URBANFESTIVAL13 BACK TO THE SQUARE!

In 2014, UrbanFestival continues with its 13th edition: Back to the Square!, which is the first one taking place in a three-year format (2014/15).
Using long-term research projects of local and international artists, a series of interventions in public space, a workshop programme, and the production of written materials, Back to the Square! analyzes the role of the square in today’s cities. At the time when squares in world metropolises regularly come into the focus of public attention as arenas of self-organized struggle against the regimes, the possibilities of repoliticizing this specific unit of urban planning are explored in the local context. It is primarily about spaces under the growing pressure of corporate capital: private sector uses various mechanisms, supported by the local political administrations, to take the squares away from the public and transform them into a resource for (speculative) trade, a commodity that should bring profit to private investors. In central urban zones, the square is a tightly controlled space subjected to consummation, fulfilling the needs of those who live in luxury apartments surrounding it. Further away from the centre, the situation varies from functional and very lively public spaces, which function as centres of their neighbourhoods and should be preserved, to spaces whose potential for collective and public use is still waiting to be activated.
The chronologically dispersed festival programme, which takes place in diverse media, insists on the new ways of reflecting on the square as a public good, bringing to the fore the processes that shape it and also opening up room for exploring various alternatives.

organiser: [BLOK]
curated by: Ivana Hanaček, Ana Kutleša