“Street Training – city of resepct” , a project that explores uses of public space of Neustadtviertel in Linz through a series of workshops, discussions and events. This research built a laboratory environment in May/June and will culminate in a public presentation at KunstRaum in September 2007 as part of ars electronica.

http://streettraining.blogspot.com/∞
http://streettraining.pangea.at/index30.html∞

Street Training city of respect


The notion of Public space may be a phantom but it’s one that it is worth continually pursuing. The challenge is having the confidence to treat the public spaces as creative crucibles which can contain the chaos and conflict of the social relations which construct them, places where the meaning of the social is negotiated - at once constituted and put at risk.1

“Conflict is not something that befalls an origionally or potentially harmonious urban space. Urban space is the product of conflict”
R Deutsch

“the forms people build, whether in the imagination or on the ground, arise within the current of their involved activity, in the specific relational context of their practical engagements with their surroundings” Ingold quoted in For Space Massey 2005

Project overview
A collective approach to making an exhibition that brings together diverse interested people within a support structure to make video, sound, writing, dance and creative ways of being in the city.
Documentation and mobilization go hand in hand as people go out in to the streets to observe and carry out interventions. Moving through the streets improvising around the architecture, social structures and events that we encounter and training ourselves in being proactive in effecting public space.


We call it Street Training - we want to consistently train our bodies and minds, collectively and individually, in sensitive and proactive engagement with our surroundings in the knowledge that we are constantly producing our environment at the same time as it effects the ways we think and move. Perhaps the thoughts we have the ways we move and behave effect our surroundings as much as building a building, joining a march or planting flowers. At this time of open source culture making use of and at the same time debating the possibility of democratic spaces The first exercise in Street Training is developing or regaining sensitivity to one’s surroundings.

To begin the Process a series of workshops will take place in May where people are asked to reflect on what is going on in neustadtsviertel. Concentrating on what they notice and also what they feel, this process of observation is crucial for sensitizing and tuning in to our selves and our surroundings. People will then be encouraged to begin making interventions, private rituals, urban explorations etc. both large and small - throwing themselves into the rugby scrum of conflicts, alliances, deviance, joyfulness etc that constantly constitute and contest public space. To document in writing, using a camera phone, sound recording, drawing. Documentation of the structures, boundaries and cultures will provide insight into the nature of the spaces being addressed and documentation of interventions, encounters, actions, games, urban exploration, invasions, hugging, pissing, fighting, sleeping will be made available at the training camp as instructional material to encourage others to develop their own street training skills.

We’re not defining the term urban interventions because we think that you and others will have your own ideas of what they are and what they can be we want to encourage active engagement with urban public space in all its forms.
Private rituals might be the things we do as we move through and inhabit the city to make a connection, give meaning and create intimacy with certain places along the way. A private ritual could be the way you spit your gum onto the pavement, counting stairs, hiding something in a tree and coming back for it later or stopping to talk to someone selling on the street.

Possible outcomes
Exhibition as training camp
Video of actions and interventions
Maps
Texts
Photos
Tool kits
Instructions
Diagrams
Recordings
website
Radio interventions – using a concealed radio transmitter to hack into the sound system of shops who are broadcasting from the radio.
Radio instructions – good morning Vietnam style announcements from Radio Fro
Morning workout – early morning broadcasts from radio Fro, Beate becomes the voice of Street Training radio like the strident woman she used to hear on the radio as a little girl.
Field Broadcasts – people who are out on the streets watching and interacting report to an interviewer at the radio station.

First discussion/meal
Brunch: Sunday 18th March 10am – 3pm
KunstRaum Goethestrasse xtd, Goethestraße 22, Linz

we asked what if private becomes public?

"Street Training – city of respect (KR) " ist ein Projekt des KunstRaum Goethestrasse xtd, das in Zusammenarbeit mit Aileen Derieg und der Kuratorin Emily Druiff/GB und der Künstlerin Lotti Child/GB in Kooperation mit Radio FRO entwickelt wird.

Some more questions we are asking:
Is there such a thing as ‘Public Space’?
Who owns the public spaces in Linz and what is permitted in them?
What is this slippery term ‘Social Art’?
What are we subject to as we travel this city?
Can we see Desire Lines – people’s physical imprints in the city?
Can behaviour in the streets change the street?
Street Training is a kind of deviance, how can that be developed?
How can we form alliances rather than compete for space?
How can we work in a way that values each person's way of seeing and being in a place?
What art is capable of that others [other fields, disciplines, approaches] are not?
How can “respect” be identified?
Liebe Freundin,
Lieber Freund!

Hiermit möchten wir Dich einladen, mit uns gemeinsam die ersten
Schritte des Projekts “Street Training – city of respect” zu setzen.
Das Projekt setzt sich mit den Nutzungen des öffentlichen Raums des
Linzer Neustadtviertels durch eine Reihe von Workshops, Diskussionen
und Veranstaltungen auseinander. Mit dieser Recherche wird ein
Laborsetting gestaltet, das im Juni offen sein wird und im September
2007 mit einer öffentlichen Ausstellung im Kunstraum kulminiert. Wir
würden uns über Deine Teilnahme am Projekt sehr freuen und laden
Dich/Sie zur folgenden Veranstaltung ein:

Brunch: Sonntag, den 18. März, 10.00 – 15.00h
KunstRaum Goethestrasse xtd, Goethestraße 22, 4020 Linz

“Street Training – city of respect (KR)” ist ein Projekt des KunstRaum
Goethestrasse xtd, das in Zusammenarbeit mit Aileen Derieg und der
Kuratorin Emily Druiff/GB und der Künstlerin Lottie Child/GB in
Kooperation mit Radio FRO entwickelt wird.

Einige Fragen, die wir uns überlegen:
Worum geht es beim Projekt “Street Training – city of respect (KR)”:
Präsentationen, Diskussionen um die wichtigsten Methoden und Themen
sowie die Möglichkeiten, wie DU Dich einbringen kannst.
- Gibt es überhaupt so etwas wie “öffentlicher Raum”?
- Wer ist der öffentlichen Räumen in Linz und was ist
darin erlaubt?
- Was bedeutet der schwer fassbare Begriff “soziale Kunst”?
- Wodurch werden wir beim Durchqueren dieser Stadt geprägt?
- Können wir in der Stadt “Sehnsuchtslinien” – physische Spuren der
Menschen – sehen?
- Kann das Verhalten auf der Straße die Straße verändern?
- “Street-Training” ist eine Art Abweichung, wie kann sie entwickelt
werden?
- Wie können wir Allianzen bilden, anstatt um den Raum zu
konkurrieren?
- Wie können wir so arbeiten, dass die jeweiligen Sichtweisen und
Daseinsweisen wertgeschätzt werden?
- Was kann die Kunst, das andere nicht können?
- Wie kann “Respekt” festgestellt werden?

Unser bisheriges Street-Training-Labor:
http://del.icio.us/aderieg/stkr∞

Das Street-Training Team freut sich auf ein baldiges Kennenlernen!

footnote
1 Doreen Massey, For Space

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