Openhagen

UNDOING THE CITY / 7-10 May, 2009. Copenhagen

Info: undoingthecity@openhagen.net

Cities today are scene for a long series of conflicts. It’s a battle going on between those who are forced out into ghettolike districts, those who retreat to gated communities in the suburbs, the creative class in the regenerated city centres, and the police who are increasingly forced to ensure these separations. The city and its space are more and more becoming battle zones – battle zones which call for a re-conquest of the city space against fences, profit and discrimination. It is a battle to be fought with theoretical inputs, political statements and with the entire spectrum of social, cultural and artistic forms of anti-power. We want to challenge both the capitals, the states, the city governments and the creative class’s ideas of the city. And we want to challenge our own idea of the city. Let’s undo the city.

We invite citizens, activists, artists, intellectuals and graffiti people. We invite all those who use the city space and who have a wish to make the city a common space to participate in Undoing the City.

The festival is taking place in Copenhagen, 2009 May 7-10 under the name of Undoing the City. Workshops, debates, film-screenings, city walks, canal tours, street parties, actions and alike will question our use of the city.

Undoing the City focuses on a wide variety of topics which are linked to urban issues, discuss the existing Copenhagen and open up for new, alternative ideas. It is the purpose of this festival to create interest for the various spaces of the city – to see the city as a platform for a series of activities, which both challenge, investigate and experiment with the existing confines of the city. This festival is meant to be critical on the processes that shape our cities today. Through concrete action, happenings and doings the city should be changed, undone in order that we, the people living and breathing in it, actually influence its development. The right for the city is the right to change it. Undoing the city focuses on four basic social and politcal struggles, which both are meant to be receptive to the myriads of battles, conflicts and possibilities going on in our metropols and which simultaneously narrow and summarize our actions.

GENTRIFICATION

The regeneration of cities results undoubtedly in a re-organizing of its inhabitants. This process is also known as gentrification. Who is included, who gets excluded? How is this process, though often taken for granted, going on and what are our possibilities for intervening progressively in it? Who is responsible for ascribing value and hype to some city districts and making them more attractive to live in than some of the nearby districts?

AGAINST THE WALL

Urban spaces are often characterized by separation. It is not only a class separation, but also a separation of ‘ethnicities’, expressed through the regularly aggressive behaviour by the police and the division of ‘black’ and ‘white’ schools. It is to be found in the intersection between dangerous Blågårds Place and trendy Elmegade. And it is expressed by the unequal distribution of recognition in the segregated public space.

RIGHT TO THE CITY

The right to the city derives from the desire to change the city. It means that all of us should have the right to participate actively instead of just being labor power and passive consumers. The neoliberal society order has increased the privatization of public space and diminished its possibilities of expansion. It is right here this battle has to be fought. This battle needs different strategies, like the re-organization of economic conditions. We need to claim the right to influence decisions on consumption in the cities. As the influence on how we want to live, how our city is organized and what products there are being produced. It is our vision to go beyond the political consumer and to experiment with cooperatives, self-supply and squatting.