1/2/8 – Urban Frictions

How can the boundaries, layers and structures of a city be read? What are the forces and mechanisms that govern the fabric and development of a city? How do self-determined and diverse spaces for action and intermediation arise in complex urban structures? What role can art play in this? 

For the third edition of the research festival 1/2/8, a gathering of international artists, scientists and experts will once again descend on PACT for a focused exchange of knowledge and practical know-how. Over the course of the festival period, forums, project presentations, open laboratory visits and cooperative field studies will introduce participants to new perspectives and offer them time and space in which to explore their own ideas. As the focal point of this chapter, the city will become a setting for artistic, social and political activity in which the clash of different infrastructures, needs and living realities gives rise to complexity and productive friction. 

At the close of their residency period on Saturday 26. May, the participating artists, scientists and scholars invite the public to share insights into their work in the form of happenings, talks and performances.

Playful Commons – Die Genehmigungswerkstatt

As part of the research festival "1/2/8 Urban Frictions", Playful Commons - Jennifer Aksu, Gilly Karjevsky and Sebastian Quack - will realise smaller, creative "special uses" on marketplaces, green areas, traffic islands and parking bays in Essen's neighbourhood of Katernberg. One focus of the project is to make the interests, areas of responsibility and procedures of public administrations and urban population comprehensible and transparent. From this they develop proposals for simplifying approval processes for public-sector activities open to each neighbour. In Essen, Playful Commons will collaborate with urbanist Laura Bruns, one of the authors of the handbook "Freiraum-Fibel", a manual mapping regulations of public space in Germany.

ROBERTO SANTAGUIDA

The desired effect of Roberto Santaguidas work is the elimination of the feeling of anticipation and expectation upon which the tension of a documentary depends and to create a form that favors intimacy and immediacy.

The proposed project, which is supported by Juliane Beck, Cassidy Bankson, Dora Filipović and Emily Klassen, will be a public collaborative documentary installation with a group of people in Essen. The videos will be incorporated into a constantly evolving installation, made up of five synchronized projection screens. Every day the projections will mix and match messages, creating a never-ending web of stories. The testimonies will unfold across all of the projection screens, and, on occasion, the screens will converge to show a single testimony.

H-ARTLAB

During their 1/2/8 - Urban Frictions residency h-artlab are starting their research process called 'La Zone', which consists into questioning how we appropriate an unknown area.

During their stay at PACT Zollverein they are about to explore physically the place, collecting maps, gathering, organising and transforming the objects they find, and reading about human and anarchist geographies. By bounding the surface, observing the landform, finding and creating landmarks, they would like to consider how the territory can be thought in a sensitive and subjective approach and to interrogate how maps build a narrative on our world.

HEFT

HEFT was initiated by Ina Römling and Torben Körschkes in March 2016 as a project space for reflections and debates addressing the city. We organise and curate readings, discussions, exhibitions, screenings and music events, all orbiting questions of the urban. HEFT also built up a collection of independent magazines and zines from very diverse authors from around the world.

These magazines come together in a dynamic and growing archive and should be understood as working material. At PACT we will experiment with different forms of gathering and negotiation structures questioning how the political can get reconnected with the everyday urban life on a spatial level. These structures will serve as a living lab for all participants during the festival.

YOTAM SCHLEZINGER

Can an urban environment be conveyed solely through sound or is its abstract nature something completely subjective? How does FRICTION manifests itself in our life in terms of sound?

Yotam Schlezinger is working with field recordings, trying  to find the moments where reality and sound are not fitting together or even contradicting each other - how can this dissonance be captured and preserved in an interactive installation?

LENIO KAKLEA

From January to September 2017, choreographer Lenio Kaklea met with residents of Aubervilliers in the Paris suburbs in order to observe their habits and customs. During her investigation, she collected close to 300 stories revealing a diversity of habits, rituals and trades. The transcription of these accounts first took the shape of a book, Encyclopédie pratique, Portraits d'Aubervillierswhich unveiled the organised repetition of the gestures, rhythms and temporalities that insinuate themselves into a city as well as the modes of transmission implemented to create a society. Lenio Kaklea then appropriated this material to create the stage workPortraits choisisas well as the film Portrait | 7: Maryse Emel.

The richness and complexity revealed by this investigation led the artist to extend this project to other European cities, and she has been carrying out field work in Essen beginning in May 2018, focusing on the Katernberg neighbourhood. This new collection of practices will lead to future choreographic projects and books that will create connections between people from distinct backgrounds. The result of the investigation carried out in Essen will be presented later this year.