Kathrin Böhm & Doina Petrescu
Kathrin Böhm is an artist and founding member of the London based art and architecture collective Public Works, and the pan-European artist initiative Myvillages whose work is collaborative and towards a expansive and collectively produced public realm. Recent projects include the “International Village Shop” (2005 – ongoing), “Trade Show” at Eastside Projects in Birmingham (co-curated with Gavin Wade), “Good News From Nowhere” an exhibition and events programme at The Architecture Foundation in London, and “Vorrastkammer (Pantry)” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Current projects include ‘Company: Movement, Deals and Drinks’ in east London (2014, ongoing), the ‘International Village Show’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig (2015-16) and the ongoing London based ‘Haystacks’ series.
Doina Petrescu is a Professor of Architecture and Design Activism at the University of Sheffield. She is the co-founder of atelier d’architecture autogérée. Her research focuses on gender and space in contemporary society, co-design and participation. Her approach broadens the scope of architectural discourse by bringing cultural, social, and political issues to inform the design and thinking processes in architecture. Her research methodology combines approaches from architectural theory and design, contemporary arts, social sciences, political philosophy, and feminist theory. She is the editor of The Social (Re)Production of Architecture (2015), Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space (2007) and co-editor of Architecture and Participation (2005), Urban Act (2007), Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures (2009), and Trans-Local-Act: Cultural Practices Within and Across (2010).
Local production and Trans-local dissemination
In her presentation together with Doina Petrescu Kathrin Böhm will be presenting two projects (Eco Nomadic School and International Village Shop) which address collective local production and are linked through pan-national and trans-cultural connections to the Colombes based r-Urban project by aaa.
Both projects have grown out of collective and collaborative efforts and programmes to link specific local research, activities and knowledge to other local projects.
The Eco Nomadic School and International Village Show facilitate a trans-local exchange and dissemination with specific local projects and locally produced goods and knowledge. Kathrin will describe and illustrate the methodologies and cultures of exchange within both projects, with a focus on the strategies both projects pursue in order to keep them accessible to a broad range of co-producers and users.
SUGGESTED BOOKS
Interesting questions / statements
I am an artist with an interest in architecture and economy as two realms where our sense of the possible societal and commoning is shaped through everyday activities. Even though I work and present myself as an artist, I prefer to think of myself as a builder or a dealer who acts within and across everyday situations and whose work is set out to extend collective practices of spatial and economical production, whilst lacking a professionally inherited desire to make a building or to profit financially.
I often remember following statement from a recent presentation by Paul Roncken which was roughly : “our own professions might be the biggest hinderance of actual change”.
Statement 03 is an image of a glass half-full
