Exploring Intergenerational Practices of Care in Vienna and Beyond - MAK Exhibition Contribution

The Vienna Biennale for Change 2021: Planet Love: Climate Care in the Digital Age at MAK - Museum for Applied Arts with a contribution by students of the master project "Exploring Intergenerational Practices of Care in Vienna and Beyond: Intersectional Perspectives for Society and Environment" has opened and will take place from May 28thto October 3rd 2021. The project explored the complexity of demographic change by using ethnographic filming both as a research method and means of dissemination. We engaged in recent debates around ‘ageing societies’, practices and relations of care, and what these debates mean in the context of urban development and particularly for the disciplines of planning, architecture and urban design. The students have been working with the findings of our book "Care and the City: Encounters with Urban Studies" submitted to Routledge, which will be published Open Access in fall. Based on these findings, the students conducted their own empirical fieldwork in Vienna, Ankara, and Shanghai and conceptualized their findings in the form of a research table. The table was built by the students themselves and integrated into the exhibition. Also part of the exhibition contribution are three films that the students developed, shot and edited over the course of the semester. The films can be viewed here.

Publications

KNIERBEIN, S. and VIDERMAN, T (2018 Routledge)

Public Space Unbound: Urban Emancipation and the Post-Political Condition.

Through an exploration of emancipation in capitalist urbanization, this book argues the political is enacted through the everyday practices of publics producing space. This suggests democracy is a spatial practice co-constituted by residents, places and practices rather than an abstract professional field organizing people and movements.

Public Space Unbound brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to examine spaces, conditions and processes in which emancipatory practices impact the everyday life of citizens. We ask: How do emancipatory mo(ve)ments relate with public space under ‘post-political conditions’? In a time when democracy, solidarity and utopia are in crisis, is it still productive to claim future progress by urban revolution, or shall we rather look at small emancipatory mo(ve)ments that characterize present everyday life?

Announcement by Routledge

Review by Nicole Kirchberger in dérive
HOU, J.and KNIERBEIN, S. (2017 Routledge, in print)
City Unsilenced: Urban resistance and public space in the age of shrinking democracy.

What do the recent urban resistance tactics around the world have in common? What are the roles of public space in these movements? What are the implications of urban resistance for the remaking of public space in the "age of shrinking democracy"? To what extent do these resistances move from anti- to alter-politics?

City Unsilenced brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars and scholar-activists to examine the spaces, conditions and processes in which neoliberal practices have profoundly impacted the everyday social, economic, and political life of citizens and communities around the globe. They examine the commonalities and specificities of urban resistance movements that respond to those impacts. They focus on how such movements make use of and transform the meanings and capacity of public space. They investigate their ramifications in the continued practices of renewing democracies. A broad collection of cases is presented and analyzed, including Movimento Passe Livre (Brazil), Google Bus Blockades San Francisco (USA), the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) (Spain), the Piqueteros Movement (Argentina), Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong), post-Occupy Gezi Park (Turkey), Sunflower Movement (Taiwan), Occupy Oakland (USA), Syntagma Square (Greece), 1DMX (Mexico), Miyashita Park Tokyo (Japan), 15-M Movement (Spain), and Train of Hope Vienna (Austria).

By better understanding the processes and implications of the recent urban resistances, City Unsilenced contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the role and significance of public space in the practice of lived democracy and lived space.

Announcement by Routledge.

Review by Routledge

Interview with Jeff Hou in UW News.

 

Dates

10 September 2020

Our new Office Address is: TU Wien, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space, E 285-02, Karlsgasse 11, Rooftop Floor, A-1040 Vienna. Austria.

15 May - 15 August 2021

Research Stay Angelika Gabauer at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany.

28 May - 3 October 2021

21 MAK Vienna Biennale for Change 2021, Museum for Applied Arts, Exhibition, Climate Care: Reimagining Shared Planetary Futures, Participation in collaboration with ETH Case, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. More Information

1 - 2 September 2021

The Crisis of Democracy in the Age of Cities Conference, Tel Aviv University, Israel (invited participation). More information.

9 - 10 September 2021

Session Participation UK - Ireland Planning Research Conference. Session: Public Space - Future Imaginaries and Research Avenues. (invited)

11 September 2021

Workshop Coordination Virtual Training for Scholarship Holders of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation in the alpine countries (Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein)  "Times of Crises: Challenges and Approaches to Solutions" , 10am -1pm CET (invited)

14 October 2021

AESOP Thematic Groups Fika: Introducing the Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures, 13:00-14:30 (CET), online. More information.

2 December 2021

AESOP Thematic Groups Fika: Introducing the Thematic Group for Planning/Conflict, 13:00-14:30 (CET), online. More information.