Contested Constructions: Who Owns the City?
Friday, June 15 from 4pm – 5.30pm
Common discussion moderated by Aïcha Diallo
The panel WHO OWNS THE CITY? is associated with the project STREITBAUTEN, which was implemented within the framework of Caring for Conflict under the artistic direction of Aïcha Diallo and Lorenzo Sandoval. Within the context, we address the questions: Which conflicts and exclusions are created in urban space and how are they negotiated? How can young people realize their agency in urban society and develop and design their own space? Topics are urban society, city development, gentrification, and urban space.
Moderator:
Aïcha Diallo is the project co-director of KontextSchule at the Institute for Art in Context at the University of Art in Berlin. Besides this, she is the co-publisher and coordinator of the art magazine Contemporary And (C&)—platform for international art from African perspectives. Diallo has Guinean heritage, was born and raised in Berlin, and works as a cultural worker and pedagogue with a focus on migration, empowerment, and communication. She received a BA in European Studies at Queen Mary College of University of London und her MA in Intercultural Education at the Freien Universität Berlin. Diallo worked for the cultural platform Chimurenga in Kapstadt, the exhibition project prêt-à-partager at ifa—Institute for Foreign Relations, and was the publisher of the online publication with the focus Cultural Production and Space of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung and co-founder and actress of with the Performance Plattform Label Noir.
Co-moderators: Arzu Altan, 15 years old, and Thierry Kohrs, 14 years old, live in Kreuzberg and attend the Rückert Gymnasium. Both students actively participated in the project STREITBAUTEN.
Panelists:
Leila Haghighat
Konstanze Schmitt is a visual artist and theater director. Starting from documentary and biographical material and in interaction with political contexts, Schmitt’s performances and installations explore possibilities and realities of utopias, e.g. in the field of reproduction. Among others, she has cooperated with old communists in the east and the west, organized domestic workers in Madrid, and former managers of an occupied DDR youth club. Her most recent exhibitions and performances include: Ringlokschuppen Ruhr (Mülheim 2018), after the butcher (Berlin 2017), nGbK (Berlin 2016), Latvian Center for Contemporary Art (Riga 2014), Bergen Assembly (Bergen 2013), Vierte Welt (Berlin 2011–2013; 2016), and steirischer herbst (Graz 2012). Konstanze Schmitt is currently a lecturer in performance and theater in the Masters Program for Spatial Strategies at the KHB Weißensee. She also co-founded the initiative and association LauseLebt! at her other workplace, Lausitzer Straße 10. More information at www.konstanzeschmitt.net