All Projects - Arte Útil - (2024)

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Engineers of Philips NatLab, J.H. Van Den Broek, J.B. Bakema, J. Stokla, G. Lans

Maintained by

Ingenieurs van het Natuurkundig Laboratorium van Philips

Duration

1971

Category

urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

055

‘t Hool

Initiator

Van Den Broek & Bakema

Description

The project started as an initiative of some of the Philips's engineers working in the NatLab. They realised that the quality of living involved more than just individual dwellings, so they established a housing corporation (Woon en Wijk) to build a new neighbourhood in Eindhoven, adapted to their needs and requirements. At that time, it was an unusual assignment, so after various architects had rejected the offer, they commissioned Van den Broek and J. Bakema (Team 10) who attended to their interests. Team 10 are well known for their recognition of Functionalism as a form of Humanism. The design for 't Hool resulted in 14 housing types based on the resident's requirements taking action about the urban expansion and their environment, mainly integrating the green area into the houses.

Goals

The aim was to build a whole neighbourhood adapted to the interests and needs of its inhabitants, involving them in the decision-making.

Beneficial Outcomes

It brought some alternative solutions, among them: split level apartment with the elevated street; back to back houses or a terrace dwelling. The project has been described as living under, between and on the trees (Jan Stokla).

Location

Austria, Italy

Users

Michael Rakowitz, citizens

Maintained by

Michael Rakowitz

Duration

2004

Category

urban-development, economy

Nr. and Title

029

(P)LOT: Proposition I

Initiator

Michael Rakowitz

Description

The project questions the occupation of public space and encourages new ways of participation in city life. The project proposes the rental of parcels of land and public space for alternative purposes. Users may acquire municipal permits and simple payment of parking meters to repurpose the use of public space, for instance, they may establish temporary encampments or establish a temporary garden, outdoor dining, etc.

Goals

To question the occupation and dedication of public space and encourages reconsiderations of “legitimate” participation in city life.

Beneficial Outcomes

For a small amount of money, users may use public space alternatively.

Location

Mexico

Users

Paulina Cornejo, readers

Maintained by

Centro Nacional de Prevención del Delito y Participación Ciudadana (National Center of Crime prevention and citizen's participation), Mexican Federal Government, Museo Tamayo

Duration

2012

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

467

100 Tácticas Creativas para la seguridad ciudadana

Initiator

Paulina Cornejo

Description

This work is a publication consisting of 100 examples and projects carried out by designers, architects and cultural workers from all over the world, which propose, through art and creativity, solutions to local social urgencies. Enclosed in it, there are maps, tables, and a leaflet with the goal of evaluating the projects in social contexts.

Goals

To offer a tool for organisers, initiators, users, communities, organisations, as well as local and national governments to develop creative tactics and strategies for solving concrete urgencies.

Beneficial Outcomes

It brings new ideas of how to manage the most common social problems nowadays, giving concrete advice about the organisation of these kind of projects.

Location

Italy

Users

The artists, citizens and tourists.

Maintained by

Lorenza Cossutta, Giulia Gabrielli, Isabella Sannipoli.

Duration

2006 - 2008

Category

economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

248

100% Pubblica

Initiator

Lorenza Cossutta, Giulia Gabrielli, Isabella Sannipoli

Description

Italians were the first consumers of bottled mineral water in the world, and this produces high costs and levels of pollution from plastic bottles. The project 100% Pubblica puts attention on the issue of water privatisation. Through this initiative, bottles of 0.5 lt. of water and a map of the public fountains were given to people. This project also allows users to explore areas of the city outside the canonical tourist paths.

Goals

The aim is to promote the use of water as public goods, a human inheritance, a cooperation and solidarity source, respecting the further generations’ rights.
To make people aware that water is a primary and vital resource and should be free for everyone.
To stop plastic consumption.

Beneficial Outcomes

Citizens and tourists got free bottles of water and a map of the town displaying public fountains.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Citizens, scientists

Maintained by

The artist, DA4GA, Fisher Scientific

Duration

2011 - ongoing

Category

scientific, social

Nr. and Title

280

2.6g 329m/s

Initiator

Jalila Essaïdi

Description

2.6g 329m/s are the maximum weight and velocity of a .22 caliber Long Rifle bullet from a Type 1 bulletproof vest which should protect you. Assuming that spider silk is much stronger than steel, Jalila Essaïdi implanted in vitro this woven material in a human skin sample to test the outcomes. Some slowed bullets were stopped but not the one at full speed. The purpose of this project is, therefore, to demonstrate how this invention could be a form of safety for society.

Goals

Essaïdi wants to explore the social, political, ethical and cultural issues surrounding safety in a world with access to new biotechnologies; as well as the issues around the ancient human desire for invulnerability.

Beneficial Outcomes

A partial bulletproof skin. Besides this, the project opened new avenues of research in different scientific fields: medical, forensic, etc.

Location

Germany

Users

The artists, undocumented inmigrants.

Maintained by

Boran Burchhardt, Folkwang Museum Essen (Exhibition: Hacking the City), Kunstverein Heidelberg.

Duration

2010 - ongoing

Category

politics, urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

485

3D 87 Deutschlandbilder

Initiator

Boran Burchhardt, Ana Siler

Description

The project uses a system of signs to navigate the legal gray area of medical care for people without health insurance, residence permits and papers. In the form of a sticker attached on the back side of parking zone signs in over 50 languages the artist informs the public about the network of medical offices. The project started in 2010 in Essen and continued to Heidelberg and Hamburg. An extension to other cities around the Ruhr and Northern Germany is in preparation. The title alludes to Article 87 of the Residence Act, that committs public employees to report ‘undocumented’ persons. This contrasts with medical confidentiality to protect patient privacy.

Goals

The goal of the project is to make visible one of the invisible boundaries that divides public space. This boundary has its origin in the 1987 Residence Act, which is for everyone readable and visible, but its effects stay invisible.

Beneficial Outcomes

To offer information on medical care to those without health insurance, residence permits and papers in 50 different languages, referring them to the Medibüros offices. Medibüros are non-governmental contact points, established with the aim of giving anonymous and free medical assistance to illegals. In addition, the project also seeks to raise awareness of the issue with those who walk past the sign.

Location

Mexico

Users

Raúl Cárdenas Osuna, Marcela Guadiana Cardenas, Shijune Takeda Bernardo Gutierrez, Jorge Blancarte, Ana Martínez Ortega, Enrique Jiménez, Rodolfo Argote and artists, architects, scientists, enginers, writers, chefs, curators, designers, musicians and Dj’s), Ruido Blanco, Carmen Duran Ponce, and other 9 families

Maintained by

Torolab

Duration

2002 - 2005

Category

urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

222

9 familias, Arquitectura de Emergencia

Initiator

Torolab

Description

The project focuses on Lagunitas, an underdeveloped neighbourhood in Tijuana, and it suggests a sustainable and alternative model for architecture development in a city where traditional planning development has not been able to keep up with its fast growth. Frequently, the buildings lack basic infrastructures such as electricity and sewage. For the project 9 families living in the neighbourhood worked together with the artists, who acted as facilitators, to activate a process of co-design for their own homes.

Goals

Be a support tool for revealing spaces of possibilities.

Beneficial Outcomes

Providing new homes for families.

Location

United States

Users

Bonnie Ora Sherk and the A.L.L. team, local residents and organisations, schools and students, government agencies, businesses and corporations, private foundations, etc.

Maintained by

Life Frames, Inc., local staff with students and volunteers from each Branch Living Library & Think Park in diverse communities – locally and globally

Duration

1981 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

503

A Living Library

Initiator

Bonnie Ora Sherk

Description

A Living Library (ALL) transforms public open spaces that have fallen into disuse or dilapidation into ecological wonderlands and landscapes the local community can learn in and from. Each site contains a themed, content-rich landscape, integrated with community programs and hands-on learning that establishes the sites as vital, life-long learning magnets for the whole community. Additionally contributing to each community’s development economically and culturally by improving public areas and creating these green, ecological areas as accessible community resources.

Goals

To develop ecological sites that are culturally-sensitive and place-based. To transform communities by allowing them to engage in learning programs that incorporate local resources—human, ecological, economic, historic, technological, and aesthetic. To link ALL branches from different communities—near and far—so that cultural and ecological experiences and differences become shared knowledge.

Beneficial Outcomes

Transforms barren, under-used, or damaged public places into thriving, interactive, learning landscapes that benefit the local community. They are lush environments where people of all ages can learn new skills and understanding. An established and growing international network that allows experiences to be shared from all around the world leads us towards a greater and more peaceful understanding of our planet and each other.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

The initiator and those who take up the process.

Maintained by

Jeannette Petrik

Duration

2012

Category

economy, environment

Nr. and Title

476

A Parasitical Breed of Consumer

Initiator

Jeannette Petrik

Description

The focus of this case study is on leftovers of supermarkets as distributors of food, especially the Ekoplaza supermarkets in Eindhoven. Petrik collected their 'waste' material, mostly consisting of fruit and vegetables. The amount of vegetables and fruit thrown away daily is vast and normally in a good condition, so Petrik decided to apply techniques of preservation and conservation such as sausage making, drying and curing in order to lift quickly decaying materials of low economic value. The tools needed for these processes are also made by the 'parasite' herself, again, out of leftover low quality materials which are transformed into useful objects through the application of craft techniques and skills.

Goals

To raise awareness on the local sources of useful leftovers and other materials in Eindhoven. To exemplify possible uses through the demonstration thereof (in a working project space and through a publication, the 'parasite' cookbook') to a wide range of users.

Beneficial Outcomes

People can reuse leftovers from the supermarket for free.

Location

Portugal

Users

WochenkKausur, Danielle van Zuijlen, Students, City of Porto

Maintained by

Culturgest (exhibition Guests become Host), City of Porto

Duration

2010

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

443

A Vacant House for Students

Initiator

WocheKlausur

Description

Wochenklausur succeeded in activating one of the many vacant buildings for a group of students in Porto. The city is full of vacant houses with many students searching for cheap accommodation. Since there are many vacant buildings, Wochenklausur contacted an official in charge and made a proposal: A couple of students could be commissioned by the city to refurbish one of these empty houses and would in return get to live there free of charge. Afterwards, the owner (the city), will get back a refurbished house in good condition. WochenKlausur convinced the city who agreed to offer a house for this purpose and also found a group of ten students from the Faculty of Fine Arts that were interested enough to take a look at the proposed house. In the end, both partners agreed and it was even possible to find sponsors that agreed to donate part of the expensive construction materials.

Goals

To offer cheap accommodation to students and recuperate part of the historical structure and architecture of the city.

Beneficial Outcomes

The students have a free house to live in. The city receives a refurbished house in good condition.

Location

Argentina

Users

The artists, residents of the area

Maintained by

Ala Plastica, activist groups and ONGs.

Duration

2000 - ongoing

Category

scientific, pedagogical, politics, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

370

AA Project

Initiator

Ala Plastica

Description

Ala Plastica has developed the AA project in collaboration with schools, which are the point of connection between local families. Through the collection of oral information, it was possible to create a memory database with family photos and narratives, supplemented with land and satellite maps, to create a comprehensive picture of the Rio de la Plata delta region. Thanks to the collected information the group built embankments to prevent flood damage, developing training programmes in carpentry, beekeeping and organic farming for the inhabitants of the area.

Goals

To design a cognitive, participatory map, whose purpose was to recover local knowledge of the region's topography, habitats and cultural-agricultural traditions.

Beneficial Outcomes

The community members exchanged information and generated effective alternatives to the governmental proposal of the IIRSA as the "Integral Strategic Plan for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Paraná Delta" (PIECAS-DP).

Location

Cuba

Users

Núria Güell, 37 Cubans could use the free service

Maintained by

Núria Güell

Duration

2008

Category

pedagogical, politics, social

Nr. and Title

025

Acceso a lo denegado

Initiator

Núria Güell

Description

Acceso a lo denegado, was a project that provided internet access to Cuban citizens, as the Cuban telecommunication enterprise only offers the service to foreigners and denies it to residents. The payment for the service was based on bartering system, in exchange for it people offered the artist information about how a foreigner could understand the Cuban system. Through this project, a standard of strategies and insights on Cuba was developed, and is shown in the documentation stages of the piece.

Goals

‘Providing Cuban citizens with access to internet for whoever wants to use it. Changing power relationships established by the Cuban state on the use of free information through internet.’ (N. Güell).

Beneficial Outcomes

Access to internet.

Location

United States and United Kingdom

Users

Open to all users.

Maintained by

Sullivan Galleries Chicago (Fall 2014) Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art 2015 onwards.

Duration

2014 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, social

Nr. and Title

519

Addams-Dewey Gymnasium

Initiator

Pablo Helguera

Description

Goals

To provide a holistic education of exercise, wellbeing, arts, food and social development.

Beneficial Outcomes

Increased physical, social and mental wellbeing for individual and group users.

Location

Worldwide. First manned flight in United States

Users

Artists, lighter-than-air aeronautical engineers, balloonists, scientists, climate activists, public.

Maintained by

Tomás Saraceno Studio

Duration

2015 - ongoing

Category

scientific, environment, social

Nr. and Title

548

Aerocene

Initiator

Tomás Saraceno Studio

Description

Aerocene is an artistic project, a collective endeavour that is being currently developed by a team, united under a non-profit organisation. Aerocene manifests as a series of air-fuelled sculptures that will achieve the longest, emission-free journey around the world: becoming buoyant only by the heat of the Sun and infrared radiation from the surface of Earth. The sculptures float without burning fossil fuels, without using solar panels and batteries; and without helium, hydrogen or other rare gases. The Aerocene D-O AEC air-filled sculpture successfully carried passengers without any use of propane for nearly three hours in a collaborative experiment in November 2015 in White Sands, New Mexico, achieving the first and longest purely solar-powered, certified, lighter-than-air tethered flight. Aerocene is a fully open project, relying on worldwide social action and interaction, and aiming at mobilizing groups of individuals for multiple concrete solutions for our common environment. Aerocene is related to Cloud Cities, a project focusing around the idea of cities in the sky, a speculative project by Tomás Saraceno.

Goals

Aerocene is an open participatory platform of knowledge production and distribution. The Aerocene action and project enlivens the discussion on 2-degree climate thresholds; it materialises debates on climatic shifts in social, collaborative practices.

Beneficial Outcomes

The sculpture sets the road for the most sustainable and energy efficient vehicle humans have ever created.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Willem de Ridder, Peter Muller, Ruud Schoonman, artists, graphic designers, magazine's readers / writers.

Maintained by

Willem de Ridder, Peter Muller, Ruud Schoonman, artists, graphic designers, magazine's readers / writers.

Duration

1969-1974

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

002

Aloha

Initiator

Willem de Ridder, Peter Muller, Ruud Schoonman...

Description

Aloha started in 1965 as a music magazine called Hitweek, equipped with the first four-color offset printer in the Netherlands.
In 1969 it changed its name to Aloha, a magazine focused on music, graphic design, comics and counterculture alongside national and international social issues.
Aloha was independent and operated without permanent writing staff or editors, so everybody was welcome to write an article or publish a drawing.
Aloha was ironic, critical, unconventional and seasoned with absurd humour.

Goals

Produce a publication where a new generation could feel free of manipulation and produce their own content.

Beneficial Outcomes

It offered critical reports about political and social issues beyond the official version given by the conventional media and some tricks on how to endure "outside" the system. f.i. On number 35 (1970), Aloha provided a free small guide for diggers called "Free and surprising Amsterdam" where you could find all kind of suggestions to survive in the city without any money. This satirical and radical tradition later continued in ‘Frietkaas’.

Location

United States

Users

Tenants, Activists, Artists

Maintained by

Anti Eviction Mapping Project

Duration

2013 - ongoing

Category

politics, urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

558

Anti Eviction Mapping Project

Initiator

Anti Eviction Mapping Project

Description

The project consist of a website for data-visualisation, data analysis, and storytelling collective formed to document and make visible the dispossession of San Francisco Bay Area residents and to facilitate and organise collective resistance. The project studies the displacement of people and the way in which evictions and gentrification target specific communities in the Bay Area. The website provides many resources and tools to help tenants to look up landlords and speculator information, it also tracks illegal vacation rentals with a crowdsource system. The project collaborates with many local groups who fight against displacement such as Eviction Free SF.

Goals

Make this issue public, share stories, promote boycotts of serial evictors, protect tenants, facilitate collective resistance.

Beneficial Outcomes

Communicates the details of the issue, shares factual research to foster community resistance.

Location

Spain, Online

Users

Citizens who wish to expropriate money to banks and learn how to make money from debt.

Maintained by

Produced by Fundació Guasch Coranty/ Maintained by the artist.

Duration

2010 - 2011

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

026

Aplicación Legal Desplazada #1: Reserva Fraccionaria

Initiator

Núria Güell

Description

The project consists of a program of lessons and conferences aiming at sharing strategies about how to expropriate money from banks. Starting from applying the same law that banks apply to their customers such as investing the fractional reserve system, the project explains how to create money out of nothing.
The training is divided into two phases: during the first one the artist invited the economist Qmunty and bank expropriators Lucio Urtubia and Enric Duran to deliver a lecture about "How can we expropriate money from banks?”; during the second phase the artist published a manual including various expropriation strategies, legal consultation, and analytical texts, made public online and by distributing copies to several libraries across Spain.

Goals

To teach how to expropriate money from banks as well as make visible the perverse strategy used by banks to create money from nowhere. To prove that the term legal is not synonymous of legitimate and that there are some laws which we need to reconsider.

Beneficial Outcomes

To empower the Spanish population by generating general financial literacy even in questions that are usually reserved to experts.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Owen Hodgkinson, Emma Payne, Ella Perkins, Tom Davies, Ian Daniell, Chloe Carson, Daniel Dutton. Audiences of 500 over 3 days. Artist Gardeners, Dimitri Launder with a fruity thanks to the Grow It Together.

Maintained by

Dimitri Launder

Duration

2009 - 2011

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

499

Apothecary Arboretum

Initiator

Dimitri Launder

Description

The Apothecary Arboretum was designed and built by the artist gardener Dimitri Launder with a group of students of Camberwell College of Arts in London. The aim was to create a garden both medicinal and edible, in a concrete neighbourhood. His latest project was to create a living eco-system of vertical, functional, agricultural, apothecary sculpture: prototype 1.0.

Goals

Using recycled materials to harvest rainwater and incubate plants that are grown from bio-diverse seed stock and foraged herbal and medicinal plant seed sourced from waste lands in London. This Free Farm explores the plants around us in the hope that it makes people think about their relationship with nature. Planting Propaganda for a public planting transformation; planting on rooftops, in and on buildings, to reclaim and illustrate sustainable solutions.

Beneficial Outcomes

An edible and medicinal garden.

Location

The Arctic and circumpolar region

Users

The artists and initiators. The indigenous people of the North and Arctic regions.

Maintained by

The Arctic Perspective Initiative working group, led by Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman.

Duration

2006 - ongoing

Category

scientific, politics, environment, social

Nr. and Title

540

Arctic Perspective Initiative

Initiator

Marko Peljhan, Matthew Biederman.

Description

The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) is a non-profit international group of individuals and organizations, founded by artists Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman, whose goal is to promote the creation of open authoring, communications and dissemination infrastructures for the circumpolar region. Its aim is to work with, learn from, and empower the North and Arctic peoples through open source technologies and applied education and training. By creating access to these technologies while promoting the creation of shared communications and data networks without costly overheads, continued and sustainable development of autonomous culture, traditional knowledge, science, technology and education opportunities for peoples in the North and Arctic regions is enabled.

Goals

To work with, learn from, and empower the North and Arctic Peoples through open source technologies and applied education and training.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project benefits communities in the unique and difficult landscape of the Arctic in multiple ways, including:
- Iglutaq, a mobile, lightweight, warm, sustainable, zero impact modular living and research unit.
- New hydroponic systems to grow vegetables.
- Climate and land sensor networks.
- Open source information and communications technology literacy workshops.
- Presentation activities within the circumpolar region.
- Exhibitions and publications drawing attention to the global cultural and environmental significance of the Arctic region.

Location

Brasil

Users

Vito Acconci, Giselle Beiguelman, Casa Blindada, Waltercio Caldas, Maurício Dias / Walter Riedweg, Carlos Fajardo, Nelson Felix, Hannes Forster, José Wagner Garcia, Marco Giannotti, Carmela Gross, Rem Koolhaas, Atelier Van Lieshout, Antoni Muntadas, Ary Perez, Hermann Pitz, Avery Preesman, José Resende, Schie 2.0 / Urban Fabric, Regina Silveira, Ana Tavares, Cassio Vasconcellos, Angelo Venosa, Carlos Vergara, Krzysztof Wodiczko among the others and the residents of Sao Paulo

Maintained by

Arte Cidade, CIAC – Centro da Indústria, Arte e Cidade de Minas Gerais.

Duration

1994 - ongoing

Category

politics, urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

330

Arte Cidade

Initiator

Grupo de Intervenção Urbana, Nelson Brissac, Agnaldo Farias

Description

Arte/Cidade aims to discuss and plan new forms of artistic interventions in urban megacities, in areas which have both structural complexity and socio-spatial dynamics. The project speculates about a new approach toward possibilities for artistic and urban interventions: urban planning, extensive research of the regions, selection of sites and development of interventions. The project has had four editions: 1 - City Without Windows (1994); 2 - The City and its Fluxes (1994); 3 - The City and Its Stories (1997); 4 - East Zone (2002).

Goals

Arte/Cidade aims to discuss and plan new forms of artistic interventions in urban megacities, in areas which have both structural complexity and socio-spatial dynamics.

Beneficial Outcomes

Interventions that relate the vast territory of megacities and the global reconfigurations of economy, power and art.

Location

France

Users

Art students, painters and striking workers

Maintained by

The faculty and student body of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Atelier Populaire

Duration

1968

Category

politics, social

Nr. and Title

006

Atelier Populaire

Initiator

Atelier Populaire

Description

On May 16th, art students, painters from outside the university and striking workers decided to permanently occupy the art school in order to produce posters that would "give concrete support to the great movement of the workers on strike who are occupying their factories in defiance of the Gaullist government". The posters of the ATELIER POPULAIRE were designed and printed anonymously and were distributed for free.

Goals

The posters produced by the ATELIER POPULAIRE are weapons in the service of the struggle and are an inseparable part of it. Their rightful place is in the centers of conflict. To use them for decorative purposes, to display them in bourgeois places of culture or to consider them as objects of aesthetic interest is to impair both their function and their effect.

Beneficial Outcomes

The posters were seen on the barricades, carried in demonstrations and were plastered on walls all over France. Their bold and provocative messages were extremely influential and still resonate in our own time

Location

Various

Maintained by

Host institutions

Duration

2014 - 0ngoing

Category

scientific, social

Nr. and Title

515

Autonomy Cube

Initiator

Trevor Paglen and Jason Applebaum

Description

Goals

Providing a tool for surveillance-free internet infrastructure in which data and internet use can be anonymous. Reclaim the space within which users log on through the autonomy cube as public, civic space.

Beneficial Outcomes

Allow the host institution and users to log on to the internet without being traced or surveyed.

Location

Palestinian territories

Users

Women of Nablus, tourists, researchers, artists, academics

Maintained by

A.M. Qattan Foundation, Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, Associazione Donne-Nuove, Associazione Pacefuturo, Lions Club International & Soroptimist Biella, Stichting DOEN, FARE Contemporary Art Association, Niklas fa*gerholm Design, Osteria La Villetta, Rising Voices, Roberto Cimetta Fund, Slow Food (International, Basso Mantovano, Bergamo, Firenze), Step Beyond Travel Grant, The Mosaic Rooms and royalties from the publication CAKE. Bait al Karama is currently sustaining itself.

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

531

Bait al Karama

Initiator

Beatrice Catanzaro, Fatima Kadumy, Cristiana Bottigella

Description

Bait al Karama consists in a sociocultural centre run by women and managed according to a social enterprise business model, where food-related activities are the vehicle to develop regular income for the women involved, as well as the means to sustain a socially and culturally meaningful programme. The centre is run and managed by disadvantaged women living in the Old City of Nablus, and features among other relevant social and educational activities, the first female-run Cookery School in Palestine. Through income-generating activities, Bait al Karama aims to achieve long-term financial sustainability, and to accomplish its sociocultural mission, whilst offering the women of the Old City employment and the chance to develop income and self-sustainability. Bait al KARAMA is the first Slow Food Convivium in Nablus and since 2012 it has been participating in the Terramadre-Salone del Gusto fair in Turin as Palestinian representation.

Goals

To support the social and economic needs of women of the Old City of Nablus struggling in the aftermath of the occupation by means of a food-based social enterprise. To draw international attention to the Old City of Nablus as a place of Food and Culture, by initiating a number of cultural and educational initiatives involving the local and wider Palestinian scene as well as international guests, and to encourage sustainable tourism.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project offers the women employment and creates the first space of aggregation for women in the Old City of Nablus. The centre features a Palestinian Cookery School for foreigners visiting Palestine.

Location

Spain

Users

José Brito, Laura Brito, Andrés Betancort, Tatiana González, Eva Cabrera, Pedro Santana, Hugo Escobar, Samanta León, Ariel Betancor, Caín Santana, Cristina Mendoza, Gisela Rodríguez, Tania Cantallops, Román Brito, Marcos Pulido, Ancor Alfonso, Laura Hernández, participants and neighbors.

Maintained by

Asociación Cultural "Orquesta Bela Bartok”, Fundación Canaria Mapfre Guanarteme, Fundación DISA, Fundación Jungle Sanjuán - SATOCAN, Grupo CAPISA, Obra Social Fundación “La Caixa”, Fundación La Caja de Canarias y BANKIA, Dirección General de Protección a la Infancia y la Familia del Gobierno de Canarias, Restaurante Quebeque, Arimotor Canarias, Concejalía de Cultura del Ayuntamiento de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Consejería de Cultura y Consejería de Educación y Juventud del Cabildo de Gran Canaria, Aula Alfredo Kraus del Vicerrectorado de Cultura y Atención Integral de la Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Fundación SGAE and crowdfunding.

Duration

2011 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

535

Barrios Orquestados (Orchestrated neighborhoods)

Initiator

José Brito

Description

Goals

To integrate all citizens in a society which prides itself in being egalitarian in opportunities and possibilities, where they can feel useful and included. This process itself is the main objective, not the final result that may be offered in an auditorium.

Beneficial Outcomes

Location

Germany

Users

Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Mies van der Rohe, teachers (Johanness itten, Lyonel Feininger, Gerhard Marcks, Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Theo van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Marianne Brandt, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer...), students, industrial companies.

Maintained by

Regional and local government, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Duration

1919 - 1933

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

464

Bauhaus

Initiator

Walter Gropius

Description

Goals

To undertake design that combined rationality, functionality and mass production systems breaking the barriers between craftsman and artist.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Bauhaus brought art and design closer to daily-life.

Location

US

Users

People living in homeless shelters

Maintained by

A Blade of Grass, Brooklyn Arts Council, Asian Arts Initiative, ArtPlace America, the Visual Artist Network Exhibition Residency, Esopus Foundation.

Duration

2006 - ongoing

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

552

Beauty in trasition

Initiator

Jody Wood

Description

The project consists of a mobile hair salon built inside an old ice cream truck. The pop-up salon provides beauty services to people living in homeless shelters, including hair wash, cut, and color from a team of volunteer stylists. While offering access to a cosmetic service may seem unessential for people who always negotiate for basic services, ‘Beauty in Transition’ provides a space where people feel dignified by choosing self-representation.

Goals

To provide cosmetic services to people living in homeless shelters.

Beneficial Outcomes

People can have cosmetic services for free. By experiencing an ‘unnecessary’ service they may re-access a part of their forgotten identity linked to how they appear in society.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

General public and everybody who enjoys biodiversity and a variety in their diet.

Maintained by

The Blindpainters Foundation and citizen in the neighbourhood(s). General directions and specific details are peered with a scientific group of advisors and the individual activities have been made possible by the following: Rijkswaterstaat (Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment), the Province Noord-Holland, the Prins Bernhard Culture Fond, City of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Council West, Amsterdam Council East, the GWL terrain, De Alliantie, ABC Alliantie West, Groen en Doen, het Fonds voor Oost, ANMEC, NMA, HB|3D bv, 3D Orbit and Veldtwerk.

Duration

2011 - ongoing

Category

scientific, pedagogical, politics, urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

487

BeeCare – The Inner City as Nature Reserve for Pollinators

Initiator

Hans Kalliwoda

Description

BeeCare is an interdisciplinary art project that combines sociological, ecological and educational elements through performative acts, sculptures and scientific research. It is a series of art interventions in public space, addressing the urgency of the global pollination problematic by creating Inner Cities as Nature Reserves for pollinators. Pollinators are the basis of a healthy ecology and the cause of being in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. There are 360 different species of bees in the Netherlands, half of them are on the list of being endangered and becoming extinct. There is one species of honeybee, the rest of the species are wild bees. Honey bees are quantity and wild bees (solitary bees and bumblebees) are quality pollinators and form the very basis of the biodiversity in the ecosystem.
Nowadays, bees do better in inner cities than on the countryside. This is mainly due to toxicity in the water system through the use pesticide over the last 50 years, monoculture of crops grown that delivers food only in certain periods of the year and destruction of nesting opportunities. Between the beginning of the 90’s and 2018 we measured a decline of 75% of flying insects. The trend goes towards a greater loss, which will have grave consequences for biodiversity in the near future.
Buckminster Fuller says: ‘If you want to change how someone thinks, give it up; you cannot change how another thinks. Give them a tool, the use of which will lead them to think differently.’ The sculptures that are placed in public space are tools for local citizens to get hands-on engaged in creating Nature Reserves for pollinators. A healthy social cohesion is a precondition for ecological sustainability. The sculptures are made in partnership with the Dutch Nature museum (Naturalis), the ecology department of the TU Darmstadt in Germany and a group of entrepreneurs, who through the means of state-of-the-art 3D printing processes believe in a holistic approach with circularity and upcycling as a must. BeeCare is a GLOCAL intervention project in public space, conceived/executed by Hans Kalliwoda and produced by the Blindpainters foundation.

Goals

Awareness creation of problems and potential solutions in inner-city neighbourhoods by using diverse artistic methods. Installing tools for local citizens to engage them in spiritual and cultural transformation. Establishing thresholds of healthy environments with an infrastructure where indigenous bees can survive and flourish until the countryside has lost its toxicity. BeeCare contributes to knowledge creation and transfer, avoids species extinction and advances biodiversity.

Beneficial Outcomes

Taking away stinging fear by door-to-door leaflet spreading on differences between bees and wasps; The RefuBee campaign in public space; Lobby on green policy management to adjust mowing; Organic beekeeping with own honey bees; Symposia on ‘Biodynamic Beekeeping' and ‘The Inner City as a Nature Reserve’; Distribution of 5-star Bee hotels; Annual Bee Film Festivals at the local cinema; Guerrilla gardening, sowing and planting with people in all seasons in the neighbourhood; Workshops on gardening and on making bee hotels; Distribution of information via various media channels (newspapers, digital); The Veggie Rocket' education project in Amsterdam schools; Inspiration sessions on swarm intelligence for top managers of Rijskwaaterstaat at the 'Future Pollination Lab' ; Pushing for alternatives to pesticide used in parks and on roadsides. With the support of people in the neighbourhood, we set up an exemplary case to replicate and implement in other Inner-city neighbourhoods, nationally and internationally.

Location

Turkey

Users

Hikers and everyone who is concerned about urban and landscape transformations in the area of Istanbul

Maintained by

Serkan Taycan and volunteers. It was initially supported by the 13th Istanbul Biennial.

Duration

2013 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

583

Between Two Seas

Initiator

Serkan Taycan

Description

The project consists of a four-day walking route in the near West of Istanbul, between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea. While walking, users can experience the threatening changes in the urban landscape starting from the outermost periphery of the city, passing through rural and uninhabited areas and water basins, to its centre. The route is 60-km long and it is composed of four 15-km parts, which can be covered over four days. The lignite mines are along the way, as well as the area reserved for the new airport, the road leading to the 3rd bridge on Bosphorus, excavation dump sites, industrial sites and residential areas, inner-city vegetable gardens, and sites of cultural and historical significance such as the Yarımburgaz Caves. The latter is the oldest settlement in Istanbul. The project provides a platform to witness the ongoing radical transformation of the city, which is threatening both the ecological and the social life of the inhabitants. It stimulates the perception and the understanding of the surroundings in an experience-oriented way through walking. The project was initiated in collaboration with an urban geographer (Jean-François Perouse), a graphic designer (Didem Ateş), a multidisciplinary design studio (Superpool), a trail maker (Kate Clow), and other professionals, including architects, urban planners, biologists, cartographers, and historians.

Goals

The route, as a ‘passage’ between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea, is a tool that allows its users to experience the urban transformation of Istanbul in an unmediated way. Following the environmental debates which were raised during the Gezi Park protests in 2013, the project becomes a platform for the discussion of the latest developments on projects of urban transformation. The project aims at encouraging citizens to experience the city through the act of walking.
At times when being an active citizen is difficult in Turkey, the project helps to catalyse media coverage and to link the local discussion to an international context.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project keeps record of how the route is used by hikers. Maps, photographs, video footages, films and sketches which consistently record the changes in the landscape are constantly being produced. Each hiker becomes an active witness as well as a co-producer of the project. The route helps to create and expand an international network of individuals and organizations who are concerned about urban issues and consider the act of walking as a tool. The initiator created another route in Athens, Greece that was adapted to local urgencies. Between Two Seas became a member of the ‘Cultural Routes in Turkey’ Association. More than 30 group-walks have been organized, 6 of which were conceived as excursions for research groups, including KTH Royal Institute of Technology - Sustainable Urban Planning and Design, Harvard University Graduate School of Design Mellon Urban Initiative, Bergen School of Architecture, ENSA Paris-Malaquais School of Architecture, University of Minnesota School of Architecture. Individuals and separate groups have also organized their own walks using the published map - available in bookshops across Istanbul- of which 50,000 have been printed so far (the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) published two editions of 10,000 each, and ATLAS magazine, a geographical monthly, printed 30,000 copies as a free supplement).

Location

Spain

Users

Citizens of Barcelona, professionals and anyone interested in self-built construction systems using natural-compostables or re-used materials.

Maintained by

BaM-Bioarquitectura Mediterranean Association, SiteSize, Olab, Labs, Meridiano70yMedio. Besides, they developed a crowd funding campaign and they have the support of many organizations like Barcelona Permaculture , Research Canyera , Sitesize , COAC Barcelona and companies offering materials such as Slow -House (ground), Casaspasivas ( straw) Hempsystem ( hemp ) , Olab -Labs ( digital manufacturing).

Duration

2014-2017

Category

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

527

BioBui(L)t Txema

Initiator

V. Maini (BaM), E. Silvestre, T. Solanas, J. Capell's, 20 professionals and activists.

Description

Spain is a country with more than 25% of unemployment combined with huge political and social crises. In capital cities as Barcelona we find a high density of cultural institutions combined with large, dense and diverse populations but the lack of dialogue among different institutions and citizens is overwhelming, showing in all its roughness the economical and social cost of not being able to value human & space resources. The local government of Barcelona has opened the door for civil management of the space. BioBuil(L)t Txema is a collaborative self-built construction using natural-compostables or re-used materials to create a public space where develop 3 years of activities to show that is possible to create bridges among citizen, companies and institutions: learning, teaching and discussing around self-buildt systems, providing new models for citizens to build, use and living public spaces. It has created a collective design process, which has integrated the variable and free cooperation of passionate and qualified specialist. They will build a 90m2 polyvalent space created with healthy materials such as straw, clay, hemp, cane and lime. The construction is open to the public and it is expected to last a year. Once finished, it will allow the usage to everybody who wants to meet people, mingle with specialists and support each other to grow up in a healthier and fairer environment. The building is located next to many other important and cultural buildings.

Goals

Build a space that is an example and tool for other projects, showing to the citizens it is possible to auto-build / Experiment and collect data of the usage of materials like straw, clay and hemp / Promote technological innovation and citizens teamwork ability / Example of good practices in social and environmental impacts of construction / Create meeting spaces for knowledge exchange between professionals from different fields and citizens / Teach knowledge about healthy materials usage / Support small and/or specialists committed to healthy building / Set up a "machine" that creates a new economy using basically creativity and ability to connect fields of disperse know-how and material resources.

Beneficial Outcomes

BioBui(l)t Txema’s space will be used for training, research and promotion of healthy building practices and activities in the Mediterranean area. They are willing to create a meeting and exchange space to enable the learning and promotion of the participant’s capabilities and innovative communication systems. This project and the construction retrieves the social purpose of the construction act.

Location

Spain

Users

Fernando García-Dory, Dorian Moore, Stewart Breck, Research Wildlife Biologist - National Wildlife Research Center Yellowstone/ Eugenio Sillero ISOM & Dpto. Ingeniería Electrónica - E.T.S.I. de Telecomunicación / National Park of Picos de Europa / Laboral Centro de Arte / Libellium, sheeps and shepherds.

Maintained by

Fernando García-Dory.

Duration

2006 - ongoing

Category

scientific, economy

Nr. and Title

264

Bionic Sheep

Initiator

Fernando García-Dory

Description

The bionic sheep project comprises a device (Flock Protection System) placed around the neck of the sheep that emits an ultrasonic signal, audible and annoying only for wolves and other canidae. This first prototype was field tested in 2008. Another prototype had also been developed, equipped with a system of geo-positioning which transmits a signal to the PDA of the shepherd who can see where the flock of sheep is localised. Both devices have been developed with the assistance of shepherds.

Goals

To develop a portable, solar-powered, ultrasonic Flock Protection System to help shepherds protect their sheep.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Flock Protection System provides a technological and creative solution to the age-old pastoral rivalry of the shepherd and the wolf so that wildlife and farmers can co-exist in harmony. The system is intended to have an open source license (such as the TAPR Noncommercial Hardware License) meaning that any interested person or organisation would be free to reproduce and improve it.

Location

Online

Users

Users of the website

Maintained by

Bioswop

Duration

2009 - ongoing

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

359

Bioswop

Initiator

Natasha Sadr Haghighian

Description

Bioswop is a cv-exchange platform. The idea is to provide curriculum vitae, bios, resumés for people to use and borrow. With a list of several institutions, the assembly of a CV is possible without utilising existing CVs. The assembled or borrowed CV can be downloaded as a pdf file. It will carry a footnote 'this CV was borrowed through www.bioswop.net'. The project is entirely based on trust and involves no monetary exchange.

Goals

In best-case scenario the project should devalue the notion of CVs altogether, and their essentialist elements such as ‘origin’, as well as the accumulated trade value created through image exchange on the market place.

Beneficial Outcomes

People can provide CVs and/or borrow names and programmes of institutions as basics elements for CVs assembly.

Location

Indonesia

Users

Villagers of Muntuk, visiting artists, ecologists and NGO workers.

Maintained by

Marco Kusumawijaya and other co-workers from Rujak Centre for Urban Studies, Arsitek Komunitas (ARKOM) Yogyakarta, Antariksa of Kunci Cultural Studies Centre.

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

542

Bumi Pemuda Rahayu

Initiator

Marco Kusumawijaya and other co-workers from Rujak Centre for Urban Studies, Arsitek Komunitas (ARKOM) Yogyakarta, Antariksa of Kunci Cultural Studies Centre

Description

Bumi Pemuda Rahayu aims to support a vision of ecological sustainability through works with communities and arts on practical and theoretical levels. Architecturally the site itself is built on a model of self-sustainability, using various methods to approach minimum carbon footprint. All the materials used have been chosen for its lowest impact on energy, using recycled materials with the main building itself made from bamboo. All its waste will be recycled or composted, with specially designed human waste recycling plant to generate electrical power. The garden has been planned to be completely edible. Aside from its architectural and environmental focus the other important aim is to support the local community. People from the local area were invited to be an integral part of this new centre and have already been employed to help build the centre, including the main bamboo multipurpose hall. They have been given training in new skills from master bamboo builders and expert architects and landscape designers. The centre’s arts programs aims at process and forms that are innovative and creative for the local area within an international context. The activities that have been run in the past include science workshops for children, bamboo making workshops, artist residencies, puppet making with the local children and video making classes with women from Munthuk.

Goals

Developing and supporting ideas for ecological sustainability through works with communities and arts on practical and theoretical levels.

Beneficial Outcomes

Employment of the villagers of Muntuk; Knowledge exchange between villagers, architects, artists and others; Seeding of new longer term projects investigating ecological sustainability.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Homeless, displaced people, scholars and public.

Maintained by

Charity

Duration

1991 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

171

Cardboard Citizens

Initiator

Adrian Jackson

Description

Cardboard Citizens is a theatre project and performing arts collective staged, in the street, in hostels, prisons, schools as well as traditional theatre venues, whose theme relates to the living conditions of homeless and displaced people. The purpose is to let the public understand the problems of these people. For this reason, following the Theater of the Oppressed methodology, instead of recruiting homeless men and women, the organisation has an open and ongoing process, which create dialogues and workshops to determine the nature of the performances.

Goals

To use theatre as a catalyst for change, growth and learning for participants and audience.

Beneficial Outcomes

In addition to offering opportunities for the excluded people bringing out all kind of issues around homelessness, Cardboard Citizens supports the performers through the housing, education, health, employment, personal and professional development.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Gerard Morgan-Grenville, Volunteers, students and visitors.

Maintained by

Funded by donations from Morgan-Grenville's contacts, companies and manufacturers provided products to be displayed and demonstrated in use.

Duration

1973 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

260

Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT)

Initiator

Gerard Morgan-Grenville

Description

The CAT originated in 1973 in Wales as an experimental community dedicated to eco-friendly principles and a 'test bed' for new ideas and technologies. In 1975 it opened a Visitor Centre and, in the 1980s, a study centre running residential courses on all aspects of green living: environmental building, eco-sanitation, woodland management, renewable energy, energy efficiency and organic growing.

Goals

To search for globally sustainable, whole and ecologically sound technologies and ways of life.

Beneficial Outcomes

During the last 40 years, the center has been offering free information, curriculum-based education, residential education trips, and teacher training to visiting schools, colleges and universities. It also publishes books on key environmental issues, runs a graduate school, and a successful volunteer programmes for those that want to gain hands-on experience. Finally, it has a growing network of supporter members who receive their quarterly magazine and an invite to their annual conference.

Location

Albania

Users

the artist, inhabitants of Alexander cel Bun.

Maintained by

Tirana 2 Biennial

Duration

2003

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

037

Cesme

Initiator

Matei Bejenaru

Description

The project consisted in a public intervention in the city centre of Tirana, in front of Enver Hoxa Monument, realised to distribute free drinking water by temporary using the city water main during the Tirana Biennial. The project started from the fact that a large number of the population in Tirana did not have access to drinking water.

Goals

Offer a public service within the context of one of the most iconic symbols of the communist state.

Beneficial Outcomes

The inhabitants had free access to drinking water during the Biennial.

Location

Mexico

Users

Chiapas Media Project, Promedios France, CLACPI (América Latina), Zapatista Communities.

Maintained by

Angelica Foundation, Daniele Agostino Foundation, Chace Fund, Funding Exchange, Fund for Global Human Rights, Goldman Environmental, Foundation Global, Fund for Human Rights, Honor the Earth Fund, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Joshua Mailman Foundation, Peace Development Fund, Reebok Human Rights Award, Riverside Sharing Fund, Solidago Foundation, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, US-Mexico Fund for Culture Vanguard Foundation, William H. Donner Foundation

Duration

1998 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

533

Chiapas Media Project (Promedios de comunicación comunitaria)

Initiator

Promedios

Description

CMP is a project established by a group of filmmakers and media artists that went to Chiapas to report about Human Rights violations and the situation with the Zapatistas Communities. They decided to provide video equipment, computers and training enabling marginalised indigenous communities in Southern Mexico to create their own media. CMP instructors worked in close collaboration with autonomous Zapatista communities sharing knowledge, technics and skills. As a consequence, indigenous youth with little formal education, and often working without reliable electricity, have produced videos on critical issues as agricultural collectives, fair trade coffee, women’s collectives, autonomous education, traditional healing and the history of their struggle for land.

Goals

Responding to the Zapatistas Communities demands of media access. Offer training and resources to document and denounce Human Rights violations, building their own autonomy through communication.

Beneficial Outcomes

CMP has distributed over 6000 indigenous produced videos. These videos have been screened at universities, museums, and film and video festivals worldwide. All the participants got a complete professional training. Currently, CMP functions solely as a distributor of the Zapatista productions and other documentaries from Mexico and Promedios de Comunicación Comunitaria continues working with the Zapatista communities.

Location

United States

Users

Homeless people

Maintained by

Dan Peterman, Resource Center

Duration

1988

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

226

Chicago Compost Shelter

Initiator

Dan Peterman

Description

While working for the Resource Center, a non-profit recycling organization, Dan Peterman converted an adjacent lot into a temporary shelter for the homeless. Peterman created Chicago Compost Shelter with a Volkswagen van body, burying it in compost to retain heat. The van’s seats were removed, making the space large enough for a bed and some furniture. The compost used for the shelter was collected as part of a project to recycle organic waste in Chicago by the Resource Center. The compost consisted of a mixture of leaves, grass, clippings, and police horse manure.

Goals

Temporary shelter for homeless in the winter, using organic material to produce heat.

Beneficial Outcomes

Heated, temporary shelter without the danger of fire.

Location

The Netherlands, Austria

Users

CAE, Creation is Crucifixion and the Carbon Defense League, Teenage boys

Maintained by

CAE, coproduced by Carbon Defense League, Institute for Applied Autonomy, RTMark.com

Duration

1998 - 2001

Category

scientific, pedagogical

Nr. and Title

431

Child as audience

Initiator

Carbon Defense League, Critical Art Ensemble

Description

This project began in 1998 by the Carbon Defense League, with the support of Critical Art Ensemble and Institute for Applied Autonomy. It was designed for teenagers and consist in a package composed of a host of radical software, a hardcore CD, instructions on how to hack a Nintendo Game Boy and a pamphlet on the oppression of youth.

Goals

The final aim was to provide the necessary information on how to hack a Nintendo Game Boy. It meant to bring together the efforts of the Carbon Defense League, and Creation Is Crucifixion, to digitally invade one of the icons of the consumer age, the Nintendo Gameboy.

Beneficial Outcomes

The teenagers discovered how to hack a Gameboy and the first CDL game.

Location

United States

Users

Josiah Warren, inhabitants of Cincinnati.

Maintained by

Josiah Warren and clients

Duration

1827 - 1830

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

454

Cincinnati Time Store

Initiator

Josiah Warren

Description

A store where customers could purchase goods with "labour notes", which represented an agreement to perform labour. This was determined on the principle of the equal exchange of labour, measured by the time taken, and exchanged hour for hour with other kinds of labour. Warren embraced the labour theory of value, which says that the value of a commodity is the amount of labour that goes into producing or acquiring it. Warren summed up this policy in the phrase "Cost the limit of price," with "cost" referring to the amount of labour one exerted in producing a good. He set out to examine if his theories could be put into practice by establishing his "labour for labour store". His experiment proved to be successful.

Goals

To establish various colonies whose participants all agreed to use "cost the limit of price" in all economic transactions, hoping that all of society would eventually adopt the tenet in economic affairs.

Beneficial Outcomes

Anyone could purchase goods without money but with an exchange of labour. Created a new system in how to value goods.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Stichting Terremoto (UlrikeHelmer and Boris Everts), Residents of Nieuw Unicum.

Maintained by

Stichting Nieuw Unicum, SKOR

Duration

1995 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

298

Circuit II

Initiator

John Körmeling

Description

Körmeling has created a circuit for wheelchairs for the inhabitants of Nieuw Unicum Foundation, a communal accommodation facility for physically handicapped people in the dune area of Zandvoort. The artist has thus transformed his art work in a project designed to improve the life of these people and let them enjoy the natural environment at the same time. Slopes and turns, are designed to give easy access for wheelchairs. The project was completed with a film "Stichting Earthquake" about how to use the circuit.

Goals

Increase the possibilities of movement and freedom through the dunes to the wheelchair's users.

Beneficial Outcomes

The dwellers of Nieuw Unicum could go outside through the dunes with their wheelchairs.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Models

Maintained by

Hussein Chalayan

Duration

2000

Category

urban-development

Nr. and Title

225

Coffee Table skirt

Initiator

Hussein Chalayan

Description

Hussein Chalayan realised a set of portable furniture, including a coffee table that transforms into a wooden skirt, 4 chairs cases that transform into dresses or fold into travel suitcases. He presented the project as a living room set on the catwalk stage. Furniture turned into dresses and suitcases, so the models could leave their stages with their portable objects.

Goals

It was inspired by the designer's thinking on the wartime impermanence that finds homes raided and families forced to flee or be killed.

Beneficial Outcomes

The furniture is portable and wearable.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

People living in Barking and Dagenham and wider east London, clients who buy drinks, commission bars, and researchers who use Company Drinks as a case study.

Maintained by

Initially funded by the 2014 Create Art Award, today the project is a Community Interest Company and it is run by Kathrin Böhm, Cam Jarvis, Pip Field, Oribi Davies and Tracky Crombie, Alice Masson-Taylor and Shaun Tuck (all part-time). Company Drinks is organized around a diverse set of economic underpinnings, stressing the monetary and non-monetary factors. Funders of the 2018 programme include The Wellcome Trust, Heritage Lottery Fund, the Greater London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Big Lottery Fund, Barking and Dagenham Renew, Arts Council England and Santander Discovery Grant.

Duration

2014 - ongoing

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

577

Company Drinks

Initiator

Kathrin Böhm, Myvillages

Description

Company Drinks is a community enterprise which links the history of east London families 'going picking' (fruit and hops) to the constitution of a new business which incorporates the whole drinks production cycle, and makes each step of the cycle accessible. The commercial aspect of the enterprise supports the communal and cultural one, and Company Drinks runs a year-round intergenerational programme that includes growing, picking, making, socializing, trading and discussing economy. The base is a former sports pavilion in a park in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, which has a large club room, a training and production kitchen and a large outdoor area with growing and recreational spaces. Workshops, public events and 'Hopping Afternoons' are held here which combine local heritage, local resources such as spare fruit and growing spaces, local skills such as recipe ideas, drinks production, specialist and localised knowledge, and a local economy. The drinks range change every year according to who are the people who go picking, where they pick and which recipes they might suggest.

Goals

Company Drinks produces syrups, sodas, saps, tonics, ciders, pop, and beers to be sold in order to establish an enterprise based on the principles of community economy, and to sustain a wide program of cultural activities such as workshops, events and study days about alternative economies. In addition, the project creates an open public space where different generations of people coming from different cultural background can meet and produce drinks. Drinks are mainly sold during events locally and London wide. It is possible to buy them at the Barking Pavilion or in honesty fridges across London.

Beneficial Outcomes

Every year around 1200 local residents engage with the project through various activities. The project has been recognised on a national and international level and today, it has developed into a fully-fledged community enterprise with a permanent base in Barking Park.

Location

United States

Users

Jon Rubin, Dawn Weleski, staff, and customers.

Maintained by

The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, The Benter Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, The Sprout Fund, Jon Rubin, and Dawn Weleski.

Duration

2010 - ongoing

Category

politics, social

Nr. and Title

433

Conflict Kitchen

Initiator

Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski

Description

Each Conflict Kitchen includes events, performances, and discussions that seek to expand public engagement with the culture, politics, and issues at stake within the focus country. The restaurant rotates identities every few months in relation to current geopolitical events. For example the focus started in 2015 was on the food, culture, and politics of Iran. The food comes packaged in wrappers that include interviews with Iranians on subjects ranging from culture to politics. The thoughts and opinions from the interviews and programming are often contradictory and complicated by personal perspective and history. These natural contradictions reflect a range of thought within each country and serve to bring about questioning, conversation, and debate with customers. Previous focus countries have included Afghanistan, Cuba, North Korea, Palestine, and Venezuela.

Goals

Engage the general public in discussions about countries, cultures, and people that they might know little about outside of the polarising rhetoric of governmental politics and the narrow lens of media headlines.

Beneficial Outcomes

Customers eat food from other countries. It has presented the only Iranian, Afghan, and Venezuelan restaurants the city has ever seen. Questioning, conversation, and debates have been ignited.

Location

Russian Federation

Users

Workers, artists

Maintained by

Karl Ioganson

Duration

1923

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

277

Constructivism – Finishing Machine

Initiator

Karl Ioganson

Description

Goals

Change the role of artists, to become the artist-producer (‘khudozhnik-proizvodstennik’) as Nikolai Tarabukin wrote, to design the process through aspects of production. He became a true worker at the factory workbench who is also an inventor, rather than an artist fulfilling a managerial-designer role.

Beneficial Outcomes

A closer integration of art, work and life. The invention of a machine that raised the production.

Location

The Netherlands, Spain

Field

Loopholes, Hacking, Extraterritorial Reciprocity, Userhsip

Strategy

Legislative Change, Use of the space as a common good, Space Hijack, Housing Rights, Right to the city

Users

Open to all users

Maintained by

Initial supporter was Casco Office for Art Design and Theory, Utrecht. It is maintained by the initiator in collaboration with hosting institutions that organise readings of the convention such as Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Madrid) and Tenderpixel (London)

Duration

2015 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

530

Convention on the use of space

Initiator

Adelita Husni-Bey

Description

The project consists of a legal instrument drafted as a response to the housing crisis: the lack of affordable homes, absence of provisions for those without the legal right to stay, rising rents, and the criminalisation of squatting. Husni-Bey, in collaboration with different participants (lawyers, activists, academics, squatters, researchers and cultural workers), wrote the text through a series of public drafting assemblies. During the collective sessions, the document was created, amended, critiqued and transformed. To be able to assist in making legal claims in court, the convention was written with the assistance of lawyers, yet it uses a legitimate form to make claims that are currently not considered legal. The document, therefore, provides an explanation of the motive behind an illegal action - squatting, for instance - and attempts to unite and protect struggles against the privatisation of space and housing.

Context

The Convention declares that occupation should be re-legalized, or made legal, or protected, depending on the state where the Convention is taken to, and that urban space should not be speculated upon, should be protected, essentially that everybody should have a right to space. The different claims that it makes in the orientations and different directions that this gets taken to are the result of different legislations that the Convention approaches because every single country in Europe has its own legal codes around housing. Therefore the Convention needs to be a travelling document that goes to each different European state in order to rewrite itself according to local legislation.

Goals

Legitimate and protect certain uses of ‘empty’ space to be occupied to produce non-marketable uses: living, sharing knowledge and skills, occupying space in protest, running cooperative systems of wealth and labour distribution, providing mental and physical support, or protecting space from environmental destruction. Going forward the Convention will be hosted in different EU countries, translated and open to further amendments, in order to produce a ‘European Convention on the Use of Space’.

Beneficial Outcomes

Facing the absence of European laws protecting the urban commons, the convention supplies the lack and acts as a contract. Subjects that sign it agree with its principles and guidelines. The convention can be used as a supportive document in court and affixed in spaces threatened with eviction.

Location

United States

Users

The members of the co-operative

Maintained by

Melusina Fay Peirce

Duration

1870

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

275

Cooperative Housekeeping

Initiator

Melusina Fay Peirce

Description

Melusina Fay Peirce was a writer, a social scientist, and a feminist who developed a cooperative housekeeping model as a solution to reduce the burden of housework for women in order that they could pursue other interests. She extended an idea already implemented for labour movements and consumer cooperatives such as farmers for the benefit of women. In 1870, she founded the Cooperative Housekeeping Association with a group of 15-20 women that would carry out the common tasks of cooking, laundry and sewing. The common tasks would be done by skilled women on a wage, and the goods and services being sold to members with profits shared. Peirce theorized about her idea of communal kitchens and laundries from neighborhoods of detached houses to apartment blocks and even patented her design for a co-operative apartment building. She used the term 'cooperative housekeeping' for her proposal published in the journal Atlantic Monthly from 1868-69.

Goals

The co-operative housekeeping would permit women to develop other activities in many different fields. It pursued the idea of bringing together women from hugely different backgrounds and did away with house-servants.

Beneficial Outcomes

The members of the cooperative shared domestic-tasks earning some money and time to spare in other fields.

Location

Mathare slum, Kenya

Users

Diana Adhiambo, Margert Adhiambo, Philgona Aluo, Brian Bera, Mary Mueni, Ann Mwikali, Millicent Ochieng, Susan Odhiambo, Rose Onyango, Nancy Opondo, Maureen Otieno, Alicja Wysocka, clients of the cooperative and artists who collaborated with the cooperative: Joanna Rajkowska, Małgorzata Markiewicz, Radek Szlaga, Paulina Ołowska, Dawid Polony

Maintained by

The project was made possible thanks to the support and assistance of the Razem Pamoja Foundation.

Duration

2017 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

570

Cooperative Spółdzielnia Ushirika

Initiator

Alicja Wysocka (Alfa Omegi), Razem Pamoja Foundation

Description

Cooperative Spółdzielnia Ushirika is a socio-artistic project, grounded in traditions of cooperative movements, run by the initiator and the community of Mathare Valley in Nairobi. Members of the cooperative produce mainly clothes and other accessories such as bags, school rucksacks, and travel bags, which are sold on and offline. Workers have an active role in the final form of the product they create, the work is not just limited to a passive re-making of a pre-established design. All cooperative members are provided with health insurance, a training, and workshops for learning how to use manual and electric sewing machines. According to the tribal tradition of the region, conversations and communal meals prepared by cooperative members are part of everyday work. Women are allowed to go to work with their children. Today, 10 women and a man are employed in the cooperative, the cooperative is equipped with 9 sewing machines (including 3 electric ones). The regular work shift is from Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 16:00 including a lunch break.

Goals

To provide workplaces to people excluded by the economic system, contributing to a fair redistribution of goods. To ensure safe and healthy working condition. To provide training and skills improvement in sewing for its new members. The profit generated by the cooperative covers the salaries of the members and it sustains cooperative's costs such as rent, materials, equipment maintenance, purchase of food for communal meals and the remuneration for the teachers leading workshops.

Beneficial Outcomes

The cooperative fosters a change of economic and social situation of the cooperative's employees. It encourages well-being and comfort at work. Workers learn skills in preparation for labour market. The cooperative uses locally sourced materials, thereby supporting the local economy. Used tires and plastic bags are recycled. In the first 5 months of activity, workers have produced over 200 bags (the first 3 months consisted in the training period for the workers). Today workers produce around 200 bags and backpack per month. With the help of a local cobbler, workers produced a collection of sandals made from recycled plastic bags. The current team is: Elizabeth Akoth, Diana Adhiambo, Margert Adhiambo, Philgona Aluo, Brian Bera, Mary Mueni, Ann Mwikali, Millicent Ochieng, Susan Odhiambo, Maureen Otieno, Alicja Wysocka.

Location

Italy, China

Users

The artists, Audience.

Maintained by

Alterazioni Video

Duration

2005 - ongoing

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

271

Copy-right no Copy-right

Initiator

Alterazioni Video

Description

This project consists of an open multimedia archive, while at the same time, it is also a physical place. Alterazioni Video, as a kind of gift, makes artists’ multimedia archives (films, pictures, mp3. etc.) available to the public – allowing people to download and upload files for free, while also sharing their own information.

Goals

The aim is to invite users to ponder the meaning of memory.

Beneficial Outcomes

Visitors can download for free whatever they want from the archive.

Location

Online

Users

Everyone

Maintained by

Coursera staff

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy

Nr. and Title

269

Coursera

Initiator

Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng

Description

Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera, a social entrepreneurship company that partners with top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Coursera envisions a future where the top universities are educating millions of students. The technology enables the best professors to teach hundreds of thousands of students. Their hope is to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. Coursera wants to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.

Goals

Empower people with education to improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in. Improve resumes, advance careers, or just learn more and expand knowledge.

Beneficial Outcomes

Coursera creates accessible education and a global classroom. It offers courses in a wide range of topics, spanning the Humanities, Medicine, Biology, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Business, Computer Science, and many others, all for free.

Location

Turkey

Users

Designers, Architects, Artists, Engineers, Advertisers, Students.

Maintained by

The project started as a school project; now it is sustained by one of the initiator, Bilal Yılmaz

Duration

2014 - ongoing

Category

urban-development

Nr. and Title

569

Crafted In Istanbul

Initiator

Bilal Yilmaz, Seda Erdural, Baris Gumustas

Description

Craftsmanship in Istanbul is under the danger of extinction with all the knowledge accumulated with generations of masters and apprentices. After visiting some workshops in the city, craftsmen shared with the initiators how their condition and businesses have changed since they started working. Many of them see their practice disappearing due to the growing industrialization, gentrification of the city, urban transformation, and the lack of support from the government. Almost 95% of artisans haven't taken on apprentices and their average age is over 50 years old, meaning that it is going to be more and more difficult to keep their expertise alive for the next generations. The project questions the possibilities of integration of traditional makers, small manufacturers and artisans into today's production and consumption system, in order to avoid their complete disappearance. Initially, an online map has been created with data gathered by the initiators' research. Today, craftsmen who want to appear on the map can contact directly the project via the dedicated website and request to be included on the map. After that, the initiators visit every workshop to gather information about their practice and consequently, the workshop is added to the map. The project allows people, especially designers, architects, artists, engineers, advertisers, and students, who might need to work with a specific material, such as glass, metal, wood, to get in touch with the most convenient person for their needs.

Goals

Beneficial Outcomes

Provides a database of craftsman for designers and art producers with a classification according to their expertise. The current map consists of 99 craftsmen who specialized in metalwork, wood, glass and textile products. They are mostly located in the Historical Peninsula, Dolapdere and Shishane region.

Location

United States

Users

Bonnie Ora Sherk, neighborhood residents and art community.

Maintained by

The Trust For Public Land

Duration

1974 - 1987

Category

urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

007

Crossroads Community (The Farm)

Initiator

Bonnie Ora Sherk

Description

Located on 7 acres adjacent to the intersection of several freeway overpasses in San Francisco, The Farm was the home of over 70 domestic animals, gardens, a theatre, a state preschool, an art gallery, a communal kitchen, and a punk rock club. Neighborhood residents, as well as the art community, were invited to participate in The Farm’s interdisciplinary, environmentally oriented activities.

Goals

As a life-scale environmental and social artwork, it brought many people from different disciplines and cultures together with each other and other species—plants and animals. The project involved extensive land transformation including the integration of disparate land parcels—all adjacent to and incorporating a major freeway interchange into a new city culture-ecology park.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Farm transitioned into a new city park with community gardens.

Location

The Internet

Users

Anyone with access to the internet can use the app. If a user signs up as a CSIA agent using an email account, they can gain access to all of the features. Without signing up, users can access the Resource library and social media Post Inspector.

Maintained by

Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki

Duration

2015 - ongoing

Category

scientific, pedagogical, politics, social

Nr. and Title

563

Crowd-Sourced Intelligence Agency

Initiator

Derek Curry, Jennifer Gradecki

Description

The Crowd-Sourced Intelligence Agency (CSIA) is an online application that replicates and displays some of the known techniques used by intelligence agencies to collect and process open source information. The app uses technical manuals, research reports, academic papers, leaked documents, and Freedom of Information Act files to construct an Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) system that's accessible to the public. OSINT is gathered from publicly available sources like social media, academic articles, and public data. The application consists of five main parts: The Social Media Monitor, a surveillance interface where users evaluate Tweets based on their threat to national security. Two Naïve Bayes supervised machine-learning classifiers that automatically label tweets as suspicious or not suspicious that users can review for accuracy and idiosyncrasies. The Social Media Post Inspector, where users can submit text to see if a post is likely to be considered threatening by intelligence agencies before sharing it on social media. The Watchlist, where users can target themselves and others as subjects of social media monitoring, and which provides automated evaluations from our machine-learning classifiers to show how social media posts may be treated by OSINT surveillance systems. A Resource Library that links to documents that informed the creation of the app.

Goals

The goal of the CSIA is to expose potential problems, assumptions, and oversights inherent in current dataveillance systems in order to help people understand the effectiveness of OSINT processing and its impact on our privacy.

Beneficial Outcomes

The CSIA provides first-hand experience with social media monitoring, allowing users to choose how they want to navigate social media surveillance.

Location

Colombia

Users

Residents of Bogotá

Maintained by

City Council of Bogotá

Duration

1995 - 1998 / 2001 - 2003

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

156

Cultura Ciudadana

Initiator

Antanas Mockus

Description

Antanas Mockus, who had no political experience, successfully ran for mayor of Bogotá. With an educator’s inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a social experiment, just as the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic and corruption. For ‘Women’s Night’ in 2001, he asked men to stay home and care for their families while the women went out. That night the police commander was a woman, and 1500 women police were in charge of Bogotá’s security. To avoid legal challenges, the mayor stated that the men’s curfew was strictly voluntary. Men who simply couldn’t bear to stay indoors during the six-hour restriction were asked to carry self-styled ‘safe conduct’ passes.

Goals

To make the city safer for women to be in public. To reflect on women’s role in society. To examine the role of men in both domestic and public violence.

Beneficial Outcomes

Under Mockus's leadership, Bogotá saw improvements such as: water usage dropped 40%, 7000 community security groups were formed and the homicide rate fell 70%, traffic fatalities dropped by over 50%, drinking water was provided to all homes (up from 79% in 1993), and sewerage was provided to 95% of homes (up from 71%). For ‘Women’s Night’, about 700 000 women went out, flocking to free, open-air concerts. They flooded into bars that offered women-only drink specials and strolled down a central boulevard that had been converted into a pedestrian zone. Men learned the joys and responsibilities of ‘women’s work’.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Lawson Park staff and visitors.

Maintained by

Lawson Park staff

Duration

2009 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, environment

Nr. and Title

482

Culture Shop

Initiator

Grizedale Arts

Description

Culture Shop is a collection of fermenting cultures for use in food produce.

Goals

To use and disseminate yeast-based cultures for the production of healthy food. To produce low-cost and low-impact food storage and exchange cultures.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Culture Shop is a vehicle for discussion in other places – exhibitions, projects etc. – whilst producing for sale. It encourages the growth of knowledge through exchange.

Location

India

Users

Sarai: Ravi S. Vasudevan and Ravi Sundaram (both fellows at CSDS) and the members of the Raqs Media Collective;

Maintained by

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi; in collaboration with 'Ankur' (Society for Alternatives in Education)

Duration

2001- ongoing

Category

scientific, pedagogical, social

Nr. and Title

079

Cybermohalla

Initiator

Sarai

Description

The project consists of a network of 5 'Media Labs' set up in deprived neighbourhoods in Dehli especially dedicated to kids and women. The aim is to teach people how to use free software in order to save money and to open the access to technologies such as computers, digital photography and film-making. The topics covered include issues related to the social problems of the neighbourhoods in which they live. The workshops are structured with digital images and sound technologies, inviting participants to interpret the urban condition with imagination, a sense of humour, and criticality.

Goals

The Cybermohalla Project (Mohalla in Hindi and Urdu means neighbourhood) addresses the interface between information technology and creativity in the lives of young people who live in a highly unequal society.

Beneficial Outcomes

Fostering understanding of important local issues through collective dialogue

Location

United States

Users

Artists, curators, activists, students

Maintained by

The artist and hosting institutions

Duration

2014 - ongoing

Category

economy

Nr. and Title

553

Day after Debt

Initiator

Ahmet Öğüt

Description

The artist conceived the project as a collaborative exhibition featuring five art-as-response pieces to the student loan crisis and the pressure it causes upon graduates. In its original version, Öğüt invited Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Superflex, Dan Perjovschi, Martha Rosler to present sculptures as collection points for public contribution to The Debt Collective, a student-debt canceling initiative launched by Strike Debt's Rolling Jubilee. Artworks were installed in museum public spaces such as corridors and entrance ways. To complete the project, Öğüt collaborated with a lawyer to write a Letter of Agreement between the artists and potential owners of the pieces, which states the possibility to continue raising funds for the Debt Collective through the artworks. Earnings must be donated to Strike Debt to buy back students’ loan.

Goals

To raise funds for Strike Debt to buy back Student Loans.

Beneficial Outcomes

To buy back Student Loans.

Location

Spain

Maintained by

Núria Güell and Levi Orta, activists

Duration

2014 - ongoing

Category

politics, economy

Nr. and Title

516

Degenerate Political Art. Ethical Protocol

Initiator

Núria Güell and Levi Orta

Description

After creating an anonymous corporation (Orta & Güell Contemporary Art S.A) in a tax haven, the artists Núria Güell and Levi Orta donate the management of their company and the accompanying bank account with all its benefits to a group of activists who are developing an autonomous society project on the sidelines of the capitalist dynamics. This company allows its recipients to evade the regulations imposed by the states, which are the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), challenging the financial system monopoly and thus facilitating a free effectiveness for an autonomous economy development. The founding of the company is thus a tool for establishing a more autonomous financial system, using the contradictory mechanisms of financial capitalism as tools in the struggle against the very system those tools were designed to support.

Goals

Allow users to avoid regulations imposed by states, ECB and the IMF. To analyze the contradictions inherent in copying capitalist strategies and whilst offering a tool to create anti-capitalist social dynamics.

Beneficial Outcomes

Through the bank accounts users are enabled to evade state-imposed regulations, and challenge the monopoly of the financial system, thus facilitating free operations to develop a self-governing economy.

Location

Online and built installations

Users

Anyone can visit the website, Furniture installations can be borrowed or commisioned Artist, Jenny Polak, 3D interaction designer Peter Mackey.

Maintained by

Jenny Polak and art galleries where her work is exhibited.

Duration

2006 - ongoing

Category

politics, social

Nr. and Title

229

Design for the Alien Within

Initiator

Jenny Polak

Description

The project consists of a web-based interactive design tool to help people in designing spaces to hide undocumented immigrants in different locations. The initiator built a prototype of furniture with space for hiding people, which was displayed in several art galleries.

Goals

To raise awareness about the precarious living conditions and danger faced by people living and working without immigration papers, and promote resistance to anti-immigrant authorities.

Beneficial Outcomes

By initiating ‘in-store’ gallery performances, the artist was able to bring additional awareness to the project and the issue.

Location

Croatia

Users

persons diagnosed as having the chronic mental illness of schizophrenia

Maintained by

Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital in Zagreb

Duration

2014

Category

social

Nr. and Title

523

Destigmatization

Initiator

Andreja Kulunčić

Description

Destigmatization was made in Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital in Zagreb in collaboration with a working group consisting of mentor Dubravka Stijačić, prof. (defectologist, social pedagogue and psychotherapist who has since 1996 run an independent unit in the Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital called the Resocialization Centre), Vlatka Prstačić (coordinator of creative workshops), Kuna Zlatica (designer) and persons diagnosed as having the chronic mental illness of schizophrenia who, after being discharged from Vrapče, have endured various forms of the stigmas attached to mental disturbances and their consequences. The “Vrapče Pillows” were made by patients with mental health problems in their endeavour to open up a dialogue about the problem of the stereotypes that became attached to them because of their conditions. The pillows with sparrows (sparrow in Croatian is “vrabac”, which is also the name of the city part where the hospital is located) were concrete and symbolic objects in which associations of the warmth and safety of home were brought together with their repugnance at the hospital ward. The strategy was to promote the pillows through a media campaign as a public speech about the taboo theme of the psychiatric hospital, patients, and mental illnesses.

Goals

The wish here is to find ways in which persons with mental illnesses can themselves talk of the problems, possible solutions, the mistakes that society at a conscious or unconscious level makes with respect to them and to give them tools so that they themselves can find and create spaces in society for their own active inclusion.

Beneficial Outcomes

A large number of people got involved, carrying pillows with them to the places they moved, and putting photographs with pillows on the Facebook page of the project. They would send the pillow to a member of their family, a friend, neighbour or back to the hospital for the next interested person to take it with them.
It raises the level of public awareness, provoking modifications in the perception of persons with mental illnesses, that is, in understanding that the phenomenon of mental sickness is not something distinct from society, that people with social disturbances are a part of society and that they need to be given the chances to become themselves agents in the process of de-stigmatisation.

Location

Chiapas and Mexico City (Mexico), New York City (USA)

Field

Coefficient of art, Deactivate (art’s aesthetic function)

Strategy

Alternative Economy, Right to the land

Users

Zapatista farmers, coffee drinkers

Maintained by

The project was self-initiated, and it is self-funded by the artists. The coffee circulates mainly around art and social justice events in NYC; coffee is also sold door-to-door in the city; the project is additionally financed by Spacebank, an ongoing art project and virtual community investment bank founded by Ilich in 2005.

Duration

2015 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

544

Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op

Initiator

Fran Ilich

Description

The Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op offers organic coffee sourced locally in Chiapas from Zapatista autonomous farms. The coffee is stored and packed in Tijuana; then, it is shipped to New York City to be distributed mostly at art & culture and social justice-related events where Ilich and his collaborators engage in a conversation and training about experimental economics models. The artist also organises a door-to-door distribution in Brox, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. The Co-op trades the coffee using alternative currencies, barter of time deposits and accepts voluntary money donations as well. Proceeds are used to buy more coffee from the autonomous Zapatista rebels.

Context

The Zapatistas plant coffee in the mountains and the jungles of Chiapas as a way to fund their activities. Through its bartering in NYC, Ilich enabled the product's circulation and ideas about alternative ways of exchanging products within the economic system.

Goals

The project uses coffee as an excuse to create a sustainable way to fund the production of coffee without exploiting Zapatista farms, to create a network based on solidarity between farmers in Chapas, service industry labourers and users and in New York City mediated by the artist and his collaborators.

Beneficial Outcomes

The exchange of coffee allows the sustainability of the production in Chiapas, and at the same time, it avoids large-scale exploitation of both land and farmers.

Location

United States

Users

Theaster Gates, Inhabitants of South Dorchester Avenue.

Maintained by

Theaster Gates

Duration

2006 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

062

Dorchester Project

Initiator

Theaster Gates

Description

Goals

To provide affordable housing, studio, and live-work space for residents of Dorchester, Chicago.

Beneficial Outcomes

Provides cultural institutions in the neighbourhood, brings together different community organisations and individuals, creating what Gates calls ‘radical hospitality’.

Location

United States

Users

Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, Richard Kallweit, Clark Richert and art students

Maintained by

Independent

Duration

1965 - 1973

Category

environment, social

Nr. and Title

056

Drop city

Initiator

Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, Richard Kallweit and Clark Richert

Description

Drop City was the first rural commune of the '60s where a group of about 12 adults and children lived in dome-style architectures inspired by the geodesic design principles of Buckminster Fuller. House-domes were built without a systematic kit or an exact design and members of the commune used mostly inexpensive, found materials such as sheet metal hacked off of junked car roofs. The village became a sort of laboratory for experimental building, solar technology and recycled materials, becoming an inspiration for a new generation of DIYers.

Goals

Influenced by Allen Kaprow's happenings and new theories and performances by John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, and Robert Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College, they were determined to break art out of the confines of museums and galleries and integrate it with everyday life. To create a “live-in” work of Drop Art.

Beneficial Outcomes

They used the geodesic design principles to build domes for domestic living, using waste and salvaged material.

Location

Venezuela

Users

Liyat Esakov (architect), Marjetica Potrč, La Vega community

Maintained by

Caracas Case Project and Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany; Ministry of Environment, Venezuela

Duration

2003 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

049

Dry Toilet

Initiator

Marjetica Potrč

Description

The project consists of a waterless and ecologically safe toilet that collects waste and turns into fertiliser for La Vega barrio in Caracas, an area with no running water. The toilet was built with the residents, a neighbourhood association and architect Liyat Esakov.

Goals

The project provides an 'informal' infrastructure to residents who receive water from municipal authorities no more than two days per week.

Beneficial Outcomes

Collects waste and turns it into fertilizer.

Location

Turkey

Users

Freelance and white collar workers especially specialising on translation, publishing, teaching, NGO’s, arts and culture, informatics; unemployed, grassroots organisations of ecology and migration.

Maintained by

Donations from the members of Dünyada Mekan Collective, twice per year a 'solidarity party' is organized to raise funds.

Duration

2015 - ongoing

Category

politics, urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

571

Dünyada Mekan

Initiator

Sectoral and labour organisations focusing on white-collar workers and freelancers, individuals.

Description

Dünyada Mekan (A Place in the World) consists in a free working space equipped with a kitchen available from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm every day, for white-collar workers and freelancers who, due to the peculiarities of their work, experience isolation and precariousness. As a platform of solidarity, Dünyada Mekan can be used also as a place for gathering during evening times, it hosts other groups who are active in movement building and in the alternative solidarity economies such as Plaza Eylem Platformu and Kaç bize gel. The constituents of the space organise several workshops on video editing, visual design and translation to share their skills with each other, in addition to some other activities such as talks, screenings and presentations. The meetings function as tools for drawing attention to the problematics related to precarious working conditions and isolation, as well as whether these conditions have an effect on individual lives and how.

Goals

Beneficial Outcomes

Dünyada Mekan has a core group of around 10 people who regularly use the space and around 100 people who gather occasionally for the other activities. The project does not require a membership, it is completely run on a volunteer basis. Grassroots organisations can use the space for their meetings and activities.

Location

Austria

Users

Museum guards, public

Maintained by

Wiener Secession

Duration

1997

Category

scientific, environment

Nr. and Title

076

Dynamo Secession

Initiator

Maurizio Cattelan

Description

Inside the Wienner Secession gallery, a system of bicycles was installed to generate energy. Two security guards were pedalling on bicycles propped on trestles, producing the energy to turn on the bulbs in several of the rooms of the gallery.

Goals

To generate electricity in a gallery space modifying the roles and relationship between the artist, attendants and artworks within the exhibition.

Beneficial Outcomes

Several rooms of the gallery were powered by the bicycles.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Sandwich Technology School students

Maintained by

Sandwich Technology School

Duration

2004-2006

Category

scientific, environment, social

Nr. and Title

541

East of Eden

Initiator

Lucy Stockton-Smith, Arts Catalyst

Description

For 18 months, Lucy Stockton-Smith worked with teachers and pupils at Sandwich Technology School in Kent to plan, design, build and fully utilise two geodesic ecology domes in the grounds of the school. Each dome now houses a microenvironment in which food crops are grown. The ‘Perma-pod’ is an environment which follows the principles of sustainable land use. It incorporates a wormery and is used to cultivate plants and wildlife which are ‘companions’, and beneficial to each other and the soil. The ‘Techno-pod’ aims to recreate contemporary farming methods, including the use of pesticides and intensive cultivation. These contrasting environments have served as a platform from which artists have led a diverse range of workshops across the school curriculum, in science, art, design and technology, geography, music and history. The project has seized upon areas where science has overlapped into other subjects. Students have been growing a huge variety of fruit and vegetables both inside and outside the domes. They conduct wildlife surveys, document the plant life and use it for inspiration for poetry and writing. Others are currently researching and designing a medieval garden. Other artists have come in to work on the project and lead workshops, including Antony Hall and Marcus Ahlers. Artists’ workshops have included making solar ovens and solar puddles; a bio-acoustic project; and the building of a rainwater harvesting system and an automatic irrigation system for the domes.

Goals

To cultivate understanding of and excitement about ecology and food growing techniques.
To develop self-confidence and autonomous working skills in students.
To develop interdisciplinary projects in a whole school activity.
To integrate art across many areas of the school curriculum.

Beneficial Outcomes

A love of ecology and understanding of where food comes from in young people. Inter-disciplinary and inter-class working, across subjects and age groups, with artistic practice at the heart of all activities.

Location

France

Users

AAA functions as a collaborative network with variable geometry, which organizes itself according to different topics, contexts of intervention, competencies and availability of participants. AAA: Constantin Petcou, Doina Petrescu, Denis Favret, Giovanni Piovene, John Sampson, Giada Mangiameli, John Roberts collaborators : Béatrice Rettig, Jean-Baptiste Bayle, Bordercartograph (Marion Baruch, Miriam Rambach , Arben Iljazi), School of Architecture/University of Sheffield, Antoine Quenardel and inhabitants of La Chapelle area including Fabienne Molinier, Catherine Sachet, Richard Laquitaine, Michèle Chevillon, Phillipe Serret, Abdulaye Sy and many more.

Maintained by

Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée (AAA)

Duration

2001 - 2006

Category

urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

066

ECObox

Initiator

Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée (AAA)

Description

Goals

To encourage residents to get access to and critically transform temporary misused or underused spaces.

Beneficial Outcomes

Offering the inhabitants the chance to occupy an abandoned space and transform it into a participatory garden and a place for debate.

Location

Turkey

Users

Users of SALT, Community gardeners, Workshop participants, Youth and children, Researchers, Chefs, Urban theorists, Architects

Maintained by

Slow Food Youth group Istanbul and Fevzi Cakmak, SALT Beyoğlu.

Duration

2011 - 2015

Category

urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

554

Edible Estate #11: Istanbul, Turkey

Initiator

SALT, Fritz Haeg, November Paynter

Description

A glass greenhouse with south and west exposure on the top floor of the cultural venue SALT Beyoglu in central Istanbul houses an evolving experimental edible garden environment. Scavenged materials, construction detritus, empty containers, and local finds were gathered to create structures accommodating plants and people. SALT staff and visitors use the casual handmade environment as a green living room and gardening retreat, participating in its creation, use, and development. Local urban gardeners occupy it as an occasional headquarters and seed-starting facility. The planted, structural and furniture elements of the hothouse evolved through time with the growth of the plants and the changing desires of the users, while built elements are continually constructed, adjusted, and reconfigured. The Rooftop Hothouse is a casual laboratory for modest and year-round urban gardening activity cultivating a diversity of edibles. The garden is now managed by Slow Food Youth Group Istanbul.

Goals

The aim was to create an edible estate that would act as a casual laboratory for modest and year-round urban gardening activity cultivating a diversity of edibles. At the same time it was hoped that the space would launch a series of questions, discussions and reflections on cultural agency, urban issues, the environment, what a cultural institution can and should be or do etc.

Beneficial Outcomes

The garden created an alternative environment to the gallery spaces of the institution and sparked debates around what art is and can be, and what it means to present something in an unfinished or developing state. It created a hub for people to gather, to meet, to learn about edible plants and food production. It offered a space for workshops and discussion around urban issues and the environment. Ultimately it opened a series of propositions without offering answers.

Location

Puerto Rico

Users

Chemi Rosado-Seijo, inhabitants of El Cerro.

Maintained by

Chemi Rosado-Seijo, inhabitants of El Cerro

Duration

2002 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

337

El Cerro

Initiator

Chemi Rosado-Seijo

Description

The project consists in painting the houses of the residents of El Cerro, a community that was initially founded by workers of a coffee plantation that was located there in the past. Over the years, over 100 buildings have been painted in green for free by residents, volunteers and students.The artist has implemented an extensive plan for painting the houses within the community using different shades of green to match the surrounding mountains; in doing so, he has altered the area both aesthetically and socially. The project also includes workshops for residents of all ages covering different subjects, ranging from art to law. With the help of curator Pablo León de la Barra, it was possible to create El Cerro Museum in an abandoned building that now is a community centre.

Goals

Formulate new relations in the social context and renovating the buildings.

Beneficial Outcomes

The exchange of knowledge between people that normally wouldn’t share knowledge. It generated an open community for other artistic or social projects, activities and workshops.

Location

Egypt

Users

The artist, residents in Art El Lewa, University professors and unemployed youth.

Maintained by

Idea and production by Asunción Molinos Gordo. Hosted by ́ Artellewa Art Space. Collaborators: Elisabeth Shoghi, 5 star international chef: Om Islam, Om Mohamed, Om Karim y Wafea: ́ traditional cooks, Solafa Ghanem: mediator, Salima Ikram: archaeologist.

Duration

2012

Category

politics, urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

449

El Matam El Mish Masry

Initiator

Asunción Molinos Gordo

Description

The project was based on the creation of a restaurant in the neighbourhood of El Lewa, Cairo – one of the many neighborhoods built illegally, known as Ashguahiyats, a term meaning 'leaving things to chance'. Using different kinds of menus, people have been able to deal with issues relating to food and agriculture such the substantial loss of fertile soil as a result of uncontrolled growth in suburban areas on top of agricultural land; or the impact of export/import policies on Egyptian diet.

Goals

Lack of food sovereignty is one of the main factors that sparked the ongoing Egyptian Revolution. This project’s main goal is to reintroduce into public discussion facts about the food and agriculture situation which are crucial to the country’s future. The restaurant was designed as a meeting point where, rather than through mass media, users and initiators could start a conversation. The project also aims to ‘translate’ into real dishes some data that would normally be presented under the abstract coding of mathematical percentages.

Beneficial Outcomes

Facilitating casual meetings between residents, university professors, researchers, activists, visiting artists who all sat at the dining table. In a time when public discourse is being shaped in order to divide the population according to ethnic group or religion, the project’s main beneficial outcome was to remember what is common among the variety of people than life in Egypt: food, a basic need.

Location

US

Users

Inhabitants of Williamsburg

Maintained by

Aetna Foundation-- Help Portrait, Andy Harris (through BNY Wealth Management), Brooklyn Community Foundation, Coca-Cola Company (Fitness Program), Environmental Protection Agency, Green Jobs Green NY--NYSERDA, Hispanic Federation- Aetna Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)--Community Arts, New York Community Trust, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), NYC Department of Education - Academy for IAP, NYC Department of Youth & Community Development, NYS Council for the Arts, NYS Dept. of Education - 21st Century, NYS Dept. of Health - Health Research Aids Institute, NYS Office of Alcoholism & Substance Abuse Services (OASAS), Rockefeller Family Fund, Rockefeller NYC Cultural Innovation Fund, The Scherman Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, William B. Weiner Foundation, Winslow Foundation, Youth Development Institute (YDI)

Duration

1982 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

103

El Puente

Initiator

Luis Garden Acosta and Frances Lucerna

Description

Goals

Its goal is to promote social justice through direct community engagement in the arts, education, scientific research, and environmental action. It was founded to complete the holistic transformation of North Brooklyn from one of the most challenged neighborhoods in New York City to a more equitable, healthy and green community.

Beneficial Outcomes

They have improved the life of the community. The Academy for Peace and Justice is one of the NY "A" rated public school with 100% students graduated. In 2003, the Academy was recognized by the Department of Education’s Chancellor as one of New York City’s 200 Schools of Excellence and remains among NYC’s A-rated schools. In 2009, it was recognized for achieving the highest 1 year graduation rate increase among Brooklyn High Schools. The Academy is highlighted in the Eisenhower Foundation report, “What Works: Public School Reform” and is currently part of a Stanford University Study sponsored by Linda Darling Hammond researching best practices in schools focused on social emotional development and social justice. It is also part of the NYC DOE’S Expanded Success Initiative focused on the academic success of Latino and African American male students.

Location

Venezuela

Users

Kids and adolescents at risk of social exclusión, public schools, teachers, and those who have directed the orquestra: José Antonio Abreu Anselmi, Frank Di Polo, Ulyses Ascanio, Sofía Mühlbauer, Carlos Villamizar, Jesús Alfonso, Edgar Aponte, Florentino Mendoza, Carlos Lovera, Lucero Cáceres, Claudio Abbado, Eduardo Mata, Zubin Mehta, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Daniel Barenboim, James Judd, Sir Simón Rattle y Gustavo Dudamel.

Maintained by

Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Longy School of Music of Bard College (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Bard College (New York) and the Goverment of Venezuela

Duration

1975 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

044

El Sistema (The System)

Initiator

José Antonio Abreu Anselmi

Description

El Sistema is a pedagogical, artistic and social model to systematize the musical education. It has been operating since 1975 as the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras and Choirs of Venezuela (Sistema Nacional de Orquestas y Coros juveniles e infantiles de Venezuela) recently renamed to Fundación Musical Simón Bolívar.
The program was created primarily focused on offering free classical music education for kids at risk of social exclusion. Under the motto "play and fight" the Sistema is based on a network of music centers called "nucleos" that work together with local communities to organize the instruction, the collective and individual practice of music among kids and youth through symphonic orchestras and choirs, as instruments of social organization and human development.
The program begon with 11 participants in a garage in Caracas. From that, the network expanded to 300 youth orchestras and choirs, with approximately 700,000 young people involved.

Goals

- Giving free access to classical music education, symphonic orchestras and instruments to kids and youth at risk of social exclusion.
- Offering Individual intellectual development and integral personal capacitation through the music.
- formulate local shared spaces as generators of culture, breaking the elitism of the high culture and recovering Art as a social right.

Beneficial Outcomes

El Sistema runs lessons and workshops for children and young people, in which they learn to play, construct and repair special instruments, besides offering programs for children with disabilities or learning difficulties. It also provides technical and organizational assistance to all public schools that request their integration into the musical system and relies on neighborhood associations, parents, town halls and institutional representations to provide them with the necessary rehearsal rooms or musical instruments.
The system is a model that can be replicated and implemented in other countries and it has inspired multiple educational programs in USA, Canada, UK, Portugal, Spain.

Location

Austria

Users

Seven former drug users who had completed rehab therapy and were willing to start working.

Maintained by

Anton-Proksch-Institute

Duration

2003 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

256

Employment of Former Drug Users

Initiator

WochenKlausur

Description

The project consists of a series of upcycling workshops to help former drug users who have completed long-term therapy work, with the reintegration in the first labour market. Through the workshops, participants redesign and sell discarded products or worn-out pieces of furniture for a new use. Every year, a new group of people who have completed therapy are employed by the business.

Goals

To help people who have completed long-term therapy work creatively for a year and adapt to a structured workplace.

Beneficial Outcomes

A number of participants have been able to find jobs in the primary sector of the labor market following their employment at gabarage. The workshop has been invited by Trigos Awards to design their contest trophies.

Location

Rio de La Plata, Argentina

Field

Ecological activism, Alternative Energies, Extractivism, cultural landscape

Strategy

Use It Yourself, Extraterritorial Reciprocity, Deactivating (art’s aesthetic function), Alternative Economies

Users

Community of Isla paulino and visitors in general.

Maintained by

Community of Isla paulino

Duration

2000 - ongoing

Category

scientific, pedagogical, politics, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

480

Energia Alternativa para Isla Paulino (Alternative Energy for Isla Paulino)

Initiator

Ala Plastica

Description

After another tragic oil spill from the petrochemicals factories at the banks of the canal in the La Plata harbour in 1999, Ala Plástica proposed to the local community to install 32 solar panels to supply the lack of electricity on the island. They encouraged a group of inhabitants to organise themselves into an association in order to manage the installation. The strategy was dialogical to involve a community formed by diverse actors (neighbours, associations, religious groups, policymakers, local institutions, and collectives) with experts in different fields (political experts, biologists, engineers, artists, etc).

Context

Ala Plástica (1991-2016, initially formed by Alejandro Meitin, Silvina Babich, and Rafael Santos) had a background in law, horticulture, science, and art education. Since 1991 they have worked around environmental issues engaging with the communities from the basin of La Plata (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia) to develop a trans-regional territorial research using artistic methods.Isla Paulino is a wetland –habitat of aquatic birds– in delta Río Santiago (riverbank of Rio de la Plata). The Delta is composed of a group of islands, creek and coasts with a rich natural and cultural ecosystem. The Delta was modified in the late XIX century to open up the channel to reach La Plata Harbour. The inhabitants of Isla Paulino have developed a traditional economy based on fishing and horticulture. Although the island doesn’t have infrastructure nor running water, the expansion of petrochemical industries had put this environment and its fauna in danger with a series of oil spills in 1999-2000.

Goals

The project was aimed to protect the natural and cultural landscape; provide solar energy for inhabitants and to conceive a plan based on the understanding of the ecosystem and its infrastructure. The final goal was to promote a national law to keep this landscape protected.

Beneficial Outcomes

Location

United States

Users

Artists, curators, critics, general public, students

Maintained by

Grants and individual donations

Duration

2002 - ongoing

Category

Nr. and Title

157

Experimental Station

Initiator

Dan Peterman and Connie Spreen

Description

The project consists of a refurbished building where a broad range of social organisations and independent projects take place. In 2002, after a massive fire, the structure was renovated and reopened as the Experimental Station. The centre offers various forms of support for the residents of Southside Chicago, including workspace at discounted rents, meeting space, technology, and shared resources such as a greenhouse and roof gardens and small offices suites. At the same time, the users are asked to contribute offering lectures, exhibitions, etc. that are free and open to the public. Areas of primary interest include art, ecology, cultural criticism, independent publishing and alternative models of education.

Goals

To provide essential resources that enable vulnerable, yet valuable initiatives to stabilize and flourish. To maintain a diverse and interdisciplinary balance of participants and activities and generate events, lectures, and exhibitions which are free and open to the public.

Beneficial Outcomes

The building now hosts a number of initiatives and programs attending to local needs: a nonprofit community bike shop, a farmers market featuring educational programs, an investigative journalism production company called the Invisible Institute, and other public events such as conferences, concerts and readings.

Location

United States

Users

Billy Klüver, Robert Whitman, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and Robert Whitman among the others. Notable engineers involved include: Bela Julesz, Billy Klüver, Max Mathews, John Pierce, Manfred Schroeder, and Fred Waldhauer

Maintained by

Julie Martin

Duration

1966 - 2001

Category

scientific, pedagogical, economy

Nr. and Title

220

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)

Initiator

Billy Klüver, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman.

Description

E.A.T. was a non-profit foundation established to promote collaborations between artists, engineers and scientists. The organisation responded to artists' request for technical help by matching them with an engineer who could work with them and develop new projects using new technologies. E.A.T created a collaboration between these actors, through cooperation and sponsorship. In the late 1960s, 28 regional E.A.T. chapters were created throughout the U.S. to promote collaborations between artists and engineers and expand the artist’s role in social developments related to new technologies.

Goals

The organisation placed artists working directly with engineers in the industrial environment where technology was being developed.

Beneficial Outcomes

Projects realized at this time included developing methods to produce instructional programming for India's educational television; a communication net of linked public spaces by telex in New York (U.S.), Ahmadabad (India), Tokyo (Japan) and Stockholm (Sweden) by telex; a pilot project enabling children in different parts of New York City to speak over the telephone, telex and fax equipment; a pilot programme to devise methods for recording indigenous culture in El Salvador, etc.

Location

Germany

Users

A third of the space is rented to local, production-oriented businesses; a third to art and culture; and a third to community outreach organizations or non-profit associations. There are also a canteen, a project room for events and two guest apartments.

Maintained by

ExRotaprint gGmbH (non-profit limited liability company) founded by renters / the planning team consists of artists Daniela Brahm and Les Schliesser, and architects Bernhard Hummel and Oliver Clemens.

Duration

2005 - ongoing

Category

politics, urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

100

ExRotaprint

Initiator

Daniela Brahm, Les Schliesser

Description

After the Rotaprint company went bankrupt in 1989, the 10,000-square-meter manufacturing facility was left without any future prospects. In 2005, artists Daniela Brahm and Les Schliesser formulated a concept for taking over the property through renters already on site. The goal was to develop the location to serve a heterogeneous mix of Arbeit, Kunst, Soziales (work, art, and community).

Goals

To create a common space for people with different occupations, and different backgrounds and histories, fighting against the delimiting tendencies of culture and money. To prevent real estate speculation. To keep rents low.

Beneficial Outcomes

After successful negotiations in 2007, the non-profit company ExRotaprint owns the buildings through a 99-year heritable building right and is responsible for all aspects of its development. The legal structure prohibits selling the property again and the income from rents is linked to declared non-profit goals.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Students of the Professor Einstein Elementary School, students of the Calvijn Junior College (lower secondary professional education), Jeanne van Heeswijk, Dennis Kaspori, Slotervaart’s design department and outside experts, inhabitants of Slotervaart

Maintained by

SKOR, Amsterdam City Council.

Duration

2005 - 2011

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

213

Face Your World

Initiator

Jeanne van Heeswijk

Description

The project was set up as a tailor-made educational program for the youngster to explore and participate in the process of city renewal. To help them it was developed the so-called Interactor software, an interactive tool to enable users to rebuild their neighbourhood. The software creates a virtual environment which represents the neighbourhood and enables users to see the result of its modification while it has been used.

Goals

The project enables young people to investigate the environment in which they live. It gives them instruments so that they can – like a genuine town planner – change their environment.

Beneficial Outcomes

In the Stedelijklab which is essentially a gym hall converted into a design studio, students designed a new park, Staalmanpark. The designs were not only based on their own wishes, but also on those of other local residents.
In 2011, their new Staalmanpark was opened.

Location

Worldwide

Users

Initially the maps were intended for the homeless, however their use has broadened to local residents and others as the maps live online and are reproduced freely and widely on the internet.

Maintained by

Fallen Fruit

Duration

2004 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

468

Fallen Fruit – Public Fruit Maps

Initiator

David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young

Description

Fallen Fruit began as a collaboration between David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young in 2004 and originally focussed on mapping the fruit trees on or over public property in Los Angeles. Its focus grew to other urban, public spaces; sidewalks, streets and alleys. They termed these findings as ‘public fruit’ and started to think about how they could expand this project to regenerate neighbourhoods and urban spaces. Hand drawn maps were produced and distributed covering various urban cities and towns – intending to encourage others to continue in this way by wandering, foraging and seeing the new potential in their urban spaces. For this reason they’ve avoided geo-tagging online maps, which give exact locations for the trees. However, a separate project exists called ‘falling fruit’, which works on very similar lines, does use this method. Fallen Fruit’s maps in contrast do not follow exact spatial proportions, but each map has a certain amount of play in the choice of which streets are included, so that often these express unusual shapes present in the landscape: an animal, a mythical shape of just a gesture used to break the grid on which most cities are built.

Goals

To change the way we think and live in our cities and neighbourhood by challenging the meaning of place and the way our familiar spaces can be put to new use. To highlight the way in which fruit can be used to rethink the way people live, to evoke a utopian possibility whilst being solidly pragmatic. To encourage explorative wandering, foraging, and discovery.

Beneficial Outcomes

The maps have a liminal life and are widely circulated and often copied. Fallen Fruit often activate the maps by using them to lead tours through actual sites. These tours start in the evening so they can meet the residents and talk to them. The residents are often as surprised as the people on the tour. The intangible benefit of these maps is most important to them: the emergence of new conversations around cities and neighbourhoods, gardens, public space and the meaning of food. Fallen Fruit believes in a kind of art-making in which the product is social and generative.

Location

Online

Users

Everyone

Maintained by

The creators and the users

Duration

2013- ongoing

Category

economy, environment

Nr. and Title

436

Falling Fruit

Initiator

Caleb Phillips, Ethan Welty

Description

The Falling Fruit project was born from a passion for food and the environment. It is organised in an open-source database that brings together the entirety of maps made by foragers from the Internet. The database also includes edible species found in municipal tree inventories: databases of street (and sometimes private) trees used by many cities, universities, and other institutions to manage the urban forest. Through the quantification of these resources on a map, Falling Fruit hopes to facilitate intimate connections between people, food, and the natural organisms growing in their own neighborhoods.

Goals

Foraging in the 21st century is an opportunity for urban exploration, fighting the scourge of stained sidewalks, and reconnecting with the botanical origins of food. Foragers and private tree owners are encouraged to donate their surplus to charity and to the organisations specialized in rescuing and distributing fresh produce.

Beneficial Outcomes

The map is open for anyone to edit. The entire database can be downloaded with just one click, and our code is open-source.

Location

China

Users

Factory community, People that eat, People that use technology

Maintained by

Factory workers-owners community

Duration

2011 - onwards

Category

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

545

Farmification

Initiator

Lisa Ma

Description

Farmification is a part-time farming scheme to help migrant workers gain control over their futures in relation to their past values. Before, these workers were farmers, producing food for themselves and for others, but now having migrated into factories these producers became consumers. Who’s making all the food now? Over years, Farmification as a quiet meme migrated in making statements indirectly, without a voice of conflict from the doer. Since 2012 onwards, the largest iron factory, losing demand as a result of a burst property bubble, took Farmification into practice by invested billions of dollars into pig farming, starting a series of weekly newspaper comic strips and uprooting the national idealism of progress and profession.

Goals

Create a global dialogue about how technological demands impact world food economy. Initiate large-scale transitions between industries; a form of passive activism that is productive.

Beneficial Outcomes

Allow communities of factory workers to retain their community despite technology renewal.

Location

Norway

Users

Farmers, oven builders, astronomers, artists, soil scientists, bakers, city officials and citizens

Maintained by

Situations, Bjørvika Utvikling

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, environment

Nr. and Title

562

Flatbread Society

Initiator

Futurefarmers

Description

Flatbread Society is a permanent project created in a common area amidst the waterfront development in Oslo, where farmers, oven builders, astronomers, artists, soil scientists, bakers and city officials work together with local people to establish an aligned vision for the use of this part of the land. Using grain as an excuse to analyse the interrelationship of food production to knowledge sharing, cultural production and socio-political formations, they built a bakehouse and a cultivated grain field resulting in the formation of an urban gardening community. The project functions as a shared resource for urban food production and the preservation of the commons. A full-time farmer was hired in collaboration with the Norwegian Farmers Union to maintain the project.

Goals

The project provides a multi-functional oven and glass house which facilitates various types of bread baking and public programs around agriculture and grain. The activators of the project collected and planted seeds that have been “rescued” from various locations in the Northern Hemisphere to display thousands of years of a complex hand-to-hand network of knowledge and genetic resources. The project inserts make-shift production into the highly planned and controlled public space of the new Bjørvika, in Oslo. The space offers an alternative approach in building methodology of urban design, creating a place in which people might actively contribute to the life of the public spaces.

Beneficial Outcomes

Users can learn how to cultivate grain in a urban setting, how to bake and they can use the facilities for free.

Location

United States

Users

The artists.

Maintained by

Sculpture Chicago provided the materials and rent.

Duration

1992 - 1995

Category

scientific, economy, social

Nr. and Title

158

Flood

Initiator

Haha

Description

The project consisted of a hydroponic garden built in a storefront in Chicago. The artists collaborated with a group of people to grew kale, collards, mustard greens, swiss chard and other therapeutic herbs used as therapy for HIV-infected patients. Flood provided free meals, educational activities, a public programme of events related to alternative therapies, nutrition and horticulture. After the project was over, Flood users and activators continued to volunteer at social service organisations especially related to the support of people infected with HIV/AIDS. Thanks to Flood an HIV/AIDS facility opened in Chicago and it contained a food pantry, an alternative high school and a community centre. Flood was developed in other communities (Dekalb, Illinois; Cedar Rapids, Iowa), each of which developed the project relative to the local context.

Goals

To promote community health care.

Beneficial Outcomes

Flood served as a service provider, offering educational activities, public events, biweekly meals, and information on alternative therapies, local HIV/AIDS services, nutrition, and horticulture.

Location

United States

Users

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maintenance workers, visitors of the museum.

Maintained by

C.7,500 Exhibition, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum or Art

Duration

1973

Category

pedagogical, social

Nr. and Title

218

Four actions of Maintenance Art

Initiator

Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Description

After the birth of her first child, Mierle Laderman Ukeles wrote a Manifesto for Maintenance Art and embarked on a career that has mixed maintenance performances and public art. Through the Manifesto she attempted to question and break down the barriers between the idea of 'work' and what can be labelled 'artwork'.
Initially the work consisted of a series of solitary performances in Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. She performed 4 actions called 'The maintenance of the art object': a ritual sequence of three cleanings of a glass vitrine in the Museum’s Egyptian mummy section (by the maintenance person, by the artists and the conservator respectively); the keeping of the keys intended as maintenance as security where she took control of the keys closing the museum's main entrances, during open hours; 2 acts of Washing/Maintenance: she washed the stairs to the main entrance of the museum with water, stone and diapers (normally used by the conservators to clean works of art). Later, the artist washed the marble floor of Avery Court with the same materials.

Goals

To blur distinctions between work and art, to do publicly what women often do privately, to highlight how housekeeping and maintenance are essential acts in a domestic, urban and global context.

Beneficial Outcomes

The work of maintenances was underlined and the vitrine, the stairs and the court floor were washed. The value of maintenance work was highlighted.

Location

United States

Users

Temporary Services, Tony Alamo, Matti Allison, Anonymous, María José Barandiarán & Michael Bulka, Baur Au Lac Zürich, Bible Helps, Shawn Calvert, Charm School Industries, Coalition for Positive Sexuality, Credit Suisse, Wilfrid Désir, Jim Duignan, Anthony Elms & Joel Score, Ending the Begin Tract League, Evangelical Tract Distributors, Fellowship Tract League, F.T.L., Nicolas Floc'h, Grace & Truth, Emily Jacir, Jews For Jesus, Kevin Kaempf, Kim and Mike, Nance Klehm, Kate Kranack, Liberation Rock, Josh MacPhee, Ryan McGinness, Adam Mikos, Mr. Nash, Ralph Nielsen, Leah Oates, Old Paths Tract Society Inc., Krista Peel, Michael Piazza, Pilgrim Tract Society, Inc., Ben Rubin, Bob Shaw, David Shrigley, Shy Girl, Owen Smith, Dana Sperry, Jocelyn Superstar 2000, Temporary Services, Threadculture, Several Unknown Individuals, Vladlen Voronin, Oli Watt and visitors.

Maintained by

It was part of an exhibition titled "6/6". It was located at the School of Fine Arts Gallery at Indiana University.

Duration

2000

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

232

Free for all

Initiator

Temporary Services

Description

Over 50 artists, individuals and organisations have been asked to realise a work to be distributed for free at a one-day-only event. Artists' work were integrated with a wide range of material submerging the work in a broader context. Religious tracts, booklets, flyers, stickers, matchbooks, posters, audio tapes, and postcards were among the items given away for free. Visitors could collect the artworks in free boxes provided by the organisers, no restrictions were placed and what or how much works visitors could take. A series of instructions suggested how people could use and display the portable collection.

Goals

Point out the vast amount of sheer surplus that American Culture generates.

Beneficial Outcomes

The visitors could get anything they wanted for free. And they can re-enact the action to get for free the products samples of medicines, food, booklets.

Location

Germany

Users

Beuys, Klaus Staeck (1st chairman), Georg Meistermann (2nd chairman) and Willi Bongard (secretary), students.

Maintained by

Its users

Duration

1972-1988

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy

Nr. and Title

192

Free International University (FIU) for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research

Initiator

Joseph Beuys

Description

A school outside the academic system that admitted all students. It was founded as an "organizational place of research, work, and communication" to ponder the future of society. One of the most pressing issues for the project was how to help realise the capacity of all individuals to be creative beings by advocating cross-pollination of ideas across disciplines as well as how to formulate the concept of individual freedom as the ability to shape social forms, through the transformation of resources.

Goals

As a Free University it was intended to supplement the state educational system while at the same time campaigning for legal equality with that system.

Beneficial Outcomes

The idea of the Free International University was revisited and taken further by various people and groups, including the author Rainer Rappmann under the FIU-Verlag and the F.I.U.s in Amsterdam, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, and Munich, which were begun by students of Beuys. They also include the organization Mehr Demokratie e.V. and the Omnibus for direct Democracy.

Location

Germany, Austria

Users

Critical Art Ensemble (Steve Kurtz, Steve Barnes, Dorian Burr, Beverly Schlee, and Hope Kurtz), Beatriz da Costa and Shyh-shiun Shyu, general European public who wanted to test their foods for markers indicating that they are genetically modified.

Maintained by

Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt); Esc Gallery (Graz)

Duration

2003 - 2004

Category

scientific, pedagogical, politics

Nr. and Title

116

Free-Range Grain

Initiator

Critical Art Ensemble

Description

The project consisted of a portable and public lab which used molecular biology techniques to test food for the more common genetic modifications (GM). Users were invited to bring food to the gallery that they thought it could be suspect. The initiators tested the food over 72-hour period to see if users' suspicions were justified.

Goals

To contribute to an idea of public science by focusing on issues such as food production that are of direct interest to people, and to make scientific initiatives more immediate and concrete.

Beneficial Outcomes

To popularize scientific techniques the general public can use to test foods themselves, instead of relying on the potentially dubious labeling and testing provided by their governments and corporations.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Jeanne van Heeswijk, Dennis Kaspori, the inhabitans.

Maintained by

Kosmopolis Rotterdam, Fonds BKVB - Intendant Culturele Diversiteit, Stichting DOEN, Europees Fonds voor Regionale Ontwikkeling van de Europese Commissie, Pact op Zuid, Vestia, CVAH en VETRA.

Duration

2008 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

086

Freehouse

Initiator

Jeanne van Heeswijk

Description

The project has focused on the micro-urbanism emerging in small communities across the city of Rotterdam. After a research in the Afrikanerwijk in particular, the initiators developed a foundation with the help of the residents. Freehouse comprehends 3 studios: Wijkatelier, wijkkeuken (kitchen­) and wijkwinkel (shop). Here residents can share their skills and create new products in the communal workshops, which are then sold in the shop. Every activity is based on community participation, co-operative cultural production and self-organisation. Freehouse has recently developed a skill-based neighbourhood co-operative.

Goals

To try and instigate projects that challenge people to play a more active part with respect to the space in which they live and work by bringing skills and qualities of local people together.

Beneficial Outcomes

The sewing atelier has already received commissions from several designers to produce their clothes; the wijkkeuken has become in a catering service; all the participants are earning money for their work; the market has improved its offer and services, after a struggle against municipal rules.

Location

Online, Berlin.

Users

People leaving in Berlin.

Maintained by

Jaime Iglehart, Eric Brelsford.

Duration

2009

Category

pedagogical, politics, urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

483

Freiräume Map Berlin

Initiator

Jaime Iglehart

Description

An internet-based map depicting various forms of Freiräume (‘free spaces’) in Berlin today, including Hausprojekts (legalised squats), Wagenplätze (trailer communities), co-housing, social centers, tool-shares, hacker spaces and community gardens, all of which engage in what is commonly known as ‘free culture’. Free culture is practised purposefully by social and political movements as well as ‘non-politically engaged’ people every day. The map allows users to find spaces that match certain criteria, and also narrow down to their particular areas of interest, such as community meals, wood/metal-working spaces, free building materials, film screenings, guest rooms and donation-based health and legal counselling. So far, they have plotted 230 spaces on the map. They have 60-100 more spaces yet to add, and they expect the map to grow when they make it available to the public as a Wiki.

Goals

To provide a tool for connection, historical analysis, and community organising between autonomous, DIY, and/or ‘free’ spaces. To chart spaces which exist either in opposition to, or somehow otherwise wedged within the cracks of capitalism. To explore the edges between subcultures and spaces with different agendas and the even greater 'edge' where the illusive mainstream and the countercultural meet.

Beneficial Outcomes

In addition to the many concrete uses of Freiräume Map Berlin, the map also provides affirmation and inspiration as a counter-power to the dominant narrative that free spaces are on the decline. During the course of the research, the project identified approximately 200 more spaces than usually encountered in day to day life. It is the hope that users of the map will have a similar experience and become inspired to make new connections.

Location

Germany, The Netherlands

Users

Contemporary refugees.

Maintained by

Exhibition Liminal Spaces / Grenzräume, Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig (Germany); project Liminal Spaces, organised as a collaboration of the Israeli Centre for Digital Art Holon (Israel), the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Arts PACA and the University of the Arts Berlin (Germany).

Duration

2006

Category

social

Nr. and Title

180

Frontier Vest

Initiator

Azra Akšamija

Description

The Frontier Vest is a prototype of a contemporary vest design, which can have different functions, both sacred and profane. It can be worn as a tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl, but it can also turn into a Jewish prayer rug. Inspired by the nomadic life of the Bedouin, the Frontier Vest also represents a useful garment for a contemporary refugee.

Goals

The Frontier Vest allows for individual expressions of different belief systems. This individual wearable architecture can also be combined to generate a communal space. For this, it needs a congregation of minimally ten in Judaism (minyan), two in Islam (masjid) and three in Christianity. Yet more importantly, this individual territory can only become collective through overcoming the fear of mutual otherness.

Beneficial Outcomes

The vest can be worn by both men and women, and can be used in Jewish and Islamic religions within individual religious communities in the future.

Location

United States

Users

Buurtgroepen, vaak geholpen door kunstinstellingen zoals het Watts Towers Arts Center of Machine Project in Los Angeles.

Maintained by

Fallen Fruit (Gevallen Fruit) – een samenwerking tussen David Burns, Matias Viegener en Austin Young

Duration

2007 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

425

Fruit Tree Adoptions

Initiator

Fallen Fruit

Description

Fruit Tree Adoptions is project created in collaboration with donors, civic groups and organisations like Treepeople in Los Angeles and San Diego (CA). This work proposes to plant fruit trees seedlings in various urban contexts – both public spaces or on the peripheries of private property. Each recipient signs an adoption form that promises to care for the tree, initiating a relationship with it. This project aims to develop new forms of community life based on generosity and sharing. The work was moreover recalibrated in a kind of performance to engage individuals and also to put the focus onto the fabric of the neighbourhood.

Goals

The core of Fallen Fruit’s work is social, finding ways to get strangers to develop relationships and to create new consciousness about public space and social collaboration. Neighbourhoods change over the years to become both greener and more social and cooperative; fruit trees are not a silver bullet to urban problems, but they are a uniquely playful glue towards a more inclusive social fabric.

Beneficial Outcomes

In 2010 the most successful Fruit Tree Adoption at the Watts Towers Community Arts Center was organised. The director of the centre was scared to work in the neighbourhood of Watts, because she reminded us that it was an historically oppressed neighbourhood, where residents were more involved in more in violence than with developing a culture based on sharing. The event went on and at the end of it, every single resident was agreed to plant a tree.

Location

United States

Users

WochenKlausur, employees of the Smart Museum, students of the University of Chicago Art Department, students of the Illinois Institute of Technology, students of Harrington College of Design, social institutions and their users.

Maintained by

Exhibition ‘Beyond Green: Towards a Sustainable Art’, Smart Museum & University of Chicago.

Duration

2005

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

257

Furnishing Social Institutions

Initiator

WochenKlausur

Description

WochenKlausur developed an initiative for reusing materials discarded by cultural institutions. The network established by WochenKlausur gets involved: nine cultural institutions in Chicago supply materials they no longer need at regular intervals, and the usable items are converted by students at design institutes into furnishings and everyday objects that can be used by social institutions. The group visited homeless shelters, soup kitchens, clothing distribution centres and other similar institutions in the neighbourhood, evaluating their need for furnishings, interior remodelling and everyday objects. Simultaneously, theatres and museums were asked to join the network on a permanent basis, and to supply at regular intervals materials that otherwise would be thrown away. The project’s final task was to found a non-profit organisation that could manage the long-term operation and coordination of the network. This new organisation, is named Material Exchange.

Goals

To create a more sustainable use of materials used by cultural institutions, repurposing them for organisations that needed better facilities.

Beneficial Outcomes

Using the materials from the cultural institutions, the students design and build-to-order the items needed by the social organisations.

Location

Ghana, Cuba, El Salvador, Serbia, Mexico, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, Kosovo.

Users

Ghana ThinkTank staff including Christopher Robbins, John Ewing, Matey Odonkor, Carmen Montoya, and citizens.

Maintained by

Ghana ThinkTank staff and participants.

Duration

2006 - ongoing

Category

social

Nr. and Title

021

Ghana ThinkTank

Initiator

Christopher Robbins, John Ewing, Matey Odonkor and Carmen Montoya (since 2009).

Description

The Ghana ThinkTank is a worldwide network of think tanks creating strategies to resolve local problems in the ‘developed’ world. Ghana ThinkTank collects problems from the developed world, primarily in the US and Europe, and then seeks solutions by working within the communities where the problem originated. The network began with think tanks in Ghana, Cuba and El Salvador, and has since expanded to include Serbia, Mexico and Ethiopia. Some of these actions have produced workable solutions, but others have created intensely awkward situations, as different cultures' assumptions about each other are played out.

Goals

To collect problems from developed countries and seek solutions from think tanks in developing countries. Solutions are then played out in developed countries.

Beneficial Outcomes

Exploration of the friction caused by solutions that are generated in one context and applied elsewhere, while revealing the hidden assumptions that govern cross-cultural interactions.

Location

Wales

Users

Local communities

Maintained by

National Museum Wales, Owen Griffiths and the community of users

Duration

2017 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

585

GRAFT – A Soil Based Syllabus

Initiator

Owen Griffiths, Now the Hero/Nawr yr Arwr, National Museum Wales

Description

GRAFT consists of a garden and workshop based at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea. The project works with local communities, schools and adult learners to grow food, preserve seeds, keep bees, as well as teaching cooking skills in a clay oven and exploring an alternative, museum-based curriculum. Volunteers are invited to join an intergenerational curriculum of outdoor learning, wellbeing and making connected to food. The garden is a social and educational resource within the museum and provides somewhere for people to gather to grow and cook food, work collaboratively and learn collectively. All of the garden’s infrastructure has been built by the team and participants who are learning woodwork and metalwork skills, alongside horticulture. GRAFT became recognised as an important example of green infrastructure in a city which has undergone endless regeneration cycles and has seen a huge number of trees and green spaces cut down or removed.

Goals

The project creates a new system of practical pedagogy: to connect to food, sustainable development and the creation of a green infrastructure in the centre of the city; to create a sustainable and long-term project that could exist as a useful community resource after the project’s initial 2 year development; to influence the museum as a site of collaboration and co-production; to reimagine the museum's carbon footprint and responsibility to the community in a time of global climate change; to create a new green space in the heart of the city where food can be grown and people can meet and work together to explore culture and community; to create an environmental green space that would influence and affect use of local green and civic spaces. Through its interpretation and aims, GRAFT seeks to make connections and educate visitors on issues of climate, food production, sovereignty and poverty. The initiators work with local Community Supported Agriculture Projects, signposting to organisations such as La Via Campesina, the Land Workers Alliance and local community food initiatives and banks, and support other community gardens across the region. GRAFT’s key goal is to explore the museum as a community resource and how it can support its local constituents.

Beneficial Outcomes

The garden provides a space for people to grow and cook food, work and learn collectively, and it fosters the development of a long-term green civic space. The project develops an intergenerational curriculum connecting soil and place with community development. It also works with a local pupil referral unit at a Comprehensive School to train pupils to become beekeepers, learning about biodiversity and climate. Users have made seed bombs, harvested seeds and have sent out hundreds of packs of seeds to community centers across the region. The museum provides participants with accreditation, training and support to explore new skills through the project, which has been designed as wholly participatory. Users share produce with projects and institutions across the city to cook for those in need. GRAFT has influenced the culture of National Museum Wales who are now exploring the possibilities of similar land-based community gardens at all of their 7 sites. The project has also impacted on how the museum accesses the collection, making connections between the processes of the garden and the museum’s focus on industrial heritage, exploring links to capitalism, land use, labour and colonisation.

Location

UK

Users

Residents of the 'Granby Triangle', Liverpool 8, the wider Liverpool Community and visitors.

Maintained by

Granby Community Land Trust

Duration

1998 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

532

Granby Four Streets Regeneration

Initiator

Granby Residents Association, That blooming Green Triangle, Granby Street Market, Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, Granby Somali Women's Group, Steinbeck Studios, Assemble, A Sense of Place. Terrace 21 Co-op

Description

Granby Four Streets Project emerged from the activism of a group of residents in one of Liverpool's neglected inner-city wards. The previous activism led to a call for arms against the status quo, which led to the community forming a Community Land Trust, securing assets from the Local Authority and taking the regeneration of their immediate surroundings into genuine community ownership. They have done it and will continue to invest in collaborative, participative action to creatively use their immediate environment for the benefit of all community members.

Goals

The aim is to build a thriving, vibrant and sustainable community; filled with a diversity of creative local's empowered by the history of the area. The CLT is a vehicle in which community assets will be owned by the people, be used for the people and benefit their immediate surroundings.

Beneficial Outcomes

A vibrant, sustainable, affordable and desirable community to live in for local residents. A place in which the urban environment forms communal spaces in which activities are the basis of neighbourly interactions. They have proved that taking the people's concerns, lives and love into the streets forms the basis of a prosperous community working outside the realms of the housing profit motive.

Location

Iran

Users

Pupils from the age of 5 until the age of 18 from 22 districts in Tehran

Maintained by

Tehran Monoxide Project and Biloba Green House

Duration

2011 - 2017

Category

pedagogical, environment, social

Nr. and Title

568

Green Corners

Initiator

Negar Farajiani

Description

The project focuses on creating green spaces as effective elements which ameliorate air quality absorbing chemicals from the atmosphere. In order to develop an alternative pedagogical approach into Tehran's public schools, the initiator, in close collaboration with the botanist Shahrouz Hakimi, formed different teams of people with different backgrounds such as art, physics, chemistry, biology, statistics, math, and agriculture, who can collaborate and shape the program. After a year of negotiation with some private and public schools, they all contribute to a series of workshops for pupils to improve the school conditions as well as achieve results that benefit both pupils and the school staff. Such activities lead to creating a sense of accountability which will, in turn, contribute to a cultural and artistic exchange between pupils and teachers. After a research about the educational system and its curricula, and after reading the school books, the initiator noticed a lack of environmental topics and botany, which are fundamental aspects of student's training. Educating pupils about the basics of caring for indoor plants can lead to more attention to plants, trees and the problem of climate change. "Green Corners" is the fifth phase of "Tehran Monoxide", a cultural and socially engaged art project, which has been going on since 2011, in the form of independent projects, in collaboration with artists and citizens from Tehran in public spaces.

Goals

To offer practical solutions to the problem of air pollution in Tehran by creating and redefining new spaces. It reflects the viewpoints of people from all walks of life, from children to adults in terms of the issue of air pollution, what they cannot see, but do breathe. To educate pupils aged from 5 to 18 about caring and maintaining indoor plants. To offer environmental education and art practice, that students cannot find in their school books.

Beneficial Outcomes

Creating green spaces as a beautiful and effective element not only to turn educational environments into more charming places, but also familiarizing students with plants that promote air quality, absorb chemicals and aerosol and transpire. Instilling a sense of responsibility and collaboration in pupils to take care of plants and public green spaces. Teaching pupils how to take care of indoor plants step by step. They started with caring for low-maintenance plants, and after the completion of the program, they received a certificate and move onto the next level where they were offered new plants to take care of. The initiators succeed in proposing and accessing the public school system in Iran with their workshops.

Location

United States

Users

Gardeners-citizens

Maintained by

Volunteers, citizens, Donald Loggins

Duration

1973 - ongoing

Category

politics, urban-development, environment

Nr. and Title

212

Green Guerrillas

Initiator

Liz Christy

Description

In the early 1970’s, Liz Christy and the original band of “green” decided to do something about the urban decay they saw all around them. They threw “seed green-aids” over the fences of vacant lots. They planted sun flower seeds in the center meridians of busy New York City streets. They put flower boxes on the window ledges of abandoned buildings. Soon they turned their attention to a large, debris-filled vacant lot in the Lower East Side, where they created the Bowery Houston Farm and Garden – and they sparked a movement. On April 23, 1974, the City’s office of Housing Preservation and Development approved the site for rental as the Bowery Houston Community Farm and Garden for $1 a month.

Goals

The Green Guerillas began rallying other people to use community gardening as a tool to reclaim urban land, stabilize city blocks, and encourage people to work together to solve problems.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Green Guerillas were running workshops and planting experimental plots to learn how a wide range of plants could be grown in hostile conditions. The garden became a site for many plant giveaways, where plants grown on-site or donated from nurseries, professional horticulturists and local gardeners were given to new gardens all over the City.

Location

Israel

Users

Avital Geva, Rafi Shapira, students

Maintained by

Creative Time and the Queens Museum

Duration

1977 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, environment, social

Nr. and Title

124

Green House

Initiator

Avital Geva

Description

Green House project was originally a municipal greenhouse where families were growing their vegetables each on its own plot but under one roof. The aim of the project was to bring together Arab and Jewish families to work together on the same site. From 2004 it was reorganized as a nonprofit organization, and has became an educational center for Iron Mevo'ut high school students, opened its doors to 12 schools whose students, both Arab and Jewish, have joined activities in the greenhouse, expanded the fields of study, and risen the scientific level with research into the branching zooplankton, alternative energy, technology, agriculture an other fields.

Goals

Promoting education, ecology and social involvement in Israel (with an emphasis on coexistence).

Beneficial Outcomes

Arab and Jewish students learn sharing space and knowledge with researchers from all over the world.

Location

Brazil

Users

Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen, and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, local cooperative of farmers, Bikstok Røgsystem.

Maintained by

NIFCA, a São Paolo-based foundation called Extra Arte and the Amazonian government (Research), Kiasma, Helsinki (Exhibition), the 50th Venice Biennial, 2003; Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, Los Angeles; Socle Du Monde, Herning Kunstmuseum; Danish Design Center in Copenhagen, Harbobar , Copenhagen

Duration

2003 - ongoing

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

101

Guaraná Power

Initiator

Superflex

Description

The artists group SUPERFLEX in collaboration with guaranà farmers cooperatives from Maués in the Brasilian Amazon, produced a soft drink called Guaranà Power. As Superfelx say: “The farmers have organised themselves in response to the activities of the a cartel of multinational corporations whose monopoly on purchase of the raw material has driven the price paid for guaraná seeds down by 80% while the cost of their products to the consumer has risen.” Through workshops this group of artists tried to give help the local cooperative with economic and productive problems. With the aid of SUPERFLEX this soft drink was promoted using the facilities of art field: galleries, exhibitions and biennials. Thanks to this support it has created a large scale economy that uses guaranà, the raw material present in this area.

Goals

The intention with Guaraná Power is to use global brands and their strategies as raw material for a counter-economic position, and to reclaim the original use of the Maués guaraná plant as a powerful natural tonic, not just a symbol. Guaraná Power contains much more original Maués guaraná for energy and empowerment.

Beneficial Outcomes

Since 2010, GUARANÁ POWER is produced by organic soft drink and beer manufacturer NaturFrisk - Ørbæk Bryggeri.

Location

United States

Users

Educators, youth workers, students/young people ranging from around 10-24, parents.

Maintained by

Jessalyn Aaland

Duration

2017 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics

Nr. and Title

556

Guide for Youth Protestors

Initiator

Jessalyn Aaland

Description

The project consists of a double-sided, hand-drawn 8.5" x 11" quarter-fold sheet available to print and distribute freely. It features such topics as basic information on police tactics (kettling, LRADS, tear gas or pepper spray), ways cops might try to get you to talk to them, and your rights as a student. This guide was created to distribute to high school students walking out of attending protests in January 2017, when an educator expressed concern to the artist that educators contractually could not be seen walking out with students during the General Strike on January 20, 2017. A former high school teacher, the initiator used her knowledge of teenagers to create a guide using humour to engage students while informing them about how to maintain their rights and personal safety, knowing many might be protesting for the first time in their lives. Key players include the following: celery cops, a burrito cussing out a celery cop, and her new favourite youth-oriented 501(c)3, "Cool Youth Org."

Goals

To inform youth about how to take care of themselves and their peers while protesting; police tactics used to intimidate protestors, and how to deal with them; their rights as student resistors; possible consequences of arrest and how to avoid talking to the police.

Beneficial Outcomes

These guides have been printed and distributed widely by educators in the past couple weeks; a user copied 500 to help students prepare for an upcoming walkout. In addition to educators, parents have also found them helpful. The initiator constantly distributes these guides to youth (particularly unaccompanied minors) and educators during protests. The guide has a secondary benefit of helping youth feel included in protest because they've been giving something made just for them. Empowering youth and helping them see their voice as equally is critical in the struggle for justice.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Krijn Giezen, Hamilton Finlay, Remco Scha, Herman de Vries, Bertus de Jong, residents of Den Haag.

Maintained by

IFLA (International Federation of Landscape Architects), 'Artivisual Landscapes' congress.

Duration

1991 - 2000

Category

urban-development, environment

Nr. and Title

329

Haagse Beek

Initiator

Krijn Giezen

Description

The artist was commissioned by the Foundation Artivisual Landscape and the International Federation of Landscape Architects to research the context of The Hague Stream in order to propose a project for a new perception of the stream. As a result of his research, he speculated on its purification, using elements that were already on site. It emerged that the 7,5 kilometres long course were a relocated, unnatural and canalised watercourse with no visible source and that it was heavily polluted and contaminated.

Goals

Adding the least possible, using what is available on the spot, rearranging already existing elements, combining future building activities and art at an early stage.

Beneficial Outcomes

Krijn Giezen has made visible the source of the Haagse Beek, a stream running through The Hague and flowing out into the Hofvijver, in the middle of the city centre.

Location

United States, Canada, Australia

Users

Darren O´Donnell, Students, inhabitants.

Duration

2006 - 2007

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

077

Haircuts by Children

Initiator

Darren O'Donnell

Description

Darren O'Donnell worked with children between the ages of eight and twelve trained by professional hairstylists and paid to run a real hair salon, to offer free haircuts, both in public parks and in salons.

Goals

The project asks both those who submit to haircuts and those who merely watch to see children as creative and competent individuals capable of aesthetic decisions, just as they will one day be citizens capable of political decisions.

Beneficial Outcomes

By interacting directly with the community, creating relationships and involving rigorously framed participation, audience members not only got free haircuts; their awareness about children citizenship rights was also raised.

Location

Senegal

Users

Huit Facettes (Abdoulaye N'Doye, El Hadji Sy, Fode Camara, Cheikh Niass, Jean Marie Bruce, Mor Lisa Ba and Amadou Kane Sy (Kan-Si)), residents of Hamdallaye

Maintained by

Huit Facettes, Vredeseilanden, Local practitioners

Duration

1998 - ongoing

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

233

Hamdallaye Project

Initiator

Huit Facettes

Description

Goals

The goal was to improve the residents' core competencies and turn them into professional skills (i.e., under-glass painting, ceramics, batik dyeing, carving, weaving, embroidery).

Beneficial Outcomes

The participants enhance their skills and creativity in a useful way. The relationships that Huit Facettes initiated with various social groups have been maintained even after the conclusion of the workshop.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

People without regular homes, people interested in recycling, re-using the surplus of the food industry, eating wild plants and other critical practices. And people who aim to get a deeper understanding of what it means to live in the fringes of society, both in the Netherlands and the US and Brazil.

Maintained by

Handboek of de Stadswildernis was published by the Dutch Art Institute in 2011 as part of DAI Publications. The book was produced in close collaboration with Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem and the designer Noah Venezia. Distributed by several book stores like 'De Rooie Rat' in Utrecht, 'Fort van Sjakoo' in Amsterdam and 'Printroom' in Rotterdam as well as by Doris Denekamp through her website.

Duration

2011

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

514

Handboek voor de Stadswildernis

Initiator

Doris Denekamp, Noah Venezia

Description

Handboek voor de Stadswildernis is a guide for survival in the fringes of Dutch cities. The handbook contains sections like Sleeping & Shelter; Food; Equipment; Clothing; Washing; Sickness; Emergencies & Services. The book also provides a guide for edible city weeds: a short description of the plant, the location where it can be found and how it should be cooked. All the information, tips and tricks in the book is based on a series of interviews with homeless people that have developed similar strategies for survival. Through their practices of recycling, reclaiming the surplus of the food industry and their use of local, informal economies, they are developing useful alternatives for our wasteful society.

Goals

To validate and distribute the knowledge of people living without a regular home.
To help others living in similar situations or those who are looking for an alternative to the dominant practise of waste and extravagance.
To investigate the possibility of a life off the grid in a densely populated area of the Netherlands.

Beneficial Outcomes

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Church and village community of Coniston.

Maintained by

Village church

Duration

2010

Category

politics, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

500

Harvest Festival

Initiator

Grizedale Arts

Description

The old tradition of a harvest meal and festival was revived by a community dinner and frozen meal distribution created from donations in the village of Coniston.

Goals

To reinvigorate the harvest dinner tradition by producing freezer meals for the elderly, made using local produce. To bring together different groups in the village.

Beneficial Outcomes

A community day of cooking, a large scale village dinner production, and distribution of 200 freezer meals for the elderly.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Children and their parents, Geestenberg inhabitants.

Maintained by

SALTO Eindhoven, Municipality of Eindhoven.

Duration

1970 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

268

Het Karregat

Initiator

Frank van Klingeren

Description

The architect Frank Van Klingeren designed a community centre for the new district of Herzenbroeken in Eindhoven. Het Karregat included all the shops' under one roof —an umbrella-like structure— alongside other social, cultural, health and educational facilities like the school, the public library, the general practitioner doctor, the bar and the supermarket. His aim was to bring people into contact with others more easily fostering mutual understanding. He did it removing the walls and combining the different functions of the facilities. The community centre had a central space that functioned as a public square where the community programmed and organised all kind of cultural activities and events. In 1977, the structure was modified because of noise problems in the open-plan school, erecting walls and reverting the school to traditional lessons. Finally, by the 1990s the structure had been changed drastically moving away from Van Klingeren’s community vision.

Goals

To involve residents in the decision making concerned the local conditions of a new area and their interests. To build a community bringing the people closer together and challenging architecture, creating for fluid, open structures.

Beneficial Outcomes

Het karregat was a social experiment that succeeds in ist time involving residents in the decision making concerned the local conditions and interest for a new district. It provided a new cultural and social space for the inhabitants. In the long term, it contributed to the democratisation of architecture so that openness, mixed functions, and occupant involvement in planning are topics still discussed today, as illustrated by proposals to redevelop Hoog Catherijne and the railway station area in Utrecht.

Location

The Netherlands

Maintained by

Casco Utrecht and the artist

Duration

2001

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

090

Home Design Service

Initiator

Apolonija Šušteršič

Description

The artist repurposed and adapted a mobile bagel selling cart - called Casco Mobile - in order to create a nomadic info point, whose function was to give free advice on interior design to the residents of Leidsche Rijn neighbourhood in Utrecht. The project provided a library with books, periodicals and catalogues available for visitors focused on interior design, domestic space and a housing development-information brochure about the neighbourhood development. The project ended with a workshop on interior design addressed to the residents.

Goals

Home Design Service addresses the process between finished plans and finished buildings. The situation in between is temporary and changeable. Once the buildings are completed, the occupants move in and the decorating and furnishing begins with the interior becoming a reflection of individual and personal ideas about living.

Beneficial Outcomes

To give users access to information and knowledge on Home Design

Location

Israel

Users

WochenKlausur (Haim Burshtein, Yoad Earon, Claudia Eipeldauer, Brett Hunter, Martina Reuter, Alon Schwabe, Wolfgang Zinggl), local community centre, the Israeli Center for Digital Art, the Municipal Social Welfare Department and a representative from the public housing company, neighbourhood

Maintained by

Israeli Center for Digital Art

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

278

Home Improvement Service

Initiator

WocheKlausur

Description

In 2011 a protest movement started in Israel. Citizens expressed their demand for a fair distribution of resources, claiming for the lack of housing and maintainence of the buildings and apartments, due to the privatised housing schemes. In these instances no one feels responsible for maintaining buildings and those in need are forced to live under poor and risky conditions. The Home Improvement Service, therefore, set up a structure to provide apartment renovations in the Jessy Cohen neighbourhood with no cost to residents who can´t afford it. First, they started to visit different apartments in order to be able to prepare a list of needed renovations. With this information, it was possible to find project partners who were willing to donate the necessary material, expertise and time to repair these damages. Partnerships were established with local businesses and professionals. Also community groups, schools and youth groups were asked to participate in volunteer work.

Goals

Improve the conditions and the maintenance of housing in the neighbourhood.

Beneficial Outcomes

The structure provide small home improvements, at no cost, to the residents of the Jessy Cohen neighbourhood in Holon.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Jeanne van Heeswijk, Architects URBED and other design specialists, Sue Humphreys and more than 200 participants.

Maintained by

Liverpool Biennial, Homebred Community Land Trust

Duration

2010 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

115

Homebaked

Initiator

Jeanne van Heeswijk

Description

Goals

Provide a way for local people to “take matters into their own hands” and make real social and physical change in their neighborhood.

Beneficial Outcomes

Today, the bakery is open as a social, independent and sustainable business 6 days a week. It is a meeting point to gather the community that now have a strong voice for future developments. Nowadays, they are promoting participation in the decision making process about the design for news houses in the area (Homebaked Favorites wall).

Location

United States

Users

Homeless people in New York City.

Maintained by

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Duration

1987 - 1989

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

010

Homeless Vehicle

Initiator

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Description

A hinged metal vehicle, which can be extended to provide sleeping, washing, and toilet facilities as well as a can-storage compartment. The product was tested by a panel of homeless people and adapted to the precise subsistence needs of these prospective users.

Goals

To create a tool for increased self-sustainability and survival of urban nomadic workers who opt out of the shelter system. To create mobile architecture which communicates the relationship of the homeless to the rest of the city, as legitimate members of the community and citizens.

Beneficial Outcomes

The homeless become actors, orators, workers, all things which they usually are not. The Homeless Vehicles let them speak and tell their own stories and legitimate them as actors on the urban stage.

Location

Coniston, United Kingdom

Users

The local community, village producers and suppliers, visitors/tourists to the area.

Maintained by

Coniston Institute

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

472

Honest Shop

Initiator

Grizedale Arts

Description

A village shop in Coniston is stocked by local producers with everything from farm meat and vegetables to paintings and knitted goods. The produce is all homemade and brought in by local suppliers. Customers are invited to buy goods in the shop for an 'honest' price, there are guideline price tags attached to the items by the producer but customers are expected to pay what they consider an honest, suitable price for the item. On paying for and taking this item they must make a note in the sales ledger of what they bought and for how much so the suppliers can get honest feedback on their produce. This practise encourages a move to closer communal way of living. 80% of takings go to the supplier whilst 20% goes to the general upkeep of the Coniston institute.

Goals

To provide a retail outlet for local producers.
To create a portrait of the village community.
To rejuvenate the Coniston Institute and generate local production.
To create stronger community bonds whilst working toward a better way of life.

Beneficial Outcomes

Restored building; sales point; income generation; created local economy and a meeting place.
It also improved visitor numbers to other facilities.

Location

United States

Users

Citizens of San Francisco

Maintained by

Manilow Sculpture Park at Governor's State University, Chicago

Duration

1983, 1988

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

509

House of Cars, #1 and #2

Initiator

Vito Acconci

Description

The artist built housing complexes with junk cars that had been gutted and then welded together. The original 1983 version was four battered, painted cars, stacked two-high in an abandoned vacant lot in San Francisco. Acconci's upgraded designs for living on the streets are biting commentaries on gentrification and urban reality. He never considered the works as models but hoped they would be lived in.

Goals

To create real, usable housing out of society's throw-aways.

Beneficial Outcomes

People could live in the car-houses for free.

Location

Spain

Users

Susanne Bosch, inhabitants of La Latina, Local Schools, local organisations.

Maintained by

Madrid Abierto

Duration

2009 - 2010

Category

urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

070

Hucha de los deseos

Initiator

Susanne Bosch

Description

‘Hucha de deseos: ¡Todos somos un barrio, movilízate!' collected the Peseta coins (former Spanish coin) and banknotes in a public collection site in Plaza Puerta de Moros, La Latina neighbourhood. Along with the Peseta collection, the project asked the neighbourhood and the users of the area what they would like to realise with this public and worthless money in and for La Latina. The project collected and published the wishes. The first phase of the project was realised in the neighbourhood of La Latina. With the help of a website (designed bij zoohaus and the artist) 512 wishes in and for La Latina and approximately 85,000 Pesetas were collected. The project created a dialogue and neighbours of La Latina met for a day in El Circulo de Bellas Artes. Together they decided what would happen with the collected wishes and the Pesetas, worth €513.70.

Goals

The project served as a model to empower people and offered a creative platform that allowed people to work together, to develop a collaborative spirit and inclusion. The project offered the experience of a collective decision-making process. It combined an aesthetic appearance in the form of a multi-media collection site, a blog, posters and public interventions with a meaningful invisible sculpture in form of an ongoing public debate.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Open Space event led to the selection of two proposals. The frequently-voiced wish for more green space in La Latina was realised through planting eight plum trees in Cornisa Park. The Asociación Amigos de la Cornisa-Las Vestillas realised this wish with a collaborative action. The second wish, putting a letterbox in La Latina to exchange ideas and inform each other of events, was also realised in the shape of public black boards. Since Spain’s current precarious situation within the Euro Zone arose and the resulting May uprisings in 2011 occurred, La Latina became one of Madrid’s neighbourhoods, which responds to the current economic crisis with weekly neighbourhood assemblies. The locals took ownership of their public space. El Campo de Cebada, the former leisure center site, is a derelict building site that, since 2011 and in negotiation with the city council, is used by the locals for cultural activities, which proved the artists' methodology could be sustained and continued in the future without her presence.

Location

United States

Users

Teddy Cruz, David Deutsch, (Studio Teddy Cruz - Active Associates: Cesar Fabela, Jesus Fernando Limon, Rastko Tomasevic, Megan Willis), citizens of Hudson

Maintained by

The plan is being supported by the city’s mayor, Richard Scalera and Parc Foundation (nonprofit foundation that sponsors arts programs in Hudson, NY, founded by David Deutsch)

Duration

2008

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

046

Hudson 2+4

Initiator

Teddy Cruz, David Deutsch

Description

The project consists of an unconventional redevelopment plan aimed at reintegrating poor, immigrants and dispossessed people, into the everyday life of the city of Hudson. Starting with workshops conducted with immigrants and the elderly, the project includes communal gardens, playgrounds, an amphitheatre and other spaces in the city to be used for art or job-training. The project also includes the creation of a residential mixed-use housing complex, around a series of public zones.

Goals

To use the architectural model in order to create a series of subtle but unexpected connections between east and west, poor and privileged.

Beneficial Outcomes

To use the architectural model in order to create a series of subtle but unexpected connections between east and west, poor and privileged.

Location

The Netherlands, Greece, Spain, Germany, Romania, Denmark, United States, Finland, Hong Kong, Portugal, United Kingdom, Mexico, France, Italy, Brazil, Georgia, Canada, Armenia

Users

Artists, citizens, activists.

Maintained by

Wooloo, citizens and Copenhagen Municipality, New Ideas City Musuem,

Duration

2009 - ongoing

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

243

Human Hotel

Initiator

Wooloo

Description

The project was conceived as a practical solution for the activists who were travelling to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009. The city was not ready to provide affordable accommodations for the huge amount of activists so the project secured free homestays for more than 3,000 people. Since then, the collective has developed an international network of guests and hosts matching locals and visiting artists, urban planners and activists with the specific knowledge and talents of residents. Human Hotel has become a curated travel network for creatives and visionaries open to applications from individual members.

Goals

The aim of the project is to implement a practical change in the ways in which both artists and cultural institutions work with—rather than around, or apart from—the people and structures of a particular place.

Beneficial Outcomes

Free housing for over 3 000 climate activists coming to Copenhagen from over 100 countries.

Location

Cuba, Spain

Users

The winner of the love letter contest

Maintained by

Produced by Casa de Cultura de Girona / Maintained by the artist and her spouse.

Duration

2008 - 2013

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

237

Humanitarian Aid

Initiator

Núria Güell

Description

With this project Núria Güell offered herself as a bride to any Cuban who wanted to immigrate and obtained the Spanish citizenship. The aspiring husbands were invited to write a love letter which was submitted to a jury composed by three prostitutes who then declared the winner letter. Once married and having obtained Spanish citizenship it was possible ask for a divorce. This project focuses on issues related to immigration restrictions and the social consequences that they involve.

Goals

This project gave a chance to the contest winner to live legally in the country and consequently to receive a Spanish residence permit. The project also shows a possible strategy to be used by other immigrants who are in the same situation.

Beneficial Outcomes

Through the project, Güell’s husband has obtained a legal residency in Spain and a residence permit to be abroad from the Cuban government. From now on, he is free to enter and exit Cuba whenever he wants and has all the rights of a Spanish national.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

nature volunteers, local entrepreneurs and inhabitants, nature lovers from the city, policy makers, scientists, farmers, hunters, fishermen, maintainers etc.

Maintained by

Zorgboerderij Amstelkade icw Hunnie Foundation and Staatsbosheer.

Duration

2010 - 2014

Category

scientific, pedagogical, politics, environment, social

Nr. and Title

512

Hunnie

Initiator

Henriëtte Waal, Sophie Krier

Description

‘Hunnie’ ('them' in local slang) is a collaboration project between Henriëtte Waal and Sophie Krier, which addresses our approach to nature ‘now that cows and greenhouses are disappearing from the landscape’. In the course of a years field work new forms of recreation and maintenance in De Bovenlanden in the Dutch Province of Utrecht were designed and tested. The area, known as a polder, was destined to exchange its agricultural function for a nature reserve in the context of a European wide plan to link ecological zones and allow flora and fauna to migrate and diversify. Hunnie's focus is the role of humans in relation to this man-made 'new nature'. The initiators invested time into acquainting themselves with inhabitants and local clubs with very specific knowledge of the area. Fishermen; hunters; historians; geologists; biologists; dieticians; artists; water engineers were given the role of guides, while scientists and thinkers were asked to provide a reflective framework. New nature lovers from the surrounding cities were attracted through a series of seasonal adventures, products and a field workshop related to water, clay, grass, fauna, wilderness and willow. Because Project Hunnie ran ahead of the Provincial realisation plans for ‘new nature’ it was possible to implement insights from Hunnie’s fieldwork into the decision-making process.

Goals

Explore, appoint and visualise the current natural and cultural potential of De Bovenlanden. Design and test new forms of nature experience and nature maintenance. Address the urgency of new exploitation models for ‘nature’ in the Netherlands with policy makers. Challenge ideas around the role of users and maintenance issues. Empower entrepreneurs and nature volunteers making them more visible in the transformation process of De Bovenlanden from a rural area into a new nature resort. Equip participants with skills and knowledge of their surroundings.

Beneficial Outcomes

Characteristic guided walks to explore and imagine today's potential of De Bovenlanden. Linking the wisdom inherent in local activities to expertise in art and science. The knowledge that is released is then processed in custom made attributes for the future visitors of the area. Specially designed outdoor equipment. In a farm yard where Hunnie products can be bought or borrowed by visitors.

Location

Denmark

Users

The artists, anyone interested in build the hygiene system

Maintained by

N55

Duration

1997

Category

economy

Nr. and Title

068

Hygiene System

Initiator

N55

Description

The Hygiene System is a unit to satisfy the minimum needs for personal hygiene. The unit consists of three parts: a toilet module, a module for bathing, and a supply module. It's easy to build, install, and everybody can use it. The design is simple, compact and it can be constructed with minimal means. At the same time, the Hygiene System is easy to clean and durable. A DIY manual for constructing a hygiene unit is available online.

Goals

To be an accessible, mobile hygiene unit to be used anywhere.

Beneficial Outcomes

Everyone can build the Hygiene system using a free manual that is available on the website.

Location

United States

Users

Mierle Ukeles, Bank workers, Visitors of Whitney Museum, citizens of New York.

Maintained by

Whitney Museum of American Art / New York Department of Sanitation.

Duration

1976

Category

Nr. and Title

217

I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day

Initiator

Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Description

Mierle Laderman Ukeles collaborated with 300 hundred maintenance staff at a bank in Manhattan. She took Polaroid photographs of men and women doing routine jobs and asked them to discuss their labor as either art or work. Jobs were often discussed by the same person, at different times, in different ways. Later, she exhibited the workers' narrative statements alongside pictures of their daily chores. In 1976, Ukeles accepted an unsalaried position as artist-in-residence with the New York City Department of Sanitation. She proposed to do work that would incorporate dialogue, community participation around life-centered issues, and ecological sustainability.

Goals

She asked viewers to challenge the social constructions of aesthetic and cultural values that define what work and art mean and provided visitors and citizens with points of access to issues of urban waste management.

Location

Spain, France

Users

The persons that took the documents

Maintained by

Passage Souterrain

Duration

2007 - ongoing

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

042

ID: a criminal project

Initiator

Ruben Santiago

Description

The artist has collected passports, identity documents and credit cards from robberies carried out by burglars in Barcelona. The city, do to its urban organisation, is the ideal setting for this type of crime, because burglars can quickly empty the content of bags, get only cash and abandon the rest. Santiago collected 25 documents that were camouflaged as artistic objects and transported in Paris with the aid of a company specialised in artwork transport, to be displayed on a gallery – becoming available material for anyone who may wish to take them, recovering their criminal origin.

Goals

Transform the artistic system into a screen to conceal crime, as the possession of this material is a criminal activity in itself held against the state (the documents do not belong to the individuals, but to the state) and therefore, a punishable offence.

Beneficial Outcomes

All the documents were taken by Passage Souterrain visitors.

Location

Austria

Users

Wochenklausur, seven immigrants that participated, relief organizations, families of kurdish cities of Dohuk, Erbil and Sulemanija, Childrens of Bonia and students of the University of Graz.

Maintained by

WochenKlausur

Duration

1995

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

249

Immigrant Labor Issues

Initiator

WochenKlausur

Description

In order to pursue an occupation legally in Austria, foreigners must have a work permit. At the time of the project, the Minister of Social Affairs set a yearly quota for the number of work permits issued. The group used the special arrangement for foreign “artists” (that allowed artists to remain in the country without a work permit as long as they could prove that they lived from their artistic activity). Seven immigrants were commissioned to produce "Social Sculptures". It was necessary to find patrons who would provide the “artists” with an income by commissioning them. The commissions and their honoraria provided the proof of income required for the refugees to take advantage of the exception made for artists. Each Social Sculpture would consist of preparing aid materials for relief efforts.

Context

=

Goals

Circumventing strict legislation concerning foreigners.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project assured the participants legal residency in Austria. Afterward the materials were transported to their destinations by relief organizations. Through the project the refugees secured legal residency in Austria for one year. Several of them (especially the Bosnians) later returned to their home countries. One of the participants married in Austria, and two others obtained further commissions as artists.

Location

Austria

Users

WochenKlausur, Inmates of Salzburg Police Detention Centre

Maintained by

Salzburger Kunstverein

Duration

1996

Category

politics, social

Nr. and Title

250

Improving Conditions in Deportation Detention

Initiator

WochenKlausur

Description

The Salzburg Police Detention Centre is one of the largest deportation detention facilities in Austria. Nevertheless, conditions in deportation detention are significantly worse than they are in any correctional facility. The group’s initial research for the project, in which relief organizations, counsellors, lawyers, detention inmates and former guards were interviewed, confirmed the rumours that were circulating about inhumane conditions. Many of the inmates were not informed of their status or of their rights. The group worked toward establishing a social service agency in the detention centre to coordinate the efforts of the various initiatives involved with deportation detention. WochenKlausur organized discussion groups with key representatives from politics, the media, scholarship, the church, police authorities, the Ministry of the Interior and relief organisations. These discussions were held in a tiny cottage built especially for the purpose in Salzburg’s historic centre. The talks led the police chief to allow the establishment of a social service agency in the facility.

Goals

Improve detention conditions for inmates.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Protestant Refugee Service agreed to oversee the agency’s permanent operation. Since then each inmate was assigned a volunteer counsellor, and thus it was possible to ensure that basic social, legal and hygienic services were available. After the police administration agreed to the creation of dayrooms in the detention centre, WochenKlausur found donors and sponsors for fitness equipment, table soccer games, television sets and radios as well as board games, books and newspaper subscriptions in a variety of languages. A telephone was installed, with the social service agency providing telephone cards according to need.

Location

United States

Users

Jenny Polak, Art Gallery, undocumented immigrants

Maintained by

Jenny Polak, Exit Art

Duration

2003

Category

politics, social

Nr. and Title

230

In situ Sanctuary

Initiator

Jenny Polak

Description

The project is a site specific prototype created to match the space of a gallery. The initiators designed fake column and fake beam which visitors could climb up inside. A monitor connected to a surveillance camera showed who was inside the structure. The initiator designed a series of structures replicating some hidden places which either immigrant workers or persecuted people have been using to hide from the authorities.

Goals

To hide people form the authorities.

Beneficial Outcomes

The structures could keep their users purposely invisible and safe when immigration officers arrive.

Location

Website – (the website is translated in English, Spanish, Greek French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Hebrew and Arabic)

Users

Activists, Journalists, Politicians, Citizens

Maintained by

The creators, the users, private donors.

Duration

1999 - ongoing

Category

politics

Nr. and Title

453

Indymedia.org

Initiator

Various Activists

Description

The Independent Media Center (IMC), established by various independent and alternative media organizations and activists, is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate journalism. Indymedia was founded as an alternative to government and corporate media, and seeks to facilitate people to publish news as directly as possible.

Goals

To empower people to use the media by presenting honest, accurate, powerful independent reports, to develop as much independent media as possible.

Beneficial Outcomes

IMC collectives distribute print, audio, photo, video media and newswires, sites where anyone can publish news from their own perspective.

Location

United States

Users

Chip Lord and Doug Michels, Hudson Marquez and Curtis Schreier

Maintained by

Ant Farm

Duration

1968 - 1978

Category

urban-development

Nr. and Title

057

Inflatables

Initiator

Ant Farm

Description

The project consisted in a anti-architectural structure that was cheap, easy to transport and quick to assemble. The structures had no fixed form and they promoted a type of architecture outside the expert knowledge field. Inflatables hosted conferences and various events like festivals, university campuses, conferences, lectures, workshops and seminars. To move the structures, they used a customized Chevrolet van, called Media Van, that turned into a mobile studio to share information and images. The van was also indispensable as a power generator to inflate the structures. The artists produced the Inflatocookbook, a manual for making your own structure.

Goals

To promote ideas that have no commercial potential, embracing the latest technologies at the same time as they criticize American culture.

Beneficial Outcomes

Conferences and various events were conducted freely because they developed in their architectural inflatables.

Location

Germany

Users

WochenKlausur, inhabitants of Berlin.

Maintained by

Kunstamt Kreuzberg, NGBK.

Duration

1998 - ongoing

Category

Nr. and Title

252

Initiatives for Unemployed People

Initiator

WochenKlausur

Description

Kreuzberg was the Berlin district with the highest percentage of unemployed people and welfare recipients. WochenKlausur conceived a workstation, consisting of an “Info Tank” that would help unemployed people develop their own ideas of what they could do for a job, and a “Think Tank” that would aid them in realizing individual projects. Announcements were put in the newspapers, the employment office and other counselling institutions were contacted, public presentations on the issue were organised, and numerous experts from various fields were invited for talks. A great deal of cooperation was stimulated by these efforts: the district government made available an office in a good location, a “job creation program” contributed computers, and Frauke Hehl from the unemployment initiative Springboard took over the permanent administration of the workstation initiative. The final decisions were made at a summit meeting held on a boat excursion on the river Spree.

Goals

To provide opportunities and advice for the unemployed.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Info Tank supplied information about existing opportunities in Turkish and German and offered individuals support in developing and formulating their own ideas and plans. In the summer of 1999, the Think Tank launched its first projects, drawing up exact plans for their realisation, testing their feasibility and contacting possible cooperation partners.
Today the workstation has a staff of more than twenty – some working on a volunteer basis – and is located in nearby Friedrichshain.

Location

Spain

Users

José Miguel de Prada Poole, Carlos Ferrater, Fernando Bendito and students that participate in the congress.

Maintained by

International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID)

Duration

1971

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

114

Instant City

Initiator

José Miguel de Prada Poole, Carlos Ferrater and Fernando Bendito

Description

The instant city was a self-built structure made with inflatable plastics and staple-guns, that could disappear after use without any trace in the landscape. It was designed as a solution to overcome the lack of temporary accommodation for students and participants of the VII Congress of International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) in Ibiza. The Manifesto of the Instant City was sent to architecture and design schools all over the world as an invitation to participate. It was a symbol and, at the same time, the implementation of an alternative ideology based on participation and experimentation that characterised that edition of the Congress. The organisation provided the materials, but everyone should build his own habitation that was integrated into the whole structure.

Goals

Imagine, create and implement a model of cities with buildings that could disappear after used, without any traces of human constructions.

Beneficial Outcomes

The participants got free accommodation during the Congress.

Location

Congo

Users

International and local artists, scholars, local community, inhabitants of the rainforest.

Maintained by

The IHA is funded by Akademie der Künste der Welt Amsterdam Fund for the Arts
 Mondriaan Fund
 Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
.

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

513

Institute for Human Activities

Initiator

Delphine Hesters, Jacob Koster, Renzo Martens, Els Roelandt, Guido van Staveren van Dijk

Description

The Institute for Human Activities (IHA) began its operations on a former Unilever plantation, located on a tributary to the Congo River, 800 kilometers upstream from Kinshasa. Here, in one of the most disadvantaged regions of the world, the Institute launched its five-year gentrification program in order to recalibrate art’s critical mandate. The Settlement serves as an in-vitro testing ground where the IHA mobilizes the modalities of art production, seeking to acknowledge the economic mechanisms through which art has the greatest impact on social reality. The institute uses capital accumulation as a tool for artistic intervention, enabling art to make productive use of its dependence on existing economic structures.

Goals

In the Congolese interior the IHA is building an art center which will generate a sustainable source of income for the local population through the production of critical art. It thus endeavors to make critical artistic reflection profitable for the poor.

Beneficial Outcomes

The results of the Gentrification Program will be shared with audiences in Africa and around the world through lectures, exhibitions, film and television.

Location

Online, Colombia, Perú, Chile, Uruguay, Spain, Hungary, Santo Domingo, Germany, Sahara.

Users

Zoohaus, citizens

Maintained by

Zoohaus

Duration

2010 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

075

Inteligencias colectivas

Initiator

Zoohaus

Description

An online free database where different construction techniques from every region of the world — and every degree of industrialization and development — can be accessed and exchanged.

Goals

This methodology is used in order to promote a type of technical know-how that is at once inclusive and public. A horizontal learning system —through tinkering with material prototypes— helps to weave together a tight network of people and collectives.

Beneficial Outcomes

A catalog with record files, a “human network” of persons and collectives from around the world, and detailed edited plans and instructions, can be accessed for free and implemented anywhere in the world.

Location

Spain

Users

Homeless people and people evicted by banks

Maintained by

Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca de Torrevieja y Vega Baja

Duration

2012

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

219

Intervention #1

Initiator

Núria Güell

Description

58,241 evictions were conducted in Spain in 2011, mostly through real estate speculation by the Mediterranean Savings Bank. In Intervention #1, the artist created a cooperative through which she contracted a construction worker (who himself had been evicted from his own house) to remove the entrance doors to other foreclosed properties. In this way, houses were accessible and open to public use, and occupants were not liable for housebreaking. Since the process of hiring the worker was done through a legal entity, it prevented the worker who removed the doors as well as the occupants from being legally liable.

Goals

To reinstate to public use houses and warehouses that were purchased by banks through public bailouts at 50% less of their appraised value. To make visible the legal strategies used by banks to steal from the state and citizens with total impunity.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project offered houses to citizens who do not have homes. Instead of the citizens, the project itself assumes responsibility for opening the houses. On a pedagogic level, the project promotes legal strategies which citizens can use to avoid legal liability, adopting similar strategies to those that banks themselves use to avoid culpability.

Location

Italy

Users

People who have been evicted by banks and homeless

Maintained by

Produced by VIVA Performance Lab / Maintained by Prendocasa Cosenza (activists)

Duration

2012

Category

politics, urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

236

Intervention #2

Initiator

Núria Güell

Description

Palazzo Morelli in Cosenza, is a building that was renovated with public money in order to create a place for social housing. Actually, the state then transferred the management plan to the Bank BNP Paribas from 2005 until 2017, using the space as an investment fund selling virtual sales through listing on the stock exchange. Many of the families that inhabited the Palazzo were thus left homeless – evicted by the police. Afterwards, the main entrance of the building was walled-up to avoid future occupations inside the building. On Sunday, December 8, 2012, during a demonstration, the artist, together with the collaboration of Collettivo Prendocasa, began to demolish the wall in order to open a new entrance to the building.

Goals

‘To enable citizens who do not have access to housing to inhabit the Palazzo Morelli, which was originally refurbished with public money from the budget set aside for social housing. Through this demonstration, we denounce the fact that the bank uses the space with the endorsem*nt of the state as an investment fund, selling virtual property through the stock exchange, and corrupting its initial use for which it was refurbished.’ (N. Güell)

Beneficial Outcomes

‘To offer houses to citizens who do not have a home. In a legal phase, the action benefits the users since the artist broke down the wall and therefore assumed all the legal consequences and responsibilities for that action. The users can get in without any legal consequences since there is an open entrance which allows a free entry.’ (N. Güell)

Location

Canada

Field

Education, Indigenous Communities Rights, Counter-narratives

Strategy

UIT (‘use it together’), Repurpose, Artworlds (art-sustaining environments), Narratorship (talking art)

Users

Inuit community, artists, filmmakers, people worldwide

Maintained by

Zacharias Kunuk, Pauloosie Qulitalik, Norman Cohn

Duration

1990 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

253

Isuma Productions

Initiator

Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirg, Pauloosie Qulitalik and Norman Cohn

Description

Context

For long time Inuit community only received the national broadcast TV where none representation or access to its history, culture and language was present. Zacharias Kunuk started to make videos in 1981 and four years later, he received his first Canada Council grant to produce an independent video, from Inuk Point of view together with Paul Apak, Pauloosie Qulitalik, and Norman Cohn. In January 1990 the team founded Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc. to produce and distribute independent Inuit-language films and media art, featuring local actors recreating Inuit life in the Igloolik region in the 1930s and 1940s. Over the next ten years, Isuma helped establish an Inuit media arts centre, NITV; a youth media and circus group, Artcirq; and a women’s video collective, Arnait Video Productions. In 2004 Isuma incorporated Isuma Distribution International and in 2008 launched IsumaTV, the world’s first website for Indigenous media art now showing over 7000 films and videos in 70 languages. In 2010, Igloolik Isuma Productions closed and re-opened as Kingulliit Productions.

Goals

Isuma's mission is to produce independent community-based media – films, TV and Internet - to preserve and enhance Inuit culture and language and to tell authentic Inuit stories to Inuit and non-Inuit audiences worldwide.

Beneficial Outcomes

It creates jobs and economic development in Igloolik and Nunavut community.
In 1991 Isuma created the first Artic independent non-profit centre, called Tarriaksuk Video Centre.
In 2012 Kingulliit and Isuma Distribution produced Digital Indigenous Democracy, an internet network to inform and consult Inuit in low-bandwidth communities facing the Baffinland Iron Mine development.
Isuma's 30-year media art project represented Canada at the 2019 Venice Biennale with its newest feature, One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, which then screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and won Best Canadian Film at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Location

United States, Australia, Europe

Users

Miranda July, Filmmakers and film lovers.

Maintained by

Miranda July

Duration

1996 - ongoing

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

234

Joanie 4 Jackie

Initiator

Miranda July

Description

The project consisted of an underground and independent film network for women to share their movies. In a pre-Youtube era, the project functioned as a platform to share and see each other's work in a field where women were massively underrepresented. The network connected directors and filmmakers internationally throughout screenings, and over 200 movies was distributed through a 'chainletter' system: filmmakers contacted J4J sending their work and they received a compilation with nine others. In 2017 the Getty Research Institute acquired the complete archives, which consist of 27 boxes of tapes, posters, letters and the archives of artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Robert Mapplethorpe and Carolee Schneemann.

Goals

To enable female film directors to share their movies.

Beneficial Outcomes

Promoting the widespread circulation of material, which might never be seen otherwise.

Location

Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Online

Users

Immigrants and refugees in various locations.

Maintained by

Hybrid Workspace, Documenta X, Kassel

Duration

1997 - ongoing

Category

politics

Nr. and Title

147

Kein Mensch Ist Illegal

Initiator

Florian Schneider

Description

The project is an international network of local immigrant and refugee rights advocacy groups. What began as a conference on June 28, 1997, developed into a national campaign. More than thirty anti-racist groups present at the conference issued an appeal for greater attention to migrant workers' rights, such as healthcare, education, and housing for migrant workers. Schneider's subsequently initiated several projects in the same vein, like the "no border network" and the online platform KEIN.ORG.

Goals

Support free movement and equal rights for all, and unity between all.

Beneficial Outcomes

The campaign culminated in 2001 with an online demonstration in conjunction with Libertad! Today, No Person Is Illegal continues to work on problems of labour and immigration, focusing on the connections between economics and racism.

Location

Japan

Users

People in the disaster area (northeast Japan)

Maintained by

Kesen Festival organised by the people from the area

Duration

2012

Category

environment, social

Nr. and Title

427

Kesen Transplant

Initiator

Kesuke Ikeda

Description

The region of Kessen located in the north-eastern part of Japan, is an area seriously damaged by the tsunami in 2011. The same region was the basis of a project entitled Kessen Transplant – the goal of which was to renovate temporary infrastructure, for artists and visitors to live again in this place In particular, Kesuke Ikeda made a local power plant, Kesen-Art Power Plant, using rubble This still remains in Rikuzen Takata. The "power plant" provided energy to the house located next to it. In this house artists and participants enjoyed local foods from the area while talking about the future of the region.

Goals

The purpose of the project is creating our lifestyle in relation to the richness of the land, surround by mountains and the sea. Our hope was that the experiences of a project on livelihood and energy would be a good opportunity for everyone to grow the future vision of the stricken area together.

Beneficial Outcomes

The house became a place for participants and artists to enjoy gatherings and local foods in a hot pot, using the natural energy produced by the Kesen Art-Power Plant. Many visitors (most of them victims of the tsunami) came to enjoy and rediscover the fascination of the area while talking with artists who came from outside.

Location

Kenia

Users

Kounkuey Design Initiative, Inhabitants of Kibera, Buro Happold, Knyan Architecture Firm, volunteers.

Maintained by

Eco-Build Africa

Duration

2006 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

409

Kibera Public Space Project

Initiator

Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDL)

Description

Design interventions oriented to sustainably revitalize one of the largest informal settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa. The group of Harvard School of Design students partnered with residents, local design students, private sector experts and government officials to build a flood control system, a bridge to open a circulation route and a shade pavilion to accommodate more than 200 residents and their income-generating activities. Each enterprise contributes a percentage of their profits to site maintenance.

Goals

Reinforce sustainability: social, economical and environmental.

Beneficial Outcomes

Productive public space, and income-generating activities. Several community-based groups have been created, and construction is ongoing.

Location

Iran

Users

Women Weavers, Local young and emerging artists in fashion industry, Supporters who use the weaving products and a culture in their daily life.

Maintained by

Soheila Moayed Jafari, Hooshyar Cyrous, Shaghayegh Cyrous, Khashayar Cyrous

Duration

2014 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

565

Klozar Weaving

Initiator

Soheila Moayed Jafari, Shaghayegh Cyrous

Description

Klozar is an organization aimed at supporting women weavers residing in the rural areas of Iran, such as Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Bijar, Hashtgerd, Eslam shahr, Tehran, Nezam Abad. Through supply and distribution of high-quality crafts, Klozar creates a market for Iranian craftswomen whose art is at the edge of deterioration. The initiators hand picks the highest quality weaving, compensates the weavers twice the national average, and commission waivers before they start weaving. Women weavers produce bags whose labels identify who made them and where. The bag labels give the name of the traditional design that has been passed down through the weavers' families for many generations. Most of these patterns are passing to the next generation of waivers by a song that tells the weaver what pattern and colour they should use as they keep singing and weaving.

Goals

Entrepreneurship and supporting women weavers in all over Iran in creating a safe space for them to use their talents. Support women to become independent financially. Collecting stories from women weavers who were always hidden behind the weaving industry. Bringing back the traditional colours and patterns that were going to disappear and repurpose the weaving for a more contemporary use introducing it to the next generation that will keep the handwoven industry alive. Allowing people to use the handmade weaving component in their daily life by getting introduced to different patterns, colours and the information of provenance and who are the weavers behind the woven product.

Beneficial Outcomes

Since the creation of Klozar more than 40 weavers joined the organization from more than 25 cities and villages around Iran. Klozar supported women in negotiating and changing mindsets of their husbands and families, who are not allowing them to be financially independent, because of the cultural and traditional expectations and barriers. The project supported weavers' families by providing healthcare - such as medicine that is not available, because of being expensive or rare, as a result of Iran's sanctions by 5+1 world power countries - and home supplies or children's school material. Klozar gives a platform to emerging artists in the fashion industry. It brought back the attention to handwoven industry that was fading by new machines and China's industry. The project has received many awards including the best cultural entrepreneur of Iran by cultural heritage of Tehran in 2015.

Location

Japan

Users

Shin Egashira, Students and professors of AA School of Architecture, inhabitants of Koshirakura.

Maintained by

AA School of Architecture, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.

Duration

1996 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

406

Koshirakura Landscape Workshop

Initiator

Shin Egashira

Description

Koshirakura Landscape Workshop is a visiting school programme of the AA School of Architecture in which students plan interventions of architecture and urban design, with the participation of the local community of Koshirakura village. Located in the disused elementary school, international students work with local people in order to create an infrastructure for the social sustainability of the village which consists of only 100 inhabitants. Considered temporary residents rather than visitors, students are an active part of the community and they are integrated into the everyday life of the village. Recent projects consist of a communal oven, an Azumaya (a summer pavilion), the design and making of vehicles that could be used in celebrating the traditional Maple Cutting Festival, the transformation of Masuke House into an open-house for semi-communal use, and the conversion of the abandoned school into a communal area.

Goals

Because the majority of the inhabitants of the village is over 60 years old, the purpose of the project is to avoid the shrinking of the community using architecture as a tool for the development of resources to be used by the residents.

Beneficial Outcomes

Infrastructures constructed, cultural exchange, and enrichment of community dynamics.

Location

Kosovo, The Netherlands, United Kingdom

Users

Women of Vushtrri / Kosovo, Radio Vushtrri, Metropolitan School of Architecture London, School of Architecture, Prefecture Architecture UK, Prishtina, Shirin Homann-Saadat.

Maintained by

School of Architecture Prishtina, Metropolitan School of Architecture London, Architectural Summer Hamburg, Uta Homann Minden, Kunstlerhaus Hamburg-Bergedorf, galerie Xprssns Hamburg

Duration

2001 - 2006

Category

politics, urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

481

Kosovo Box

Initiator

Shirin Homann-Saadat

Description

The project consists of a construction manual, conceived as a recipe book, dedicated to women in Kosovo addressing the lack of sheltering space after the Balkan War. The content of the box has been created throughout worksps by women from Prishtina and Vushtrri and it was developed in collaboration with the School of Architecture in Prishtina and in London.

Goals

Propose a solution for the lack of shelter for women.

Beneficial Outcomes

Some of the Kosovo Box‘s architectural ideas were integrated into an architectural local proposal; women of Vushtrri formed a group and occupied the building site for their ’women only-building’ (finally the site was not given to the women and the house was not built); the project was published in architectural journals in England and Germany and shown on Kosovo media.

Location

Italy, Kosovo

Users

WochenKlausur, Ardit Misliu, Refugees, Austrian Pavilion’s visitors

Maintained by

Austrian Pavilion, 48th Biennale di Venezia ; Vienna City School Board, University of Vienna, Caritas; KulturKontakt, the Rotary Club of Vienna and the Women’s Initiative Against War; Veuve Cliquot company; Austrian Pavilion’s visitors; Austrian film production company PPM, Macedonian civil rights organization ADI (Association for Democratic Initiatives).

Duration

1999 - 2003

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

254

Language Schools in the Kosovo War

Initiator

WochenKlausur

Description

During the Kosovan War numerous young refugees had found shelter with families in small Macedonian towns and had not had access to any schooling. WochenKlausur decided to establish a network of language schools. Initially seven spaces were rented on the Kosovo border – around Gostivar and Pristina – and furnished as classrooms. Organizations like KulturKontakt, the Rotary Club of Vienna and the Women’s Initiative Against War, as well as the Veuve Cliquot company and many private individuals, contributed a total of €48,000. The group held a lottery in the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennial: for 20 euros visitors could choose from an array of surprise bags containing prizes sponsored by a variety of Austrian and Italian companies. The language courses were organized and administered in cooperation with the Macedonian civil rights organization ADI (Association for Democratic Initiatives). ADI also hired the teachers, who offered courses in English, German, Italian and French. Additionally, Biennial visitor Jeannette Armer, a teacher from Cambridge, spontaneously agreed to teach on a volunteer basis for an entire year.

Goals

Take the chance to involve 200,000 visitors in a project to help refugees of the Kosovo War – a mere 300 km from Venice and help to improve the professional qualifications of the refugees.

Beneficial Outcomes

Upon completing a course, each participant received an official diploma. As a civil rights organization involved in training for NGOs, ADI was certified by government authorities to award these certificates. Funding was sufficient to operate the language schools for three years. At the end of 2000 the courses in Macedonia were discontinued, because most of the refugee families had returned to Kosovo. Four classes were transferred to Kosovo and ran there for another year.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Readers

Maintained by

John Ruskin

Duration

1860-1900

Category

scientific, pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

118

Lectures and other essays

Initiator

John Ruskin

Description

John Ruskin was the greatest British art critic and social commentator of the Victorian Age. He fiercely attacked the worst aspects of industrialization and actively promoted art education and museum access for the working classes. His prophetic statements on environmental issues speak to our generation as well as to his own. Ruskin’s social view broadened from concerns about the dignity of labour to consider wider issues of citizenship, and notions of the ideal community. Just as he had questioned aesthetic orthodoxy in his earliest writings, he dissected the orthodox political economy espoused by John Stuart Mill, based on theories of laissez-faire and competition drawn from the work of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. Ruskin became an increasingly popular public lecturer in the 1850's. His work Lectures is a compilation of his most important pieces. The Lecture III is "The relation of Art to Use".

Goals

He emphasized the connections between nature, art and society.

Beneficial Outcomes

His ideas inspired the Arts and Crafts Movement and the founding of the National Trust, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and the Labour
Movement.

Location

Sweden, The Netherlands, Canada

Users

Museum visitors

Maintained by

Moderna Museet Stockholm; Bildmuseet, Umeå; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; MOCA, Toronto

Duration

1999

Category

scientific, economy, social

Nr. and Title

089

Light Therapy

Initiator

Apolonija Šušteršič

Description

Light Therapy was originally made as a project for Moderna Museet in Stockholm,1999. The idea was to focus on the program and typology of spaces within the contemporary museum today: how it functions as public space, and as a social or healing device in itself. Light Therapy became an addition to, and a comment on the museum’s program. It is clear that museums today not only function as exhibition space, but that they are also generators of city development and places that offer visitor various other activities and outlets, such as an education program, library and reading room, restaurant and shop etc.
Light Therapy is always designed with a generous amount of light simulating a bright, sunny day. The light elements used in the room are specially developed in relation to medical light treatments that affect our behavior. Everything in the room is white in order to keep the amount of light at the level of 10.000 lux. The room is furnished with white furniture, visitors get white coats, all objects and elements of the furniture in the room need to be white. There are Light Therapy instructions on the wall for visitors to consider as advice on how to use the room. Reading material is available for visitors to read and it is usually selected as a comment to the current issue discussed in public within specific situations / contexts where the room is installed. Invitations to use Light Therapy are placed in local newspapers and flyers are handed out in the urban realm to inform the public that light therapy is available to everyone. The logo for Light Therapy is developed by each hosting institution, to imply that the therapy is an authentic part of the museum experience.

Goals

To allow visitors of contemporary art museums to experience feelings of happiness and make them aware of its meaning within our everyday life.

Beneficial Outcomes

This treatment is used to fight Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), milder winter blues and sleep disorders caused by jet leg and overwork, or lack of daylight. It is a therapy with no proven side effects, which everyone can use. Light therapy creates an artificial condition to improve our busy lives: "it is a ‘new prosthesis’ to make our everyday lives easier. It is a tool, which artificially makes you happy”. However, the subject of happiness is always related to a specific context or situation where Light Therapy is installed which makes the visitors of a contemporary art museum aware of its role in society today.

Location

Italy

Users

Hypothetical suicide committers in a confused and hesitant phase.

Maintained by

Publisher: VIAINDUSTRIAE; Editor: Emanuele De Donno, Amedeo Martegani; Collaborators: Franco Troiani, Alice Mazzarella.

Duration

2010 - 2012

Category

politics, social

Nr. and Title

477

Lonely

Initiator

Luca Pucci

Description

Lonely is a guide book to Ponte delle Torri (Towers Bridge), which is one of the favourite destinations for travellers, artists and suicides. It is a small publication of extreme explorations, on the border between travel literature, fiction and crime dossier. This is a publication along the lines of the touristic guide ‘Lonely Planet’ which deals with the concept of travelling and its historical, artistic and sociological context, in a transversal way. Several themes are included and debated: timing of fall, jump, damages, history, environment, hotels and restaurants for the last meal, art and a wide section dedicated to other places connected to suicide in Italy and across the border. In this way, instead of pushing the tourist toward the act of committing suicide, this guide tries to bore him and to ‘spoil the party’.

Goals

This research starts from a ‘discovery’, so to speak. Many suicides, before entering the void, plan, in detail, their suicide by choosing the last restaurant,
the right time, and so on. Considering the importance of this phase of preparation for death, the idea was to ‘consume and formalize’ this ritual: to neutralize the practice of suicide. This manual also tries to stop the ’procedure’ through a guide and at the same time, tries to educate the audience about death and the
censured topic of suicide.

Beneficial Outcomes

Lonely is a practical, detailed and funny guide to the city of Spoleto and its ‘Bridge of Suicides’. It introduces the city and to its restaurants, museums, monuments. It is an original publication that deals in a specific and deep way with the historical and artistic aspects of the bridge that could not be found in a standard touristic guide. Moreover, the book is also an archive of interventions of contemporary art recently installed over and around the bridge.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Bik van der Pol, readers of Loompanics publications and users of the museum

Duration

2001- ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy

Nr. and Title

313

Loompanics

Initiator

Bik van der Pol

Description

The project includes a selection of 140 books from Loompanics Unlimited publishers, Washington. Out of business since 2006, this publishing house had for decades published manuals that ‘your mother and the state would rather you didn’t read’. Subjects varied from practical handbooks on ‘How to Develop a Low- Cost Family Food- Storage System’ to less generally acceptable publications as ‘Gourmet Cannabis Cookery’ and controversial self-help books as ‘How to Start Your Own Country’, ‘Homemade Guns and Homemade Arms’, or ‘How to Clear Your Adult and Juvenile Criminal Records’. Users are invited to read the publications and make copies of the manuals, meaning they can follow instructions and realise projects on their own.

Goals

To allow users free access to material, bypassing reproduction rights and encouraging them to use the manuals themselves.

Beneficial Outcomes

Users gain free access to Loompanics publications

Location

United States

Users

Fallen Fruit (David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young), Islands of LA (created by Ari Kletzky), citizens of LA

Maintained by

Fallen Fruit/Islands LA

Duration

2008

Category

urban-development, economy, environment

Nr. and Title

164

Love apples

Initiator

Fallen Fruit, Islands LA

Description

The initiators, in collaboration with residents, planted 72 tomato plants in 12 traffic islands around the city. Tomatoes were planted on empty and irrigated public space to suggest an alternative use and occupation of the public space. Users were invited to sample but not hoard the produce. At the end of the project, a map was created to invite users to discover these new urban spaces and taste the tomatoes.

Goals

The project tested the definition and use of public space in the city of Los Angeles, imagining new ways in which such spaces could be utilised differently.

Beneficial Outcomes

The re-use of public spaces and the fact that public sampled the tomatoes.

Location

United States

Users

Mad Hoursers, donations

Duration

1987 - ongoing

Category

Nr. and Title

112

Mad Housers

Initiator

Michael Connor and Brian Finkle

Description

Mad Housers is a non-profit organisation, comprised entirely of volunteers, who engage in various forms of social, charity and educational work. The project provides shelters in various areas in the city of Atlanta for homeless families and individuals, without differentiating between the nationality, religion, age and sexual orientation. It develops low-income housing for people in need, and workshops to help people developing skills and knowledge for refurbishing housing and shelter.

Goals

To help the plight of the homeless in Atlanta and low-income families.

Beneficial Outcomes

To develop low income housing for people in need, to help people develop the skills and knowledge to construct housing and shelter, and also to act, if necessary as an advocate for the homeless, to ensure that their moral and civil rights are protected.

Location

US, Mexico

Users

Mark Bradford, Mexican border police, Maleteros (Luggage carriers)

Maintained by

inSITE 05

Duration

2005

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

111

Maleteros

Initiator

Mark Bradford

Description

Malteros are the porters who transport luggage and goods between the border of the US and Mexico. Working with a group of maleteros in 2005, artist Mark Bradford collaborated on a system of maps and signs that placed the marginalized work of the unofficial maleteros alongside that of the sanctioned labor of policemen and taxi drivers. Along with the map, the collaboration resulted in new stations for the maleteros to work out of and store their carts, as well as the creation of a large sign that reads “MALETEROS” under the taxi and buses sign.

Goals

To provide visibility, improve business and legitimize the work of the maleteros operating in the informal economy

Beneficial Outcomes

The signs provide visibility for the maleteros as well as demarcated stations for facilitating business and storing carts.

Location

México

Users

Speakers of various languages throughout Mexico, language activists who are developing projects on the subject

Maintained by

Primal

Duration

2017-2018

Category

pedagogical, politics, social

Nr. and Title

575

Matria

Initiator

Paola Sánchez, Héctor Juárez (Primal).

Description

Goals

-Put the original languages in the future and contemporary thinking.
-Revalue and create bridges between different traditions, worldviews, codes and cultural practices.
-Promote that languages should be present in daily use
-Understanding collectively that large infrastructures or technologies are not required to be able to bring these languages to contemporary life. It is a matter of political, personal and collective willpower.

Beneficial Outcomes

The workshops are designed to provide tools to the attendees, who will be able to make use of them in their daily lives, e.g. a dubbing workshop to give speakers the ability to translate movies into their original language. Some texts of contemporary thought have already been interpreted into native languages (free access on the website) and "Blade Runner" has been dubbed to Nahuatl.

Location

Austria

Users

Homeless population, people without health insurance. The clinic has over 700 patients per month

Maintained by

Vienna Secession; sponsors and Council.

Duration

1993 - ongoing

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

140

Medical Care for Homeless People

Initiator

WochenKlausur

Description

After receiving an invitation from the Vienna Secession, WochenKlausur decided to develop a project to improve the situation of homeless people, instead of putting on an exhibition. At the time of the project, Karlsplatz, the square in front of the exhibition building, was known throughout the city as a meeting place for homeless people. WochenKlausur customized a van into a mobile clinic that provided Vienna's homeless population with access to health care, free of charge. To pay the salaries of the physicians, WochenKlausur resorted to a trick, asking a correspondent for the German news magazine Der Spiegel to conduct an interview with the councilor of Vienna and pretend that he was interested in reporting on the project. Since the politician did not want to appear in the German press as the cause of the project’s failure, he had no choice but to provide funding for the physicians who would staff the clinic – initially for one year.

Goals

To provide health care for homeless population and to people without access to healthcare.

Beneficial Outcomes

Since 1993, 600 people per month have received medical care from the clinic. In 1998 a larger vehicle replaced the old van and the relief organization Caritas has taken over management of the entire project. The mobile medical clinic has become a permanent institution, also offering treatment to foreigners without Insurance. If you are in need of free of charge healthcare you can go find the Louise-Bus at these locations: Mon 16.00–19.30: Franz-Josefs Bahnhof, 9. District, Spittelauer Platz; Tue 09.00–12.00: Praterstern - Ladezone BILLA (U-Bahn Exit Nordbahnstraße/Heinestraße) and 15.00–18.00: Behind the Day Center Josefstädterstraße, 8. District, U6 Station Josefstädterstraße; Wed 09.00–11.00: Lacknergasse 96, 18. District, next to the second Gruft and 11.30–14.30 & 19.30–21.30: In front of the Day Center Gruft, Barnabitengasse 14, 6. District; Thu 09.00–12.00: In front of the Day Center at the Main Train Station, 4. District, Wiedner Gürtel 10 and 14.00–18.00: Haus Grangasse, Grangasse 6, 1150 Wien; Fri 09.00–13.00: Behind the Day Center Josefstädterstraße, 8. District, U6 Station Josefstädterstraße and 13.30–15.00: Next to the FrauenWohnZentrum, 2. District, Springergasse 5 - Treatment only for Women.

Location

Mexico, United States, Canada, Belgium, Germany.

Users

Minerva Cuevas, citizens

Maintained by

Minerva Cuevas, volunteers and those art Institutions that host the project

Duration

1997 - ongoing

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

017

Mejor Vida Corp (Better Live Corporation)

Initiator

Minerva Cuevas

Description

Mejor Vida Corp (M.V.C.) is a non-profit corporation that creates, promotes and distributes products and services for free. Besides, they can be delivered anywhere in the world without charge. Among a variety of goods, M.V.C. provides subway tickets, safety pills, cheaper barcodes stickers, self-stamped envelopes, lottery cards, student identity cards or services like cleaning service, recommendation letters, etc.
M.V.C. explores and react on the general practices of the large corporations and institutions analysing every particular context like Mexico D.F., Toronto, Hasselt, Frankfurt, etc. MVC doesn't discriminate against gender, race, religion, sexual preferences or economic status.

Goals

To question the capitalistic economic system employing ordinary things and everyday issues, challenging the very idea of the artistic production and reversing the notions of commodification and profit.

Beneficial Outcomes

M.V.C. has given away thousands of subway tickets in Mexico city's subway stations, and they have issued numerous student Identity cards. These student's Cards can be used internationally to obtain free or reduced museum admissions, public transportation, travel accommodation, discounts on airfares, as well as many other benefits. Besides, the website provides a printable barcode database for products of supermarkets chains in Mexico, Toronto, Ottawa and San Francisco. Every product from M.V.C. is reproducible by the users.

Users

Subway users

Maintained by

Members of Memetro

Duration

2010 - ongoing

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

215

Memetro

Initiator

Memetro

Description

Memetro is a non-profit cultural organisation, which has developed a web application for smartphones for all people who have a transitory memory upset. The term ‘memetro’ is a merging of two concepts‘Meme’ from the Spanish expression, and the film ‘Memento’. People with TMG (Transitory Global Memetro) very often forget to validate their ticket of public transport, especially on the subway. Memetro is therefore a social and artistic project, anyone with this memory disease could become a member and get live updates at every moment (via Facebook and Twitter) about the locations and timing of inspections on all subway lines, thus helping these people to avoid the fine that controllers generally impose on those travelling without a ticket.

Goals

Providing support and help to the TGM-affected population through cultural activities and information campaigns; to give recognition of the victims of TGM.

Beneficial Outcomes

Memetro employs a members’ fee (7 Euros/month) to form a common fund for collectively paying the fines imposed on any member. If a member is trapped in a control line and asks help via Facebook or Twitter, any other member can buy a ticket and give it to him, just on time, before being fined.

Location

Thailand, Online

Users

Students

Maintained by

Midnight University

Duration

1997 - 2014

Category

pedagogical, politics

Nr. and Title

177

Midnight University

Initiator

Somkiat Tangnamo

Description

Midnight University is a free educational project and an academic forum online. The project was committed to democratic ideals and social justice. Since its foundation, it has been a dissenting voice in the country's larger political landscape becoming a valuable resource for artists, academics, and activists. After Thailand 2006 coup, the University website was temporarily shut down after some scholars led a protest in Chiang Mai againts the Junta's draft interim constitution. In May 2014, Thailand’s military junta blocked access to the ‘Midnight University’ website. The user was redirected to a Junta's annoucement that stated: Temporarily closed down according to the order of the National Council for Peace and Order.

Goals

The primary task of this website is to be an educational tool for citizens, providing a forum to discuss social and political issues.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Midnight University website receives over 2.5 million unique visits per month and offers users from around the world access to over 1500 scholarly articles. Most of the materials are in Thai and some are in english.

Location

Taiwan

Users

Students and citizens.

Maintained by

Department of Fine Arts at National Taipei University of the Arts, the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University, and the National Taiwan University Photography Club.

Duration

2010 - 2013

Category

urban-development

Nr. and Title

507

Mirage—Disused Public Property in Taiwan

Initiator

Yao, Jui-Chung + Lost Society Document (LSD)

Description

Goals

To underline the government negligence and to foster some action to use the buildings.

Beneficial Outcomes

Forced this issue into the forefront of the government's consciousness so they would reinvestigate the issue. To put these disused spaces back into social use. A new social awareness emerged in the student body as to the absurdity and unfairness of their society.

Location

Germany, Poland, Austria, Turkey, United Kingdom, Israel, Finland, Switzerland

Users

Experts and participants

Maintained by

Hannah Hurtzig with changing collaborators

Duration

2005 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy

Nr. and Title

198

Mobile Academy: blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge

Initiator

Hannah Hurtzig

Description

The project consists of an audio recording archive, which can be displayed in public venues. For every activation of the project, the initiator arranges between 12 to 100 individual tables that are occupied by experts (scientists, artists, philosophers, craftsmen, etc) who are invited to offer a 30 minute one-to-one session to users. Users are able to book an expert and to acquire her or his knowledge. Each conversation is made available in an online archive.

Goals

To organise a community college in which learning and unlearning, knowledge and non-knowledge, and strategies of living and surviving will change ownership in a non-institutional way. To transfer knowledge as a communicative and performative act that becomes a collectively, whispered story of knowledge.

Beneficial Outcomes

Transfer of knowledge between participants and experts. Talks are made available online and in an Encyclopedia.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Church and village communities.

Maintained by

Cheese enthusiasts

Duration

2011 - ongoing

Category

scientific, politics, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

486

Mobile Dairy Unit

Initiator

Fernando García-Dory

Description

An instructive, mobile unit that tours the country showing the process of sourcing dairy products and how they are then processed into cheese and other dairy products.

Goals

To teach people to make their own cheese to provide a herd of goats and cheese-making facilities on a short term basis.

Beneficial Outcomes

Cheese understanding: the science of cheese and fermented cultures social interaction.
Small business development.
Understanding of where food comes from.

Location

France, Spain, Italy, Austria.

Users

Citizens, artists, museum's visitors

Maintained by

To Acconci's disappointment it is now dismantled and storage in Vienna.

Duration

1991

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

510

Mobile Linear City

Initiator

Vito Acconci

Description

The artist built portable housing that can be replicated to become an entire 'city'. A semitrailer truck carries six self-contained housing units that can be telescoped down into one compact module for hauling, to be set up wherever housing is needed. Inside each house, the wall panels can turn down to form a table, a bench, a bed and a shelf. There are five living units, each essentially a studio apartment with the unit housing shared utilities.

Goals

The artist had hoped it would become a lived-in 'traveling city', but soon he realized that it was not possible due to problems of legal responsibility, permits etc.

Beneficial Outcomes

People could live in a 'traveling city'.

Location

Egypt

Users

Mosireen and participants

Maintained by

Mosireen

Duration

2011 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

447

Mosireen

Initiator

Mosireen

Description

Armed with mobile phones and cameras, thousands of citizens record events as they occur in front of them, wrong-footing censorship, and empowering the voice of those with a street-level perspective. In the wake of president Hosni Mubarak’s fall, a group of film-makers and activists founded the non-profit media collective Mosireen to film the ongoing revolution, to publish videos that challenge state media narratives, to provide training, technical support and equipment, to organise screenings and events, as well as host an extensive library of footage from the revolution.

Goals

Support citizen media of all kinds.

Beneficial Outcomes

Mosireen runs free training courses. Their videos are available to download or stream for free and openly for all non-commercial viewing, screening, and distribution.

Location

Colombia, Slovenia, Spain, Puerto Rico, France, Switzerland, Turkey, Italy.

Users

Colectivo Cambalache, inhabitants of the neighbourhood.

Maintained by

Colectivo Cambalache (Carolina Caycedo, Adriana García Galán, Alonso Gil and Federico Guzmán).

Duration

1998 - ongoing

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

134

Museo de la Calle

Initiator

Colectivo Cambalache

Description

In the district of El Cartucho, an impoverished area in the centre of the city of Bogotà, a group of students of the University of Los Andes, organised themselves in the "Colectivo Cambalache". The aim of the group was to foster an alternative economy of sharing, exchange and recycling. They use a traditional recyclers’ full cart (a wooden box on wheels) to pick up objects on the street, take donations and redistribute them.

Goals

The project “Museo de la Calle”, proposes to generate an alternative economy through the gift, barter, exchange and distribution of goods with unlimited transactions.

Beneficial Outcomes

Everybody is welcome to take something from the cart, as long as they also donate an object in exchange.

Location

The

Users

NAC members, artists and the inhabitants of Oud-Charlois district, Wolphaertstraat, the housing block ‘t O-tje at Verboomstraat and the neighborhood Wielewaal.

Maintained by

NAC, district council of Charlois, Housing corporations, The Mya NAC culture fund.

Duration

2004 - ongoing

Category

Nr. and Title

201

NAC Foundation (New Ateliers Charlois)

Initiator

Kamiel Verschuren and Jaap Verheul

Description

The project is an independent non-profit organisation who manages affordable studio spaces and two guesthouses for emerging artists and other cultural workers. Located in the district of Charlois in Rotterdam, the foundation promotes cultural activities in the neighbourhood focused on urban development. Users pay a fee to a collective fund, which is used for maintenance of the spaces, management and to support the cultural activities in collaboration with the local associations and authorities.

Goals

NAC works on the basis of trustful relationships and within the notion that freedom is generated through responsibility: “everything is possible and allowed as long as one can, and will take full responsibility for ones” actions.

Beneficial Outcomes

Over 250 artists and architects have made use of the studios. NAC provides Dutch language courses for it members, cultural trips to exhibitions, public art works, and other artists’ initiatives, supports all applications under 500 euro. NAC is now an example for new ways of urban development.

Location

Everywhere

Users

Constant, hom*o ludens, artists, critics

Maintained by

Constant

Duration

1956 - 1974

Category

urban-development

Nr. and Title

058

New Babylon

Initiator

Constant

Description

New Babylon was a situationist and utopian city, designed around the abolition of work; it was intended as a form of propaganda that critiqued a conventional, bourgeois and utilitarian society. The idea was to create an anti-capitalist society of total automation and where land was collectively owned by its citizens. Work was replaced with nomadic life, creative play and experimental architecture. New Babylon was structured as a network of megastructures floating above the ground, interconnected with bridges and pathways where the post-capitalist inhabitants could roam in search of a new and free kind of life. Constant always saw the project as a concrete and realizable proposal for a future city.

Goals

Self-fulfillment and self-satisfaction were Constant's social goals. Deductive reasoning, goal-oriented production, the construction and betterment of a political community: all these were avoided.

Location

United States of America

Field

UIT (use it together), Usership, 1:1 Scale, Narratorship

Strategy

Legislative Change, Labor Rights, Immigration Rights

Users

Domestic care workers such as nannies, housekeepers, elder caregivers and their employees.

Maintained by

Initial supporters were Tribeca Film Festival, Rockefeller Foundation, Funding Exchange, North Star Fund, MIT Community Service Fund, MIT Council for the Arts, NuLawLab, individual donors. It is maintained by Sundance Institute, The Fledgling Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, NYSCA, MapFund, Asian Women Giving Circle, National Employment Law Project, Urban Justice Center, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Philipino Worker Center, Adhikaar for Human Rights, Hand in Hand: Domestic Employer Association, Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, Terravoz, Arizona State University Art Museum, Queens Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Perez Art Museum Miami, Oakland Museum, Columbia College Chicago, 18th St. Arts, New York Arts Practicum

Duration

2011 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

244

New Day New Standard (now the “Domestic Worker App”)

Initiator

Studio REV

Description

The Domestic Worker App is a call-in service accessible from cell phones which informs domestic workers, caregivers and nannies about their rights related to overtime wages, taxes, vacations and so on. Information is given in the form of an ‘audionovela’ hosted by the voice of Christine Lewis, a nanny who explains domestic workers' rights, which draw from common employee-employer relationships. The more the app is used, the more it collects data to expand the research, becoming a tool for mutual education. The project has been used as an organisational tool by the Domestic Workers United, which distributes business cards featuring the hotline number in places where domestic workers usually gather. The project evolved in the CareForce, two mobile studios (the Nanny Van and the CareForce One) to reach domestic workers around the country through the distribution of toolkits and the organisation of informative events. One of the road trips from New York City to Miami has been documented through a film series, the CareForce Travelogues, exploring how care intersects with immigration, the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination. The project is currently developing in the Care Pod, an independent living unit for caregivers which would allow them to live in clusters beside the elderly.

Context

According to the National Domestic Worker Alliance (NDWA) over 2.5 million people in the USA work as nannies, house cleaners and care workers. The majority of domestic workers are either women with an immigration background or women of colour, who earn a median wage of $11.43 per hour without basic rights such as overtime pay, protections against sexual harassment, sick leave, meal and rest break, and so on. Care jobs are one of the fastest growing jobs in the next decade and it was accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. However, domestic workers are still the most vulnerable workers in the USA. When the state of New York became the first to pass a domestic worker bill of rights in 2010, Studio Rev partnered with the NDWA to create toolkits to inform and educate domestic workers about their rights.

Goals

The Domestic Worker App was designed to inform the 200,000+ nannies, housekeepers, and caregivers in New York State about the landmark 2010 Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Now the project amplifies the voices of care workers throughout the production of toolkits to educate and inform domestic workers around the Nation.

Beneficial Outcomes

Through informative campaigns in collaboration with the NDWA, the project created the context for bettering the working conditions for domestic workers.
The Domestic Worker App functions as a key component of a various states' campaigns that seek to encourage domestic workers and their employers to comply with the law.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Communities of Teesside, users of Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. Approximately 741 have made in workshop sessions to date (August 2016)

Maintained by

Emily Hesse, James Beighton, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Duration

2014 - ongoing

Category

social

Nr. and Title

555

New Linthorpe

Initiator

Emily Hesse, James Beighton

Description

New Linthorpe is inspired by the original 19th century Linthorpe Pottery, Middlesbrough. It re-purposes the idea and value of a social enterprise but hands it directly back to the community. Workshops are set up in the locality where people are invited to 'make' with their own earth. The physical reclamation of the land by the community allows a space for discussion as to the future of the region based on personal and shared experience. The users of the project formulate the outcomes by suggesting direct uses for the project itself within the Tees Valley. The work carried out is guided by the belief in not just the ability but also the responsibility of art to make a difference to lives.

Goals

To find new uses for local clay: Community vessel production, Honesty shop, as art world currency, medium for export, production of brick or architectural material for rebuilding local area; To create encounters that allow the community to take ownership of their own land/earth (clay); To utilise and establish skill sharing and social making as a platform for community building; To re-define the aesthetics of 'makerliness'; To respond directly to community input and transform into output.

Beneficial Outcomes

Creation of a supported ecological system, which encourages the growth of self-empowerment and the development of a positive shared community identity, assisting to end local declinist narratives. During activities and workshops, ceramic vessels were made based upon a community members need and some of them were put up for sale on a no questions asked basis. Income from sales went directly back to the makers. Working with asylum seekers living in the area, workshops acted as a classroom for learning English.

Location

Cameroon

Users

Kamiel Vershuren, Lucas Grandin, inhabitants of New Bell (Douala)

Maintained by

SUD2010 , Duala'Art

Duration

2010 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

202

New Walk Ways in New Bell

Initiator

Kamiel Verschuren

Description

The city of Douala in Cameroon had a huge problem associated with malfunctioning water drainage systems. This is due the fact that in many illegally constructed areas of the town, the sewers are without cover, and after heavy rainfall, this would generally lead to floods and related threats to public health. Verschuren covered approximately 2km of open-air gutters in the New Bell neighbourhood, with long wooden boards on which the artist wrote texts andmwords associated with water.

Goals

The project offers inhabitants the possibility of mastering and improving their living conditions, inviting them to lead spontaneous collective activities such as the functional work of Verschuren.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project was much appreciated by the people living in New Bell, including the 'chief', who took it upon himself to make sure that people gain more consciousness on how to deal with garbage produced in the neighbourhood in order to keep the sewer – and the drinking water – from becoming more polluted.

Location

Germany, The Netherlands, India, Belgium, West-Kurdistan, Norway.

Users

Progressive artists, politicians, political parties, non-parliamentary political movements, diplomats, lawyers, academics, students, journalists, aimed at citizens at large

Maintained by

1st Kochi Muziris Biennial; 7th Berlin Biennale; De Veenfabriek; Farook Foundation; Kulturstiftung des Bundes; Kunst_werke; Mondriaan Foundation; Stichting Doen; Museum De Lakenhal; Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Delhi; Farook Foundation, Dubai; Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Center for Visual Arts, Rotterdam; The Art of Impact, Amsterdam; Stichting Democratie en Media, Amsterdam; K. F. Hein Fonds, Utrecht; Promoveren in de Kunsten, Amsterdam; PhDArts, The Hague/Leiden, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Municipality of Dêrik, Kurdish Cultural Foundation, Eindhoven; Demned – Council of Communities from Kurdistan in the Netherlands; Jineolojî Center of Research for Human and Social Sciences of Women; NOW Fund, Amsterdam

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, social

Nr. and Title

473

New World Summit

Initiator

Jonas Staal

Description

The New World Summit is an artistic and political organisation dedicated to hosting 'alternative parliaments' for those organisations that are currently excluded from democracy. Such lists include terrorist organisations considered a threat to international security. In the European Union, a secret committee, called Clearing House, compiles this list. The six summits organized facilitated the discussion of 36 groups so far. All the editions of the project are supplemented by an online archive documenting the histories, aims, locations, symbols of each organization represented during the summits.

Goals

New World Summit contributes to the promise of a ‘fundamental democracy’. The organisation has no fixed geographical location; it represents no nation state; no properties or indefinite claims on the right to speak. With each summit, a growing international political coalition of progressive groups, excluded from the society. Each summit can be considered as a democratic experiment. The goal is to expand the existing notion of politics by showing the current radical diversity of ideological struggle, while also creating the first international parliament for non-statist politics in the world.

Beneficial Outcomes

The outcomes of the New World Summit are the development of an alternative global political infrastructure for non-statist politics. Through this project, the alternative parliaments aim at destabilizing existing power centres, and to prove that all political power starts with its imagination. Artists, architects, and designers are the ones who help give a human face to an increasingly suppresive form of capitalist-democracy (which we refer to as ‘democratism’). We can
imagine the world anew through our fidelity to the forces of an international democratization movement.

Location

United States

Users

The youth from Oakland, the police, Also including Unique Holland, Frank Williams, Stan Hebert, Jacques Bronson, Mike Shaw, Steve Costa, Officer Terry West, Honorable Elihu Harris Chief Joseph Samuels, Captain Sharon Jones and Greg Hodges of Urban Strategies Council.

Maintained by

Mayor’s Office, Oakland Sharing the Vision, Oakland Police Department, Midnight Basketball and Club One at City Center as part of the Oakland Youth Policy Initiative led by Council- woman Sheila Jordan

Duration

1995 - 1996

Category

pedagogical, social

Nr. and Title

584

No Blood No Foul

Initiator

Suzanne Lacy, Annie Jacoby, and Chris Johnson

Description

The project consisted of a basketball game as a performance between local youth and police officers in which the rules were changed every quarter. It included pre-recorded and live video interviews by youth reporters with local residents. During earlier phases of the project, the artists and her collaborators worked to propose a Youth Policy Initiative to be discussed during the performance through a series of telephones in the lobby that was connected to a hotline for audience response to the policy. The project is one of eight major works that comprise 'The Oakland Projects', a series of installations, performances and political activism created by the artist in collaboration with multiple artists, high school students, youth activist, educators, law enforcement agencies and government officials in Oakland, California.

Goals

This yearlong project consisted of a performance, policy interventions, collaboration with the city council, a media strategy, video documentary and screening, and direct services to participating youth in order to propose a Youth Policy Initiative and to raise funding for the development of a youth-to-youth program.

Beneficial Outcomes

The event was attended by the mayor and city council members, who eventually passed the Oakland Youth Policy Initiative and funded $ 180,000 for a youth-to-youth granting program.

Location

Chile

Users

Colectivo de Acciones De Arte: sociologist Fernando Balcells, the writer Diamela Eltit, the poet Raul Zurita and the visual artists Lotty Rosenfeld and Juan Castillo; citizens

Maintained by

Colectivo de Acciones de Arte and users

Duration

1983 - ongoing

Category

politics

Nr. and Title

083

NO+

Initiator

Colectivo de Acciones de Arte

Description

No+ (No more) was a slogan to be completed by the citizens of Santiago de Chile according to their specific demands during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The action was used by the Colectivo de Acciones de Arte (CADA) to challenge and oppose the dictatorship, and it included theatrical and art performances as strategies to intervene in everyday life in order to fill the gap between artists and spectators. No+ spread all over the country and it became a symbol of political resistance and dissent. Citizens appropriated the slogan for political intervention in the public sphere.

Goals

Colectivo de Acciones de Arte promoted the fusion of art and life as a strategy to fill the gap between spectators and artists. Throughout different performances and art actions, they understood the necessity for a theoretical and practical renovation of the artistic debate in Chile, which needed to be contextualised for the development of political resistance and critical thinking among intellectuals and citizens.

Beneficial Outcomes

The slogan was soon used by different collectives all over the country as a massive public symbol of political resistance and non-conformity.

Location

Moravia neighbourhoud, Medellín, Colombia

Field

Right to the city, Commons, Legislative Change

Strategy

Extraterritorial Reciprocity, Use it Together (U-I-T), Space Hijack

Users

Inhabitants of Moravia district

Maintained by

Alcadía de Medellín and Comfenalco Antioquia with the support of Mondriaan Fund, Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto, Unidad Taller del Espacio Público, Gerencia Macroproyecto de Moraira, Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá, Jardin Botánico, Corporación Sentidos, Cocineros de Moravia, Red Cultural de Moravia

Duration

2011 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

204

Nodes of Cultural Development N.1 ‘El Morro’

Initiator

ElPuente_lab, STEALTH.unlimited, María Camila Vélez, Yesenia Rodríguez

Description

The project consists of structures that resemble shipping containers and an abandoned bus that serve as communal areas. It was designed for the Moravian Cultural Development Centre (CDCM), considering the regional restrictions on the use of public space, as a bridge between art and architecture, building on the Experimental Architecture notion of reusing industrial materials. It is designed to be a collective artistic space that supports the neighborhood's urban transformation process through the construction of new public spaces like a multipurpose workshop, a reading room and library for kids and adults, a multipurpose space for movies and other events and a communal kitchen. The utilisation of recycled materials, beginning with a ready-made architectural idea and industrial-made components as shelter and functional structures, is emphasised in El Morro. The project supports an international exchange programme between artists and the community of Moravia.

Context

The neighbourhood of Moravia in Medellin grew as an unregulated settlement of communities that arrived in the city in the 1960s. The municipal dump "El Morro", established in the area in 1977 and closed in 1984, became a source of the neighbourhood’s survival, based on the reuse of recycled materials. In 2004 the Municipality of Medellín, under the guidance of Mayor Sergio Fajardo, began an integrated strategic plan to promote development through actions aimed at recovering the urban area and improving the social and environmental conditions. A sign of the neighbourhood’s rebirth is the Centro de Desarrollo Cultural de Moravia / Cultural Development Center of Moravia (CDCM), whose aim is to promote culture, education and arts. The initial budget available for the project was 25.000 Euros, and the team had two weeks to come up with an idea.

Goals

Beyond being a process of architectural design, the project gives a possibility of decentralising successful activities of the CDCM. The main objective of this process, which expands the range of existing cultural institutions by multiplying its space with temporary affordable structures, is to increase access to cultural activities for the community and strengthen community development processes.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project has become a prototype to explore possibilities of similar interventions in other neighbourhoods in Medellin and beyond. Over the years, it had turned into a state-of-the-art lab using plants to take the toxins out of the neighbourhood’s soil.

Location

Slovenia

Users

Apolonija šušteršič, Maria Lind, Irena Wölle

Maintained by

Mala galerija, Moderna Galerija, Ljubliana

Duration

1999

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

092

Non Stop Video Club

Initiator

Apolonija Šušteršič

Description

The project consisted of a video club where people could sit down and view a selection of videotapes or borrow videos for home viewing. Non-stop video club provided films which were not available in any other video stores, because a restrictive video distribution law that allowed only films which have been subtitled in the Slovenian language, To borrow the tapes, people had to be members of the club. Membership and rent were free of charge, so this allowed anyone to become a member of the club while at the same time, it legitimised its function.

Goals

Ultimately its goal was to give access to international films to a Slovenian audience, and to foster a new relationship between art institution and its audience.

Beneficial Outcomes

It offers a free selection of videotapes composed by Art videos from the collection of the Moderna Galerija and Art videos by international artists.

Location

United States

Users

Inhabitants of North St. Louis, students, children.

Maintained by

Old North St. Louis, Kranzberg Arts Foundation, Lumeier Sculpture Park, World Chess Hall of Fame, CAM, City Academy, Confluence Charter School.

Duration

2010 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, economy, environment

Nr. and Title

538

Northside Workshop

Initiator

Juan William Chàvez

Description

Northside workshop is a non-profit art initiative dedicated to addressing cultural and community issues in North Saint Louis, Missouri. In collaboration with Old North St. Louis Restoration Group and the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, the artist restored a historic brick building in danger of being destroyed and transformed it into a cultural space. The program focuses on beekeeping classes, cooking classes and urban agriculture on-site. They host a Workshop Incubate program which aims to help individuals develop their programming and/or non-profit by providing them with a space and support for activities and events.

Goals

To rescue a historical building developing a program that focuses on incorporating socially engaged practices and education in order to foster social progress in North St. Louis. To provide space and support for independent activities developed by inhabitants of the neighbourhood.

Beneficial Outcomes

Kids and inhabitants of the neighbourhood can join the classes for free and learn beekeeping and growing food through urban agriculture. Independent groups can use the space for free through the Workshop Incubate program and initiate their own organisation.

Location

Started at France, now in 8 European countries (France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Finland, Sweden and Great Britain).

Maintained by

Foundation de France

Duration

1991 - ongoing

Category

social

Nr. and Title

001

Nouveaux Commanditaires (New Patrons)

Initiator

Société internationale des Nouveaux commanditaires

Description

Goals

Giving to all people – independent of financial means, educational or social status – the means to assume responsibility to commission the work of an artist for the benefit of the public.

Beneficial Outcomes

Over 250 projects have been implemented (some of them are still in progress) responding to specific, local urgencies.

Location

Spain

Users

Núria Güell, the hired immigrant

Maintained by

Produced by DINA4 cultural association

Duration

2011

Category

pedagogical, politics, social

Nr. and Title

239

Offside

Initiator

Núria Güell

Description

'Offside hired an illegal immigrant to play hide-and-seek within the space and duration of the exhibition. This working contract removed the need for him to hide from the police in his everyday life because the contract provided him with the opportunity to ask for legal immigration papers. The contract was made in one of the numerous places in town where unemployed immigrants meet at dawn to offer themselves as cheap labour. In this piece I implement a common strategy of capitalism: to use the play-based aspect of games as a cover for social, political and/or economic purposes.’ (N. Güell)

Goals

‘Allow the African immigrant who was hired, to apply for his residence permit and therefore become legal in Spain. On a pedagogical level, I am interested in making visible the legal strategy that other citizens in the same situation could use.’ (N. Güell)

Beneficial Outcomes

‘The immigrant was able to receive his residence permit and by this action, he did not need to hide from the police anymore. He no longer needed to live with a permanent fear of being taken to an immigrant centre or being deported to his country of origin. He also had a work contract and a month salary.’ (N. Güell)

Location

India

Users

Berlin's 0x2620.org (oil21.org), Bangalore's Alternative Law Forum and three groups from Mumbai: Majlis, Point of View, and ChitrakarKhana/CAMP, website users.

Maintained by

HIVOS. Currently Bohen Foundation and the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.

Duration

2008 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

138

Pad.ma

Initiator

oil21.org, CAMP, Majlis, Point of View, the Alternative Law Forum

Description

The project consists of an ongoing public access digital media archive of footage and unfinished film available online. The whole collection is searchable, viewable and free to download for non-commercial use, it uses video as a medium of documentation collection, argumentation and exchange. It currently has about 2000 hours of published videos. The majority of material is from Mumbai and Bangalore and it consists of the documentation of changing cityscapes, street and domestic life, commercial and intellectual activity, protests, chance meetings, police raids, train-rides, horse-carriages and other transports, conversations with various community, state and corporate interests, players and agents, artworks, phone taps, audio recordings, "found" footage, etc.

Goals

Pad.ma is a way to access the images, intentions and effects present in video footage, that have tended to suppress for a log time. This expanded treatment then points to other, political potentials for such material, and leads us into lesser-known territory for video itself.

Location

Mexico

Users

Pedro Reyes, local chain store, schools, inhabitants.

Maintained by

Botanical Garden, Culiacán (2008); Vancouver Art Gallery (2008); San Francisco Art Institute (2008); Maison Rouge, Paris (2008); Lyon Biennial (2009); Marfa, Texas (2010); Denver, Colorado (2010)

Duration

2008 - ongoing

Category

politics, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

071

Palas por pistolas

Initiator

Pedro Reyes

Description

The project involved the citizens in the public destruction of weapons using a steamroller in a military base. Subsequently, the metal was reused to create shovels, which served to plant trees. On the handle of each shovel blade, there is a description that shows how the weapon has now become a peaceful instrument. The project was supported by a local TV station, which invited citizens to give up a weapon, and also, a local chain store which gave a coupon to be used for shopping by anyone who gave up a weapon.

Goals

To make the public aware that there is a direct relationship between crime and the number of weapons in circulation.

Beneficial Outcomes

During the first campaign, 1527 weapons were collected.

Location

United States, Slovenia

Users

Artist, homeless people

Maintained by

Lombard-Freid Fine Arts

Duration

1997 - 2011

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

016

paraSITE

Initiator

Michael Rakowitz

Description

A series of inflatable shelters for homeless people that only can operate when attached to heating or ventilation vents of buildings. The air from the building simultaneously inflates and heats their double-membrane structures. The name of the project emphasises the relationship of the parasite that uses the energy of a host.
Rakowitz designed the paraSITE units in collaboration with the homeless people that would use them meeting their requirements and were built using temporary materials available on the streets, such as plastic bags and tape. The units are easy to transport.

Goals

paraSITE proposes the appropriation of exterior ventilation systems on existing architecture as a means for providing temporary shelter for homeless people.

Beneficial Outcomes

Built and distributed to over 30 homeless people in Boston, Cambridge, New York City, Baltimore and Ljubljana. These shelters functioned not only as a temporary place of retreat, but also as a station of dissent and empowerment; many of the homeless users regarded their shelters as a protest device, as a refusal to surrender, and made visible the unacceptable circ*mstances of homeless life within the city.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Casco, Platform BK, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Das Spectrum.

Maintained by

Wok The Rock, Casco — Office for Art, Design and Theory

Duration

2016 - ongoing

Category

economy

Nr. and Title

566

Parasite Lottery

Initiator

Wok The Rock, Casco — Office for Art, Design and Theory.

Description

Adapting and fusing a lottery model for art funding that survives despite the dwindling of other cultural budgets and ‛arisan’, a commons-oriented micro-crediting system popular in Indonesia, Parasite Lottery invites a number of art organisations of different scales together as bidders, winners and hosts of lottery drawing events that are open to the public. The winners receive a sum of money to be used as a “fee for deviation”. In other words, the prize money should be spent on something that the winning organisation would usually never have the budget for. Beyond the prize itself, Parasite Lottery is a collective exploration of chance effects, not just in the thrill of winning, but also through a series of gatherings that will take place around it, including talks, food, and music.

Goals

To create a collective-funding system for different scale of art organisations through funding redistribution and social engagement. To invoke key issues relating to cultural policies and their effects on art organisations, ranging from post-crisis austerity measures —included particularly draconian budget cuts in the cultural sector which were legitimised by the portrayal of artists as “parasites”—, and precarity to the debt economy, and questions concerning sustainability and solidarity.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project is intended as a tool that can be used by any community and collective. Following this system, the small organisation gets fund from the bigger institution, while the big one gets money for a deviation. It turns to new strategies to face the lack of funds necessary to produce new art and its conditions of existence. Parasite Lottery experiments with a game of chance and desire vis-à-vis ways of redistributing funds among art institutions—a redistribution that, in the future, will hopefully include artists and other cultural workers. At the same time, it intervenes in the economy governing artistic production.

Location

Germany

Users

Christoph Schäfer, Margit Czenki, Hafenrandverein (Harbor Edge Association), Ellen Schmeisser, and residents of St. Pauli neighborhood.

Maintained by

Hamburg, Germany Culture Department

Duration

1995 - ongoing

Category

politics, urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

159

Park Fiction

Initiator

Hafenrandverein (Harbour Edge Association)

Description

Goals

Introduction of art and playful elements into emancipatory politics, link the urban everyday and the imaginary to be visible in the design of the park, city to be a product of the people who inhabit it, social interaction, participatory planning movements, and social imagination.

Beneficial Outcomes

In 1997, the neighborhood stopped the development of the costly building that was originally planned. After ten years of struggles the park was inaugurated in 2005.

Location

Italy

Field

Repurposing, Use-It-Together

Strategy

Space Hijack, Workers Rights

Users

Everyone who experience a state of constraint of body, labour and freedom

Maintained by

Initial supporters were PAC2020-Piano per l'Arte Contemporanea promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture and it is now maintained by MACTE Museum

Duration

2022 - ongoing

Category

politics, social

Nr. and Title

588

Part-time Resistance

Initiator

Nico Angiuli

Description

Part-time Resistance aims to disseminate stories of resistance to labour and segregation that have germinated in various historical, political and geographical contexts. The work is inspired by three events dating back to the 20th century. Each of these three stories unfolds through three components: a photographic triptych (3 photos, 70 " 50 cm each), a sound piece (about 4 minutes long, to be listened to through headphones) and an in-presence workshop held by a human book (with a duration of at least 3 hours, and a maximum of 15 participants). The core of the project revolves around the generative transmission of practices of resistance, assimilated by those who join the workshop guided by the human books – i.e. the artist or a participant from a previous workshop, who agreed to contribute to the dissemination of its contents.

Context

Part-time Resistance presents three episodes concerning gestures that were devised to emancipate oneself from a state of constraint – of body, labour or freedom – through acts of sabotage. The first episode "Prison Alphabet" concerns Albanian political prisoners who, during the communist dictatorship, adopted a code that allowed them to communicate secretly by tapping knuckles, bones and fingers on the walls of their cells; the second episode, "The Seamstresses of Ravensbrück", brings to light the story of women forced to work in the Ravensbrück concentration camp who invented ways of sabotaging the SS tailoring line with faulty stitching in the officers’s garments; the last one, "Slow Workers", refers to the strategy of ‘working slowly’ that began to spread in the late 19th century among exploited workers in the countryside in Malaysia and England.

Goals

The work is now part of the collection of the MACTE Museum but it stays alive thanks to the commitment of the human books, those who will decide to host the project and the participants of future workshops, who will help to incorporate new methodologies and stories to the inherited ones. The newly developed acts of resistance will nourish an open repertoire, becoming part of the shared intangible legacy of Part-time Resistance.

Beneficial Outcomes

Each group participating in the workshop enacts the original gestures of resistance together with the new ones devised by those who participated in former workshops, generating a choral space. In doing so, the selected movements of resistance will acquire new forms of use and other meanings, thus being interpreted as transmissible forms of knowledge that can continue to exist.

Location

Russian Federation

Users

Nikolai Vavilov, botanist, scientists, students

Maintained by

N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry

Duration

1926 - ongoing

Category

economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

403

Pavlovsk Experimental Station

Initiator

Nikolai Vavilov

Description

The project is an agricultural experiment station and gene bank that is included in the Institute of Plant Industry in St. Petersburg. Started as one of the first seed banks out of 11 that Vavilov created across the former Soviet Union, it contains an extensive collection of more than 5000 varieties of fruits and berries. The collection survived the 28-months Siege of Leningrad during World War II, when several botanists starved to death rather than eat the collected seeds. The institute houses one of the world's largest collections of seeds and planted crops, it includes almost a thousand types of strawberries from more than 40 countries, blackcurrant varieties from 30 countries, 600 apple types from 35 countries and more than a hundred varieties each of gooseberries, cherries, plums, red currants, and raspberries.

Goals

To preserve seeds for the future, for the study and improvement of wheat, corn, and other cereal crops. These varieties are needed to provide genes to protect commercial varieties against new threats ranging from pests to climate change. The station was established with the idea that seed banks are repositories of plant diversity that could be used to breed new varieties in response to threats to food production.

Beneficial Outcomes

His theories and the seed bank itself have been used as resources for numerous studies.

Location

Germany

Users

CAE (Steve Kurtz, Lucia Sommer and Steve Barnes), Inhabitants.

Maintained by

Exhibition ‘Natur/Kultur’, curated by Anke Haarmann and Harald Lemke

Duration

2008

Category

scientific, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

432

Peep Under the Elbe

Initiator

Critical Art Ensemble

Description

The project aimed at providing residents of Wilhelmsburg, a poor and neglected neighbourhood in Hamburg, a water testing kit for analysing the quality of the canal water near their homes in order to find out clean swimming and fishing areas.

Context

Goals

Try to encourage populations who use the canals for recreation to move around a bit, finding where the safest places were for the popular activities of swimming and fishing.

Beneficial Outcomes

It empowered people with tools, CAE tested the quality of the local water, and gave the inhabitants water testing kits to monitor their own environments.

Location

United States

Users

Students, artists, urban designers...inhabitants of Berkeley

Maintained by

Inhabitants of Berkeley

Duration

1969-ongoing

Category

politics, urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

518

People’s park

Initiator

Inhabitants of Berkeley

Description

People's Park is a park located near the University of California. The University bought this plot of land containing residences for future development into student housing, parking, and offices. However, they ran out of funds leaving the lot only partially cleared of demolition debris and rubble. After years of abandonment, local merchants and residents held a meeting to discuss possible uses and presented a plan for developing the under-utilised land into a public park. An article was published in a local counter-culture newspaper, to call for help from local residents. On Sunday, April 20, 1969, over 100 people arrived at the site to begin building the park, contributing trees, flowers, shrubs, andil. Free food was provided, and community development of the park proceeded. The park was essentially complete by mid-May but Berkeley Vice Chancellor released plans for a sports field to be built on the site. Governor Ronald Reagan considered the creation of the park a direct leftist challenge to the property rights of the university and he sent 300 police officers into People's Park. The officers cleared the area around the park destroying a large section of what had been planted and a perimeter chain-link wire fence was installed to keep people out. About 3,000 people congregated nearby UC Berkeley for a rally to discuss the Arab–Israeli conflict and, responding spontaneously, moved down toward People's Park. The protesters were met by the remaining 159 police officers assigned to guard the fenced-off park. The huge clash was called Bloody Thursday, it finished with more than one hundred residents and police agents injured, hundreds of protesters arrested, one student blinded and one dead. On May 30, 1969, 30,000 Berkeley citizens secured a city permit and marched without incident past the barricaded People's Park to protest Governor Reagan's occupation of their city, the death of James Rector, the blinding of Alan Blanchard, and the many injuries inflicted by police. The protests and demonstrations continued for two years. In 1972, the Berkeley City Council voted to lease the park site from the university. The Berkeley community rebuilt the park, mainly with people working for free and donated materials. Various local groups contributed to managing the park during the rebuilding.

Goals

To give a new green use for an urban abandoned plot of land, developing a free community area that was uncontrolled.

Beneficial Outcomes

Today, People's Park is a free public park.

Location

Worldwide

Users

Smart-phone users

Maintained by

Molleindustria

Duration

2013 - ongoing

Category

scientific, pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

546

Phone Story

Initiator

Michael Pineschi

Description

Phone Story is an educational game about the hidden social costs of smartphone manufacturing. Follow your phone's journey from the Coltan mines of the Congo to the electronic waste dumps in Pakistan through four colorful mini-games. Compete with market forces in an endless spiral of technological obsolescence. You can keep Phone Story in your favorite device as a reminder of your impact on this world. All revenues from the sale of this app will be donated to organizations working to solve the issues mentioned in this game.

Goals

"Do not pretend that you are not complicit." Creating awareness of the sacrifices in the production of the phone using a mainstream engagement platform.

Beneficial Outcomes

The "dark side" of electronics manufacturing became a prominent issue in the public debate. Donated to a Foxconn factory worker who suffered serious injuries from attempted suicide.

Location

Villa del Conte, Italy

Users

Workers, Employees and citizens of the industrial district of Villa del Conte.

Maintained by

The artists, March Foundation, LAGO s.p.a.

Duration

2013 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, environment, social

Nr. and Title

384

Piazza dell’Artigianato 0

Initiator

Aspra.mente, Ninanó, Orizzontale, Publink

Description

Piazza dell'Artigianato 0 aims to redevelop industrial sites, turning them into self-sustainable parks with an edible garden, realised in accordance with the rules of permaculture. Architectural structures and urban design furniture are made using waste materials provided by surrounding industries. In this green revitalised space, people can meet each other, relax, and eat the produce for free. Piazza dell'Artigianato 0 is a prototype, the purpose of which is to develop a model that can be applied in all industrial areas with the involvement of local workers and citizens.

Goals

To reconstitute an unused space in the industrial district of the little town of Villa del Conte (Northern Italy) into a green, accessible and sociable place for visitors.
To provide a space people can freely visit and benefit from.

Beneficial Outcomes

After one month the local school decided to use the space for some events for the students. The choice was totally autonomous and spontaneous.

Location

Austria

Users

Immigrants and asylum-seekers in Austria.

Maintained by

Vienna International Festival

Duration

2000

Category

politics, social

Nr. and Title

247

Please Love Austria

Initiator

Christoph Schlingensief

Description

This project, which resembles the Big Brother reality show, was attended by 12 asylum-seekers, that have lived one week in a shipping container nearby the theatre in the center of Vienna. Every day, through a vote by phone or internet people could choose the two least popular people that were ejected and then deported to their native country. The project was carried out during a period a tense discussion in Austria around immigration and nationalism with Jorg Haider’s nationalist Austria People’s Freedom Party enjoying strong support.

Goals

To initiate a discussion concerning the stage-managed cynicism of TV and the cynicism of a society that judges asylum policy on the basis of its majority mandate.

Beneficial Outcomes

The winner can look forward to a cash prize and the prospect, depending on the availability of volunteers, of Austrian citizenship through marriage.

Location

Croatia, travelling

Users

civil society representatives, activists, high-school students, workers

Maintained by

Andreja Kulunčić and group Direct Democracy in School

Duration

2014 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

522

Početnica – Toolkit for Joint Action

Initiator

Andreja Kulunčić

Description

The context of the Toolkit for Joint Action is determined by the erosion of social security, massive unemployment and the unstable labour market in Croatia, which brings crucial themes to the fore: the new poor, workers' self-organising, direct democracy, social solidarity, self-organised citizens' activities, and contextual theology. In addition to activities that include workshops, lectures, discussions and screenings related to the main themes of the project, the central element takes the form of a portable modular spatial unit - a toolkit - that was created by all the participants in the project.

Goals

Initiated in the Gallery Nova in Zagreb the toolkit travels around Croatia and the region with the purpose of educating, informing, opening a dialogue, networking and archiving of previous material.

Beneficial Outcomes

Using art's resources to establish wider infrastructural support for different forms of social activity, this project does not reject art as its starting point, but, beginning as well as one can, uses it as a possible initiator of critical pedagogy, in which art is not the ex-clusive means of representation but a cohesive force, able to mobilise ideas, encourage discussion and initiate action.

Location

United States

Users

Bonnie Ora Sherk, neighbourhood residents and art community.

Maintained by

Bonnie Ora Sherk

Duration

1970 - ongoing

Category

environment, social

Nr. and Title

008

Portable Parks I-III

Initiator

Bonnie Ora Sherk

Description

Portable Parks I-III was a series of performances and installations in the public space, where the artist created natural environments into unexpected urban locations like elevated freeways and by the sides of major roads in San Francisco. The artist brought sod, palm trees, picnic tables, bales of straw, farm and domestic animals to create a new understanding and relationship with the space people share and inhabit.

Goals

To create temporary green environments for the public to use within the city.

Beneficial Outcomes

The citizens could enjoy the parks sitting beside the trees, the plants and on the banks.

Location

United States

Users

Any pedestrian: Power Call has traveled around the neighborhood to the library, transit hubs, cafes and small businesses.

Maintained by

Philanthropic contributions and the initiators

Duration

2015 - ongoing

Category

environment, social

Nr. and Title

560

Power Call

Initiator

marksearch team - Sue Mark, Bruce Douglas

Description

Power Call is a nomadic, interactive energy commons in San Francisco to the Bay Area. Using low-tech systems, Power Call harnesses, stores and dispenses energy for recharging a variety of cell phones. Anyone can contribute to the energy commons by spending a few minutes pumping the machine, creating a charge for yourself or a future person in need. The amount of energy generated will be relatively small, enough to make a meaningful last phone call or text message. In exchange for participation, the initiators ask that users share their story on a rotating public message board, which answer these questions: who would you call if you had only this one last call? What would you say?

Goals

Power Call relies on good will to generate energy while simultaneously diffusing the anonymity of people in public spaces. In order for the energy commons to function, passers-by engage in an unusual and collaborative experience.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project creatively brings together contemporary issues around hand held technology and social spaces, environmental concerns about a need for alternative energy sources, and anxiety over natural disasters and a potential state of emergency, where figuring out ways to work together to share resources is going to be necessary.

Location

US

Users

Kivalina inhabitants and experts

Maintained by

Alaska Design forum, Wien Kultur

Duration

2012

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

440

Problem solving through networking

Initiator

WochenKlausur

Description

The inhabitants of Kivalina, a small island situated in the arctic circle in northwest Alaska, live endangered by erosion caused by climate change, without running water or waste disposal. To address there issues WK teamed up with residents and experts to work on implementing solutions for specific problems. Their living space, surrounded by water, is constricted. Toilets are not available. There is no running water. In addition the world-largest zink mine discharges into the water shed of the Wulik river. In summer 2012 a big storm ruined the existing pipe-system and flooded the local landfill. Disposal of all waste is up to the residents as well. People still do traditional hunting and fishing, a local store provides canned and frozen food. Access to green vegetables is limited and expensive. Endangered by global climate change causing their land to be washed away the residents of Kivalina are in need of relocation.

Goals

WochenKlausur found so called “Agents of Change”, experts who are now sharing their knowledge and resources with the little arctic town of Kivalina. Together with the village they are developing alternatives and implement them on-site. To assist communication the online platform relocate-ak.org was created. A curatorial team coordinate the work of all Agents of Change and address more when needed.

Beneficial Outcomes

WochenKlausur set up an office in the ACFNY Gallery's Upper Mezzanine, where several meetings with New York-based associations, interest groups, and activists took place. Each of the organizations was invited to use the space for one or two weeks for their purposes.

Location

United States

Field

Housing rights, Gentrification

Strategy

Double ontology, Extraterritorial reciprocity, deactivate (Art’s aesthetic function)

Users

People in Houston’s Third Ward District, young mothers, children, youth, artists, activists, architects, designers, visitors, art lovers, tourists.

Maintained by

Project Rowe Houses Community Development Corporation, The Brown Foundation, Bruner Foundation Inc., Chevron, Houston Endowment Inc., Joan Hohlt & Roger Wich Foundation, The Kinder Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Lewis Family Foundation, Marc Melcher, John P. McGovern Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Nightingale Code Foundation, Betty Pecore and Howard Hilliard, Picnic, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Simmons Foundation Inc., Surdna Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, Susan Vaughan Foundation, City of Houston, Houston Arts Alliance

Duration

1994 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

018

Project Row Houses

Initiator

Rick Lowe, James Bettison, Bert Long, Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, George Smith

Description

Artists and community activists transform the social environment in one of Houston's oldest African American neighborhood - which lacks of affordable housing - providing to low-income residents refurbished houses. Taking into account the historical and the architectural richness of the neighbourhood, the project includes six blocks of housing, 49 properties,12 artist exhibitions and residency spaces, 7 houses for young mothers, office spaces, a community gallery, a park, and commercial spaces. In 2003, after noticing the rise of property prices in the area, Project Row Houses (PRH) founded a separate Community Development Corporation (CDC) to preserve community and equal opportunity for low to moderate income residents to live in Third Ward.

Context

Originating in West Africa, the shotgun house style made its way to the United States through the slave trade, first via the Caribbean and up to New Orleans, and then throughout the nation.Houston was established in 1837 and split up into four wards. Third Ward was designated as the Southeast ward. Originally settled by former slaves who relocated to the region following the Civil War, it developed into a significant hub for African American-owned enterprises and a thriving centre for Black culture, which persisted into the 1950s and 1970s. The majority of the Third Ward's shotgun homes were abandoned in the 1990s. Black artists and their culture were also underrepresented in the art world at the time.

Goals

Beneficial Outcomes

The project provides affordable housing for people in the community. Through the Young Mothers Program provides up to two years of subsidized housing, counseling on parenting skills to mothers in need. PRH offers free tutoring to students who need assistance in their studies as well as a learning service project to provide hands-on experiences beyond the classroom. It hosts a community market to sustain local creatives and an incubator program that provide space, time and mentorship to early career artists and individuals.

Location

Germany

Users

Apolonija šušteršič, Carola Beerhues, Marga Chirazi, Ursula Haverkamp. Jutta Maier, Gisela Overloeper, unemployed women of Warendorf region.

Maintained by

Skulptur Biennale Münsterland

Duration

2003

Category

economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

088

Prototype For Self Employed Economic Unit (Street shop box)

Initiator

Apolonija Šušteršič

Description

The project consisted in a red box which functioned as a stall, placed closed to a garden into the local market. Unemployed women in their fifties from the Warendorf region, could use the stall to sell local products produced from the land associated with the stall. Women would take care of the land, production and sale of the products in the Market. The stall was designed as a sculpture which could change into a market stand on working days.

Goals

The idea was to create a very simple economic unit for one or more unemployed women from the Warendorf area. The new business model was based on the use of the land and sale of the products produced from the land.

Beneficial Outcomes

The Street Shop Box was designed and built as a transformable object, which can change from a sculpture on non-working days, into a market stand on working days.

Location

The Netherlands

Users

Activists, Politicians, citizens

Maintained by

Activists, politicians

Duration

1965 - 1967

Category

politics

Nr. and Title

451

Provo

Initiator

R. van Duijn, R. Stolk, J. Berk, H. Metz, P. Dekker, P. Bronkhorst, K. Calliauw, F. Burlage, J. Dielemans, R. de Groot, B. van Heerrikhuizen, G. Kroeze, M. Götze, L. Schimmelpenninck, C. Piesaar

Description

The anarchist movement and counterculture called Provo carried out several actions in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities, attacking the social structures of the state. Provo is a both an artistic and a political movement. Through their actions they spoke to an entire generation in the Netherlands, and were the predecessors of the hippie movement that was born two years later. Their ideological position focused on issues such as health, environmental conservation and turning private property into public property.

Goals

Trough humour, cynicism and intellect the group has tried to awaken the critical spirit of citizens to instigate social change.

Beneficial Outcomes

The “White Plans” or strategic proposals for speculative politics on the political scene, drew attention to social problems and aimed to make Amsterdam a more user-friendly city for its inhabitants. The White Bicycle Plan proposed the mass use of bicycles as a means of urban transport in order to reduce pollution; the White Housing Plan encouraged the occupation of empty buildings and apartments in order to solve the acute housing problem. They also worked in other areas, such as opening up spaces for drug use in controlled conditions (predecessors of today’s safe injection sites).

Location

Mexico, United States

Users

Claudia Fernández, architects, designers, sociologists and psychologists and artists as Manes-Massun, Andrano, Julia and Renata, Ximena Fernandez, Carla Fernandez, Thierry Jeannot, Sebastián Romo, Richard Mozska, Juan Rosales, Xavier Rodriguez, and Valeria Florescano (Mexican young designers who have done well recognized social work) and the youth and children living on the street.

Maintained by

Laboratorio de Arte Alameda, La Colección Jumex Foundation, Pfizer Foundation, Fundación Bilbao Vizcaya-Bancomer, Banorte and the artist Francis Alÿs, who entirely donated the Blue Orange Prize, awarded by the cooperative banks in Germany and then continued to sponsor the project for the next 5 years.

Duration

2003

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

296

Proyecto Meteoro

Initiator

Claudia Fernández

Description

The project consists in an art and design school structured by workshops for young homeless people which live in extreme poverty. Through the workshops participants create design objects which are sold, raising vital funds to support housing, health and mental care whilst empowering the youths. Through these workshops, children are given the chance to enter into a market, where they show their design objects, made by second hand or recycled materials. The purpose of the project is to rehabilitate and reintroduce these young people into society.

Goals

To promote creativity, as well as stimulate the development of those assisting, creating a better integrated community. The project uses art as a tool to change even the most difficult realities, creating new strategies for social transformation and the healthy development of global communities.

Beneficial Outcomes

This project has worked successfully with tangible results and has had a huge impact in the community of young people on the streets of Mexico. Some of the participants went back to their towns, some got jobs, some got over drug addiction but some others are still living within prostitution and on the street.

Location

United States

Users

The artist, Middle School students residing in North Saint Louis, teaching artists and experts

Maintained by

Northside Workshop

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, environment

Nr. and Title

426

Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary: Living Proposal

Initiator

Juan William Chavez

Description

The interdisciplinary project Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary, aims to transform the urban forest where the Pruitt-Igoe housing once stood, in public space for urban agriculture – thereby addressing the theme of urban abandonment and also finding some creative strategies to solve it. Through summer workshops for Middle School students, art and agriculture are utilised as a means of engaging them in education, encouraging them to exercise critical thinking skills that contribute to overall academic success.

Goals

The Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary proposes to transform the Pruitt-Igoe site into a public space for community and education. Keeping students engaged in learning will keep them on a path to success including a better understanding of natural science applications, increased confidence through knowledge, greater awareness of healthy food choices, and educational success.

Beneficial Outcomes

Middle School students participating in the Living Proposal workshops receive an introduction to new art forms and learn the benefits of an urban garden which include access to fresh produce and knowledge of basic food preparation and cooking skills.

Location

Online Application

Users

Anyone with access to the internet and a social media account can use the application. It is also mobile device friendly for coordination with physical on-site protests.

Maintained by

Derek Curry

Duration

2016 - ongoing

Category

politics, economy, social

Nr. and Title

557

Public Dissentiment

Initiator

Derek Curry

Description

The project consists of an online tool that helps protestors negatively impact the price of a publicly traded stock by using the same sentiment analysis tools used by many stock trading algorithms. In the contemporary stock markets, high-frequency trading bots that continuously buy and sell stocks have replaced human market makers. These bots provide the market with liquidity by being ready to take the buy or sell end of a stock trade most of the time. But HFT bots are also risk adverse, and withdraw from the market in time of uncertainty. When this happens, the market experiences an almost instant decline in the price of a stock, or group of stocks, followed by a speedy recovery. This is known as a ‘flash crash’ and is now a common feature the electronic stock markets. Trading bots are also analyzing news and social media posts to gain an informational edge. This provides a space for people to intervene and make their voices heard. In April of 2013, the Twitter account for the Associated Press was hacked and a deceptive tweet that said two explosions had gone off in the White House caused the S&P to drop $136 billion before rebounding. And the recirculation and renewed popularity of old news stories can also affect stock prices. In 2008, a six-year-old news story about United Airlines erroneously appeared in as a top link in Google’s search results, UAL’s stock plummeted 75% before the mistake was noticed. Like financial trading bots, Public Dissentiment machine-reads news articles about targeted companies and performs financial sentiment analysis. Articles with a strong negative sentiment are saved. Protestors can then use Public Dissentiment to generate negative social media posts that link to an article with negative sentiment and use some of the negative words found in the article. When a swarm of protestors targeting one company is large enough to create uncertainty around that company’s stock, they can cause the high-frequency trading bots to stop trading that stock creating a flash crash. Shareholders may ignore public protests, but they will notice swings in the company’s stock price.

Goals

The goal of the project is to help protestors become noticed by a company's board of trustees by creating financial implications for a company's misdeeds. Similar to how boycott's once functioned.

Beneficial Outcomes

The first stock requested to be added to Public Dissentiment's database was Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Location

United States and worldwide

Users

Community groups, activists, citizen scientists and schools worldwide

Maintained by

The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (Public Lab) is a community -- supported by a 501(c) 3 non-profit

Duration

2010 - ongoing

Category

scientific, pedagogical, environment, social

Nr. and Title

551

Public Lab

Initiator

Jeffrey Warren, Shannon Dosemagen, Stewart Long, Adam Griffith

Description

Public Lab is an open network community and non-profit. It is democratising science to address environmental issues that directly affect people. It is an online community through which people can learn how to investigate environmental concerns. Using inexpensive DIY techniques, Public Lab seeks to change how people see and engage with the world in environmental, social, and political terms.

Goals

Public Lab aims to open research from the exclusive hands of scientific experts. By doing so, communities facing environmental justice issues are able to own the science and advocate for the changes they want to see. By promoting a hands-on, do-it-yourself ethos, Public Lab supports each other’s exploration, which leads to technical development and real applications in communities.

Beneficial Outcomes

The science, technology and data in Public Lab are community-created and open source. They utilise open data to advocate for better environmental management, regulations and enforcement. These tools enable people to more easily generate knowledge and share data about community environmental health. Public Lab was founded in the wake of the 2010 BP oil disaster. During the spill, there was an information blackout for residents of the coastal region, as well as the rest of the world. No one was accurately tracking what was happening on the ground. In response, a group of concerned residents, environmental advocates, designers, and social scientists lofted “community satellites,” made from balloons, kites and digital cameras, over the spill to collect real-time data about its impact. Local citizens collected the images, and through a newly created open source platform, contributors stitched over 100,000 aerial images into maps of the coastline before, during, and after the oil spread. BBC and New York Times featured these high-resolution maps, among others, allowing residents to speak their truth about what was going on in the Gulf Coast.

Location

online

Users

scholars, students, artists, cultural workers, wider public

Maintained by

memoryoftheworld.org

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, social

Nr. and Title

526

Public Library

Initiator

Marcell Mars

Description

The artist/hacker Marcell Mars agues that the concept of the public library is right up there with public education, public health care and the scientific method as a both a great achievement and social good to which almost everybody subscribes to as a non-negotiable public good. Taking the concept of the public library as a benchmark against which to measure what society and culture should be like and an indication that an economy of contribution is possible. Where there is a will there is a way. Mars’s project has taken this broad consensus as the basis for Public Library and on-line book sharing project which promulgates the utopian hacker ethic of the universal space of free ex-change of all knowledge by seeking to fuse a number of existing internet based projects for either managing or exchanging electronic publications (such as Calibre) along with his own plug ins to create a peer 2 peer culture for the exchange of books.

Goals

To make a place where all people can get access to all knowledge that can be collected.

Beneficial Outcomes

Public Library makes the case for the institution of public library and its principle of universal access to knowledge. It is an exploration and development of distributed in-ternet infrastructure for amateur librarians.

Users

sport practitioners, activists, fans

Maintained by

Zeljko Blace

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

524

Queer Sport

Initiator

Zeljko Blace with collaborators on different projects including Kate Bowman, Jason Hall and Artur van Balen

Description

Contemporary sport (hyper competitive, commercialised, institutionalised, politicised...) is often perceived uncritically - especially as a mechanism of capitalist ideology and in its capacity of a globalizer/normalizer of societies. It is equally a source of countless traumatic, stressful and frustrating experiences for (queer) youth, (trans) individuals and others who challenge or do not fit its existing norms. If Sport (as Art) can be considered a laboratory and a contested site, then it is potentially one of the largest domains for social, cultural and political experimentation, but also innovation in contemporary societies... This exhibition and the QueerSport.LAB program is part of a broader international creative inquiry into tensions between Sport and LGBT/Queer realities. Artists and communities presented here with their works and documentation point to some of many tangents in which creative engagement can work against the normativity of sport through queer expression. Though physically far apart, contextually constrained and of different methodologies and operational networks, all share a common understanding of sport as a context that is neither fixed nor given, but one that needs constant claiming and self-organizing and most of all, imagining viable alternatives.

Goals

To queer existing and establish new forms and relations in sport that would be inclusing, diverse, with shared ownership and participation/emancipation of minorities.

Beneficial Outcomes

Informed public and engaged sport participants, sustainable queer sport practices and reclaiming of mainstream sport system.

Location

Italy

Users

Beggars, worshippers, tourists

Maintained by

Luca Pucci

Duration

2009 - 2010

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

274

Questuamatic

Initiator

Luca Pucci

Description

Assisi has recently banned the request for alms outside of its many shrines. This project takes the shape of a vending machine, placed at a proper distance from the sanctuaries, that dispenses photos of the poor of Assisi and a prayer. The proceeds were distributed between all the poor who participated in the project.

Goals

To provide the poor with some finance and to give to the religious visitor a prayer.

Beneficial Outcomes

The beggars can obtain some money.

Location

United States

Users

RainDance Collective, video artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, schools and communities of NY, readers

Maintained by

RainDance Collective, Daniel Langlois Foundation of Montreal, and Davidson Gigliotti and Ira Schneider

Duration

1970 - 1975

Category

scientific, politics

Nr. and Title

434

Radical Software

Initiator

Beryl Korot, Phyllis Gershuny, Ira Schneider and the Raindance Corporation

Description

Radical Software was a journal devoted to the early independent video art movement. The founders of the publication understood the potentiality of video editing in shaping the way information is disseminated. Thanks to the modest cost of portable video devices available to artists and other potential filmmakers, they emphasised on how using video as a new art form, would become an indispensable tool in accelerating social change. Developed more like a newspaper than an art magazine, it was a platform for the study of alternatives to the dominant mass media structures. Radical software represented a form of grassroots social activism but also a platform, a magazine and a journal of philosophical speculation and political opinion.

Goals

Imagine a world in which the discussion of ideas and values could take place freely and openly, outside of the existing institutional framework and in active opposition to the worldview constructed and maintained by commercial TV.

Beneficial Outcomes

They proposed not only a re-ordered power structure, but also a new information order in which the very idea of hierarchical power structure might be transformed or even eliminated.

Location

Italy

Users

Small farmers

Maintained by

The Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice; Verlato+Zordan Architects, Vicenza; Termoidraulica Cabi, Vicenza; and project manager Gaston Ramirez Feltrin

Duration

2010 - ongoing

Category

scientific, environment

Nr. and Title

052

Rainwater Harvesting

Initiator

Marjetica Potrč and Marguerite Kahrl

Description

In 2010, Marjetica Potrč & Marguerite Kahrl developed a rainwater-harvesting system for a farm on Sant’Erasmo island in the Venice Lagoon. Rainwater is collected from a rooftop catchment system that is used to irrigate the crops in the greenhouse and it is powered by solar panels. Venice is currently facing serious water resource threats as the lagoon subsides and as a result, is limiting water use from underground aquifers. By creating sustainable and alternate methods of catchment and irrigation, small farmers are able to maintain their livelihoods and provide food for the surrounding areas.

Goals

To respond to changing climate and urban resource needs in Venice by creating a sustainable alternative for accessing water. To support a local farm. To encourage a paradigm shift so that the city of Venice once more has a symbiotic relationship with its water.

Beneficial Outcomes

The farm is able to use rainwater to irrigate crops, leaving more water in Venice’s aquifers.

Location

United States

Users

Range Studio is committed to working with artists, writers, performers, designers, and other creatives concerned with social practice, community engagement, sustainability, and innovative art forms.

Maintained by

David Szlasa, Katrina Rodabaugh, and presenting partners

Duration

2014 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, social

Nr. and Title

559

Range Studio

Initiator

David Szlasa

Description

The project consists of a small mobile workspace and a micro artist residency program composed by two tiny art studios founded in Oakland. Studio 1 is a solar powered art studio which was built on the back of a flatbed trailer and Studio 2 was built in collaboration with students at Stanford University, both spaces are composed of second-hand materials. The project supports artists' creative work and advocates for sustainable solutions for artists and the arts community in creating an adaptable and agile solution to the shortage of affordable art spaces in urban areas and the need for flexible, short-term programming in rural areas.

Goals

Range Studio prioritizes short-term creative residencies for artists across disciplines, collaborations with institutions to create adaptable, site-specific public art programming and acting as a platform for social action, community engagement, and social practice.

Beneficial Outcomes

The project offers a sustainable and mobile studio to artists and art programming. It proposes a model for DIY green building for artists and institutions. So far he provided space for 14 artists.

Location

Italy

Users

IUAV Students, Architects, Venice Biennale Foundation, Sale Docks, Laboratiorio Morion.

Maintained by

Re-Biennale

Duration

2008 - ongoing

Category

economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

272

Rebiennale

Initiator

Various Authors

Description

The Biennale in Venice is definitely one of the major events that is spread throughout the city, but which rarely interacts with it and its inhabitants. For that reason, this project aims to reuse material from the biennale's closed exhibitions to create a shared project of regeneration, restoration, and reopening of urban spaces, such as the area of Santa Maria. This is also an occasion to take care of the city as complex net of social, functional and spatial relations.

Goals

To transform the city itself into a building site of ideas and facts. To give that sense that state institutions cannot give. To recycle the materials used for the art installation after the biennale events, in order to reuse them for new installations or furniture for Venetian art spaces, labs, not-for-profit institutions.

Beneficial Outcomes

The stockpiled materials are recycled by being put to use when setting up exhibitions; the reopening and restoration of public gardens in the St. Marta area of the city; the rebuilding and renovation by the occupants themselves of a number of squats; breathing new life into the ‘laboratorio Morion’.

Location

Spain

Users

Artist, citizens

Maintained by

Recetas Urbanas, users

Duration

1996 - ongoing

Category

urban-development, economy, social

Nr. and Title

013

Recetas Urbanas

Initiator

Santiago Cirugeda

Description

The project arises from the frustration that for citizens, it is almost impossible to take action to improve the urban environment, due to the difficulty in obtaining official permits for temporary interventions in the public space. With the project, the initiator uses its position as an artist and architect to empower citizens to act by explaining how to subvert regulations and conventions. He created a free toolkit which is distributed freely via the project's website, with instructions and guidelines in order to build, display or create space using the structures already available in the city.

Goals

The goal of his projects are to find out the gaps in administrative structures and official procedures, to intervene where the law falls short and to perpetually redefining global systems of urban planning and legislation.

Beneficial Outcomes

A different use of public space.

Location

Spain-Germany

Users

Colectivo Enmedio, Eclectic Electric Collective, protesters

Maintained by

Colectivo Enmedio, Eclectic Electric Collective (Tools for Action), anyone who builds one.

Duration

2012 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, politics, social

Nr. and Title

536

Reflecto-cube

Initiator

Eclectic Electric Collective, Colectivo Enmedio

Description

Reflecto-cube is a DIY giant silver inflatable cube that can be used in a demonstration to stop the police charge. This artifact has multiple functions: Transform a grim protest situation into a playful event; De-escalate tension or protect one's own body. Additionally, it reflects the light provoking a momentary loss of vision giving enough time to escape; Inflatables provide strong visual imagery that can capture the media attention creating a spectacle and giving visibility to the protest. The reflecto-cube was one of the outcomes of the workshops organised in the frame of "Como acabar con el mal" (How to End Evil) – a creative activism conference which revolved around the idea of transmitting creative activism practices.

Goals

Beneficial Outcomes

Anyone can download a free DIY manual in pdf. The reflecto-cubes were used effectively in Spain during the General Strike in 2012 and other demonstrations against the austerity cuts. Later, they have been used in Berlin at the First of May Demonstration in 2013 and in different demonstrations throughout EU, always stopping police riot charges and keeping protesters safe.

Location

United Kingdom

Users

Lucy Orta

Maintained by

Lucy Orta

Duration

1992 - 2007

Category

economy, social

Nr. and Title

228

Refugee wear

Initiator

Lucy Orta

Description

The project consists of a series of temporary shelters that can transform itself into clothing and transport bags, and provide autonomous habitats offering mobility and protection in situations of human distress or unsuitable social environments. The artist has developed the series Refugee Wear in collaboration with individuals in difficulty and nomadic populations as well, like homeless people for instance, to create different prototypes that provide a comfortable place to rest in extreme conditions.

Goals

This project had as its goal to provide a vital refuge, temporary protection, water reserves and medical supplies in many critical cases of homeless people (Kurd refugee population) or a temporary protection and shelter in case of natural disasters such as the Kobe earthquake.

Beneficial Outcomes

These prototypes offer possible solutions to improve homeless people’s lives and providing temporary protection and shelter in case of natural disasters.

Location

Peru, US, Argentina, UK, Spain

Users

Collective Basurama, local organizations, Inhabitants

Maintained by

Basurama, Host institutions

Duration

2001- ongoing

Category

pedagogical, urban-development, economy, environment

Nr. and Title

133

Residuos Urbanos Sólidos (RUS)

Initiator

Basurama

Description

Residuos Urbanos Sólidos repurposed local waste in the context of an art installation at each location. In Lima, the group rehabilitated an abandoned railway, creating an amusem*nt park along the tracks. In Miami school children made musical instruments out of car parts. Basurama also introduced the cheap plastic material PET into the traditional weaving methods of Cordoba, Argentina.

Goals

To be a forum for discussion and reflection on trash, waste and reuse. To study those phenomena inherent in the massive production of real and virtual trash in consumer society, providing points of view on the subject that might generate new thoughts and attitudes.

Beneficial Outcomes

Local waste is transformed in useful installations or objects.

Location

United States, Germany

Users

Scientists, Landfill managers

Maintained by

Mel Chin

Duration

1991 - ongoing

Category

scientific, economy, environment

Nr. and Title

011

Revival Field

Initiator

Mel Chin

Description

The artist in collaboration with scientist Dr. Rufus Chaney created a 60 square foot field test in Minnesota designed as a garden, using special hyperaccumulators plants - sweet corn and bladder campion - that can draw heavy metals like zinc, copper and lead from contaminated soil through the plant's biomass. The project demonstrates that ''green remediation' could be a successful low-tech alternative to expensive and ineffective remediation methods to reclaim contaminated soil and toxic waste. Plants absorb heavy metals through their leaves and roots, and toxic elements are stored in the plants. When plants are mature they are harvested, dried, ashed and analized through a reclamation process, which extracts the metals in order to be re-sold to cover the cost of healing toxic landfills.

Goals

We live in a world of pollution with heavy metals saturating the soil. This pollution could be carved away, and life could return to that soil and then a diverse and ecologically balanced life.

Beneficial Outcomes

Cleaner soil. Significant media attention to Dr. Chaney’s research; 23 years and several test sites later, phytoremediation is becoming commercially viable.

Location

Italy

Users

The artists, citizens who use the sites.

Maintained by

In Bergamo: Municipality of Bergamo; Aprica A2A association. In Gubbio (PG): Municipality of Gubbio; Sperelliana Library. In Ravenna: Regione Emilia Romagna; Municupality of Ravenna; HERA Group, Soc. Coop. ‘Impronte’ association, Circolo Matelda Legambiente.

Duration

2007 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, environment, social

Nr. and Title

022

Rifiuto Con Affetto

Initiator

Publink

Description

The project aims to minimise and solve the problem of useful objects being thrown away; reducing the trend to waste typical of our society. It consists of transparent dustbins partially based on traditional dustbins. In this way people can see the objects inside, and choose to leave or take something. These ‘waste disposal’ sites therefore take on a new meaning as a point of encounter and exchange. The project was announced to the community through a brochure sent by post. There are currently two versions of dustbin: ‘Yellow’, designed for outdoor use; and ‘Ethics’, designed for indoor use.

Goals

RCA wants to be an instrument for governments who are sensitive to environmental issues. Refuse With Love is a ‘good practice’ that could create a more sustainable society. It promotes recycling and reuse and makes people aware of escalating garbage accumulation and of the choices around its disposal. RCA wants to create a place where people meet and rethink the concepts of ‘refuse’, ‘useful’, and ‘useless’, creating new connections in communities between public and private spaces.

Beneficial Outcomes

RCA has benefits in a practical, social and ecological way. In the practical sense, people are happy to find a place for useless things that they still love, otherwise these objects will be destroyed. People that ‘love back’ objects are satisfied because they take useful things away for free. In a social way, it promotes discussions and workshops about the importance of ecological attitudes. In an ecological way, RCA tries to reduce the quantity of waste heading to incineration or land-fills.

Location

United States

Users

Any person with a problem than money cannot solve.

Maintained by

Liat Berdugo, Leora Fridman

Duration

2016 - ongoing

Category

pedagogical, economy, social

Nr. and Title

561

Rituals Adjacent to Capitalism

Initiator

Liat Berdugo, Leora Fridman

Description