Summary
City Reserve deals with the intellectual and the existential in the life of a city. The basic objective of the project is to improve the intellectual and existential aspects of the urban environment by making cities culturally richer and discovering the ecologies of the immaterial. Using a combination of artist-led tours, archives, maps, and the publication of a book, the project seeks to make visible the importance of those aspects of the city that are often overlooked by other forms of urban entertainment and cultural production—aspects of an ecology of the immaterial.
Project history
The project began in 2006 following discussions between Gabriel Park and Jana Leo regarding the changes occurring in New York City. Library visits and subsequent research into the origins of the nature reserve revealed that it was first created in the United States and thanks to an artist. The hypothesis arose of the city center as a protected site, a city reserve, whose classification has more to do with the ecologies of the natural world than with protection regulations for buildings or neighborhoods. It was thought that conceiving an urban nature reserve is the role of visionaries, the artists; putting it into practice is the task of policy makers, the government. Actions translating these ideas into artistic practices were first tested at Matadero-Madrid in 2009. There, a large part of the elements seen in later editions were CNCeived and developed. Now, the City Reserve project seeks to extend these preliminary investigations to a larger scale, hoping to articulate an understanding of what a city is today.
Concepts: city reserve mental city preserve ecology of the immaterial the image it projects cultural tourism
Methodology
Vehicles. Putting concepts into practice: tours, maps
texts by Jana Leo; editing of ideas by Sony Devabhaktuni
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Project concepts, city reserve
If the designation “Nature reserve” is a way to preserve the natural beauty of a landscape by protecting it from further exploitation, the delimitation “city reserve” could be interpreted as a way to protect mental activity to prevent “the civic” from being subdued, and cities from becoming merely a place of consumption: the city viewed as a large public square (not just a crowded place), an intellectual park containing both, with all the chaos and freedom of the mix. “City reserve” applies the concept of a nature reserve to the city, resulting in the preservation of the immaterial—the essence of the urban environment—through art. A web structure documents and manages the artistic actions. A partner, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid in Barcelona, puts these artistic actions into practice.
Project concepts, mental city
It is widely recognized that a city is a commercial and service center for a broad population. What is not recognized is that mental and abstract activities also define the city. In addition to offering more opportunities (better jobs, education, visa conditions, access to everything) and entertainment, cities are places to think (humanism in a broad sense, a place where memories of past events gather, new ideas spread, and lessons are shared) and to experience (encounters between individuals, being part of something larger). Cities are the “gray matter” or the “mental reserve” of a country and the world. Since this mental reserve is always in danger of extinction, it needs to be preserved. This intellectual life can be understood as that part of the urban landscape that is immaterial and/or goes unnoticed. The “culture of experience” should not be industrialized and sold as a tourist package, but rather appreciated in a slow unfolding made visible through the small variations of daily life in a city that build upon each other and can only be revealed by registering partial differences.
Project concepts, preserving a city
When looking at what is commonly preserved on a large scale, two cases come to mind: the rehabilitation of historic centers and the nature reserve or wildlife sanctuary. What is preserved are physical things: a forest, a building, a group of buildings, a tree as a natural monument, a waterfall, a beach. However, while the reserve or nature reserve tries to maintain species and communities (one cannot imagine preserving a type of bird without also protecting its natural habitat), historic preservation often focuses on individual objects or buildings. There are no models for maintaining the existence of things that lack obvious material form, such as: participation in a public square, the atmosphere of the city, the degree of civility—things that are directly connected to the architecture that supports them.
Project concepts, ecology of the immaterial
If we apply ecology to the city, the result is that cities, besides being economic, social, and cultural hubs, are the places from which to question what civilization is. Ecology has been applied to the material but not to the immaterial. Sorting garbage to facilitate recycling or using reusable bags instead of plastic ones for shopping has no equivalent in immaterial ecology: removing trends and what celebrities think from personal decision-making, acting instead on lasting principles; an argumentative thought process that removes the ephemeral. Thinking is sorting and deciding. By paying attention to what is truly crucial to human existence, meaningless words are rejected. Applied to architecture, this can mean resisting the erection of buildings that merely cover squares and streets without giving anything back. Ecology applies to objects, making them durable, longer-lasting, and reusable, but it does not apply to thoughts, making them clarify existence, generate vitalism, and bring progress. Ecology is not about subtracting, but about adding. We try to reduce our waste and product use, but by not being aware of the entire cycle of ideas and principles, we use others.
Project concepts, the image the city projects
A city contains life, it has a social structure and different communities. The extension of its material elements (architecture, monuments, urban structure, educational resources) along with its immaterial elements (the atmosphere, or the urban environment, its stories, and its myths) are projected through films, novels, photographs, songs… sharing the city with those who do not live in it. What is shared is mostly the abstract element of the city: its projection. However, more effort is put into developing the physical elements of a city than its projection. The consequence is offering a reduced version, a stereotype of what a city is. When rethinking the image a city projects, it is necessary to support practices that offer a sophisticated approach (art, writing, and architecture) rather than those offering a linear reading (TV, advertising, blockbuster cinema). City Reserve reflects on the destabilizing effect of tourism on the city: historic centers and monuments are preserved without giving the same attention to the daily rituals of the place. This project integrates residents with tourists, avoiding the arrogant contempt toward tourists along with their simultaneous exploitation. We are all tourists.
Project concepts, cultural tourism
When thinking about cultural tourism, we start from the tourist as an individual and not from tourism as an industry. Exploitative tourism exploits the tourist (who does not return) and/or the city (which ceases to be desirable). The principle is that if cities are culturally rich, they naturally become a priority destination for tourism. By understanding culture as the set of overlapping actions that create a way of life rather than a list of events, from an economic standpoint, to increase a city’s cultural tourism it is necessary to invest in the city in general as an entity and not just in cultural activities. On the other hand, we must not only account for direct tourism revenue but also evaluate the losses that misunderstood tourism causes to that city. If tourism only wears down and does not generate, in the long run, the object of the industry becomes extinct and ceases to be productive. City tourism in recent years has stood out for visits to its cultural landmarks, but the life of the city itself has been left out of the visit. Tourism is considered an activity with cultural value.
Methodology
Instead of proposing to halt development or cultural production, our approach consists of inserting actions that provoke a rethinking of production and activate the city as a mental entity, intensifying the immaterial and the urban environment. These actions can be described as “vehicles”; they are practical steps that mediate and translate, describing a process that articulates the idea of the City Reserve and ultimately rethinks cultural activity with respect to the city center, which can influence the way urban planning, urban preservation, and cultural tourism are conceived.
In the same way that the environment department regulates a space as a nature reserve, for the city reserve to exist on a real level, it would have to be regulated by the government at a national level. Literally, the preservation of the environment and the immaterial wealth of cities is a political issue that must be resolved through urban planning and economic measures, not through art, architecture, or thought. However, art, architecture, and thought pave the way for change. From our position and with our means, what we do is treat the city as a project site.
