Friday November 20, 5 pm, The Forum, NAI. Admission is free.

Every Friday afternoon during the Open City Event Program, a local “cultural ambassador” hosts a performance, presentation or discussion related to the theme of the week. Tomorrow evening, Lilet Breddels of VOLUME magazine will present artist Thomas Kilpper and his project/competition for A Lighthouse for Lampedusa! Following a film and short lecture by Kilpper, a discussion with curator Marina Sorbello will explore the possible role of art and architecture in socio-political issues.

A Lighthouse for Lampedusa!
Almost every day there are news reports of refugees arriving at Europe’s southern shores. In 2008, about 30,000 refugees reached Europe via the Italian island of Lampedusa. Thousands drown in the sea—aid organizations estimate that one out of ten migrants die during this dangerous crossing. For the relatively small island of Lampedusa, with about 4,000 inhabitants, the endless stream of arriving migrants causes a lot of practical problems, bringing the administration to the brink of collapse. In 2008, the refugee center reached breaking point when up to 2,000 people were held in confinement under cramped conditions, in a space designed for a maximum of 700 people. Instead of helping Lampedusa to ease the situation on the ground and to relocate the migrants to the mainland like in the past, the Italian government further escalated the problem when it insisted that the detained migrants be kept on the island, and to erect a second detention- and deportation-center for them. In January 2009, the islanders went on a general strike against these plans, using the slogan: “No Alcatras in Lampedusa.” Participants expressed their desire to live on an open island: “To live from tourism and to welcome the poorest of the poor if they arrive…” (quotation of the Mayor of Lampedusa, 2009)

So far there is no end of the stream of refugees in sight. What can be done to prevent these tragic deaths? Efforts to improve and sustain living conditions in the immigrants’ country of origin would, if successful, last for decades, if not generations. Since 2007, the Berlin based artist Thomas Kilpper has pursued the idea of constructing a “Lighthouse for Lampedusa,” which is to have a double function: to provide essential orientation at sea and help to navigate refugee boats into safety, and to house a museum and cultural center, which the island still lacks. The Lighthouse is conceived as a tower and a landmark building, capable of hosting a diverse and trans-national program of communication, negotiation, exhibitions, concerts and other cultural events on its ground floor. It would serve as a place that attracts not only new visitors to the island but also local people—making Lampedusa not just a location to talk about, but also a place to learn from and listen to the ideas of others.

The refugee crisis of Lampedusa cannot be solved via military protection of the coastline or the declaration of a “state of emergency.” An international ideas competition will be launched in collaboration with the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam—“Open City: Designing Coexistence” — and Volume Magazine, calling for architects, planners, artists, and activists to develop imaginative architectural solutions for a lighthouse, museum and cultural center situated on the island. “Lighthouse for Lampedusa” calls for a humanitarian and fair immigration and integration policy in Europe based on the respect of a refugee’s human rights. Since Alexandria’s magnificent structure from 300 BC, lighthouses have been associated with welcoming strangers: Can 21st century Europe afford a different “wonder” of welcome—this time at its own shore?

4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam IABR
Open City: Designing Coexistence
www.iabr.nl/en/opencity

In Paris: Invisible City Bruno Latour and Emilie Hermant invite us to look at the city of Paris from a rather unusual perspective, what is usually not showed in social theory studies, to look at a city and try to unveil all the layers that constitute its life, to try to understand the several levels of complexity and their existing and possible intersections.

A city is more than the urban or social environment. That is to summarize what this study tries to show, discussing a metropolis like Paris. Complementary to that, this study also exemplifies the main concepts of Bruno Latour’s theory of actor-networking analysis of the social (explained in his book Re-assembling the social, introduction to actor-network-theory), meaning: picking an object and starting to unveil all the layers like peeling a onion, one after the other, and see where the layers intersect, where they combine, but also where they diverge. Only when we take account of the totality of layers unveiled all together in one flattened perspective instead of a hierarchical one, can we achieve a full understanding of the object we intend to study. Flattening the perspective also means assuming the point of view of the insider according to Latour, and not anymore the scientist who detaches himself from the object. On the contrary, he must be fully embedded in it to fully understand it, to fully acknowledge what the object is made of and how it functions.
The city seems to be the a perfect field to experiment with this methodology by its inherent complexity. Of course this also means that we are facing a job never to be completed but this also seems to be the case every time we debate the city, what it was, is and especially what it will be in the future, where all, or almost all the possibilities are still open. This was the time frame chosen from the conference entitled, “Tomorrow, international urban planning congress” that took place in Amsterdam last 1st and 2nd of October.

Bruno Latour approach seems useful, and the example of his study of Paris even more so, because the whole structure of the conference seemed to go into the same direction, that is, identifying the layers that constitute the problems of the city (planning from a political view, food policies, energy, definitions of urbanity), etc and by discussing them to see where they interact, where and how they establish links of interdependency. The conference wasn’t premised on Latour’s theory. It is not an exercise of it, nor do I intend to discuss the several problems this theory can bring to the analysis of a city, or any other object. The analogy here serves merely to point out the absolute need to try to understand the phenomenon of “urbanity” in the most complete way possible. This seemed to be the main concerns of those who organized this conference.

Now, I can only speak for what happen in the first day, the day I attended it, but the structure of it was common for both. In the morning several lectures and in the afternoon the program was divides between workshops (that were in fact mini-conferences where debate was promotes) or excursions, at the end we all gather again in the main building for a final lecture. If in the morning we all shared the same program, in the afternoon we had to chose what to attend, thus our experience of the conference were all different, just like it’s how our experiences of a city are different, depending on how we look at it.
The lectures, some more interesting than others, all seemed to have in common the assumption that the city is more and more where the future will happen, since we all know that already today, the majority of the world’s population live in it or close to it. The city more and more acquires an autonomous status, a political autonomy that obliges us to look at it through the concept of the “city-state” as it was the case in the ancient world. Eric Corijn (from Brussels open University and Cosmopolis research centre) discussed this perspective elaborately by tracing a history for the city back to the nineteenth century, with the industrial revolution re-shaping the city, introducing new problems, like anonymity which re-structured what was understand as “community”. Today it seems we are also in need of re-structuring some concepts associated with the city.
Increasing city autonomy also means the city’s subsistence must be re-thought, as Tim Lang (from London’s City University) remarked when discussing the issues of food policies, the city has always been a parasite in the sense that it is not able to produce all food it needs within its own territory, and it never will, but a more sustainable city is one that is able to produce more within its borders, to sponsor local production instead of importing most of its needs from far away. This goes for energy and water as well as for food.

One final word about the afternoon and specifically about the workshop I attended. We could chose from 6 different topics, from energy, sustainability, communication, and I’ve chosen the one called “Informality”, a concept discussed through 3 different examples: Latin-America with projects from the Supersudaca, Medellin with Alexandro Echeverri and Mumbai with P.K.Das. In the three examples “informality” were directly linked to the built environment and the need to improve it or to change it, but through considering the potential of “informality,” working with it and through it. The discussion had a very peculiar turn, the public struggled with the notion of absolute informality, the absence of rules, in other words how to merge planned elements with the spontaneous nature of these areas, and how to introduce elements that can connect to the anarchy but at the same time not disrupt it. The city also has an informal side to it, that what wasn’t planned. Concluding we can say we should deal more with time and not only space, or time ‘in’ space, how space is being penetrated by time and how space can allow time to be part of it. Time is of the essence when we consider future space.