Anthony Iles - No Room to Move: From Neoliberal Cities to Disaster Capitalism
Regeneration [and its Discontents]
In this presentation Anthony Iles will discuss the formative background of the two concepts: gentrification and regeneration; some recent shifts and developments in the language used to describe state-led or developer-led urban transformation projects in the UK; survey case studies of artists operating each 'side of the barricades'; offer some reflections on both recent changes and invariants in art's relationship to urban development and housing; and finally, outline a new project, Housing Art, which takes measure of the present affordances and difficulties framing art's relation to the city as we move from a phase of neoliberal urbanism to disaster capitalism.
PARALLEL EVENTS
TOMAS MARCINKEVIČIUS
“Autonomy" in (a Couple Cities of) Central and Eastern Europe: 1)...what? 2) are we really that into it?
February 26 (Wednesday}
19:00 Luna6 (Zanavykų st. 6, Vilnius)
NICOLA GUY
Restitution and Alternative Cultural Practices in Unified Berlin
KAROLINA RIMKUTĖ
Co-optation of Squat Aesthetics as a Neoliberal Strategy for the Normalisation of Precarity
AFTERPARTY with Zolo, Onegin ir Boleslove
2020 02 28 (Friday)
20:00 @ XI20 (for the location of the venue please write tourist@hardcore.lt)
Anthony Iles is an Associate Lecturer at Northampton University and a Visiting Tutor at the School of Art & Design, Middlesex University. He is the author, with Josephine Berry, of the book, No Room to Move: Art and the Regenerate City (Mute Books, London 2011). His research centers on the question of social agency in urban space re/production: from squatting movements to visionary architecture, his analysis draws out tensions between urban development and gentrification in the post-industrial cityscape. Further, he is Commissioning Editor for the series Documents in Contemporary Art published by the Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press. A founder member of the Full Unemployment Cinema and a Contributing Editor with Metamute.
The impact of global capital and foreign investment on local communities is being felt in major cities across the world.
Since the 2012 Olympics was awarded to the British capital, East London has been at the heart of the largest and most all-encompassing top-down urban regeneration strategy in civic history. At the centre of this has been the local government, Newham Council, and their daring proposal: an “Arc of Opportunity” for developers to transform 1,412 hectares of Newham. This proposal was outlined in a short film, London’s Regeneration Supernova, and shown to foreign developers and businesses at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.
While the sweeping changes to East London have been keenly felt by locals, the symbolism and practicalities of these changes – for the local area, and the world alike – are overdue serious investigation. Regeneration Songs is about how places are turned into simple stories for packaged investment opportunities, how people living in those places relate to those stories, and how music and art can render those stories in many different ways.
