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Ποιειν & Πραττειν - To Create and to do ... Non-Profit Urban Society
Understanding Youth
When you're distracted
And unwitting time
Lies on your forehead,
I am overcome by sadness
For your full-blooded youth
The dross of time.
Katerina Anghelaki Rooke
Editorial remark:
The role of Poiein kai Partein is to provide as NGO especially in these turbulent times due to the financial crisis orientation and bring about further going cultural actions. Once these actions can derive out of lived through experiences substantial knowledge, that then can become community wide ones as the case with Kids' 'Guernica. A prime interest is to know which basic forms of understanding allow us to shape life in cities. Hence answers to questions about planning, culture and economy have to include ideas and ways of perceiving things as given by philosophers, poets, artists but also by children, youth and citizens.
The website aims to become a critical memory base for such actions. Efforts are made to link ongoing discussions about culture and economy to cities and planning. This shall include position papers which may give further orientation or at least an indication of things to come. For example, Bart Verschaffel has consistently linked cultural development to public space - public truth, in order to allow for the questioning of one's opinion by someone else since everything can be treated as cultural truths.
Always work within Poiein kai Prattein is done in the awareness that the complexity of questions demand a comprehensive approach. For this may stand the ten finger approach which was started with the Fifth Seminar 'Cultural actions for Europe' held in Athens 1994. Alone what ideas were discussed back then, they can be taken as a measure of time in today's world. This world in the making is badly in need of new ideas which allow to make use of culture, but does not abuse culture (Brendan Kennelly) to bring about economic development.
Over the years Poiein kai Prattein has attempted to retain consistency in all its efforts to bring the cultural and philosophical dimensions to bear upon the economy, but also upon cities within Europe and this by including the analytical dimension of urban/regional planning. The aim as already entailed in the name of Poiein kai Prattein, namely 'to create and to do', is to bring together cultural and analytical approaches to life in cities, in order to allow for further going reflections. It has to be a methodological approach which is capable of consistency over time. Always in view of politics and reality, such independent knowledge is needed as to allow for the articulation of the most pertinent questions.
The cultural, analytical and reflective method can be linked to policy and political processes but it will still have to give testimony to this independence. In philosophy this shall be thematized as the role of the 'imaginary witness' (Adorno). It will have to underline as well the fact that even small things matter. Especially the latter can make in the long run a huge difference in how things are perceived, approached, experienced and hence shaped. This is especially the case of future generations who are forced to grow up in worlds not of their own making but soon in their responsibility. As a taxi driver said to the poetess Katerina Anghelaki Rooke in view of the crisis ahead, it is not their generation which have to face the austerity measures but the youth who has to pay for all the mistakes made by the older generations, including their neglect of life to come. Practically the consumer society has no future as it fails to anticipate a future outside its model of existence. That is more than tragic.
Poiein kai Prattein attempts to relate to the European level for several reasons. There are the experiences made in European projects such as the Article 10 ERDF CIED (Cultural Innovation and Economic Development) project, but also LORE, MIRIAD 21, SISMA, HERMES etc. It includes experiences of working in the European Parliament and doing studies about cultural planning, museums and cultural impact of the European Capitals of Culture. In respect to the latter Poiein kai Prattein has collaborated with the ECCM Network and in particular with Spyros Mercouris as its honorary president till the network ceased to exist in 2010. During that collaboration resulted the ECCM Symposiums in 2005 and the 'Productivity of Culture' in 2007.
Currently Poiein kai Prattein is a member of the Intercultural Platform on Intercultural Dialogue.
Archive work:
As to updates and new postings, there is first of all a photo report by Kostas Kartelias after he had visited Aids victims in Zambia under the heading 'International'. 'Beyond images' has seen as well in the meantime many additions, including numerous artists and photographers.
The decision to include under 'Europe' documentation of European Capitals of Cities was made after the 25 year celebration of European Capitals of Culture in Brussels March 23 - 24, 2010. Since 1985 it is one of the most successful European projects. The materials stem in part from work done already within www.heritageradio.net (2003 - 2006) to bring about a complementary online exhibition for the ECCM exhibition 'Twenty Years later' as shown in Patras 2006. Parallel to that it reflects some of the collaborative work done with Spyros Mercouris and the ECCM network.The last work done jointly was for the ECCM Symposium 'Producitivity of Culture'. The documentation entails also the experience of a transition from the previous ECCM network to new types of networking within Europe. Since 2006 there has been created an informal network called the ECOC policy group and the University Network of European Capitals of Culture. Of interest is the growing use of cultural impact studies to enhance evaluation as required by the European Commission e.g. Liverpool 08 impact study.
Ongoing activities of Kids' Guernica are documented as well with more to follow as actions are continuing to bring about ever more focused linkages between Picasso's Guernica and contemporary concerns about peace in view of ongoing conflicts especially in Afghanistan, but not only. For there is the world wide case of child abuse. There took place in January 2010 an exhibition and an "art and social justice" Symposium in Tallahassee, Florida and one in Nagasaki to mark there 'ground zero'. 2010 means 15 years of existence of Kids' Guernica. The main celebration shall take place, therefore, in Ubud, Bali come August 2010 (as the 10th year of anniversary took place there in 2005). Currently international art students are making novel and first hand experiences about 'human pain - the human cry' in a Kids' Guernica workshop at the University of Saint Denis in Paris under the auspices of Prof. Monique Kissel. They plan to hold an exhibition in Vincennes (Paris) come October. Also one summer exhibition will take place in Ohio / USA.
Furthermore under the section of 'conferences' can be found several new materials, including a documentation of the 'Myth of the City'. This conference was held in Crete 1995. The conference brought about magic like experiences. The papers are still relevant to today's discussion about life in cities, while the poems like 'This' (this is life) by Katerina Anghelaki Rooke convey by themselves their powerful meanings. See
http://poieinkaiprattein.org/conferences-symposiums-workshops/myth-of-the-city---program/
This online publication underlines a wish to re-visit this conference which had poets and city planners discuss life in cities. The next conference may take place under following theme: "Spaces and the quality of life in cities."
See as well under 'conferences" materials of both the Fourth Seminar: "Culture, Building Stone for Europe 2002" held at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium in 1993 and of Fifth Seminar: "Cultural Actions for Europe" held in Athens, Greece 1994. Both were an initiative of the Flemish Government in Belgium to organise such a seminar in the EU country holding for six months the EU Presidency.
The Fourth Seminar 'Culture, Building Stone for Europe 2002'
Hatto Fischer 29.4.2010
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