1/2/8 Urban Frictions
Playful Commons

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 and the WerkStadt 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.

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. 

Sat 26.05.18 17 h – 23 h
7 artistic positions in 7 rooms

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