Article > From a Patchwork of Territories to a Network of Collective Spaces , PEAR magazine (Paper for Emerging Architectural Research), Issue 5: Medellín Through a Kaleidoscope, London, January 2013.

The radical transformation of Medellín’s cityscape has been recognised internationally, through dramatic pictures of cable-cars flying over shantytowns, spectacular Library Parks designed by prominent architects and most recently the installation of a public escalator in the most violent barrio of the city. Furthermore, the Medellín-model has become a desirable path of development for many Latin American cities, embedded in social inequality, weak infrastructure and high rates of criminality.

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Lecture > Alternative Infrastructures of the Post-Political City / Faculty of Architecture Brno_ October 2012

As a part of the Lecture Series under the title Contesting Space-Architecture as a Social Practice, PUF had a chance to present diverse ways of building alternative infrastructures, in order to oppose current situation in which majority is excluded from the urban governance. Beyond political protests, pranks and social-media driven gatherings, lecture had aim to reposition architect as a responsible person in the struggle for political in the public arena and to see potentials of performative planning for creation of collective knowledge.Particular focus has been given to formation of alternative cultural platforms, tools for tactical urbanism and offline-communication devices.

Medellin, Colombia, Aug. 2012, in collaboration with El Puente_Lab

Cultural activation of the Medellín River has been under agenda of the project Carrito Cultural (mobile cultural infrastructure), exploring potential of tactical interventions at particular spots in order to change citizen’s perceptions of the abandoned and hardly accessible area right in the middle of the vibrant metropolis. By inviting street-artist collective Deúniti to paint large-scale mural at the one of the river sedimentations, atmosphere of the conventional city-beach has been staged, involving homeless people that live at the location and inviting random citizens that use the river occasionally for the bike-based recreation. After capturing this unusual situation, local percussion collective Alibombo has borrowed us sound background produced at the car’s cemetery.

Open Lecture > Emerging Critical Cartography: Activists mapping and Collective Knowledge_Vilnius_May 2012.

The lecture introduced the concept of critical cartography in the digital and internet era, focusing on collaborative mapping strategies and diversification of mapping agents, as well as experimental activist/artistic drawings. The idea of the formation of collective knowledge through mapping was elaborated by introducing strategies of counter-mapping, networks-mapping and crisis-mapping.

Inability of Master Plan (based on infinite growth) to deal with the climate change asks for the socio-cultural shift and micro-urbanism strategies. Alternative infrastructures in the form of offline sharing, crowd-based finance models or low-tech energy producers, appear as a creative answer to urban uncertainties. PUF presented new forms of planning based on resources-sharing, DIY culture and self-made infrastructures, with an aim to provoke discussion about non-technocratic ways to deal with the climatic turbulence.

Goethe Institute Belgrade, December 2011.

November 2011, Calle9, Medellin (Colombia)

Lecture > Tiny Empowerments_Berlin case

Art interventions in the public space became important part of the urban communications. In the city of Berlin, cultural developments that contrast “creative industries” generate plenty of alternative spaces and micro-entrepreneurs with social responsibility. Beside the administrative curtain, cultural funds and patrons, those networks are establishing new labour forms empowered by information and communication technologies.

After introducing some case studies from Berlin as a sort of inspiration, together with the short movie Pequeños Empoderamientos (Tiny Empowerments), open discussion about situation in Medellin took place together with local artists and activists.

October 2011, in collaboration with Critical Urbanism Lab

Both the form and content of the J.U.S.T. project are motivated by a desire to counter one of the effects of globalization, particularly visible in, though by no means limited to, Eastern Europe. This is the sense that development is only possible when international capital is interested in investing in a particular site. The challenge of the J.U.S.T. project is to reverse this logic – can jamming spaces on a local level act as a catalyst for urban transformations aiming at greater social justice? Urban interventions have long been utilized in critical or artistic approaches.What this project aims to do is test their potential for providing alternative development strategies for underused spaces without flirting with power structures.

August 2011, video director & editing Julia Kloiber

Making-visible is a prerequisite for collective knowledge – and each mode of production makes their own, be it through visual or other channels. AXP C4 aims to question the differences and similarities between science and the plastic arts in terms of making-visible. In a playful examination of the scientific format of the conference, work and interventions are seen through open debates about science, art and architectural production. In itself a specific format of making-visible, the video at the same time documents what happened on occasion of C4 and shapes the retrospective perception of the event.

Article The Digital Habitat and Urban Editing as Emerging Practice, with Jan Bovelet, MONU Magazine #14 (Editing Urbanism), April 2011

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Despite the current urgency to deal with the enormous potential of the already existing urban material as Urban Editors, there seems still to be an enormous lack of interest in topics such as urban and architectural restoration, preservation, renovation, redevelopment, renewal or adaptive reuse of old structures among architects and urban designers. But ignorance in this matter can only be dismissed as socially irresponsible and economically and culturally unacceptable. But what might be the reason for the prevailing ignorance? Who is to blame? Why is Urban Editing considered to be so utterly unattractive?

Article OpenStreetMap as empowering tool for collective visualizations, in The Anxious Prop / Case 4, Reviewing Making-Visible, March 2011

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Jan 2011, collaboration with  Jan Bovelet

As an object that has been constructed to be destroyed, Wrecking Pendulum contains complex geometrical patterns in the prototyping and digital fabrication phase and is constituted by its performative character rooted in the idea of the prop in theater and film. Questioning production of space through the idea of producing site-specific knowledge, the project asked for the incorporation of cultural memory and existing social landscape at Alexanderplatz as crucial factors in the formation of the new, as opposed to top-down imposed and economic driven urban morphologies.

In co-opearation with video artists Julia Kloiber and Christoph&Stephan Hartmann and audio artist Anatol Sirous the analytical visual documentation of the temporal exhibition project was developed into a small new project of its own.

Climate change has been heavily discussed from the meteorological, political or technical perspective. However, existing social change caused by shift in environment seems to be marginalized and put at the bottom of priority list.

PUF presented unconventional ways of dealing with climate change, following grass-roots initiatives, micro-ecosystems of local communities and increasing number of artists interested in this topic.

Goethe Institute Belgrade, October 2010

Article Wrecking Pendulum, in The Anxious Prop, Case 2, Have Balls (Eccentric)

Article Black Swan Spaces, in The Anxious Prop, Case 3, The Black Swan Issue

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…Cities are often the central battlefields of modern wars, resulting in the massive destruction of urban structures. In processes of reconstruction, international actors initiate urban transformation in very different regions of the world, using strikingly similar patterns. But which concepts of the city do these interventions follow? Is there a special global mode of urbanisation in post-war cities, a “UN urbanism”? Using the examples of two post-war cities—Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Kabul (Afghanistan)—this book aims to tackle the question of how the institutions and activities of the international community influence newly emerging daily city life…

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…Anstatt in der U-Bahn Werbung und Nachrichten darüber zu zeigen, wieviele Leute gestern durch welche Bombe starben und somit die Leute, die sowieso schon nicht glücklich darüber sind, zur Arbeit fahren zu müssen negativ zu beeinflussen, sollten wir all diese Einrichtungen und Medien dazu nutzen, die Leute zum Handeln zu ermutigen; die Stadt nicht nur als Spielplatz zum Spielen zu benutzen, sondern auch als Teil des kollektiven Designs…

Interview by Jan Kage alias Yaneq

Presenting research project and web-archive  Cracking The City

Platoon. Cultural Development, Berlin

Berlin Pioneers trilogy

Following spatial tactics and socio-political meaning of temporary use in Berlin

Available only in Serbian

kvart magazine_BLN pioneers_part 1

kvart magazine_BLN pioneers_part 2

kvart magazine_BLN pioneers_part 3

Project Sichuan Hot (S)pots has been published in magazine Urban China vol. 36

Available only in Chinese

Hot (S)pots_Urban China

Issue about Latin-American Metropolis through Space-Time methodology of Milton Santos

Article Medellin: “El Hueco” as a public space

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