Villa Romana, Florence

Osservatorio Urbano/Lungomare:

• Angelika Burtscher
• Roberto Gigliotti
• Daniele Lupo

Screenplay and Direction: Angelika Burtscher, Roberto Gigliotti and Daniele Lupo
Cast: Curzio Castellan, Claudio Degasperi, Riccardo Franchi, Gianpietro Gai, Andreas Pichler, Teodora Lara Rivadeneira and Monica Trettel
Photography: Daniel Mahlknecht
Editing and Sound: Stefano Bernardi

The city of our concern is the provincial capital and the centre of a vast metropolitan area of more than 1,500,000 inhabitants. Today it has 350,000 inhabitants and its population is approximately 90% of Italian origin. The origins of the population’s foreign communities’ are different and varied (from South East Asia to Europe).
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Read more: Una città monumento (in Italian)

Mayor – as the highest administrative and political office in the city, the mayor signs and assumes the responsibility of issued regulations, for the management of the problematic situation in which the city finds itself. As a political figure, the mayor enjoys considerable visibility and defines the broad direction for the development.
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Read more: Ruoli dei partecipanti (in Italian)

The mayor opens the discussion with an intervention of 1 minute maximum. He/she presents his/her goals and visions for the “Regulations for civil coexistence in the city”
Each round of discussion lasts 15 minutes.
The table of negotiations is a table of discussion and not a summary of the meetings!
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Read more: Regolamento (in Italian)

Lungomare promotes since 2005 the OU_Osservatorio Urbano project. Since its foundation in 2003, Lungomare has offered itself as a meeting place and as somewhere to exchange views on project culture and on creative arts. The underlying nature of these discussions is the curators’ desire not only to exclusively address experts but also to involve the public on a vast scale. Furthermore, the curators of the gallery have transformed these discussions into tangible interventions created both in the Lungomare exhibition space and in public spaces. The leitmotiv which links these interventions is the exploration of everyday life in all its forms. It was also starting from these assumptions that the OU_Osservatorio Urbano project was born.

The project takes on the challenge of tackling the theme of the city, avoiding a direct dialogue with the traditional instruments of town planning which are too closely connected with an objective representation of data and too far from common comprehension. A transversal approach was defined and phenomenon were tackled which were different from those usually dealt with by urban analysis and planning. The concentration was deliberately moved onto aspects such as spontaneity, emotions and unpredictability. Moreover, in order to widen the point of view proposed by the project, word is passed in the projects of OU_Osservatorio Urbano onto other disciplines and other outlooks.

The OU_Osservatorio Urbano is structed as a temporary workshop, within which it is possible to come face to face with the images and impressions that the inhabitants have of the city in which they live. The temporary laboratory is a wider long term project which proposes the objective of observing urban space in an intuitive and interdisciplinary fashion, and the creative processing of strategies for urban reading and perception.

12.05.2011
„urban matters – For a new role of art in the context of urban developments“
Lecture by Barbara Holub (transparadiso, Vienna)

Screening: „Sette per Sette“
(Video, production of Lungomare / Urban Observatory)

Barbara Holub präsentiert Projekte aus ihrer / transparadisos Praxis und stellt urban-matters.org vor: Wie kann künstlerisch-urbanes Handeln zu neuen Tools, Taktiken und Strategien führen, die die Komplexität aktueller Herausforderungen von Stadtentwicklung als gesellschaftspolitische Verantwortung jenseits neoliberalen Pragmatismus behandeln?
urban-matters.org ist Teil des Forschungsprojekts Planning Unplanned, das Barbara Holub am Institut für Kunst und Gestaltung, TU Wien, leitet. Im Zentrum steht dabei die Frage von „Planbarkeit“ vor dem Hintergrund sich permanent verändernder Parameter, denen konventionelle Methoden wie der Masterplan nicht mehr gerecht werden können.

Planning Unplanned untersucht die Möglichkeit einer neuen Rolle künstlerisch-urbanen Handelns im Zusammenhang von Stadtentwicklung, die Rolle des „urban practitioners“. Diese basiert auf den aktuellen künstlerischen und experimentellen-urbanistischen Praktiken, die in den letzten 10 Jahren allzu oft für kurzfristige Events zur Aktivierung vergessener Räume, für Problemlösungen wie dem Schaffen von Identität neuer Stadtviertel oder dem Herstellen von Kommunikation in urbanen Konfliktsituationen mißbraucht wurden, anstatt diese Praktiken als langfristiges und verantwortungsvolles Eingreifen in gesellschaftspolitische Prozesse zu begreifen, das der Komplexität dieser Prozesse Rechnung trägt.

Press release: Lungomare at Villa Romana (in German)
Sette per Sette (catalog: Villa Romana)

Autonomous Province of Bolzano-South Tyrol, Culture Departments
Produced with the support of Villa Romana (Firenze)