Beyond a Construction Site is a result of the initiative of artists and architects. For that reason I ask myself, would the community garden Beyond a Construction Site have become what it is if the initiators had had a different background, and had not been artists?
Of course, for the creation of a community garden it is not necessary to be an artist; you can just be an active individual. I spoke about this with lawyer Miroslav Dudlak,146 initiator of the community garden Krasnansky Zelovoc, which is located in Bratislava. After many years he moved back to Bratislava from the countryside and felt there was a green space missing, and also one for socialising. Since he had young children he got people interested in the idea at the family community centre in their neighbourhood, and together they created a community garden. So it was the countryside that had taught him what kind of spaces the city needed.
Nevertheless, the fact that we, as the initiators of Beyond a Construction Site, are artists was an advantage in our situation. First of all, the artistic context made it easier for us to gain access to the temporary use of the space. Second, as artists, in addition to theoretical knowledge, we also have practical experience in making things, creating spaces, and in communicating with an audience. This knowledge was a great help and supported us in our spatial and community-based project. Third, as artists we constantly deal with imagination, and our mission was to encourage others to imagine as well. We managed to stimulate those involved, daring them to think about the space in a different way, and about what kind of neighbourhood they wanted to live in, as well as what they needed, and how they wanted to create it. The authors of the text Non-plan recommended that we ourselves believe in experimenting with the space and dare to think: “What happens, if there is not a plan? What do people do, if there is nothing to hinder their choices? Would things be any better, any worse, or fairly similar? [...] Our goal is to ask why we are unwilling to trust the choices which would have developed, if we had let that happen.”147 As artists and architects we have specific knowledge which opens up the possibility of having a vision; the possibility of utopia, or of thinking about the future in a way where we create new, alternative ideas and situations. The fact that we noticed this abandoned construction site and saw potential in it is a result of this knowledge. At the very base of our work, artists think
146 Skype conversation, March 2014.
147 Reyner Banham, Paul Baker, Peter Hall, Cedric Price, Non-Plan: An experiment in Freedom, published in Slovenian lan-guage in the Booklet O urbanizmu: Kaj se dogaja s sodobnim mestom? (On Urbanism: What is Happening with the Contempo-rary City?), edited by Ilka Čerpes and Miha Dešman, published by Založba Krtina, Ljubljana 2007, pg. 324-325.
“outside the box” and we try to tear down borders, widen perception and knowledge, and critically observe what is given and what is established. This can be seen in the entire history of art. Many artists today are focused on a real space and real spatial and social situations, because we believe that art is a part of society and culture, and that artists have an influence on that. We are dreamers, theoretical analysts, and critics, but in addition to all of that we are also workers. In the case of the Beyond a Construction Site it was definitely an advantage to be able to think creatively, but also to realise our ideas in real space through manual work. Our experimental approach, openness to the unexpected, ability to communicate with the audience (with participants), and ability to imagine and inspire other participants to imagine as well are definitely advantages rooted in our artistic experience.
The Artist Co-creates a Platform for Learning and Networking
I believe that the concepts and methods of German conceptual artist, politician, and humanist Joseph Beuys are still topical and forward thinking, as well as his faith that art could transform society. This is especially so for the concepts that he developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and tested and realised in the context of artistic spaces, museums, and large festivals. These are the concepts of radical education, the permanent conference, and not least of all the social sculpture, which are alive to this day and have influenced the transformation of art in the widest sense. Even though for the artist the artistic context is often that which limits him, it is precisely the artistic context which also enables him to try and test other social models and ideas. For example, Beuys’ artwork Honey Pump in the Workplace148 was presented at the very well renowned art festival Documenta 6 in Kassel (1977). It demonstrates the principles of operations for the Free International University which functions within the circulatory system of society. Honey Pump is an actual pump pushing honey through plastic pipes which represent the human circulatory system, and can circulate two tonnes of honey. In its one hundred days of operations the honey pump became a space for the testing of Beuys’ concept of the “permanent conference”149 which was intended to create a permanent dialogue on various social questions.
Honey Pump was at once also an artistic sculptural work which symbolised human veins. The two tonnes of honey, which was pumped through the space, ran into a metal barrel, which was intended to represent the heart of society. The artwork was not completed if people did not participate in it.
148According to Beuys: “With Honey pump I am expressing the principle of the Free International University working in the bloodstream of society. Flowing in and out of the heart organ – the steel honey container – are the main arteries through which the honey is pumped out of the engine room with a pulsing sound, circulates round the Free International University area, and returns to the heart. The whole thing is only complete with people in the space round which the honey artery flows.”
Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1979, pg. 254.
149Over the course of one hundred days, thirteen consecutive workshops took place: the Periphery workshop, the Nuclear Energy and Alternatives workshop, Media workshop 1: Manipulation, Media workshop II: Alternatives, Human Rights Week, the Urban Decay and Institutionalisation workshop, the Migrant workshop, the Northern Irish workshop, the World workshop, the Violence and Behaviour workshop, Work and Worklessness, and an analysis of the one hundred days. The workshop titles reflect the breadth of issues that social sculpture sought to address in a public environment. Open forums were held for ten hours daily, and speakers and visitors from all over the world participated. Hundreds of people interacted with Beuys over the course of the action. The collaborative environment within Honey Pump was in opposition to the one-sided relationship between artist and public.
http://neveryday.wordpress.com/tag/honey-pump-in-the-workplace/ (18.10.2014).
It makes sense to compare Beuys artwork with the contemporary The Silent University,150 which was created on the initiative of Turkish artist Ahmet Ögüt in 2012 in London. It is a clear development of similar principles, which Beuys tested decades ago. It is also interesting to observe what has changed. The Silent University is “an autonomous knowledge exchange by and for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants”.151 From its very inception the university has included those who had professional lives and academic training in their home countries and were unable to use their abilities or professional training in Great Britain. The Silent University was created during Ögüt’s one year residence in London with the support of the Tate Museum and in cooperation with the Delfina Foundation. Support for The Silent University has continued well after the project’s end and is being supported by other artistic and non-artistic institutions.
For Beuys the honey pump was a symbolic element of the artwork, and as a physical spatial installation it connected the content of the artwork (the establishment of a platform for
conversations on social topics) with an artistic object. Fifty years later, A. Ögüt no longer needed this symbolic element. He has initiated a regularly operating self-organised platform in the form of academic programmes for the exchange of knowledge, all of which came about with the help of refugees, and in order to help refugees. In this case the artist-initiator is far in the background, as opposed to the times of Beuys, when the credibility of his art action was strongly tied to his original work and charisma. The average visitor to the website of The Silent University will only with difficulty discover that the initiator was an artist.
Our community garden in Ljubljana developed within an artistic context and began during an art festival. The idea of a community garden was something we developed in an artistic context, but also in the context of the everyday. Here, urban gardening, the self-management of space, and the community all have a direct impact on social and political life in the neighbourhood, and on the entire city. I like to think of our community garden as a learning platform, where it is not important that we are artists, but rather that we are residents of this city. This platform which we have managed to create with the participation of other residents enables us to learn together about self-organisation, self-management, different ways of creating a space, and allows us to raise awareness of the right to space in general. It is also about how to work together, how to grow our own food, and is connected to tolerating differences among ourselves. Another important goal which this platform enables is collaboration with similar initiatives, with the goal of influencing municipal legislation on the temporary use of space and gaining easier access to city land for urban gardening. In 2013 our Initiative Kud Obrat created a round table called Kaj pa mestni vrtički? (What about urban gardens?) on the topic of urban gardening (allotments and community gardens), and invited newly started projects and initiatives like the Eco Community Urban Garden from Maribor, and the initiative Saprabolt, active in the community garden project
150 http://thesilentuniversity.org/ (19.9.2014).
151 http://thesilentuniversity.org/.
in the Savsko Naselje district of Ljubljana. Darja Fišer presented Zelemenjava, an initiative for the exchange of seeds, saplings, and produce. At the invitation of both Darja Fišer and Maja Simoneti (from the Institute for Spatial Policies, or Inštitut za politike prostora), in May of 2014 our community garden took part in the Chelsea Fringe festival. This international festival was born in London two years ago as an alternative to the prestigious flower festival The Chelsea Flower Show. Maja Simoneti is also part of the initiative Behind the Railway Line, which has established a collaboration between the Botanical garden of Ljubljana, individual allotment gardeners, and a television programme about organic gardening.152 Urška Jurman from our initiative Kud Obrat is also collaborating with the Institute for Spatial Policies and some other NGO’s on the project Mreža za prostor (Network for Space).153 In the context of this project all the initiatives involved send proposals to the municipalities of Slovenia urging support for the temporary use of space. For this reason our community garden has become an important platform for communicating with other local and international initiatives, and has enabled us to create a network of similar initiatives in order to trigger changes on the structural level of the city as well.
152See chapter seven, Urban Gardening in Ljubljana Today.
153See section 8.6, The Temporary Use of Space in Ljubljana.
A discussion with Maja Simoneti and Drago Kos Photo by: Kud Obrat archive, September 2011
Workshop: Participatory design by ad-hoc construction.
Mentor: Mathias Heyden.
Photo by: Kud Obrat archive, May 2011
A lecture by Elke Krasny:
Hands on Urbanism, the Right to Green Photo by: Irena Woelle, September 2014
Polonca Lovšin, Back to the City, 2011 10 Collages, 30 x 45cm
Collage No. 10