Beograd Gazela - Travel Guide to a Slum | Book project with Can Gülcü and Lorenz Aggermann

Beograd Gazela - Travel Guide to a Slum takes us into a "blank" area in the middle of Europe - in a Roma slum in the center of Belgrade. How does one live without a city infrastructure, without water, without electricity? How do the inhabitants organize themselves and what kind of jobs do they have? What is their situation in regard to health care or the cultivation of their cultural life? The travel guide directs our attention to a place which is paradigmatic for the recent history of Roma in Southeastern Europe. It provides essential information about the social and economic structures of a slum, about the inhabitants and their daily lives and exposes the complex mechanisms of marginalization and discrimination against Roma.

In summer 2005 Eduard Freudmann and Can Gülcü began to visit Gazela regularly, gathering material for the travel guide during several longer stays in Belgrade up to the end of 2007. At the start they interviewed politicians, sociologists, representatives of aid organizations, and representatives of Roma associations. Although these groups provided a precise picture of those structures and mechanism by which the Serbian Roma are pushed to the margin of society, they gave little information about the Belgrade slums or about Gazela itself. Thus the focus was transferred to visiting the settlement itself, in the course of which the extensive interviews with the inhabitants took place that ultimately provided the major foundation for the travel guide.

The travel guide has been published in Romani, Serbian and German language:

Lorenz Aggermann, Eduard Freudmann, Can Gülcü
Beograd Gazela - Dromesko manualo ande jek corrivani cara
romanes | Br.224 riga | Euro 9.80 | DRAVA 2009.
ISBN: 978-3-85435-587-8

Lorenc Agerman, Eduard Frojdman, Ðan Gildi
Beograd Gazela - Vodic kroz sirotinjsko naselje.
Srpski jezik. | Obim: 220 str. | Cena: 1,290.00 RSD
RENDE 2009. ISBN broj: 978-86-83897-69-8

Lorenz Aggermann, Eduard Freudmann, Can Gülcü
Beograd Gazela - Reiseführer in eine Elendssiedlung
Deutsch. | Br. 224 Seiten | Preis: EURO 19.80; CHF 35.90
DRAVA 2008. ISBN: 978-3-85435-533-5

http://www.beogradgazela.ne t

Eduard Freudmann researches and intervenes in the intersections of art and politics, power relations and social contexts, history-politics and media mechanisms, strategies of exclusion and the commodification of knowledge. He studied fine arts in Vienna and Weimar and likes to work with narrative formats. Since 2007, Freudmann has been teaching at the Department for Conceptual Art Practices at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he participated in the education protests 2009 as a squatting teacher. He co-initiated "Plattform Geschichtspolitik," an open collective of students, activists and teachers who critically reflect and publicly deal with the institution's participation in colonialism, (Austro-)fascism and Nazism.

Parallax Views on Architecture

Parallaxe bezeichnet die scheinbare Differenz oder Änderung der Position eines Objektes, die sich aus einem neuen Blickwinkel ergibt. Wir alle nutzen diese Differenz zur räumlichen Wahrnehmung.  Astronomen nutzen sie, um die Distanz und Umrisse weit entfernter Objekte zu bestimmen. Derweil argumentiert Slavoj Zizek, dass die parallaktische Lücke nicht nur eine "erkenntnistheoretische" Veränderung des Subjekts, sondern immer auch eine "ontologische" Veränderung des Objektes an sich bedingt, da Subjekt und Objekt in einem inhärenten Vermittlungsverhältnis stehen.

In Wechselwirkung zwischen Fokussierung und produktiver Unschärfe richtet die diesjährige Vortragsreihe des Instituts für Kunst und Architektur den Blick auf die Produktion von Raum aus unterschiedlichen Standpunkten. Da nahe Objekte eine stärkere Parallaxe aufweisen, als weit entfernte, haben wir KünstlerInnen und ForscherInnen aus unserem unmittelbaren Umfeld eingeladen - KünstlerInnen und ForscherInnen aus der Akademie der bildenden Künste-deren Arbeiten sich implizit oder explizit mit Themen der Architektur und Stadt auseinandersetzen. Folglich bietet die Vortragsreihe ein weites Spektrum koexistierender Positionen und schafft eine Plattform für transdisziplinären Austausch an der Schnittstelle zwischen Kunst und Architektur.

Vorträge:
15.10.  Thomas Freiler, Artist/Photographer
Living in a Camera

Historisch werden die Anfänge der Fotografie an Beobachtungen von Licht und Bildphänomenen in Räumen oder Gebäuden festgemacht. Die darin beschriebenen Prinzipien sind auch im Zeitalter digitaler Fotografie natürlich immer noch gültig. Die Gesetzlichkeiten und Bedingungen zur Möglichkeit fotografischer Bilder sind zentrales Interesse der künstlerischen Arbeit von Thomas Freiler. Im Vortrag werden an Hand von Arbeitsbeispielen und  eigenen Kamerakonstruktionen Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Räumlichkeit und Bildlichkeit angestellt.

Thomas Freiler, born 1962, artist and photographer based in Vienna. Additional to his projects he reads lectures on photography and history of photography and is head of the photographic laboratory at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna since 2006.

29.10.  Anette Baldauf, Sociologist
Consumed. An Archeology of the Shopping Mall

Once a fantastic city unto itself, the traditional shopping mall is currently vanishing from the US-American landscape. "Dead malls" have started to litter the US-suburbscape, with molding interior, trees and wild dogs taking hold of consumer dreams. As a pioneer of mall development, the Viennese architect Victor Gruen began to promote polyfunctional shopping centers in the late 1930s. But he was not able to realize his vision until the 1950s, when nuclear paranoia, white flight and destabilized gender economies supported the reevaluation of the commercial bunkers as attractive shopping spaces. Today, like no other urban activity, shopping guides Western cities' transition into postindustrialism. How does this heritage of the mall as container and containing institution impact on urban redevelopment projects? Who, or what, is consumed in these variations of public spaces?

Anette Baldauf is a sociologist and cultural critic, who continuously collaborates with artists on questions of public space, consumerism and the economic imaginary. She is currently Professor at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies and co-coordinator of the PhD in practice program at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

26.11.  Mona Hahn, Artist
"Kunst am Bau"-leben Totgesagte länger?

Ja, es gibt sie noch: die "Kunst am Bau". Zwar wurde sie im letzten Jahrzehnt gerne be- bzw. verhandelt wie die verstaubte, längst überflüssig gewordene Vorgängerin der inzwischenhinzugekommenen "New Public Art" und der noch neuer hinzu gekommenen "New Genre Public Art".

Zu Unrecht? Während NPA und NGPA für sich in Anspruch nehmen, sich den Interessen- und Vereinnahmungskonflikten im öffentlichen Raum zu stellen, um auf bestehende politische, soziale, institutionelle, urbanistische Strukturen aufmerksam zu machen und diese umzugestalten, tritt die "Kunst am Bau" (meist) in einen formalen Dialog mit - und manchmal auch gegen - die Architektur, der sie zugeordnet ist. Doch ist diese Auseinandersetzung  zwangsläufig unpolitischer und gesellschaftlich wirkungsloser als andere, vielleicht neuere künstlerische Praxen im öffentlichen Raum? Ein künstlerisches Plädoyer.

Mona Hahn | Künstlerin, geb. in Frankfurt/Main Studierte Bildende Kunst an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar; Unterrichtet an der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien "Kunst im öffentlichen Raum".
Lebt und arbeitet in Wien.

03.12.  Sasha Pirker, Artist/Filmmaker
The Future will not be Capitalist

Working in the fields of cinema and installation, Sasha Pirker will give an introduction to her artistic approach. Her architectural explorations of public and private buildings by renowned architects such as Lautner, Schindler and Niemeyer, are not so much portraits, but rather profound dialogues, echo chambers for the inspirational, social and political dimensions of buildings. Starting with a football game, the lecture will reflect on architecture, cinematic space and the perception of space.

Sasha Pirker, artist/filmmaker, born 1969 in Vienna, Austria. Studies in Linguistics.

From 1995-2000 she worked as a curator of contemporary architecture at the Architecture Center Vienna (Az W).

Since 2006 she is a teaching member at the department "Video and Videoinstallation" at the University of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria.

Her films are distributed by sixpackfilm Vienna, www.sixpackfilm.com

(selection)
2011 Werkschau / Retrospective "The Thinking Form", VIENNALE - Vienna International Filmfestival
2010  67. Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica, La Biennale di Venezia/I

10.12   Wolfgang Baatz, Conservator
Conservation of Cultural Heritage: Decisionmaking Processes

Conservation of cultural heritage is an issue which as a concrete task may seem self-evident at first sight in public awareness. Nevertheless, the specific decisions how to preserve directly affect not only the material aspects and physical condition of an object but also its interpretation. In consequence, those who take the decisions take not only the responsibility for its physical stability but also for its appearance, which will affect the appreciation of the object by society as well as by future generations.

In order to comply with this fact, activities of preservation may not lack awareness of the many aspects which have to be taken into account. Conservation-restoration has to be based on the understanding of the appearance, meaning, material composition, and condition of the cultural heritage object as interdependent parameters and their relevance to the decision-making process.

Wolfgang Baatz has been teaching conservation-restoration at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna since 1994. After Conservation and Technology (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna 1978) he studied chemistry (TU Vienna 1993). Worked as freelance conservator-restorer, ample activities, mainly conservation of mural paintings. Co-founder (1997) and Chairman (2010-) of ENCoRE (European Network for Conservation-Restoration Education).

14.01.  Eduard Freudmann, Artist/Author