Bilk. A part of the city should be theirs...
- Series: Ökonomie
In the course of the Gängeviertel event, a new manifest regarding the Ruhr area was published on the blog Land for free. It reads as follows:
The Ruhr area is in the middle of a structural change – and it is also the European Capital of Culture 2010. The exciting questions are: which structures have changed in what way? And what kind of culture are we talking about?
Hope, courage, and local heroes are the buzz words since the beginning of the year. The Capital of Culture is criticised only very tentatively. A political discussion about the „culturised“ spectacle and the prevalent communal politics seems to be ungrateful, or even cynical. And, seriously, who would actually be against creativity, arts, and culture? The application for Cultural Capital was sort of daring and included the wildest pilot projects such as „Land for Free” (www.neueraeume.de) - but the official programme has cancelled that project, let alone wants to know anything about that kind of bold and subversive presents anymore.
What will happen if nothing happens?
There is more than a fair share of wasteland and free areas in the Ruhr area 2010. Put together, their total calculative area would be an additional ninth city (www.ruhr-2030.de/neuntestadt).
The potential use of these “vacant areas” may be free of many things – but it is certainly not free of profitable commercial interests and of property claims. Thus, there are a lot of waste and/or vacant areas, but no free ones available for use. The im/possibility to withdraw from this complete process, yet to arrange yourself with this life at the same time – that is certainly one of the key issues for urban social movements in the ongoing debate on gentrification.
It is all about the old question: „Land for Free“? Free of what?
In capitalism, first, the merchandise is free, and as long as land is a merchandise, it is new land, building land, or whatever – but it is no free land for use in the emancipatory sense. Undeniably, political, social, cultural, autonomic centres – so-called sociocultural centres – are vital for the (sub)cultural infrastructure of a creative city. On December 8, 2009, a survey dealing with the importance of sociocultural centres in NRW was presented in the Domicil club in Dortmund, containing the following statement: “With their low-threshold room offers for artists and other self-employed creative entrepreneurs, sociocultural centres provide a so far mostly unnoticed service of an endogenous culture and creative industry development which is hardly adequately ‘rewarded’ by the economic promotion departments of the respective cities”.
Bilking
It is obvious what the new, flexible, creative exploitation of human resources is all about in urban development – business as usual – but you may accuse the local politicians in charge of a provincialism counterproductive for the ambitious marketing campaign regarding the Ruhr metropolis. But what does that mean for 6 million people? Aren’t they the most important asset of this area? Will they simply stand by and pay for it all?
Mind you, we don’t want to say goodbye to the creative atmosphere of departure in the Ruhr area, but we “decline to accept this logic” (Mustermensch Duisburg) of the “business idea” (AG Kritische Kulturhauptstadt) and are “fed up” (ZAKK Düsseldorf), „are against forced savings till closure“ (Schauspielhaus Wuppertal) and “don’t want to be part of this shit” (LAG Soziokultur NRW). We don’t play along to this game anymore – we can neither play nor live according to its rules. Especially the Ruhr area knows some things or two about hard and dirty work and won’t reject any given creative redefinition of it. We don’t want to turn away from creativity, (sub)culture, and progressive politics: the only thing we offer to abandon is the production process and its distributions mechanism. Of course we’re a metropolis – and a very unique one indeed!
Entitlement to a part of the city
We, the apprentices, students, artists, people engaged in the cultural sector, musicians, political activists, creative self-exploiters, yesterday’s upper middle class children, today’s precarious survival artists and tomorrow’s futuristic avant-garde are not only a part of that much-quoted creativity – we are the nucleus, the motor, the start of the city’s motion and movement!
Now, the state makes itself independent, de-democratises itself, and leaves welfare to the church again - we demand our right to participate, our right to a city! We do not demand this right from the state, but from a critical, democratic public! Our objective is to put standstills and vacancies in urban development into perspective: the global market forces are unable to respond adequately to local needs of the population. Said standstills and vacancies are not only symptoms, but the beginning and the end of an evidence of incapacity in this economic order.
We hardly can withdraw ourselves from the market’s system, we’re an involuntary part of the price spiral, but we refer to its democratic legitimation and say:
We are different! We are a part of the city! There are many of us! And we need space! There is enough of it available. We only want to use it instead of constantly exchanging it among the highest bidders!
Here’s to a new culture of room use. Simply bilk. We are entitled to get a part of the city!
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