Day 1 – Session ‘Urban Laboratories’

As part of the first round of workshops of the conference, the Urban Laboratories session set out to explore questions of representation with regards to the new, new culture and experimentality. The three speakers, Marc Glaudemans, Pascal Gielen and Michelle Teran were introduced by Bas van Heur, post-doc at the Maastricht Virtual Knowledge Studio, Maastricht University. The three presentations were followed by short Q&A rounds.

The first speaker of the workshop, Mr. Marc Glaudemans, gave an extensive description of the School of Architecture in Tilburg, Netherlands, an institution which is rather professional than academic. Since 2006, one of the programmes of the university that he is involved in is Stadslab – the European Urban Design Laboratory. Stadslab is a consultancy organization that aims at being a knowledge centre supported by European experts. Cities can use Stadslab as an advisory tool for various urban problems they might encounter. The Stadslab team analyzes these problems in a laboratory or atelier environment with the goal of providing “strategies for the cities to develop,” Glaudemans explained. The end results are, therefore, conceptual frameworks that can be used for creative and sustainable urban development, as well as urban design scenarios and case studies. During the Q&A round, the issue of politics being intermingled with urban planning was raised, as well as the difficulty of integrating all the dimensions of an urban environment in the strategies developed by Stadslab. Nevertheless, Glaudemans acknowledged the fact that urban regeneration is not only a spatial problem, but also social, cultural and political.

The second presentation given by Pascal Gielen focused on the speaker’s research on visual artists in Flanders, Belgium. Mr. Gielen discussed how the art world is influenced by globalization. Supporting issues for that are numerous: acceleration of artistic careers, boom of creative cities, accumulation of artists, curators, etc., post-political ideology shifts and renegotiations of value regimes. The resulting global ‘meshwork’, as the speaker calls it, can be used to further analyze how the art world is currently differentiated. Two sets of oppositions were discussed in relation to each other: “high / low networked” art or artists and “development / product” – development seen as education, research, or academia, and product seen as market oriented art production. In the context of this four dimensional schemata, or the ‘Healthy art ecological system,’ Gielen sees smaller cities as weak passages in the global art world. Maastricht is one of these weak passages when it comes to art, and the speaker suggested that the city should take its spot on the graph in the high networked, development orientated corner. Furthermore, Maastricht should aim at being a “place to slow down, to reflect” Mr. Gielen said, going beyond the creative city idea.

The third and last speaker of the session was Michelle Teran, a practicing artist originally from Quebec, Canada, but active in urban art projects around the world. The artist gave the audience an insight into her work, which mostly consists of using media as guiding tools to explore a city and its narratives. Her works also contain a high level of performance, as she communicates with people on the streets in order to see how they create the meanings of their own city. In the first project described, Ms. Teran explored a city through two ways, a cartographic and a street dimension. She used different media to investigate the visual unity of a place, as well as spatial narratives that become part of the city’s fabric. The second project presented took place in Quebec, and it dealt with, as Ms. Teran put it “unofficial urban histories.“ The third and last work the speaker discussed was a project in Murcia, Spain, in which she used Google Earth to collect YouTube videos from a particular location, with the overall goal of creating a narrative.

In the concluding remarks of the workshop, the moderator emphasized the importance of experimental culture, and how hidden urban narratives are made visible through this experimenting process. However, the moderator said, we should be careful with “what we make visible and in relation to what.”

Text: Ana Maria Raus

Day 2 – Urban Laboratories & Cultural Capital and Institutional Change

Got Spaghetti, Waiting for the Sauce

In this session the intention was to cover the themes discussed the day before, practical ideas on possible projects and, finally, organizational structures necessary for successful implementation of the ideas. As an overarching theme of ‘Urban Laboratories’ discussion, Bas van Heur indicated that there was a need to acknowledge the ways in which cultural practices are not simply representative – i.e. belonging to particular groups (ethnic, national, gendered, etc.) – but also innovative and involved in the production of newness. This demands a sensitivity towards and promotion of spaces of experimentation.

Another prominent theme was the tension between official and unofficial narratives surrounding cultural events. According to Michelle Teran, there is often an official story presented by advertising campaigns and mass media covering up possibly very different picture as perceived by participants or other involved. The task of critical thinkers in this case would be questioning the official language.

The most important opposition considered by the group ‘Cultural Capital and Institutional Change’ was between so called ‘official culture’ or institutions and community. Although ‘community culture’ is often deemed to be naturally good and liberating, this group agreed that both of the sides should be problematized. Other themes which deserved mentioning were internal and external rationales for becoming ECOC as well as the position of artists in such mega events. Finally, the importance of networking was stressed.

In any case, both groups seemed to have very hot topics, because the overview of themes brought them further into discussion. The most prominent one was about the narratives surrounding ECOC. One of the speakers very rightly noted that narratives are by definition exclusive: someone gets to decide who will be involved in the dialogue. According to Bas van Heur, the negative effects of this exclusionary moment can be minimized through reflection and awareness of this unavoidable exclusionary dimension of narratives. Janicke Kernland added to this that, on the one hand, exclusion can be seen as positive because it signals a choice or position and, on the other hand, exclusion can be easily unmasked by a counter narrative which, in turn, should be encouraged.

Unfortunately, it was more difficult to turn the discussion along more pragmatic lines than this. Although the task of people working on Maastricht ECOC is to set the base for those who will implement the project, inventing and adding institutions does not seem the best idea. According to Paul Lambrechts, Maastricht and surrounding cities already possess necessary institutional components to successfully implement such mega-events as ECOC. However, communication and cooperation of these separate bodies is of key importance. He compared the institutions to spaghetti, which without connecting material – sauce – are tasteless and therefore useless. We have the spaghetti, now let’s work on the sauce, suggested Paul.

Actually, my favorite idea came from the public (Ruth Benschop): in any narrative we talk about, the focus is on the future and the progress. Reflection on past and present is submerged in plans and dreams, if existent at all. Are we not losing something very precious in this way?

Text: Ruta Norvaisaite

Day 1 – Session ‘Cultural Capital and Institutional Change’

The ambition to become European Capital of Culture raises the question how the city can develop its various kinds of cultural capital. In this connection the various institutional settings play a significant role in shaping and structuring cultural practice. Moderated by Janicke Kernland (Studio Kernland), Kate Oakley (City University London) and Piet Menu (Het Huis van Bourgondië, Maastricht) discussed the politics and realities of cultural institutions.

Oakley talked about her experiences with the creative industries policies in London 2003-2012 addressing the question how to organize and deal with small cultural institutions and their funding within this system. London started with a “fast policy” (Jamie Peck) focussing on the cultural industry in terms of London’s economic development, taking a spatial strategy. However, in the course of time this approach transformed into a sectoral strategy. As Oakley emphasized, the smaller cultural businesses encounter difficulties to get a meaningful voice in this discussion because of London’s institutional history of established hubs and local politics. As such one should ask the question if those discussions are truly concerned with cultural issues or rather focussing on political or capitalizing strategies. Only if one is aware of this aspect, can one ensure genuine interaction between different parties, eventually bringing about a political strategy that is characterized by an open discussion with the creative industries.

In the second part of the session Piet Menu discussed the role and status of the performing arts in Maastricht. He started by describing an image of the artist as a kind of flexible worker who must engage in a great variety of different activities and areas in order to be able to earn a living. He identified three layers of institutional organizations in Maastricht: Firstly, international organizations; secondly, organizations on a national level; and thirdly, local organizations at a grass-roots level. In this respect Menu emphasized that the goal of the ECOC competition as formulated in Maastricht might be oriented too strongly towards the internal dimensions of the city. This is why Maastricht lacks lively and fruitful networking between organizations on a national and international level. Also, the funding mechanisms and allocation of subsidies in the Dutch context does not provide many incentives to cooperate with institutions outside of the Netherlands. Therefore, as Menu pointed out, the ‘import-export’ relation of cultural capital in the Euregion must be re-thought and balanced anew.

In the third part of the session Oakley and Menu engaged in a discussion with participants of the conference. Most people agreed that there already exists a great amount of cultural capital in Maastricht, but that there should be more cooperation and networking between those institutions. This may be realized by means of the establishment of a kind of reflexive institution bringing isolated organizations into contact, opening up their institutional structures and consequently making real dialogue and cooperation possible. In this people should think ‘outside the box’ and should develop innovative ideas. However, the crucial question in this respect will be if Maastricht’s institutions and people are flexible enough in order to realize these ideas. As Neil Peterson (Head of Liverpool Welcome for the Liverpool Culture Company) pointed out, this aspect of cooperation and networking among institutions definitively was essential for the Liverpool’s successful application. As he also pointed out, however, those dialogues should not be focused on finding definite answers, but rather should be a means of bringing contacts and new relationships into being.

Text: Aline Reichow