a0This means that Kosovar participants are balanced, equally with all other international partners and participants in the biennial, inviting us to develop different modalities of transdisciplinary working in a biennial perspective. Manifesta 14 has also created a regional parcours, connecting the Prishtina programme to regional cultural partners through the Western Balkans\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/manifesta14.org\/pre-biennial\/western-balkan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Project<\/a>\u00a0and establishing a lasting network.<\/p>\n<p>In a changing world, Manifesta is also experimenting with new democratic models of curation. In Marseille, the three-fold Manifesta 13 programme included: an external curated programme with a team of international specialists; a programme to connect local institutions, galleries, artists and curators; and an education and mediation programme. Over the last two years, to create a more tangible legacy for Prishtina, we have been working collectively and closely with Kosovar urbanists, cultural professionals, artists, and thinkers. Focusing on research and knowledge production, Manifesta implemented strategies based on the needs and interests of local communities with an ambition to explore new practices and new ways of learning and unlearning.<\/p>\n<p>The big change I introduced is that we are developing more long-term institutional projects, where Manifesta is the initiator and together with its local team sets up the parameters and transfers the project to those who can maintain it afterwards. So, we still produce artistic projects, but also set up new models of art institutions and of learning, alternative mediation models, and alternatives for mobility and ecological issues. I am inviting for each edition and each issue the best practitioners to create imaginary dreams together. In all these Manifesta cities,\u00a0communities and citizens are separated from the artistic communities. A big part of our work is to bring these poles together and stimulate them to find new ways to collaborate. A successful project in Marseille was the founding of a community-art centre in a deprived neighbourhood where communities and cultural workers give voice to untold histories, which now turned into a permanent institution.<\/p>\n<p>When preparing for our current edition in Prishtina, I experienced a pressing purpose for Manifesta\u2019s presence in this part of Europe, where we can co-create sustainable projects in areas such as urbanism and ecology as well as increase the standing of interdisciplinary institutions in education initiatives. In this sense, Manifesta has persisted as a platform for experimentation ever since our first edition in Rotterdam in 1996. In Kosovo, numerous long-term projects have been initiated. That is our ambition: to be the incubator and create the conceptual framework while the local community assumes collective ownership and continues after Manifesta 14 will close. One example of such a project is the Green Corridor which will transform a part of the disused Prishtina \u2013 Belgrade railway into a new green space and pedestrian path connecting the Brick Factory to the Palace of Youth and Sports in the heart of the city. The community will be involved in the planting, design and maintenance of this corridor. In close collaboration with the public administration, this project will foster long-term environmental change in the city.<\/p>\n<p>In a constantly changing world, Manifesta has rethought and will keep rethinking the model of the biennial on several levels, relating to the origin of our structure, namely nomadic, itinerant, and acting as an incubator. In Prishtina, this means changing our knowledge production into a form of participatory practice, next to creating a more tangible legacy for the city and its communities in the form of a permanent interdisciplinary institution which could be an example of the development of Prishtina\u2019s cultural ecosystem. Sketched out by Manifesta\u2019s artists, cultural practitioners and architects in the many different stories, plays and plots, I rather see the common horizon, with Manifesta as a temporary funambule, and the citizens as the true owners and caretakers of their public space, institutions and cities. Much like this acrobatic tightrope walker, Manifesta shows alternatives in the important, but often difficult task of building diversified alliances, where worlding is a relation based on solidarity and productive collaborations, besides pointing out the ways to promote coexistence. Not only is it essential to ask who owns our cities; we should also imagine how to remember, activate and support each other in our cities.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" \/>\n<div id=\"edn1\">\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_ednref1\" name=\"_edn1\">[1]<\/a>\u00a0Member states of the European Union and the Schengen area have constructed almost 1,000 km of walls, the equivalent of more than six times the total length of the Berlin Wall, since the nineties to prevent displaced people migrating into Europe. Source: Ainhoa Ruiz Benedicto and Pere Brunet. \u2018Building Walls: Fear and Securitization in the European Union\u2019 in Centre Del.s d\u2019Estudis per la Pau (2018).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"edn2\">\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_ednref2\" name=\"_edn2\">[2]<\/a>\u00a0Dockx, Nico &amp; Gielen, Pascal. \u2018Introduction: Ideology &amp; Aesthetics of the Real\u2019 in Commonism: A New Aesthetics of the Real. Amsterdam: Valiz (2018). p.58-59.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"edn3\">\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_ednref3\" name=\"_edn3\">[3]<\/a>\u00a0\u2018\u201cNi oubli ni pardon\u201d. Marseille, un an apr.s le drame de la rue d\u2019Aubagne\u2019 in Le Monde (2019).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"edn4\">\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_ednref4\" name=\"_edn4\">[4]<\/a>\u00a0Ranci\u00e8re, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics. London: Continuum (2006), p.12.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"edn5\">\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/teh\/91422\/who-owns-the-city\/#_ednref5\" name=\"_edn5\">[5]<\/a>\u00a0Negri, Antonio. \u2018The Salt of the Earth: On Commonism. An Interview with Antonio Negri\u2019 in Commonism: A New Aesthetics of the Real. Gielen, Pascal &amp; Lavaert, Sonja (eds.). Amsterdam: Valiz (2018). p.98.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tags-holder d-flex flex-wrap w-100 clear mgb-30 mt-4\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sbunker.net\/tag\/manifesta\/\">#MANIFESTA<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"news-right\">\n<div class=\"post\">\n<p class=\"time\">\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reclaiming public space in Palermo, Marseille and Prishtina Life today seems increasingly unpredictable and the current media discourse shows a future threatened by polarisation, climate chaos, rising economic inequality and the impact of the pandemic and the Ukrainian- Russian war. I am writing this essay at a crucial time, for Manifesta, the European nomadic biennial [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11433,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,8],"tags":[2140,2141,1081],"ppma_author":[289],"class_list":["post-5732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analize","category-blogje-tematike","tag-manifesta-palermo","tag-marseille","tag-prishtina"],"authors":[{"term_id":289,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"hedwig-fijen","display_name":"Hedwig Fijen","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/FIJEN.jpeg","url2x":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/FIJEN.jpeg"},"user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","description":"Hedwig Fijen studied History and History of Art at the University of Amsterdam. She is founding director of Manifesta, the nomadic European biennial, since its origin in Rotterdam in 1993. Under Fijen\u2019s direction Manifesta has developed into the fourth most influential biennial in the world. Over this period, Fijen has transformed the biennial from a contemporary art platform into an interdisciplinary platform for social cultural change. For her work in the field of European cultural developments she has recently been appointed as an Officer in the Order Oranje-Nassau by the the King of the Netherlands.\r\n\r\nFijen oversees all aspects of the Manifesta organization including the selection of Host cities and thematic content. The final execution of the concept of the cultural mediator is her responsibility. Fijen has worked in the international field of contemporary culture, art and urbanism for 30 years in a variety of countries. Before Manifesta, she worked as a curator at the Netherlands Office for Fine Arts and has worked in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, Cuba and many other countries. She has lectured extensively and wrote many articles in the context of Manifesta as a biennial.\r\n\r\nFijen is currently working on concurrent editions of the Manifesta biennial: Manifesta 14, currently hosted by the city of Prishtina; Manifesta 15, to be hosted by the city of Barcelona in 2024; and Manifesta 16, in the Ruhr area in 2026."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5732"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11434,"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732\/revisions\/11434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5732"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbunker.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}