"What's the deal?" – A Transnational Project on Young Urban Cultures …The project “What’s the deal?” has ended officially in 2015, but the blog keeps the project alive.
Have a look at the impressive number of diverse posts describing what has happened during “What’s the deal?”: events, art work created and related stories – enriched by pics, videos and other visuals.
After the WTD festival at the Kreativquartier in Munich, the Nomadic Sculpture was deinstalled for the last time and was moved to Berlin. Why to Berlin? Because that is where Philip Metz, the artist of the skateable sculpture, lives. He is now in charge of the art work and has found a storage place for the modules. They are currently being stored in a warehouse somewhere in the woods around Berlin waiting to be reused again…
While the Nomadic Sculpture is now in Berlin, an unexpected positive outcome of the project “What’s the deal?” has occurred in Munich. Several city councillors issued a petition requesting the city administration to look into the possibility of providing temporary space to create DIY skateparks. This idea was developed during a debate at the WTD festival “moving urban cultures” with representatives from political parties and from the skateboarding scene.
The ‘Mag het Licht Aan Festival’ is a festival for idealists and those who want to make the world a better place. With a program full of inspiring philosophical in-depth talks, exhibitions of art and photography, theatre as well as new forms of music. Among many contributors to the program such as Het Filosofisch Kwintet, Marli Huijer, Henk Oosterling, was also Coolpolitics as the Dutch project partner of “What’s the deal?” with a talk about ‘A More Sustainable Me’ led by Dutch Radio and Television presenter Pieter van der Wielen. The guests participating in the talk were Willa Stoutenbeek (Sustainable Fashion Industry), Tom van de Beek (sustainable entrepreneur) and Nynke Schaaf (sustainable economist, entrepreneur and program maker at the Dutch Television). The talk resulted in a lively interactive debate between guests and visitors about three subjects: sustainable life, sustainability with regard to family and friends and sustainability with regard to work and education.About one hundred people participated actively in the talk while even more people followed the discussion from the outside of the discussion arena. The talk attracted a very mixed group of visitors: from young to old, from very idealistic to very practical, makers as well as consumers, men and women.
During and after the debate, the Art Intervention booklet “How to change the world as a designer” was distributed amongst the audience. The booklet presents the designers who had participated in the Art Intervention activities of What’s the deal? as well as their work shown in a 10 day long exhibition at the festival “what’s the deal? – moving urban cultures” in Munich in Junie.
The last day of the festival was all about Skateboarding: Even though the weather could have been better, the Skateworkshop of Albertross & Friends was a full success! And Munich’s got 20 skaters more to be proud of.
But not only the kids had fun on Saturday. Some of the best skaters from Munich and around came to inaugurate the new skateobstacle made of concrete.
After two years focusing on the skateboarding scene in Munich, the discussion about the need of a D.I.Y-Fullpipe park in Munich gave a new understanding of that topic. While the Skateboarding scene represented by Daniel Haas, Roman Astleitner and Stefan Lehnert argued that Skateboarding always was about do it yourself, the representatives of the city of Munich (Willi Wermelt, SPD, Verena Dietl, SPD, Wolfgang Zeilnhofer-Rath, Hut and Oswald Utz, Grüne) pointed out that there would be administrative problems regarding security and responsibility.
Although all of the participants agreed that there should be a DIY project with skateboarders, the problems of the insurance, little space and costs won’t make it easy to find a solution pleasant for everyone.
The last day of the Moving Urban Cultures festival ended with a concert of the argentinian band Faauna. The two musicians kept the audience moving with their so called Cumbia bass: a mix of electronic music combined with relevant lyrics.
Thanks to all coordinators, artists, visitors and helping staff the festival was a full success and enabled an exchange of people with all kind of different backgrounds.
After a few days at the Moving Urban Cultures festival dedicated only to the exhibition and live concerts during the night, Friday was full of activities related to design. With discussions, presentations, a food happening and some good Indie music at Import Export, there was surely something for every kind of taste.
Ever wondered if there’s a new design culture in Europe? The participants of the first talk on Friday (Jurij Bobic, Onur Ceritoglu, Philipp Weber, Ralf Josef and Shevia Limmen) were discussing this topic and brought up some interesting thoughts. Due to Philipp Weber and Ralf Josef, who both took part in the Art Intervention Amsterdam, there’s a big difference between Dutch design and German design. In the Netherlands storytelling is always seen in the work of designers, which makes it also more sustainable, as we tend to keep things longer which have a meaning for ourselves.
Jurij Bobic and Onur Ceritoglu both pointed out that their work is always influenced by their cultural background and therefore disagreed that there should be a one world design. Shevia Limmen added that for her the main reason of designing is to create something personal, so a one world design would just be boring.
It’s hard to answer the question if there’s a new design culture in Europe, but the discussion showed, that young designers are occupied with sustainable topics and are trying to make a change with their work.
“There is no garbage” quoted Denis Oudendijk and started the following presentation of REFUNC, giving an idea of what waste architecture means. Based on waste material, REFUNC creates experimental structures and mobile micro architecture thus extends the life-cylce of materials. For me it was surprising and inspiring at the same time how waste materials like palletts, old A/Cs or fridges can be used in an arty but also usable way for citizens.
What would the design day have been without meeting the designers of the exhibition personally? Susanne Esken, coordinator of the Art Intervention Amsterdam, gave a short introduction of the exhibition by explaining the idea of sustainable design. After that the visitors had the chance to talk to the artists and designers – a great opportunity for new insights.
My personal highlight on this day was the so called Dinner happening. Without any expectations I found myself around 8pm behind the Kreativräume surrounded by a tempting smell. Laborküche München in cooperation with Foodsharing had prepared a delicious meal for all the visitors: enjoying a healthy dish with rice and the personal choice of veges with a relaxed audience while listening to the DJ set was the perfect ending of a long day!
Half-time at the moving urban cultures festival: Even if some of us were quite tired of celebrating all night at Panama Plus, we wanted to know all about the Velocity day. So from 3pm on the guys were there and lots of visitors came to try different kind of bikes.
Something really handy: the repair cafe which created the group Muslauf from Ljubljana. So if you’re bike needed to be fixed, Sunday was the day to do it without getting your hands dirty of the oil. Also the architecture looks pretty cool – maybe we’ll find some of the Bike boxes around the city center soon.
Another highlight was the BMX show infront of Import Export Kantine. Watching these guys doing tricks and biking on the Nomadic Sculpture is another example in how many diverse ways the skateable sculpture is usable.
Whether it were carrier bikes, racers, city bikes or new creations – people had fun trying new bicycles and it was fun watching them doing so.
The long awaited Panama Plus finally is here: More than 1000 visitors came to celebrate at the Kreativquartier. From 4 pm to 7.30am people had fun and danced to the sound of Damnitdisco, Retrogott & Hulk Hodn, Munich open minded, Walter Wolff or Joasihno & Tadklimp. Here are some impressions of the festival:
The festival was not only about music and dance. There were also presentations, cinema and workshops. EE Music for instance hold a presentation about the music event sector in Europe.
A festival can only be great if the audience is great. Thanks to open minded visitors who all wanted to enjoy a good time during Panama Plus, the festival was a full success.
Luckily also the weather was good, so we could listen to the sounds of L’aupaire open air. The singer and mulit-instrumentalist Robert Laupert created his very own music during his time travelling in Budapest. The results are dreamy but honest lyrics which, surprisingly, are still danceable.
As it was getting dark outside, the visitors came by Import Export Kantine to listen to Manual Kant from 10pm. Good vibes, great music and drinks – what else do you need to have a good time?
After a spectacular start on Thursday with well over 400 visitors, Friday was a day for cultivated discussions about creative uses of urban spaces. In the first talk, Uros Veber, a cultural organizer from Ljubljana told about how his city tries to install a clean and tourist friendly city centre – and how street artists need to find other places to work with, e.g. trains. Being Munich’s representative for graffiti, David Kammerer aka. Cemnoz pointed out, that was also how Munich became a vibrant centre of street art in the 80ies.
Roman Häbler, who wrote his master thesis on graffiti in Munich and co-publishes graffiti magazine ‘Klick Klack’ added interesting insights on how even if a city has a very clean image, like Munich does and Ljubljana wants it to have, there is still plenty of room for street artists to express themselves.
Another aspect was presented by Stephan Doesinger, a lecturer and several art universities and an expert on graffiti used by advertising agencies: the difference between how public spaces and therefore also graffiti and street art is perceived online versus real life – in his view it’s not about working on a picture, but about working with pictures, e.g. google maps.
Berlin-based Adrian Nabi, founder of graffiti magazine ‘Backjumps’ refers to this plethora of pictures evoked by digital media as ‘instagram-picture-bulimia’ – and presented his vision: giving street artists money and support and simply let them loose on the city in real life. And interesting and detailed discussion formed that also broached the issue of institutionalisation, be that by companies or the municipality.
Which was also a central topic of the second discussion of the day about urban wasteland across Europe – and how it is used. Tunjay Acar, co-founder of ‘Import Export Kantine’ spoke about how it is not possible to achieve any sort of lasting cultural project without working hand in hand with the local authorities: ‘Within 24 hours you would be kicked out by the police.’ He told a bit about how ‘Import Export’ started as a side project and what steps where needed as well as what fights had to be fought.
Which is similar in Ljubljana, where Miha Zadnikar comes from and leads a autonomous cultural facility. He talked about how regulations, especially since Slovenia became part of the European Union, made it ever more difficult for them to do their jobs as cultural players and how gentrification and tourists change the place. Not yet but maybe in the near future this is what might happen to ‘Projet Darwin’ in Bordeaux, France. One of the founders, Sylvain Barfety, also took part in the discussion and expressed his fear of big private investors turning their beloved place in Bordeaux into a soul-less money machine. On top of that, he pointed out the importance of democratic processes and that the public should own those places of urban wasteland – they are, together with new economic alternatives and different ways of usage a foundation of new culture in times of crisis.
Two very interesting discussions that will reverberate for some time to come.
Finally! We just can‘t handle it! After over two years of constantly working on ‚What‘s the deal?‘ the final event actually started – introduced at ‚Import Export Kantine‘ by none other than the head of the department of arts and culture of the city of Munich, Dr. Hans-Georg Küppers and the head of ‚Import Export‘, Tunjay Acar. In their speeches they highlighted the importance of an international network of young urban artists and designers to tackle themes like sustainability and implant them much deeper into the visitors minds and hearts.
Something else for the heart: the first event of the day, a skateboard-workshop by Matt Wiegele and his friends for young future skate professionals.
Look at you! If you remember, yesterday we showed a picture of Jurij Bobic‘s project still under construction – just one day later he and his team realised this amazing room.
Free your mind, because this was the performance of the class of Res Ingold of the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. They sure did get the attention with the noises they made and their paroles (‚GO TO SLEEP OTHERWISE YOU ARE AWAKE‘) – if not, the pack of dogs which was part of the event did the job.
People everywhere – thanks to all the visitors who already came by on the first day. There was a lot to see and talk about. For example about the work ‚Objet‘s d‘art‘ of Moulsari Jain and her partner, Hannah Kindler who turn everyday objects into pieces of art.
The last performance of the day: ‚THE SINGER – Opus im Akkord‘ by Lisa Simpson in collaboration with Stephanie Müller, Gülcan Turna and Klaus Erlich Dietl. Did you want to have handmade counterfeit money sewn into your pockets? Then this was the place to be.
‚Nomadic Sculpture‘ by Berlin-based concept artist Philip Metz in its final stage of construction right outside ‚Import Export Kantine‘ at Munich‘s ‚Kreativquartier‘ – the location of the final event of the EU-programme ‚What‘s the deal?‘ which took place in four different European cities starting over two years ago.
Dozens of people are still working on those last details: will those screws hold? does that picture still need to be put straight? should I put my sculptures here or there? are there still extension cables left? who wants a coffee? Only 24 hours later these places need to be ready for visitors to the exhibition. Since work ethics is great, there‘s no doubt things will work out just fine in the end. Back to work!
Be it Jurij Bobic from Ljubljana with his group‘s project ‚Re: ciklarnica – waste as a challenge‘ or Marjanne van Helvert from the Netherlands – every artist and designer is putting his or her stuff on display: how do young creative makers percieve sustainability and how do they apply their views on urban culture?
And by the way: thanks a lot to all the helping hands. There would be no exhibition without you. So lets hope we‘ll still get our stuff done until tomorrow – big opening at 6 p.m.!
