Producing Desires in the City

In the Alte Saline in Hallein yesterday Christoph Schäfer entertained us once more in his inimical style. He admitted he was a little “talked out” having already spoken at the opening of his exhibition, Lamentation for Ur, and at the "City is Our Factory" session last Wednesday. So today he decided to engage with some of the questions raised by the various artists and speakers over the last two weeks.

Two themes in particular had caught his attention: the question as to how to operate within political and social movements, and the problems which arise when producing art in the age of mass creativity.

He began the session by showing us a quite brilliant film in which he considered ideas of “paradise” as constructed within an area of urban space in Hamburg. Deeply satirical and ironic, his tour of these “gardens” could not avoid the comedy which his observations provided. Nevertheless, the film raises questions of how we create, consider, and appropriate these spaces. Turning to the Romantic Tradition, Schäfer drew upon Hogarth’s concept of the “line of beauty” and its realisation in the work of Capability Brown: in the Romantic garden, “everything is transformed into art...a totality of aesthetics”.

Such notions can apply to the image city of today and the possibilities which exist to appropriate space. Here we can see ways in which art can “dissolve into reality”. Schäfer gave us two examples of the highly politicised “production of desires” taking place within urban spaces. The first concerned Hamburg residents’ ultimately successful battle to save an area of St. Pauli from developers and create a space for people. The Park Fiction Collective proved ways in which art could intervene in wider life. The second example concerned the attempt to save the Kukutza Gaztetxea youth cultural centre in Bilbao. While the campaign may have been unsuccessful, the astounding film they produced remains a testament to the remarkable vision and talents of those involved.

As ever, Christoph Schäfer entertained as he informed, a talk which was artistically and politically aware, sophisticated without ever talking down to his audience. There is much to be learned here.