Urban Life - Part 15

posted by viktor on 2006/07/21 14:12

[ Urban Life ]

URBAN POTENTIALS - HIDDEN RECOURSES IN THE CITY Public art works and events in five Budapest locations 4-30 July 2006

Urban Potentials (UP) maps those possibilities that lie in urban public places and community locations used by citizens, the opportunities yet to be exploited, and thus seeks perspectives and creative solutions to form the urban environment.

The European city - within this scheme - is not defined as a given construction, but as a laboratory, as a location of various processes. The involvement of various professional and art fields becomes relevant from this perspective since as a result of their cooperation with the policy-makers in charge of the primary shaping of public places, and their critical and creative working methods they can be initiators in the formation of both aesthetically and functionally successful community spaces.

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The Budapest action-series in July is composed of five projects that are run in various spots in the city. The participating artists highlight relevant problems that determine the capital's daily life: the city's relationship to the Danube, the reinterpretation of the concept and function of public places, the increase of green areas in the city centre, the reutilisation of empty premises and shop windows that disfigure the cityscape, and the creation of the notion that in the formation of the city environment the inhabitants should play an active role.

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UP is realised in the collaboration of five international art institutions: Kunsthaus Dresden (D); TENT, Rotterdam (NL); BWA, Galeria Awangarda, Wroclaw (PL); Galerie 5020, Salzburg (A); Studio of Young Artists Association, Budapest (H).


Antworten

Budapest

A picture from the heydays of liberal Budapest - when a whole (though short) underground line could be built within two years. And M1, the famous "Földalatti", Budapest's yellow line, still works. I have never seen this image of the construction on Andrássy before, so be full of admiration - and I am not telling your where it is from...

The M1-line so is a memento to both: a liberal mayor (for what Budapest was capable of) and the Siemens company, who more than a hundred years ago was capable of producing faultless underground trams (not like today's Combino crap...)

Budapest has – together with St. Petersburg and Vienna – one of the largest tramway networks of the world. The tramway type "UV" – standing for "Új villamos - New tramway" and pictured above – was designed in the early forties and is still a symbol for Hungary's once high-tech railway-carriage industry. With the arrival of the new low-floor-trams in spring 2006 – built by Siemens in Vienna and not too beautiful – this landmark of Budapest will vanish from the cityscape.
György Petri: Imre Nagy

Du warst unpersönlich wie die anderen bebrillten Führer
im Sakko, deine Stimme war nicht metallen,
denn du wußtest nicht, was du eigentlich sagen solltest,
so unvermittelt den vielen Versammelten. Gerade das Plötzliche
war ungewohnt für dich. Du alter Mann mit dem Zwicker,
ich hörte dich, ich war enttäuscht.
Ich wußte noch nichts

vom Betonhof, wo der Staatsanwalt
das Urteil gewiß heruntergeleiert hat,
ich wußte noch nichts von der groben Reibung des Stricks, von der letzten Schmach.

Wer will sagen, was sagbar gewesen wäre
von jenem Balkon aus, Möglichkeiten, unter Maschinengewehren
verfeuert, kehren nicht zurück. Gefängnis und Tod
wetzen die Schärfe des Augenblicks nicht aus,

wenn der eine Scharte bekommen hat. Aber wir dürfen uns erinnern
an den zögernden, verletzten, unentschlossenen Mann,
der gerade seinen Platz zu finden schien,

als wir davon aufwachten,
daß man unsere Stadt zerschoß.

Übersetzt von Hans-Henning Paetzke

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