Urban Skanzen
Exhibition: 13 Jul – 3 Aug 2018
Opening: 12 Jul 2018 7 pm
Clam-Gallas Palace, Husova 20, Praha 1
Featured Artists: Jan Pfeiffer, David Možný, Daniela Baráčková, Daniel Tollady and Intermedia Atelier FAVU VUT led by Pavel Sterec
Curator: Elis Unique
Exhibition Architect: Milos Marek
The title of the exhibition uses the term ‘skansen’, which originally referred to open air museums. In this context, however, it is a much more sensitive, yet derogatory, description of attractive historical parts of cities, where the excessive inflow of tourism deprived of authentic life. It has transformed it into a stage-set for visitors. It is the “invisible hand of the market” that causes residents to move out of the districts and local shops to disappear, only to be replaced by luxury goods and souvenir shops selling kitsch versions of counterfeited traditional crafts. This phenomenon inevitably leads to a change in the function of these urban locations, which turn into one-dimensional attractions reminiscent of fun fairs.
For the sake of presentation and maximum commercial utilisation in tourism, certain heritage items turn into mummified “idols” as a result of excessive and even senseless protection while municipal officials sentence other unique works and objects of architecture outside the tourist zones to demolition without a hint of hesitation.
Boris Groys offers a deeper insight into the issue of influence of tourism on the urban landscape in his essay, The City in the Age of Touristic Reproduction, concluding that whereas the romantic tourism in the 19th century contributed towards the monumentalisation of the city, as the view of a passing tourist transformed “temporariness into permanence, fleetingness into timelessness, ephemerality into monumentality”. He concludes that in the post-romantic era it’s not just people but also objects of all kinds, signs and images derived from the local cultures that are leaving the places of their origin and circulating around the world. Redundant architectural and art styles, political prejudices, religious myths and traditional customs are no longer intended to transcend in the name of universality – they are intended to be reproduced by tourism and spread worldwide.
While we perceive free nomadism as a principal civilisation value, as a way that people form their relationship to culture and traditions of various civilisations, the tourism that used to discover cultural differences and local identities, and was in search for aesthetic experiences, has upgraded to a new level. The current form of the global travel/entertainment industry is rewriting the relationship between the urban ou-topos and the global topography. Paradoxically, local cultures and identities are being petrified and homogenised as a result, so that cities increasingly resemble one another. One of the outcomes of this process is that the real differences emerge within cities rather than between them. Therefore, what happens is a process of gentrification; the increasing distinction between city centres and peripheries, tourist and cultural neighbourhoods, and the proliferation of cultural industries. This goes hand in hand with the proliferation of excluded areas and the privatisation of public space.
Author: Elis Unique
Poster artwork created by (from top to bottom): Daniel Tollady, David Možný, Daniela Baráčková and Jan Pfeiffer.
PANEL DISCUSSION -
Monuments of Integration
Location: CAMP - Centrum Architektury a Městského Plánování
Date: 11 July 2018, 5.30PM
What is political ontology of Europe? In contrast with the imperial administration of China, Indian or American federalism and the centralised Russian kleptocracy, the former Maoist and Chairman of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso referred to the European Union as a “post-imperial empire”. That instantly brings to mind one of the sarcastic analyses of the current ideology offered by Slavoj Žižek: if we can have coffee without caffeine, cigarettes without carcinogens, love without the dangerous moment or beer without alcohol, why not have an empire without imperialism
Despite Europe’s undisputedly colonial past and present, this idea can conceal a grain of truth inside. We can see it clearly in the migration and refugee waves passing through the territory of the old continent: one of xenophobic nationalists’ primary requirements was to have firm and impenetrable borders, which is so typical of the identitarianism of nation states and the imperial order. Also, we should not forget that empires were the first multicultural political entities in the history of mankind, expanding the range of cultures and ethnicities within their territories through military expansion.
Hence, Europe’s post-imperialism should be in fact multiculturalism without the restrictive power tying down local identities and cultures – instead, it should enable their ‘spontaneous’ contact and blending. The nation state is passé and the future belongs to new political constructs, architectures relying on Euro-nomadism and (as Deleuze puts it) the de-territorialisation of the old continent for its new re-territorialisation. As nice as such an idea may appear at first, the mechanism whereby it materialises is nothing else than the concentration of cultural and financial capital in cosmopolitan metropolises, which become truly European and cosmopolitan hubs, at the expense of all other territories that turn into marginal peripheries on the verge of financial and cultural interest.
The stratification of the space and time for living is happening on the level of entire states, regions, or within cities, which are understood as the multicultural bearers of European cosmopolitism and, as such, they de facto form the institutional and ideological backbone of the integration process. But what is happening to these hubs during the process of their cosmopolitanisation?
In his essay, The City in the Age of Touristic Reproduction, Boris Groys notes that traditional cities tend to isolate themselves from the outer world, thus being essentially anti-touristic: they exit space and float through time motionlessly. The onset of the 19th century, however, brought with it the notion of romantic tourism seeking cultural differences and local identities rather than universal Utopian models. Its viewpoint is not Utopian – it is essentially conservative and conservationist: it increasingly wants to turn vital cultural processes into petrified monuments.
Nevertheless, the paradox of the current post-romantic tourism is that the process of petrifying the local cultures and identities leads to homogenising them, with cities increasingly resembling one another. One of the results of this process is that real differences are created within the cities rather than from city to city. What happens is gentrification; the rise of city centres and peripheries, tourist and cultural neighbourhoods; and the proliferation of cultural industries, and this goes hand in hand with the proliferation of excluded areas and the privatisation of public space.
Author of concept: Martin Vrba
This debate is a part of MAGIC CARPETS project and is co-financed from the European Union Funds Creative Europe Programme
