<nettime-ann> LIVE STREAMING - Urban Rescue: Creativity and Beyond

[Eric Kluitenberg <epk@xs4all.nl>]

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Cool Media Hot Talk Show on City Life
new series in the frame of the Happening project at the Netherlands  
Architecture Institute, Rotterdam

http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/nai.jsp

#1: Urban Rescue: Creativity and Beyond
Sunday March 2, 2008 - 16.00 - 18.00 CET

LIVE VIDEO STREAMING and interface for online participation:
http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/livepage.jsp

THEME:
Urban regeneration is a high point of our cities politics. How to  
transform marginal neighbourhoods into safe and attractive places  
where to live? How to achieve social cohesion? And which are the tools  
to be used to transform our cities? These are the questions that  
policy makers and social activists are facing daily. Beyond making new  
streets, new buildings, new facilities, our cities are also  
transformed by policies that attract new inhabitants, that create  
diversity or homogeneity, that are shifting the perception of entire  
parts of our urban environment. The first Cool Media Hot Talk Show, as  
part of the Happening project at the Netherlands Architecture  
Institute in Rotterdam, will investigate these topics. The fil rouge  
of the three debates will be "city-life", as a manifestation of moods,  
uses and passions that people rely on the city. Beyond the simple  
perception of the buildings and structures, our cities are mostly  
moulded by different uses, interpretations and cultures of their  
inhabitants. Cool Media Hot Talk Show will reveal possible ways of  
imagining and modifying our urban realm, starting with understanding  
potential and problems on the issue of the "creative city".

SPEAKERS:

Olof van de Wal - director of KEI expert centre for urban regeneration http://www.kei-centrum.nl 
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STATEMENT:
Urban regeneration is not about architecture and is certainly not  
about architects. If anything, it is geared towards creating vitality  
in urban neighbourhoods, creating the possibility of what has been  
called 'social ascent' for those living in these neighbourhoods. In  
this, the spatial context can provide the necessary means - and it  
often does. But economy - jobs, income levels - and education are but  
two of the decisive factors in regeneration, in the city as the so  
called emancipation machine. Architecture certainly is important, as a  
catalyst for quality, but architects themselves more often than not  
are left out (or have moved out) of the debate on urban regeneration,  
and at best play a supporting role.


Matthias Pauwels / BAVO - an independent research office focused on  
the political dimension of art, architecture and planning. BAVO is a  
co-operation between Gideon Boie and Matthias Pauwels. http://www.bavo.biz
STATEMENT:
Creative Urban Regeneration: Nothing More Than a Substitute for Urban  
Politics?
Architects should take a more politically firm stance towards the  
creative regeneration schemes and pacts that are being launched today  
in the economically less successful parts of Dutch cities (the so- 
called problem neighbourhoods). Due to increased competition on a  
metropolitan, national and international scale, cities in the  
Netherlands are eager to tap the unrealized potential of these  
neighbourhoods. All too often creative initiatives of architects are  
being used as a substitute or surrogate for any real political  
commitment with these problem neighbourhoods. They have to create a  
good vibe around the neighbourhood, restore the pride of the  
inhabitants, give them the impression that they can really make a  
difference and that they can take advantage of limitless  
opportunities. Needless to say, all of this is mere foreplay, a  
necessary game of seduction that has to convince the big market  
players to start to redevelop these neighbourhoods as well as seduce  
middle-class consumers to buy into these new, exciting property  
markets. The challenge for architects is to develop ways to empower  
these disadvantaged urban areas without participating - directly or  
indirectly - in their colonization for dubious political and economic  
purposes. Only then can they become the driving forces of a new,  
genuinely emancipatory urban political movement.

ORGANISERS:
The Cool Media Hot Talk Shows on City Life are organised by the Cool  
Mediators Foundation, The Netherlands Architecture Institute
Rotterdam, and De Balie, Amsterdam.
Live streaming in collaboration with V2_ Rotterdam


Cool Media Hot Talk Show creates an open public platform that supports  
truly interactive forms of direct public engagement in the very  
creation of critical public discourse.
More info: http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/

About Happening:
For two months the NAI will organise happenings in and around an  
installation that the architect Wiel Arets has specially designed for  
the NAI: concerts, theatre performances, interactive video  
projections, debates, dinners and performances. In this architectural  
construction, compositions of light, sound and video projection enable  
you to experience the influence that buildings, squares and streets  
have on your emotions and on how you perceive. The happenings make you  
aware of the role that you yourself play in experiencing and imagining  
the city, as well as of the difference that you as a citizen can make.

Dates: 01 march 2008 - 04 may 2008

The full programme can be found at:
http://happening.nai.nl

Netherlands Architecture Institute Rotterdam
Museumpark 25
Rottedam
www.nai.nl





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