Arte Útil / All Projects (2024)

Arte Útil archive nr:

055

Initiator:

Van Den Broek & Bakema

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

urban-development, social

Users:

Engineers of Philips NatLab, J.H. Van Den Broek, J.B. Bakema, J. Stokla, G. Lans

Maintained by:

Ingenieurs van het Natuurkundig Laboratorium van Philips

Duration:

1971

Van Den Broek & Bakema
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‘t Hool
-

Description:

The project started as an initiative of some of the Philips's engineers working in the NatLab. They realised that the quality of living involved more than just individual dwellings, so they established a housing corporation (Woon en Wijk) to build a new neighbourhood in Eindhoven, adapted to their needs and requirements. At that time, it was an unusual assignment, so after various architects had rejected the offer, they commissioned Van den Broek and J. Bakema (Team 10) who attended to their interests. Team 10 are well known for their recognition of Functionalism as a form of Humanism. The design for 't Hool resulted in 14 housing types based on the resident's requirements taking action about the urban expansion and their environment, mainly integrating the green area into the houses.

Goals:

The aim was to build a whole neighbourhood adapted to the interests and needs of its inhabitants, involving them in the decision-making.

Beneficial Outcomes:

It brought some alternative solutions, among them: split level apartment with the elevated street; back to back houses or a terrace dwelling. The project has been described as living under, between and on the trees (Jan Stokla).

Arte Útil archive nr:

029

Initiator:

Michael Rakowitz

Location:

Austria, Italy

Category:

urban-development, economy

Users:

Michael Rakowitz, citizens

Maintained by:

Michael Rakowitz

Duration:

2004

Michael Rakowitz
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(P)LOT: Proposition I
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Description:

The project questions the occupation of public space and encourages new ways of participation in city life. The project proposes the rental of parcels of land and public space for alternative purposes. Users may acquire municipal permits and simple payment of parking meters to repurpose the use of public space, for instance, they may establish temporary encampments or establish a temporary garden, outdoor dining, etc.

Goals:

To question the occupation and dedication of public space and encourages reconsiderations of “legitimate” participation in city life.

Beneficial Outcomes:

For a small amount of money, users may use public space alternatively.

Arte Útil archive nr:

467

Initiator:

Paulina Cornejo

Location:

Mexico

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Users:

Paulina Cornejo, readers

Maintained by:

Centro Nacional de Prevención del Delito y Participación Ciudadana (National Center of Crime prevention and citizen's participation), Mexican Federal Government, Museo Tamayo

Duration:

2012

Paulina Cornejo
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100 Tácticas Creativas para la seguridad ciudadana
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Description:

This work is a publication consisting of 100 examples and projects carried out by designers, architects and cultural workers from all over the world, which propose, through art and creativity, solutions to local social urgencies. Enclosed in it, there are maps, tables, and a leaflet with the goal of evaluating the projects in social contexts.

Goals:

To offer a tool for organisers, initiators, users, communities, organisations, as well as local and national governments to develop creative tactics and strategies for solving concrete urgencies.

Beneficial Outcomes:

It brings new ideas of how to manage the most common social problems nowadays, giving concrete advice about the organisation of these kind of projects.

Arte Útil archive nr:

248

Initiator:

Lorenza Cossutta, Giulia Gabrielli, Isabella Sannipoli

Location:

Italy

Category:

economy, environment, social

Users:

The artists, citizens and tourists.

Maintained by:

Lorenza Cossutta, Giulia Gabrielli, Isabella Sannipoli.

Duration:

2006 - 2008

Lorenza Cossutta, Giulia Gabrielli, Isabella Sannipoli
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100% Pubblica
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Description:

Italians were the first consumers of bottled mineral water in the world, and this produces high costs and levels of pollution from plastic bottles. The project 100% Pubblica puts attention on the issue of water privatisation. Through this initiative, bottles of 0.5 lt. of water and a map of the public fountains were given to people. This project also allows users to explore areas of the city outside the canonical tourist paths.

Goals:

The aim is to promote the use of water as public goods, a human inheritance, a cooperation and solidarity source, respecting the further generations’ rights.
To make people aware that water is a primary and vital resource and should be free for everyone.
To stop plastic consumption.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Citizens and tourists got free bottles of water and a map of the town displaying public fountains.

Arte Útil archive nr:

280

Initiator:

Jalila Essaïdi

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

scientific, social

Users:

Citizens, scientists

Maintained by:

The artist, DA4GA, Fisher Scientific

Duration:

2011 - ongoing

Jalila Essaïdi
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2.6g 329m/s
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Description:

2.6g 329m/s are the maximum weight and velocity of a .22 caliber Long Rifle bullet from a Type 1 bulletproof vest which should protect you. Assuming that spider silk is much stronger than steel, Jalila Essaïdi implanted in vitro this woven material in a human skin sample to test the outcomes. Some slowed bullets were stopped but not the one at full speed. The purpose of this project is, therefore, to demonstrate how this invention could be a form of safety for society.

Goals:

Essaïdi wants to explore the social, political, ethical and cultural issues surrounding safety in a world with access to new biotechnologies; as well as the issues around the ancient human desire for invulnerability.

Beneficial Outcomes:

A partial bulletproof skin. Besides this, the project opened new avenues of research in different scientific fields: medical, forensic, etc.

Arte Útil archive nr:

485

Initiator:

Boran Burchhardt, Ana Siler

Location:

Germany

Category:

politics, urban-development, social

Users:

The artists, undocumented inmigrants.

Maintained by:

Boran Burchhardt, Folkwang Museum Essen (Exhibition: Hacking the City), Kunstverein Heidelberg.

Duration:

2010 - ongoing

Boran Burchhardt, Ana Siler
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3D 87 Deutschlandbilder
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Description:

The project uses a system of signs to navigate the legal gray area of medical care for people without health insurance, residence permits and papers. In the form of a sticker attached on the back side of parking zone signs in over 50 languages the artist informs the public about the network of medical offices. The project started in 2010 in Essen and continued to Heidelberg and Hamburg. An extension to other cities around the Ruhr and Northern Germany is in preparation. The title alludes to Article 87 of the Residence Act, that committs public employees to report ‘undocumented’ persons. This contrasts with medical confidentiality to protect patient privacy.

Goals:

The goal of the project is to make visible one of the invisible boundaries that divides public space. This boundary has its origin in the 1987 Residence Act, which is for everyone readable and visible, but its effects stay invisible.

Beneficial Outcomes:

To offer information on medical care to those without health insurance, residence permits and papers in 50 different languages, referring them to the Medibüros offices. Medibüros are non-governmental contact points, established with the aim of giving anonymous and free medical assistance to illegals. In addition, the project also seeks to raise awareness of the issue with those who walk past the sign.

Arte Útil archive nr:

222

Initiator:

Torolab

Location:

Mexico

Category:

urban-development, social

Users:

Raúl Cárdenas Osuna, Marcela Guadiana Cardenas, Shijune Takeda Bernardo Gutierrez, Jorge Blancarte, Ana Martínez Ortega, Enrique Jiménez, Rodolfo Argote and artists, architects, scientists, enginers, writers, chefs, curators, designers, musicians and Dj’s), Ruido Blanco, Carmen Duran Ponce, and other 9 families

Maintained by:

Torolab

Duration:

2002 - 2005

Torolab
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9 familias, Arquitectura de Emergencia
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Description:

The project focuses on Lagunitas, an underdeveloped neighbourhood in Tijuana, and it suggests a sustainable and alternative model for architecture development in a city where traditional planning development has not been able to keep up with its fast growth. Frequently, the buildings lack basic infrastructures such as electricity and sewage. For the project 9 families living in the neighbourhood worked together with the artists, who acted as facilitators, to activate a process of co-design for their own homes.

Goals:

Be a support tool for revealing spaces of possibilities.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Providing new homes for families.

Arte Útil archive nr:

503

Initiator:

Bonnie Ora Sherk

Location:

United States

Category:

urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Bonnie Ora Sherk and the A.L.L. team, local residents and organisations, schools and students, government agencies, businesses and corporations, private foundations, etc.

Maintained by:

Life Frames, Inc., local staff with students and volunteers from each Branch Living Library & Think Park in diverse communities – locally and globally

Duration:

1981 - ongoing

Bonnie Ora Sherk
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A Living Library
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Description:

A Living Library (ALL) transforms public open spaces that have fallen into disuse or dilapidation into ecological wonderlands and landscapes the local community can learn in and from. Each site contains a themed, content-rich landscape, integrated with community programs and hands-on learning that establishes the sites as vital, life-long learning magnets for the whole community. Additionally contributing to each community’s development economically and culturally by improving public areas and creating these green, ecological areas as accessible community resources.

Goals:

To develop ecological sites that are culturally-sensitive and place-based.
To transform communities by allowing them to engage in learning programs that incorporate local resources—human, ecological, economic, historic, technological, and aesthetic.
To link ALL branches from different communities—near and far—so that cultural and ecological experiences and differences become shared knowledge.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Transforms barren, under-used, or damaged public places into thriving, interactive, learning landscapes that benefit the local community.
They are lush environments where people of all ages can learn new skills and understanding.
An established and growing international network that allows experiences to be shared from all around the world leads us towards a greater and more peaceful understanding of our planet and each other.

Arte Útil archive nr:

476

Initiator:

Jeannette Petrik

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

economy, environment

Users:

The initiator and those who take up the process.

Maintained by:

Jeannette Petrik

Duration:

2012

Jeannette Petrik
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A Parasitical Breed of Consumer
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Description:

The focus of this case study is on leftovers of supermarkets as distributors of food, especially the Ekoplaza supermarkets in Eindhoven. Petrik collected their 'waste' material, mostly consisting of fruit and vegetables. The amount of vegetables and fruit thrown away daily is vast and normally in a good condition, so Petrik decided to apply techniques of preservation and conservation such as sausage making, drying and curing in order to lift quickly decaying materials of low economic value. The tools needed for these processes are also made by the 'parasite' herself, again, out of leftover low quality materials which are transformed into useful objects through the application of craft techniques and skills.

Goals:

To raise awareness on the local sources of useful leftovers and other materials in Eindhoven.
To exemplify possible uses through the demonstration thereof (in a working project space and through a publication, the 'parasite' cookbook') to a wide range of users.

Beneficial Outcomes:

People can reuse leftovers from the supermarket for free.

Arte Útil archive nr:

443

Initiator:

WocheKlausur

Location:

Portugal

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

WochenkKausur, Danielle van Zuijlen, Students, City of Porto

Maintained by:

Culturgest (exhibition Guests become Host), City of Porto

Duration:

2010

WocheKlausur
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A Vacant House for Students
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Description:

Wochenklausur succeeded in activating one of the many vacant buildings for a group of students in Porto. The city is full of vacant houses with many students searching for cheap accommodation. Since there are many vacant buildings, Wochenklausur contacted an official in charge and made a proposal: A couple of students could be commissioned by the city to refurbish one of these empty houses and would in return get to live there free of charge. Afterwards, the owner (the city), will get back a refurbished house in good condition. WochenKlausur convinced the city who agreed to offer a house for this purpose and also found a group of ten students from the Faculty of Fine Arts that were interested enough to take a look at the proposed house. In the end, both partners agreed and it was even possible to find sponsors that agreed to donate part of the expensive construction materials.

Goals:

To offer cheap accommodation to students and recuperate part of the historical structure and architecture of the city.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The students have a free house to live in.
The city receives a refurbished house in good condition.

Arte Útil archive nr:

370

Initiator:

Ala Plastica

Location:

Argentina

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, politics, economy, environment, social

Users:

The artists, residents of the area

Maintained by:

Ala Plastica, activist groups and ONGs.

Duration:

2000 - ongoing

Ala Plastica
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AA Project
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Description:

Ala Plastica has developed the AA project in collaboration with schools, which are the point of connection between local families. Through the collection of oral information, it was possible to create a memory database with family photos and narratives, supplemented with land and satellite maps, to create a comprehensive picture of the Rio de la Plata delta region. Thanks to the collected information the group built embankments to prevent flood damage, developing training programmes in carpentry, beekeeping and organic farming for the inhabitants of the area.

Goals:

To design a cognitive, participatory map, whose purpose was to recover local knowledge of the region's topography, habitats and cultural-agricultural traditions.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The community members exchanged information and generated effective alternatives to the governmental proposal of the IIRSA as the "Integral Strategic Plan for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Paraná Delta" (PIECAS-DP).

Arte Útil archive nr:

025

Initiator:

Núria Güell

Location:

Cuba

Category:

pedagogical, politics, social

Users:

Núria Güell, 37 Cubans could use the free service

Maintained by:

Núria Güell

Duration:

2008

Núria Güell
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Acceso a lo denegado
-

Description:

Acceso a lo denegado, was a project that provided internet access to Cuban citizens, as the Cuban telecommunication enterprise only offers the service to foreigners and denies it to residents. The payment for the service was based on bartering system, in exchange for it people offered the artist information about how a foreigner could understand the Cuban system. Through this project, a standard of strategies and insights on Cuba was developed, and is shown in the documentation stages of the piece.

Goals:

‘Providing Cuban citizens with access to internet for whoever wants to use it. Changing power relationships established by the Cuban state on the use of free information through internet.’ (N. Güell).

Beneficial Outcomes:

Access to internet.

Arte Útil archive nr:

519

Initiator:

Pablo Helguera

Location:

United States and United Kingdom

Category:

pedagogical, social

Users:

Open to all users.

Maintained by:

Sullivan Galleries Chicago (Fall 2014) Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art 2015 onwards.

Duration:

2014 - ongoing

Pablo Helguera
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Addams-Dewey Gymnasium
-

Description:

Goals:

To provide a holistic education of exercise, wellbeing, arts, food and social development.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Increased physical, social and mental wellbeing for individual and group users.

Arte Útil archive nr:

548

Initiator:

Tomás Saraceno Studio

Location:

Worldwide. First manned flight in United States

Category:

scientific, environment, social

Users:

Artists, lighter-than-air aeronautical engineers, balloonists, scientists, climate activists, public.

Maintained by:

Tomás Saraceno Studio

Duration:

2015 - ongoing

Tomás Saraceno Studio
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Aerocene
-

Description:

Aerocene is an artistic project, a collective endeavour that is being currently developed by a team, united under a non-profit organisation. Aerocene manifests as a series of air-fuelled sculptures that will achieve the longest, emission-free journey around the world: becoming buoyant only by the heat of the Sun and infrared radiation from the surface of Earth. The sculptures float without burning fossil fuels, without using solar panels and batteries; and without helium, hydrogen or other rare gases. The Aerocene D-O AEC air-filled sculpture successfully carried passengers without any use of propane for nearly three hours in a collaborative experiment in November 2015 in White Sands, New Mexico, achieving the first and longest purely solar-powered, certified, lighter-than-air tethered flight. Aerocene is a fully open project, relying on worldwide social action and interaction, and aiming at mobilizing groups of individuals for multiple concrete solutions for our common environment. Aerocene is related to Cloud Cities, a project focusing around the idea of cities in the sky, a speculative project by Tomás Saraceno.

Goals:

Aerocene is an open participatory platform of knowledge production and distribution. The Aerocene action and project enlivens the discussion on 2-degree climate thresholds; it materialises debates on climatic shifts in social, collaborative practices.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The sculpture sets the road for the most sustainable and energy efficient vehicle humans have ever created.

Arte Útil archive nr:

002

Initiator:

Willem de Ridder, Peter Muller, Ruud Schoonman...

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

Willem de Ridder, Peter Muller, Ruud Schoonman, artists, graphic designers, magazine's readers / writers.

Maintained by:

Willem de Ridder, Peter Muller, Ruud Schoonman, artists, graphic designers, magazine's readers / writers.

Duration:

1969-1974

Willem de Ridder, Peter Muller, Ruud Schoonman...
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Aloha
-

Description:

Aloha started in 1965 as a music magazine called Hitweek, equipped with the first four-color offset printer in the Netherlands.
In 1969 it changed its name to Aloha, a magazine focused on music, graphic design, comics and counterculture alongside national and international social issues.
Aloha was independent and operated without permanent writing staff or editors, so everybody was welcome to write an article or publish a drawing.
Aloha was ironic, critical, unconventional and seasoned with absurd humour.

Goals:

Produce a publication where a new generation could feel free of manipulation and produce their own content.

Beneficial Outcomes:

It offered critical reports about political and social issues beyond the official version given by the conventional media and some tricks on how to endure "outside" the system. f.i. On number 35 (1970), Aloha provided a free small guide for diggers called "Free and surprising Amsterdam" where you could find all kind of suggestions to survive in the city without any money. This satirical and radical tradition later continued in ‘Frietkaas’.

Arte Útil archive nr:

558

Initiator:

Anti Eviction Mapping Project

Location:

United States

Category:

politics, urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Tenants, Activists, Artists

Maintained by:

Anti Eviction Mapping Project

Duration:

2013 - ongoing

Anti Eviction Mapping Project
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Anti Eviction Mapping Project
-

Description:

The project consist of a website for data-visualisation, data analysis, and storytelling collective formed to document and make visible the dispossession of San Francisco Bay Area residents and to facilitate and organise collective resistance. The project studies the displacement of people and the way in which evictions and gentrification target specific communities in the Bay Area. The website provides many resources and tools to help tenants to look up landlords and speculator information, it also tracks illegal vacation rentals with a crowdsource system. The project collaborates with many local groups who fight against displacement such as Eviction Free SF.

Goals:

Make this issue public, share stories, promote boycotts of serial evictors, protect tenants, facilitate collective resistance.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Communicates the details of the issue, shares factual research to foster community resistance.

Arte Útil archive nr:

026

Initiator:

Núria Güell

Location:

Spain, Online

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

Citizens who wish to expropriate money to banks and learn how to make money from debt.

Maintained by:

Produced by Fundació Guasch Coranty/ Maintained by the artist.

Duration:

2010 - 2011

Núria Güell
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Aplicación Legal Desplazada #1: Reserva Fraccionaria
-

Description:

The project consists of a program of lessons and conferences aiming at sharing strategies about how to expropriate money from banks. Starting from applying the same law that banks apply to their customers such as investing the fractional reserve system, the project explains how to create money out of nothing.
The training is divided into two phases: during the first one the artist invited the economist Qmunty and bank expropriators Lucio Urtubia and Enric Duran to deliver a lecture about "How can we expropriate money from banks?”; during the second phase the artist published a manual including various expropriation strategies, legal consultation, and analytical texts, made public online and by distributing copies to several libraries across Spain.

Goals:

To teach how to expropriate money from banks as well as make visible the perverse strategy used by banks to create money from nowhere. To prove that the term legal is not synonymous of legitimate and that there are some laws which we need to reconsider.

Beneficial Outcomes:

To empower the Spanish population by generating general financial literacy even in questions that are usually reserved to experts.

Arte Útil archive nr:

499

Initiator:

Dimitri Launder

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

pedagogical, urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Owen Hodgkinson, Emma Payne, Ella Perkins, Tom Davies, Ian Daniell, Chloe Carson, Daniel Dutton. Audiences of 500 over 3 days. Artist Gardeners, Dimitri Launder with a fruity thanks to the Grow It Together.

Maintained by:

Dimitri Launder

Duration:

2009 - 2011

Dimitri Launder
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Apothecary Arboretum
-

Description:

The Apothecary Arboretum was designed and built by the artist gardener Dimitri Launder with a group of students of Camberwell College of Arts in London. The aim was to create a garden both medicinal and edible, in a concrete neighbourhood. His latest project was to create a living eco-system of vertical, functional, agricultural, apothecary sculpture: prototype 1.0.

Goals:

Using recycled materials to harvest rainwater and incubate plants that are grown from bio-diverse seed stock and foraged herbal and medicinal plant seed sourced from waste lands in London. This Free Farm explores the plants around us in the hope that it makes people think about their relationship with nature. Planting Propaganda for a public planting transformation; planting on rooftops, in and on buildings, to reclaim and illustrate sustainable solutions.

Beneficial Outcomes:

An edible and medicinal garden.

Arte Útil archive nr:

540

Initiator:

Marko Peljhan, Matthew Biederman.

Location:

The Arctic and circumpolar region

Category:

scientific, politics, environment, social

Users:

The artists and initiators. The indigenous people of the North and Arctic regions.

Maintained by:

The Arctic Perspective Initiative working group, led by Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman.

Duration:

2006 - ongoing

Marko Peljhan, Matthew Biederman.
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Arctic Perspective Initiative
-

Description:

The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) is a non-profit international group of individuals and organizations, founded by artists Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman, whose goal is to promote the creation of open authoring, communications and dissemination infrastructures for the circumpolar region. Its aim is to work with, learn from, and empower the North and Arctic peoples through open source technologies and applied education and training. By creating access to these technologies while promoting the creation of shared communications and data networks without costly overheads, continued and sustainable development of autonomous culture, traditional knowledge, science, technology and education opportunities for peoples in the North and Arctic regions is enabled.

Goals:

To work with, learn from, and empower the North and Arctic Peoples through open source technologies and applied education and training.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project benefits communities in the unique and difficult landscape of the Arctic in multiple ways, including:
- Iglutaq, a mobile, lightweight, warm, sustainable, zero impact modular living and research unit.
- New hydroponic systems to grow vegetables.
- Climate and land sensor networks.
- Open source information and communications technology literacy workshops.
- Presentation activities within the circumpolar region.
- Exhibitions and publications drawing attention to the global cultural and environmental significance of the Arctic region.

Arte Útil archive nr:

330

Initiator:

Grupo de Intervenção Urbana, Nelson Brissac, Agnaldo Farias

Location:

Brasil

Category:

politics, urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Vito Acconci, Giselle Beiguelman, Casa Blindada, Waltercio Caldas, Maurício Dias / Walter Riedweg, Carlos Fajardo, Nelson Felix, Hannes Forster, José Wagner Garcia, Marco Giannotti, Carmela Gross, Rem Koolhaas, Atelier Van Lieshout, Antoni Muntadas, Ary Perez, Hermann Pitz, Avery Preesman, José Resende, Schie 2.0 / Urban Fabric, Regina Silveira, Ana Tavares, Cassio Vasconcellos, Angelo Venosa, Carlos Vergara, Krzysztof Wodiczko among the others and the residents of Sao Paulo

Maintained by:

Arte Cidade, CIAC – Centro da Indústria, Arte e Cidade de Minas Gerais.

Duration:

1994 - ongoing

Grupo de Intervenção Urbana, Nelson Brissac, Agnaldo Farias
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Arte Cidade
-

Description:

Arte/Cidade aims to discuss and plan new forms of artistic interventions in urban megacities, in areas which have both structural complexity and socio-spatial dynamics. The project speculates about a new approach toward possibilities for artistic and urban interventions: urban planning, extensive research of the regions, selection of sites and development of interventions. The project has had four editions: 1 - City Without Windows (1994); 2 - The City and its Fluxes (1994); 3 - The City and Its Stories (1997); 4 - East Zone (2002).

Goals:

Arte/Cidade aims to discuss and plan new forms of artistic interventions in urban megacities, in areas which have both structural complexity and socio-spatial dynamics.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Interventions that relate the vast territory of megacities and the global reconfigurations of economy, power and art.

Arte Útil archive nr:

006

Initiator:

Atelier Populaire

Location:

France

Category:

politics, social

Users:

Art students, painters and striking workers

Maintained by:

The faculty and student body of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Atelier Populaire

Duration:

1968

Atelier Populaire
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Atelier Populaire
-

Description:

On May 16th, art students, painters from outside the university and striking workers decided to permanently occupy the art school in order to produce posters that would "give concrete support to the great movement of the workers on strike who are occupying their factories in defiance of the Gaullist government". The posters of the ATELIER POPULAIRE were designed and printed anonymously and were distributed for free.

Goals:

The posters produced by the ATELIER POPULAIRE are weapons in the service of the struggle and are an inseparable part of it. Their rightful place is in the centers of conflict. To use them for decorative purposes, to display them in bourgeois places of culture or to consider them as objects of aesthetic interest is to impair both their function and their effect.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The posters were seen on the barricades, carried in demonstrations and were plastered on walls all over France. Their bold and provocative messages were extremely influential and still resonate in our own time

Arte Útil archive nr:

515

Initiator:

Trevor Paglen and Jason Applebaum

Location:

Various

Category:

scientific, social

Users:

Maintained by:

Host institutions

Duration:

2014 - 0ngoing

Trevor Paglen and Jason Applebaum
-
Autonomy Cube
-

Description:

Goals:

Providing a tool for surveillance-free internet infrastructure in which data and internet use can be anonymous. Reclaim the space within which users log on through the autonomy cube as public, civic space.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Allow the host institution and users to log on to the internet without being traced or surveyed.

Arte Útil archive nr:

531

Initiator:

Beatrice Catanzaro, Fatima Kadumy, Cristiana Bottigella

Location:

Palestinian territories

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Women of Nablus, tourists, researchers, artists, academics

Maintained by:

A.M. Qattan Foundation, Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, Associazione Donne-Nuove, Associazione Pacefuturo, Lions Club International & Soroptimist Biella, Stichting DOEN, FARE Contemporary Art Association, Niklas fa*gerholm Design, Osteria La Villetta, Rising Voices, Roberto Cimetta Fund, Slow Food (International, Basso Mantovano, Bergamo, Firenze), Step Beyond Travel Grant, The Mosaic Rooms and royalties from the publication CAKE. Bait al Karama is currently sustaining itself.

Duration:

2012 - ongoing

Beatrice Catanzaro, Fatima Kadumy, Cristiana Bottigella
-
Bait al Karama
-

Description:

Bait al Karama consists in a sociocultural centre run by women and managed according to a social enterprise business model, where food-related activities are the vehicle to develop regular income for the women involved, as well as the means to sustain a socially and culturally meaningful programme. The centre is run and managed by disadvantaged women living in the Old City of Nablus, and features among other relevant social and educational activities, the first female-run Cookery School in Palestine. Through income-generating activities, Bait al Karama aims to achieve long-term financial sustainability, and to accomplish its sociocultural mission, whilst offering the women of the Old City employment and the chance to develop income and self-sustainability. Bait al KARAMA is the first Slow Food Convivium in Nablus and since 2012 it has been participating in the Terramadre-Salone del Gusto fair in Turin as Palestinian representation.

Goals:

To support the social and economic needs of women of the Old City of Nablus struggling in the aftermath of the occupation by means of a food-based social enterprise. To draw international attention to the Old City of Nablus as a place of Food and Culture, by initiating a number of cultural and educational initiatives involving the local and wider Palestinian scene as well as international guests, and to encourage sustainable tourism.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project offers the women employment and creates the first space of aggregation for women in the Old City of Nablus. The centre features a Palestinian Cookery School for foreigners visiting Palestine.

Arte Útil archive nr:

535

Initiator:

José Brito

Location:

Spain

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

José Brito, Laura Brito, Andrés Betancort, Tatiana González, Eva Cabrera, Pedro Santana, Hugo Escobar, Samanta León, Ariel Betancor, Caín Santana, Cristina Mendoza, Gisela Rodríguez, Tania Cantallops, Román Brito, Marcos Pulido, Ancor Alfonso, Laura Hernández, participants and neighbors.

Maintained by:

Asociación Cultural "Orquesta Bela Bartok”, Fundación Canaria Mapfre Guanarteme, Fundación DISA, Fundación Jungle Sanjuán - SATOCAN, Grupo CAPISA, Obra Social Fundación “La Caixa”, Fundación La Caja de Canarias y BANKIA, Dirección General de Protección a la Infancia y la Familia del Gobierno de Canarias, Restaurante Quebeque, Arimotor Canarias, Concejalía de Cultura del Ayuntamiento de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Consejería de Cultura y Consejería de Educación y Juventud del Cabildo de Gran Canaria, Aula Alfredo Kraus del Vicerrectorado de Cultura y Atención Integral de la Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Fundación SGAE and crowdfunding.

Duration:

2011 - ongoing

José Brito
-
Barrios Orquestados (Orchestrated neighborhoods)
-

Description:

Goals:

To integrate all citizens in a society which prides itself in being egalitarian in opportunities and possibilities, where they can feel useful and included. This process itself is the main objective, not the final result that may be offered in an auditorium.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Arte Útil archive nr:

464

Initiator:

Walter Gropius

Location:

Germany

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Mies van der Rohe, teachers (Johanness itten, Lyonel Feininger, Gerhard Marcks, Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Theo van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Marianne Brandt, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer...), students, industrial companies.

Maintained by:

Regional and local government, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Duration:

1919 - 1933

Walter Gropius
-
Bauhaus
-

Description:

Goals:

To undertake design that combined rationality, functionality and mass production systems breaking the barriers between craftsman and artist.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Bauhaus brought art and design closer to daily-life.

Arte Útil archive nr:

552

Initiator:

Jody Wood

Location:

US

Category:

economy, social

Users:

People living in homeless shelters

Maintained by:

A Blade of Grass, Brooklyn Arts Council, Asian Arts Initiative, ArtPlace America, the Visual Artist Network Exhibition Residency, Esopus Foundation.

Duration:

2006 - ongoing

Jody Wood
-
Beauty in trasition
-

Description:

The project consists of a mobile hair salon built inside an old ice cream truck. The pop-up salon provides beauty services to people living in homeless shelters, including hair wash, cut, and color from a team of volunteer stylists. While offering access to a cosmetic service may seem unessential for people who always negotiate for basic services, ‘Beauty in Transition’ provides a space where people feel dignified by choosing self-representation.

Goals:

To provide cosmetic services to people living in homeless shelters.

Beneficial Outcomes:

People can have cosmetic services for free. By experiencing an ‘unnecessary’ service they may re-access a part of their forgotten identity linked to how they appear in society.

Arte Útil archive nr:

487

Initiator:

Hans Kalliwoda

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, politics, urban-development, economy, environment, social

Users:

General public and everybody who enjoys biodiversity and a variety in their diet.

Maintained by:

The Blindpainters Foundation and citizen in the neighbourhood(s). General directions and specific details are peered with a scientific group of advisors and the individual activities have been made possible by the following: Rijkswaterstaat (Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment), the Province Noord-Holland, the Prins Bernhard Culture Fond, City of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Council West, Amsterdam Council East, the GWL terrain, De Alliantie, ABC Alliantie West, Groen en Doen, het Fonds voor Oost, ANMEC, NMA, HB|3D bv, 3D Orbit and Veldtwerk.

Duration:

2011 - ongoing

Hans Kalliwoda
-
BeeCare – The Inner City as Nature Reserve for Pollinators
-

Description:

BeeCare is an interdisciplinary art project that combines sociological, ecological and educational elements through performative acts, sculptures and scientific research. It is a series of art interventions in public space, addressing the urgency of the global pollination problematic by creating Inner Cities as Nature Reserves for pollinators. Pollinators are the basis of a healthy ecology and the cause of being in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. There are 360 different species of bees in the Netherlands, half of them are on the list of being endangered and becoming extinct. There is one species of honeybee, the rest of the species are wild bees. Honey bees are quantity and wild bees (solitary bees and bumblebees) are quality pollinators and form the very basis of the biodiversity in the ecosystem.
Nowadays, bees do better in inner cities than on the countryside. This is mainly due to toxicity in the water system through the use pesticide over the last 50 years, monoculture of crops grown that delivers food only in certain periods of the year and destruction of nesting opportunities. Between the beginning of the 90’s and 2018 we measured a decline of 75% of flying insects. The trend goes towards a greater loss, which will have grave consequences for biodiversity in the near future.
Buckminster Fuller says: ‘If you want to change how someone thinks, give it up; you cannot change how another thinks. Give them a tool, the use of which will lead them to think differently.’ The sculptures that are placed in public space are tools for local citizens to get hands-on engaged in creating Nature Reserves for pollinators. A healthy social cohesion is a precondition for ecological sustainability.
The sculptures are made in partnership with the Dutch Nature museum (Naturalis), the ecology department of the TU Darmstadt in Germany and a group of entrepreneurs, who through the means of state-of-the-art 3D printing processes believe in a holistic approach with circularity and upcycling as a must.
BeeCare is a GLOCAL intervention project in public space, conceived/executed by Hans Kalliwoda and produced by the Blindpainters foundation.

Goals:

Awareness creation of problems and potential solutions in inner-city neighbourhoods by using diverse artistic methods.
Installing tools for local citizens to engage them in spiritual and cultural transformation.
Establishing thresholds of healthy environments with an infrastructure where indigenous bees can survive and flourish until the countryside has lost its toxicity.
BeeCare contributes to knowledge creation and transfer, avoids species extinction and advances biodiversity.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Taking away stinging fear by door-to-door leaflet spreading on differences between bees and wasps; The RefuBee campaign in public space; Lobby on green policy management to adjust mowing; Organic beekeeping with own honey bees; Symposia on ‘Biodynamic Beekeeping' and ‘The Inner City as a Nature Reserve’; Distribution of 5-star Bee hotels; Annual Bee Film Festivals at the local cinema; Guerrilla gardening, sowing and planting with people in all seasons in the neighbourhood; Workshops on gardening and on making bee hotels; Distribution of information via various media channels (newspapers, digital); The Veggie Rocket' education project in Amsterdam schools; Inspiration sessions on swarm intelligence for top managers of Rijskwaaterstaat at the 'Future Pollination Lab' ; Pushing for alternatives to pesticide used in parks and on roadsides. With the support of people in the neighbourhood, we set up an exemplary case to replicate and implement in other Inner-city neighbourhoods, nationally and internationally.

Arte Útil archive nr:

583

Initiator:

Serkan Taycan

Location:

Turkey

Category:

urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Hikers and everyone who is concerned about urban and landscape transformations in the area of Istanbul

Maintained by:

Serkan Taycan and volunteers. It was initially supported by the 13th Istanbul Biennial.

Duration:

2013 - ongoing

Serkan Taycan
-
Between Two Seas
-

Description:

The project consists of a four-day walking route in the near West of Istanbul, between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea. While walking, users can experience the threatening changes in the urban landscape starting from the outermost periphery of the city, passing through rural and uninhabited areas and water basins, to its centre. The route is 60-km long and it is composed of four 15-km parts, which can be covered over four days. The lignite mines are along the way, as well as the area reserved for the new airport, the road leading to the 3rd bridge on Bosphorus, excavation dump sites, industrial sites and residential areas, inner-city vegetable gardens, and sites of cultural and historical significance such as the Yarımburgaz Caves. The latter is the oldest settlement in Istanbul. The project provides a platform to witness the ongoing radical transformation of the city, which is threatening both the ecological and the social life of the inhabitants. It stimulates the perception and the understanding of the surroundings in an experience-oriented way through walking.
The project was initiated in collaboration with an urban geographer (Jean-François Perouse), a graphic designer (Didem Ateş), a multidisciplinary design studio (Superpool), a trail maker (Kate Clow), and other professionals, including architects, urban planners, biologists, cartographers, and historians.

Goals:

The route, as a ‘passage’ between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea, is a tool that allows its users to experience the urban transformation of Istanbul in an unmediated way. Following the environmental debates which were raised during the Gezi Park protests in 2013, the project becomes a platform for the discussion of the latest developments on projects of urban transformation. The project aims at encouraging citizens to experience the city through the act of walking.
At times when being an active citizen is difficult in Turkey, the project helps to catalyse media coverage and to link the local discussion to an international context.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project keeps record of how the route is used by hikers. Maps, photographs, video footages, films and sketches which consistently record the changes in the landscape are constantly being produced. Each hiker becomes an active witness as well as a co-producer of the project. The route helps to create and expand an international network of individuals and organizations who are concerned about urban issues and consider the act of walking as a tool. The initiator created another route in Athens, Greece that was adapted to local urgencies.
Between Two Seas became a member of the ‘Cultural Routes in Turkey’ Association. More than 30 group-walks have been organized, 6 of which were conceived as excursions for research groups, including KTH Royal Institute of Technology - Sustainable Urban Planning and Design, Harvard University Graduate School of Design Mellon Urban Initiative, Bergen School of Architecture, ENSA Paris-Malaquais School of Architecture, University of Minnesota School of Architecture. Individuals and separate groups have also organized their own walks using the published map - available in bookshops across Istanbul- of which 50,000 have been printed so far (the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) published two editions of 10,000 each, and ATLAS magazine, a geographical monthly, printed 30,000 copies as a free supplement).

Arte Útil archive nr:

527

Initiator:

V. Maini (BaM), E. Silvestre, T. Solanas, J. Capell's, 20 professionals and activists.

Location:

Spain

Category:

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Users:

Citizens of Barcelona, professionals and anyone interested in self-built construction systems using natural-compostables or re-used materials.

Maintained by:

BaM-Bioarquitectura Mediterranean Association, SiteSize, Olab, Labs, Meridiano70yMedio. Besides, they developed a crowd funding campaign and they have the support of many organizations like Barcelona Permaculture , Research Canyera , Sitesize , COAC Barcelona and companies offering materials such as Slow -House (ground), Casaspasivas ( straw) Hempsystem ( hemp ) , Olab -Labs ( digital manufacturing).

Duration:

2014-2017

V. Maini (BaM), E. Silvestre, T. Solanas, J. Capell's, 20 professionals and activists.
-
BioBui(L)t Txema
-

Description:

Spain is a country with more than 25% of unemployment combined with huge political and social crises. In capital cities as Barcelona we find a high density of cultural institutions combined with large, dense and diverse populations but the lack of dialogue among different institutions and citizens is overwhelming, showing in all its roughness the economical and social cost of not being able to value human & space resources. The local government of Barcelona has opened the door for civil management of the space. BioBuil(L)t Txema is a collaborative self-built construction using natural-compostables or re-used materials to create a public space where develop 3 years of activities to show that is possible to create bridges among citizen, companies and institutions: learning, teaching and discussing around self-buildt systems, providing new models for citizens to build, use and living public spaces. It has created a collective design process, which has integrated the variable and free cooperation of passionate and qualified specialist. They will build a 90m2 polyvalent space created with healthy materials such as straw, clay, hemp, cane and lime. The construction is open to the public and it is expected to last a year. Once finished, it will allow the usage to everybody who wants to meet people, mingle with specialists and support each other to grow up in a healthier and fairer environment. The building is located next to many other important and cultural buildings.

Goals:

Build a space that is an example and tool for other projects, showing to the citizens it is possible to auto-build / Experiment and collect data of the usage of materials like straw, clay and hemp / Promote technological innovation and citizens teamwork ability / Example of good practices in social and environmental impacts of construction / Create meeting spaces for knowledge exchange between professionals from different fields and citizens / Teach knowledge about healthy materials usage / Support small and/or specialists committed to healthy building / Set up a "machine" that creates a new economy using basically creativity and ability to connect fields of disperse know-how and material resources.

Beneficial Outcomes:

BioBui(l)t Txema’s space will be used for training, research and promotion of healthy building practices and activities in the Mediterranean area. They are willing to create a meeting and exchange space to enable the learning and promotion of the participant’s capabilities and innovative communication systems. This project and the construction retrieves the social purpose of the construction act.

Arte Útil archive nr:

264

Initiator:

Fernando García-Dory

Location:

Spain

Category:

scientific, economy

Users:

Fernando García-Dory, Dorian Moore, Stewart Breck, Research Wildlife Biologist - National Wildlife Research Center Yellowstone/ Eugenio Sillero ISOM & Dpto. Ingeniería Electrónica - E.T.S.I. de Telecomunicación / National Park of Picos de Europa / Laboral Centro de Arte / Libellium, sheeps and shepherds.

Maintained by:

Fernando García-Dory.

Duration:

2006 - ongoing

Fernando García-Dory
-
Bionic Sheep
-

Description:

The bionic sheep project comprises a device (Flock Protection System) placed around the neck of the sheep that emits an ultrasonic signal, audible and annoying only for wolves and other canidae. This first prototype was field tested in 2008. Another prototype had also been developed, equipped with a system of geo-positioning which transmits a signal to the PDA of the shepherd who can see where the flock of sheep is localised. Both devices have been developed with the assistance of shepherds.

Goals:

To develop a portable, solar-powered, ultrasonic Flock Protection System to help shepherds protect their sheep.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Flock Protection System provides a technological and creative solution to the age-old pastoral rivalry of the shepherd and the wolf so that wildlife and farmers can co-exist in harmony. The system is intended to have an open source license (such as the TAPR Noncommercial Hardware License) meaning that any interested person or organisation would be free to reproduce and improve it.

Arte Útil archive nr:

359

Initiator:

Natasha Sadr Haghighian

Location:

Online

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Users of the website

Maintained by:

Bioswop

Duration:

2009 - ongoing

Natasha Sadr Haghighian
-
Bioswop
-

Description:

Bioswop is a cv-exchange platform. The idea is to provide curriculum vitae, bios, resumés for people to use and borrow. With a list of several institutions, the assembly of a CV is possible without utilising existing CVs. The assembled or borrowed CV can be downloaded as a pdf file. It will carry a footnote 'this CV was borrowed through www.bioswop.net'. The project is entirely based on trust and involves no monetary exchange.

Goals:

In best-case scenario the project should devalue the notion of CVs altogether, and their essentialist elements such as ‘origin’, as well as the accumulated trade value created through image exchange on the market place.

Beneficial Outcomes:

People can provide CVs and/or borrow names and programmes of institutions as basics elements for CVs assembly.

Arte Útil archive nr:

542

Initiator:

Marco Kusumawijaya and other co-workers from Rujak Centre for Urban Studies, Arsitek Komunitas (ARKOM) Yogyakarta, Antariksa of Kunci Cultural Studies Centre

Location:

Indonesia

Category:

economy, environment, social

Users:

Villagers of Muntuk, visiting artists, ecologists and NGO workers.

Maintained by:

Marco Kusumawijaya and other co-workers from Rujak Centre for Urban Studies, Arsitek Komunitas (ARKOM) Yogyakarta, Antariksa of Kunci Cultural Studies Centre.

Duration:

2012 - ongoing

Marco Kusumawijaya and other co-workers from Rujak Centre for Urban Studies, Arsitek Komunitas (ARKOM) Yogyakarta, Antariksa of Kunci Cultural Studies Centre
-
Bumi Pemuda Rahayu
-

Description:

Bumi Pemuda Rahayu aims to support a vision of ecological sustainability through works with communities and arts on practical and theoretical levels. Architecturally the site itself is built on a model of self-sustainability, using various methods to approach minimum carbon footprint. All the materials used have been chosen for its lowest impact on energy, using recycled materials with the main building itself made from bamboo. All its waste will be recycled or composted, with specially designed human waste recycling plant to generate electrical power. The garden has been planned to be completely edible.
Aside from its architectural and environmental focus the other important aim is to support the local community. People from the local area were invited to be an integral part of this new centre and have already been employed to help build the centre, including the main bamboo multipurpose hall. They have been given training in new skills from master bamboo builders and expert architects and landscape designers.
The centre’s arts programs aims at process and forms that are innovative and creative for the local area within an international context. The activities that have been run in the past include science workshops for children, bamboo making workshops, artist residencies, puppet making with the local children and video making classes with women from Munthuk.

Goals:

Developing and supporting ideas for ecological sustainability through works with communities and arts on practical and theoretical levels.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Employment of the villagers of Muntuk; Knowledge exchange between villagers, architects, artists and others; Seeding of new longer term projects investigating ecological sustainability.

Arte Útil archive nr:

171

Initiator:

Adrian Jackson

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Homeless, displaced people, scholars and public.

Maintained by:

Charity

Duration:

1991 - ongoing

Adrian Jackson
-
Cardboard Citizens
-

Description:

Cardboard Citizens is a theatre project and performing arts collective staged, in the street, in hostels, prisons, schools as well as traditional theatre venues, whose theme relates to the living conditions of homeless and displaced people.
The purpose is to let the public understand the problems of these people. For this reason, following the Theater of the Oppressed methodology, instead of recruiting homeless men and women, the organisation has an open and ongoing process, which create dialogues and workshops to determine the nature of the performances.

Goals:

To use theatre as a catalyst for change, growth and learning for participants and audience.

Beneficial Outcomes:

In addition to offering opportunities for the excluded people bringing out all kind of issues around homelessness, Cardboard Citizens supports the performers through the housing, education, health, employment, personal and professional development.

Arte Útil archive nr:

260

Initiator:

Gerard Morgan-Grenville

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Users:

Gerard Morgan-Grenville, Volunteers, students and visitors.

Maintained by:

Funded by donations from Morgan-Grenville's contacts, companies and manufacturers provided products to be displayed and demonstrated in use.

Duration:

1973 - ongoing

Gerard Morgan-Grenville
-
Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT)
-

Description:

The CAT originated in 1973 in Wales as an experimental community dedicated to eco-friendly principles and a 'test bed' for new ideas and technologies. In 1975 it opened a Visitor Centre and, in the 1980s, a study centre running residential courses on all aspects of green living: environmental building, eco-sanitation, woodland management, renewable energy, energy efficiency and organic growing.

Goals:

To search for globally sustainable, whole and ecologically sound technologies and ways of life.

Beneficial Outcomes:

During the last 40 years, the center has been offering free information, curriculum-based education, residential education trips, and teacher training to visiting schools, colleges and universities. It also publishes books on key environmental issues, runs a graduate school, and a successful volunteer programmes for those that want to gain hands-on experience. Finally, it has a growing network of supporter members who receive their quarterly magazine and an invite to their annual conference.

Arte Útil archive nr:

037

Initiator:

Matei Bejenaru

Location:

Albania

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

the artist, inhabitants of Alexander cel Bun.

Maintained by:

Tirana 2 Biennial

Duration:

2003

Matei Bejenaru
-
Cesme
-

Description:

The project consisted in a public intervention in the city centre of Tirana, in front of Enver Hoxa Monument, realised to distribute free drinking water by temporary using the city water main during the Tirana Biennial. The project started from the fact that a large number of the population in Tirana did not have access to drinking water.

Goals:

Offer a public service within the context of one of the most iconic symbols of the communist state.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The inhabitants had free access to drinking water during the Biennial.

Arte Útil archive nr:

226

Initiator:

Dan Peterman

Location:

United States

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Homeless people

Maintained by:

Dan Peterman, Resource Center

Duration:

1988

Dan Peterman
-
Chicago Compost Shelter
-

Description:

While working for the Resource Center, a non-profit recycling organization, Dan Peterman converted an adjacent lot into a temporary shelter for the homeless. Peterman created Chicago Compost Shelter with a Volkswagen van body, burying it in compost to retain heat. The van’s seats were removed, making the space large enough for a bed and some furniture. The compost used for the shelter was collected as part of a project to recycle organic waste in Chicago by the Resource Center. The compost consisted of a mixture of leaves, grass, clippings, and police horse manure.

Goals:

Temporary shelter for homeless in the winter, using organic material to produce heat.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Heated, temporary shelter without the danger of fire.

Arte Útil archive nr:

431

Initiator:

Carbon Defense League, Critical Art Ensemble

Location:

The Netherlands, Austria

Category:

scientific, pedagogical

Users:

CAE, Creation is Crucifixion and the Carbon Defense League, Teenage boys

Maintained by:

CAE, coproduced by Carbon Defense League, Institute for Applied Autonomy, RTMark.com

Duration:

1998 - 2001

Carbon Defense League, Critical Art Ensemble
-
Child as audience
-

Description:

This project began in 1998 by the Carbon Defense League, with the support of Critical Art Ensemble and Institute for Applied Autonomy. It was designed for teenagers and consist in a package composed of a host of radical software, a hardcore CD, instructions on how to hack a Nintendo Game Boy and a pamphlet on the oppression of youth.

Goals:

The final aim was to provide the necessary information on how to hack a Nintendo Game Boy. It meant to bring together the efforts of the Carbon Defense League, and Creation Is Crucifixion, to digitally invade one of the icons of the consumer age, the Nintendo Gameboy.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The teenagers discovered how to hack a Gameboy and the first CDL game.

Arte Útil archive nr:

454

Initiator:

Josiah Warren

Location:

United States

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

Josiah Warren, inhabitants of Cincinnati.

Maintained by:

Josiah Warren and clients

Duration:

1827 - 1830

Josiah Warren
-
Cincinnati Time Store
-

Description:

A store where customers could purchase goods with "labour notes", which represented an agreement to perform labour. This was determined on the principle of the equal exchange of labour, measured by the time taken, and exchanged hour for hour with other kinds of labour. Warren embraced the labour theory of value, which says that the value of a commodity is the amount of labour that goes into producing or acquiring it. Warren summed up this policy in the phrase "Cost the limit of price," with "cost" referring to the amount of labour one exerted in producing a good. He set out to examine if his theories could be put into practice by establishing his "labour for labour store". His experiment proved to be successful.

Goals:

To establish various colonies whose participants all agreed to use "cost the limit of price" in all economic transactions, hoping that all of society would eventually adopt the tenet in economic affairs.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Anyone could purchase goods without money but with an exchange of labour.
Created a new system in how to value goods.

Arte Útil archive nr:

298

Initiator:

John Körmeling

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

urban-development, social

Users:

Stichting Terremoto (UlrikeHelmer and Boris Everts), Residents of Nieuw Unicum.

Maintained by:

Stichting Nieuw Unicum, SKOR

Duration:

1995 - ongoing

John Körmeling
-
Circuit II
-

Description:

Körmeling has created a circuit for wheelchairs for the inhabitants of Nieuw Unicum Foundation, a communal accommodation facility for physically handicapped people in the dune area of Zandvoort. The artist has thus transformed his art work in a project designed to improve the life of these people and let them enjoy the natural environment at the same time. Slopes and turns, are designed to give easy access for wheelchairs. The project was completed with a film "Stichting Earthquake" about how to use the circuit.

Goals:

Increase the possibilities of movement and freedom through the dunes to the wheelchair's users.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The dwellers of Nieuw Unicum could go outside through the dunes with their wheelchairs.

Arte Útil archive nr:

225

Initiator:

Hussein Chalayan

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

urban-development

Users:

Models

Maintained by:

Hussein Chalayan

Duration:

2000

Hussein Chalayan
-
Coffee Table skirt
-

Description:

Hussein Chalayan realised a set of portable furniture, including a coffee table that transforms into a wooden skirt, 4 chairs cases that transform into dresses or fold into travel suitcases. He presented the project as a living room set on the catwalk stage. Furniture turned into dresses and suitcases, so the models could leave their stages with their portable objects.

Goals:

It was inspired by the designer's thinking on the wartime impermanence that finds homes raided and families forced to flee or be killed.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The furniture is portable and wearable.

Arte Útil archive nr:

577

Initiator:

Kathrin Böhm, Myvillages

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

economy, social

Users:

People living in Barking and Dagenham and wider east London, clients who buy drinks, commission bars, and researchers who use Company Drinks as a case study.

Maintained by:

Initially funded by the 2014 Create Art Award, today the project is a Community Interest Company and it is run by Kathrin Böhm, Cam Jarvis, Pip Field, Oribi Davies and Tracky Crombie, Alice Masson-Taylor and Shaun Tuck (all part-time). Company Drinks is organized around a diverse set of economic underpinnings, stressing the monetary and non-monetary factors. Funders of the 2018 programme include The Wellcome Trust, Heritage Lottery Fund, the Greater London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Big Lottery Fund, Barking and Dagenham Renew, Arts Council England and Santander Discovery Grant.

Duration:

2014 - ongoing

Kathrin Böhm, Myvillages
-
Company Drinks
-

Description:

Company Drinks is a community enterprise which links the history of east London families 'going picking' (fruit and hops) to the constitution of a new business which incorporates the whole drinks production cycle, and makes each step of the cycle accessible. The commercial aspect of the enterprise supports the communal and cultural one, and Company Drinks runs a year-round intergenerational programme that includes growing, picking, making, socializing, trading and discussing economy.
The base is a former sports pavilion in a park in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, which has a large club room, a training and production kitchen and a large outdoor area with growing and recreational spaces. Workshops, public events and 'Hopping Afternoons' are held here which combine local heritage, local resources such as spare fruit and growing spaces, local skills such as recipe ideas, drinks production, specialist and localised knowledge, and a local economy. The drinks range change every year according to who are the people who go picking, where they pick and which recipes they might suggest.

Goals:

Company Drinks produces syrups, sodas, saps, tonics, ciders, pop, and beers to be sold in order to establish an enterprise based on the principles of community economy, and to sustain a wide program of cultural activities such as workshops, events and study days about alternative economies.
In addition, the project creates an open public space where different generations of people coming from different cultural background can meet and produce drinks. Drinks are mainly sold during events locally and London wide. It is possible to buy them at the Barking Pavilion or in honesty fridges across London.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Every year around 1200 local residents engage with the project through various activities. The project has been recognised on a national and international level and today, it has developed into a fully-fledged community enterprise with a permanent base in Barking Park.

Arte Útil archive nr:

433

Initiator:

Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski

Location:

United States

Category:

politics, social

Users:

Jon Rubin, Dawn Weleski, staff, and customers.

Maintained by:

The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, The Benter Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, The Sprout Fund, Jon Rubin, and Dawn Weleski.

Duration:

2010 - ongoing

Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski
-
Conflict Kitchen
-

Description:

Each Conflict Kitchen includes events, performances, and discussions that seek to expand public engagement with the culture, politics, and issues at stake within the focus country. The restaurant rotates identities every few months in relation to current geopolitical events. For example the focus started in 2015 was on the food, culture, and politics of Iran. The food comes packaged in wrappers that include interviews with Iranians on subjects ranging from culture to politics. The thoughts and opinions from the interviews and programming are often contradictory and complicated by personal perspective and history. These natural contradictions reflect a range of thought within each country and serve to bring about questioning, conversation, and debate with customers.
Previous focus countries have included Afghanistan, Cuba, North Korea, Palestine, and Venezuela.

Goals:

Engage the general public in discussions about countries, cultures, and people that they might know little about outside of the polarising rhetoric of governmental politics and the narrow lens of media headlines.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Customers eat food from other countries. It has presented the only Iranian, Afghan, and Venezuelan restaurants the city has ever seen.
Questioning, conversation, and debates have been ignited.

Arte Útil archive nr:

277

Initiator:

Karl Ioganson

Location:

Russian Federation

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Workers, artists

Maintained by:

Karl Ioganson

Duration:

1923

Karl Ioganson
-
Constructivism – Finishing Machine
-

Description:

Goals:

Change the role of artists, to become the artist-producer (‘khudozhnik-proizvodstennik’) as Nikolai Tarabukin wrote, to design the process through aspects of production. He became a true worker at the factory workbench who is also an inventor, rather than an artist fulfilling a managerial-designer role.

Beneficial Outcomes:

A closer integration of art, work and life. The invention of a machine that raised the production.

Arte Útil archive nr:

530

Initiator:

Adelita Husni-Bey

Location:

The Netherlands, Spain

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Open to all users

Maintained by:

The artist and host organisations

Duration:

2015 - ongoing

Adelita Husni-Bey
-
Convention on the use of space
-

Description:

The project consists on a legal instrument drafted as a response to the housing crisis: the lack of affordable homes, absence of provisions for those without legal right to stay, rising rents, and the criminalisation of squatting. Husni-Bey in collaboration with different participants (lawyers, activists, academics, squatters, researchers and cultural workers) wrote the text through a series of public drafting assemblies. During the collective sessions the document was created, amended, critiqued and transformed. To be able to assist in making legal claims in court the convention was written with the assistance of lawyers, yet it uses a legitimate form to make claims that are currently not considered legal. The document therefore provides an explanation of the motive behind an illegal action - squatting for instance - and attempts to unite and protect struggles against the privatisation of space and housing.

Goals:

Legitimate and protect certain uses of ‘empty’ space to be occupied to produce non-marketable uses: living, sharing knowledge and skills, occupying space in protest, running cooperative systems of wealth and labour distribution, providing mental and physical support, or protecting space from environmental destruction. Going forward the Convention will be hosted in different EU countries, translated and open to further amendments, in order to produce a ‘European Convention on the Use of Space’.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Facing the absence of European laws protecting the urban commons, the convention supplies the lack and acts as a contract. Subjects that sign it agree on its principles and guidelines. The convention can be used as a supportive document in court and affixed in spaces threatened with eviction.

Arte Útil archive nr:

275

Initiator:

Melusina Fay Peirce

Location:

United States

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

The members of the co-operative

Maintained by:

Melusina Fay Peirce

Duration:

1870

Melusina Fay Peirce
-
Cooperative Housekeeping
-

Description:

Melusina Fay Peirce was a writer, a social scientist, and a feminist who developed a cooperative housekeeping model as a solution to reduce the burden of housework for women in order that they could pursue other interests. She extended an idea already implemented for labour movements and consumer cooperatives such as farmers for the benefit of women. In 1870, she founded the Cooperative Housekeeping Association with a group of 15-20 women that would carry out the common tasks of cooking, laundry and sewing. The common tasks would be done by skilled women on a wage, and the goods and services being sold to members with profits shared. Peirce theorized about her idea of communal kitchens and laundries from neighborhoods of detached houses to apartment blocks and even patented her design for a co-operative apartment building. She used the term 'cooperative housekeeping' for her proposal published in the journal Atlantic Monthly from 1868-69.

Goals:

The co-operative housekeeping would permit women to develop other activities in many different fields. It pursued the idea of bringing together women from hugely different backgrounds and did away with house-servants.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The members of the cooperative shared domestic-tasks earning some money and time to spare in other fields.

Arte Útil archive nr:

570

Initiator:

Alicja Wysocka (Alfa Omegi), Razem Pamoja Foundation

Location:

Mathare slum, Kenya

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Diana Adhiambo, Margert Adhiambo, Philgona Aluo, Brian Bera, Mary Mueni, Ann Mwikali, Millicent Ochieng, Susan Odhiambo, Rose Onyango, Nancy Opondo, Maureen Otieno, Alicja Wysocka, clients of the cooperative and artists who collaborated with the cooperative: Joanna Rajkowska, Małgorzata Markiewicz, Radek Szlaga, Paulina Ołowska, Dawid Polony

Maintained by:

The project was made possible thanks to the support and assistance of the Razem Pamoja Foundation.

Duration:

2017 - ongoing

Alicja Wysocka (Alfa Omegi), Razem Pamoja Foundation
-
Cooperative Spółdzielnia Ushirika
-

Description:

Cooperative Spółdzielnia Ushirika is a socio-artistic project, grounded in traditions of cooperative movements, run by the initiator and the community of Mathare Valley in Nairobi. Members of the cooperative produce mainly clothes and other accessories such as bags, school rucksacks, and travel bags, which are sold on and offline. Workers have an active role in the final form of the product they create, the work is not just limited to a passive re-making of a pre-established design. All cooperative members are provided with health insurance, a training, and workshops for learning how to use manual and electric sewing machines. According to the tribal tradition of the region, conversations and communal meals prepared by cooperative members are part of everyday work. Women are allowed to go to work with their children. Today, 10 women and a man are employed in the cooperative, the cooperative is equipped with 9 sewing machines (including 3 electric ones). The regular work shift is from Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 16:00 including a lunch break.

Goals:

To provide workplaces to people excluded by the economic system, contributing to a fair redistribution of goods. To ensure safe and healthy working condition. To provide training and skills improvement in sewing for its new members. The profit generated by the cooperative covers the salaries of the members and it sustains cooperative's costs such as rent, materials, equipment maintenance, purchase of food for communal meals and the remuneration for the teachers leading workshops.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Arte Útil archive nr:

271

Initiator:

Alterazioni Video

Location:

Italy, China

Category:

economy, social

Users:

The artists, Audience.

Maintained by:

Alterazioni Video

Duration:

2005 - ongoing

Alterazioni Video
-
Copy-right no Copy-right
-

Description:

This project consists of an open multimedia archive, while at the same time, it is also a physical place. Alterazioni Video, as a kind of gift, makes artists’ multimedia archives (films, pictures, mp3. etc.) available to the public – allowing people to download and upload files for free, while also sharing their own information.

Goals:

The aim is to invite users to ponder the meaning of memory.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Visitors can download for free whatever they want from the archive.

Arte Útil archive nr:

269

Initiator:

Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng

Location:

Online

Category:

pedagogical, economy

Users:

Everyone

Maintained by:

Coursera staff

Duration:

2012 - ongoing

Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng
-
Coursera
-

Description:

Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera, a social entrepreneurship company that partners with top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Coursera envisions a future where the top universities are educating millions of students. The technology enables the best professors to teach hundreds of thousands of students. Their hope is to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. Coursera wants to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.

Goals:

Empower people with education to improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in. Improve resumes, advance careers, or just learn more and expand knowledge.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Coursera creates accessible education and a global classroom. It offers courses in a wide range of topics, spanning the Humanities, Medicine, Biology, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Business, Computer Science, and many others, all for free.

Arte Útil archive nr:

569

Initiator:

Bilal Yilmaz, Seda Erdural, Baris Gumustas

Location:

Turkey

Category:

urban-development

Users:

Designers, Architects, Artists, Engineers, Advertisers, Students.

Maintained by:

The project started as a school project; now it is sustained by one of the initiator, Bilal Yılmaz

Duration:

2014 - ongoing

Bilal Yilmaz, Seda Erdural, Baris Gumustas
-
Crafted In Istanbul
-

Description:

Craftsmanship in Istanbul is under the danger of extinction with all the knowledge accumulated with generations of masters and apprentices. After visiting some workshops in the city, craftsmen shared with the initiators how their condition and businesses have changed since they started working. Many of them see their practice disappearing due to the growing industrialization, gentrification of the city, urban transformation, and the lack of support from the government. Almost 95% of artisans haven't taken on apprentices and their average age is over 50 years old, meaning that it is going to be more and more difficult to keep their expertise alive for the next generations. The project questions the possibilities of integration of traditional makers, small manufacturers and artisans into today's production and consumption system, in order to avoid their complete disappearance. Initially, an online map has been created with data gathered by the initiators' research. Today, craftsmen who want to appear on the map can contact directly the project via the dedicated website and request to be included on the map. After that, the initiators visit every workshop to gather information about their practice and consequently, the workshop is added to the map. The project allows people, especially designers, architects, artists, engineers, advertisers, and students, who might need to work with a specific material, such as glass, metal, wood, to get in touch with the most convenient person for their needs.

Goals:

Beneficial Outcomes:

Provides a database of craftsman for designers and art producers with a classification according to their expertise. The current map consists of 99 craftsmen who specialized in metalwork, wood, glass and textile products. They are mostly located in the Historical Peninsula, Dolapdere and Shishane region.

Arte Útil archive nr:

007

Initiator:

Bonnie Ora Sherk

Location:

United States

Category:

urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Bonnie Ora Sherk, neighborhood residents and art community.

Maintained by:

The Trust For Public Land

Duration:

1974 - 1987

Bonnie Ora Sherk
-
Crossroads Community (The Farm)
-

Description:

Located on 7 acres adjacent to the intersection of several freeway overpasses in San Francisco, The Farm was the home of over 70 domestic animals, gardens, a theatre, a state preschool, an art gallery, a communal kitchen, and a punk rock club. Neighborhood residents, as well as the art community, were invited to participate in The Farm’s interdisciplinary, environmentally oriented activities.

Goals:

As a life-scale environmental and social artwork, it brought many people from different disciplines and cultures together with each other and other species—plants and animals. The project involved extensive land transformation including the integration of disparate land parcels—all adjacent to and incorporating a major freeway interchange into a new city culture-ecology park.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Farm transitioned into a new city park with community gardens.

Arte Útil archive nr:

563

Initiator:

Derek Curry, Jennifer Gradecki

Location:

The Internet

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, politics, social

Users:

Anyone with access to the internet can use the app. If a user signs up as a CSIA agent using an email account, they can gain access to all of the features. Without signing up, users can access the Resource library and social media Post Inspector.

Maintained by:

Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki

Duration:

2015 - ongoing

Derek Curry, Jennifer Gradecki
-
Crowd-Sourced Intelligence Agency
-

Description:

The Crowd-Sourced Intelligence Agency (CSIA) is an online application that replicates and displays some of the known techniques used by intelligence agencies to collect and process open source information. The app uses technical manuals, research reports, academic papers, leaked documents, and Freedom of Information Act files to construct an Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) system that's accessible to the public. OSINT is gathered from publicly available sources like social media, academic articles, and public data.
The application consists of five main parts: The Social Media Monitor, a surveillance interface where users evaluate Tweets based on their threat to national security. Two Naïve Bayes supervised machine-learning classifiers that automatically label tweets as suspicious or not suspicious that users can review for accuracy and idiosyncrasies. The Social Media Post Inspector, where users can submit text to see if a post is likely to be considered threatening by intelligence agencies before sharing it on social media. The Watchlist, where users can target themselves and others as subjects of social media monitoring, and which provides automated evaluations from our machine-learning classifiers to show how social media posts may be treated by OSINT surveillance systems. A Resource Library that links to documents that informed the creation of the app.

Goals:

The goal of the CSIA is to expose potential problems, assumptions, and oversights inherent in current dataveillance systems in order to help people understand the effectiveness of OSINT processing and its impact on our privacy.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The CSIA provides first-hand experience with social media monitoring, allowing users to choose how they want to navigate social media surveillance.

Arte Útil archive nr:

156

Initiator:

Antanas Mockus

Location:

Colombia

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Users:

Residents of Bogotá

Maintained by:

City Council of Bogotá

Duration:

1995 - 1998 / 2001 - 2003

Antanas Mockus
-
Cultura Ciudadana
-

Description:

Antanas Mockus, who had no political experience, successfully ran for mayor of Bogotá. With an educator’s inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a social experiment, just as the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic and corruption. For ‘Women’s Night’ in 2001, he asked men to stay home and care for their families while the women went out. That night the police commander was a woman, and 1500 women police were in charge of Bogotá’s security. To avoid legal challenges, the mayor stated that the men’s curfew was strictly voluntary. Men who simply couldn’t bear to stay indoors during the six-hour restriction were asked to carry self-styled ‘safe conduct’ passes.

Goals:

To make the city safer for women to be in public. To reflect on women’s role in society. To examine the role of men in both domestic and public violence.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Under Mockus's leadership, Bogotá saw improvements such as: water usage dropped 40%, 7000 community security groups were formed and the homicide rate fell 70%, traffic fatalities dropped by over 50%, drinking water was provided to all homes (up from 79% in 1993), and sewerage was provided to 95% of homes (up from 71%). For ‘Women’s Night’, about 700 000 women went out, flocking to free, open-air concerts. They flooded into bars that offered women-only drink specials and strolled down a central boulevard that had been converted into a pedestrian zone. Men learned the joys and responsibilities of ‘women’s work’.

Arte Útil archive nr:

482

Initiator:

Grizedale Arts

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

pedagogical, economy, environment

Users:

Lawson Park staff and visitors.

Maintained by:

Lawson Park staff

Duration:

2009 - ongoing

Grizedale Arts
-
Culture Shop
-

Description:

Culture Shop is a collection of fermenting cultures for use in food produce.

Goals:

To use and disseminate yeast-based cultures for the production of healthy food. To produce low-cost and low-impact food storage and exchange cultures.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Culture Shop is a vehicle for discussion in other places – exhibitions, projects etc. – whilst producing for sale. It encourages the growth of knowledge through exchange.

Arte Útil archive nr:

079

Initiator:

Sarai

Location:

India

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, social

Users:

Sarai: Ravi S. Vasudevan and Ravi Sundaram (both fellows at CSDS) and the members of the Raqs Media Collective;

Maintained by:

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi; in collaboration with 'Ankur' (Society for Alternatives in Education)

Duration:

2001- ongoing

Sarai
-
Cybermohalla
-

Description:

The project consists of a network of 5 'Media Labs' set up in deprived neighbourhoods in Dehli especially dedicated to kids and women. The aim is to teach people how to use free software in order to save money and to open the access to technologies such as computers, digital photography and film-making. The topics covered include issues related to the social problems of the neighbourhoods in which they live. The workshops are structured with digital images and sound technologies, inviting participants to interpret the urban condition with imagination, a sense of humour, and criticality.

Goals:

The Cybermohalla Project (Mohalla in Hindi and Urdu means neighbourhood) addresses the interface between information technology and creativity in the lives of young people who live in a highly unequal society.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Fostering understanding of important local issues through collective dialogue

Arte Útil archive nr:

553

Initiator:

Ahmet Öğüt

Location:

United States

Category:

economy

Users:

Artists, curators, activists, students

Maintained by:

The artist and hosting institutions

Duration:

2014 - ongoing

Ahmet Öğüt
-
Day after Debt
-

Description:

The artist conceived the project as a collaborative exhibition featuring five art-as-response pieces to the student loan crisis and the pressure it causes upon graduates. In its original version, Öğüt invited Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Superflex, Dan Perjovschi, Martha Rosler to present sculptures as collection points for public contribution to The Debt Collective, a student-debt canceling initiative launched by Strike Debt's Rolling Jubilee. Artworks were installed in museum public spaces such as corridors and entrance ways.
To complete the project, Öğüt collaborated with a lawyer to write a Letter of Agreement between the artists and potential owners of the pieces, which states the possibility to continue raising funds for the Debt Collective through the artworks. Earnings must be donated to Strike Debt to buy back students’ loan.

Goals:

To raise funds for Strike Debt to buy back Student Loans.

Beneficial Outcomes:

To buy back Student Loans.

Arte Útil archive nr:

516

Initiator:

Núria Güell and Levi Orta

Location:

Spain

Category:

politics, economy

Users:

Maintained by:

Núria Güell and Levi Orta, activists

Duration:

2014 - ongoing

Núria Güell and Levi Orta
-
Degenerate Political Art. Ethical Protocol
-

Description:

After creating an anonymous corporation (Orta & Güell Contemporary Art S.A) in a tax haven, the artists Núria Güell and Levi Orta donate the management of their company and the accompanying bank account with all its benefits to a group of activists who are developing an autonomous society project on the sidelines of the capitalist dynamics.
This company allows its recipients to evade the regulations imposed by the states, which are the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), challenging the financial system monopoly and thus facilitating a free effectiveness for an autonomous economy development.
The founding of the company is thus a tool for establishing a more autonomous financial system, using the contradictory mechanisms of financial capitalism as tools in the struggle against the very system those tools were designed to support.

Goals:

Allow users to avoid regulations imposed by states, ECB and the IMF. To analyze the contradictions inherent in copying capitalist strategies and whilst offering a tool to create anti-capitalist social dynamics.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Through the bank accounts users are enabled to evade state-imposed regulations, and challenge the monopoly of the financial system, thus facilitating free operations to develop a self-governing economy.

Arte Útil archive nr:

229

Initiator:

Jenny Polak

Location:

Online and built installations

Category:

politics, social

Users:

Anyone can visit the website, Furniture installations can be borrowed or commisioned Artist, Jenny Polak, 3D interaction designer Peter Mackey.

Maintained by:

Jenny Polak and art galleries where her work is exhibited.

Duration:

2006 - ongoing

Jenny Polak
-
Design for the Alien Within
-

Description:

The project consists of a web-based interactive design tool to help people in designing spaces to hide undocumented immigrants in different locations. The initiator built a prototype of furniture with space for hiding people, which was displayed in several art galleries.

Goals:

To raise awareness about the precarious living conditions and danger faced by people living and working without immigration papers, and promote resistance to anti-immigrant authorities.

Beneficial Outcomes:

By initiating ‘in-store’ gallery performances, the artist was able to bring additional awareness to the project and the issue.

Arte Útil archive nr:

523

Initiator:

Andreja Kulunčić

Location:

Croatia

Category:

social

Users:

persons diagnosed as having the chronic mental illness of schizophrenia

Maintained by:

Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital in Zagreb

Duration:

2014

Andreja Kulunčić
-
Destigmatization
-

Description:

Destigmatization was made in Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital in Zagreb in collaboration with a working group consisting of mentor Dubravka Stijačić, prof. (defectologist, social pedagogue and psychotherapist who has since 1996 run an independent unit in the Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital called the Resocialization Centre), Vlatka Prstačić (coordinator of creative workshops), Kuna Zlatica (designer) and persons diagnosed as having the chronic mental illness of schizophrenia who, after being discharged from Vrapče, have endured various forms of the stigmas attached to mental disturbances and their consequences.
The “Vrapče Pillows” were made by patients with mental health problems in their endeavour to open up a dialogue about the problem of the stereotypes that became attached to them because of their conditions. The pillows with sparrows (sparrow in Croatian is “vrabac”, which is also the name of the city part where the hospital is located) were concrete and symbolic objects in which associations of the warmth and safety of home were brought together with their repugnance at the hospital ward. The strategy was to promote the pillows through a media campaign as a public speech about the taboo theme of the psychiatric hospital, patients, and mental illnesses.

Goals:

The wish here is to find ways in which persons with mental illnesses can themselves talk of the problems, possible solutions, the mistakes that society at a conscious or unconscious level makes with respect to them and to give them tools so that they themselves can find and create spaces in society for their own active inclusion.

Beneficial Outcomes:

A large number of people got involved, carrying pillows with them to the places they moved, and putting photographs with pillows on the Facebook page of the project.
They would send the pillow to a member of their family, a friend, neighbour or back to the hospital for the next interested person to take it with them.
It raises the level of public awareness, provoking modifications in the perception of persons with mental illnesses, that is, in understanding that the phenomenon of mental sickness is not something distinct from society, that people with social disturbances are a part of society and that they need to be given the chances to become themselves agents in the process of de-stigmatisation.

Arte Útil archive nr:

544

Initiator:

Fran Ilich

Location:

Mexico, United States

Category:

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Users:

Politics, global trade, coffee drinkers.

Maintained by:

The Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op

Duration:

2015 - ongoing

Fran Ilich
-
Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op
-

Description:

The Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op is a project developed by Fran Ilich that offers organic coffee sourced locally in Chiapas, Mexico, from Zapatista autonomous farms. Its goal is to connect social movements and geographical regions – Chiapas and New York City – and to create a horizontal financial flow between social movements. A cup of coffee can be traded for any alternative currency, barter, or time deposits (as well as voluntary money donations). Proceeds are used to buy more coffee from the autonomous Zapatista Municipalities.

Goals:

Coffee is the second most traded raw material in the world. The project uses this mass to create a sustainable economy that funds the reconstruction of the Zapatista autonomy from Mexican state.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Allows continuous economic growth to indigenous population of Chiapas.

Arte Útil archive nr:

062

Initiator:

Theaster Gates

Location:

United States

Category:

pedagogical, urban-development, social

Users:

Theaster Gates, Inhabitants of South Dorchester Avenue.

Maintained by:

Theaster Gates

Duration:

2006 - ongoing

Theaster Gates
-
Dorchester Project
-

Description:

Goals:

To provide affordable housing, studio, and live-work space for residents of Dorchester, Chicago.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Provides cultural institutions in the neighbourhood, brings together different community organisations and individuals, creating what Gates calls ‘radical hospitality’.

Arte Útil archive nr:

056

Initiator:

Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, Richard Kallweit and Clark Richert

Location:

United States

Category:

environment, social

Users:

Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, Richard Kallweit, Clark Richert and art students

Maintained by:

Independent

Duration:

1965 - 1973

Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, Richard Kallweit and Clark Richert
-
Drop city
-

Description:

Drop City was the first rural commune of the '60s where a group of about 12 adults and children lived in dome-style architectures inspired by the geodesic design principles of Buckminster Fuller. House-domes were built without a systematic kit or an exact design and members of the commune used mostly inexpensive, found materials such as sheet metal hacked off of junked car roofs. The village became a sort of laboratory for experimental building, solar technology and recycled materials, becoming an inspiration for a new generation of DIYers.

Goals:

Influenced by Allen Kaprow's happenings and new theories and performances by John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, and Robert Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College, they were determined to break art out of the confines of museums and galleries and integrate it with everyday life. To create a “live-in” work of Drop Art.

Beneficial Outcomes:

They used the geodesic design principles to build domes for domestic living, using waste and salvaged material.

Arte Útil archive nr:

049

Initiator:

Marjetica Potrč

Location:

Venezuela

Category:

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Users:

Liyat Esakov (architect), Marjetica Potrč, La Vega community

Maintained by:

Caracas Case Project and Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany; Ministry of Environment, Venezuela

Duration:

2003 - ongoing

Marjetica Potrč
-
Dry Toilet
-

Description:

The project consists of a waterless and ecologically safe toilet that collects waste and turns into fertiliser for La Vega barrio in Caracas, an area with no running water. The toilet was built with the residents, a neighbourhood association and architect Liyat Esakov.

Goals:

The project provides an 'informal' infrastructure to residents who receive water from municipal authorities no more than two days per week.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Collects waste and turns it into fertilizer.

Arte Útil archive nr:

571

Initiator:

Sectoral and labour organisations focusing on white-collar workers and freelancers, individuals.

Location:

Turkey

Category:

politics, urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Freelance and white collar workers especially specialising on translation, publishing, teaching, NGO’s, arts and culture, informatics; unemployed, grassroots organisations of ecology and migration.

Maintained by:

Donations from the members of Dünyada Mekan Collective, twice per year a 'solidarity party' is organized to raise funds.

Duration:

2015 - ongoing

Sectoral and labour organisations focusing on white-collar workers and freelancers, individuals.
-
Dünyada Mekan
-

Description:

Dünyada Mekan (A Place in the World) consists in a free working space equipped with a kitchen available from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm every day, for white-collar workers and freelancers who, due to the peculiarities of their work, experience isolation and precariousness. As a platform of solidarity, Dünyada Mekan can be used also as a place for gathering during evening times, it hosts other groups who are active in movement building and in the alternative solidarity economies such as Plaza Eylem Platformu and Kaç bize gel. The constituents of the space organise several workshops on video editing, visual design and translation to share their skills with each other, in addition to some other activities such as talks, screenings and presentations. The meetings function as tools for drawing attention to the problematics related to precarious working conditions and isolation, as well as whether these conditions have an effect on individual lives and how.

Goals:

Beneficial Outcomes:

Dünyada Mekan has a core group of around 10 people who regularly use the space and around 100 people who gather occasionally for the other activities. The project does not require a membership, it is completely run on a volunteer basis. Grassroots organisations can use the space for their meetings and activities.

Arte Útil archive nr:

076

Initiator:

Maurizio Cattelan

Location:

Austria

Category:

scientific, environment

Users:

Museum guards, public

Maintained by:

Wiener Secession

Duration:

1997

Maurizio Cattelan
-
Dynamo Secession
-

Description:

Inside the Wienner Secession gallery, a system of bicycles was installed to generate energy. Two security guards were pedalling on bicycles propped on trestles, producing the energy to turn on the bulbs in several of the rooms of the gallery.

Goals:

To generate electricity in a gallery space modifying the roles and relationship between the artist, attendants and artworks within the exhibition.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Several rooms of the gallery were powered by the bicycles.

Arte Útil archive nr:

541

Initiator:

Lucy Stockton-Smith, Arts Catalyst

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

scientific, environment, social

Users:

Sandwich Technology School students

Maintained by:

Sandwich Technology School

Duration:

2004-2006

Lucy Stockton-Smith, Arts Catalyst
-
East of Eden
-

Description:

For 18 months, Lucy Stockton-Smith worked with teachers and pupils at Sandwich Technology School in Kent to plan, design, build and fully utilise two geodesic ecology domes in the grounds of the school. Each dome now houses a microenvironment in which food crops are grown. The ‘Perma-pod’ is an environment which follows the principles of sustainable land use. It incorporates a wormery and is used to cultivate plants and wildlife which are ‘companions’, and beneficial to each other and the soil. The ‘Techno-pod’ aims to recreate contemporary farming methods, including the use of pesticides and intensive cultivation. These contrasting environments have served as a platform from which artists have led a diverse range of workshops across the school curriculum, in science, art, design and technology, geography, music and history. The project has seized upon areas where science has overlapped into other subjects. Students have been growing a huge variety of fruit and vegetables both inside and outside the domes. They conduct wildlife surveys, document the plant life and use it for inspiration for poetry and writing. Others are currently researching and designing a medieval garden. Other artists have come in to work on the project and lead workshops, including Antony Hall and Marcus Ahlers. Artists’ workshops have included making solar ovens and solar puddles; a bio-acoustic project; and the building of a rainwater harvesting system and an automatic irrigation system for the domes.

Goals:

To cultivate understanding of and excitement about ecology and food growing techniques.
To develop self-confidence and autonomous working skills in students.
To develop interdisciplinary projects in a whole school activity.
To integrate art across many areas of the school curriculum.

Beneficial Outcomes:

A love of ecology and understanding of where food comes from in young people.
Inter-disciplinary and inter-class working, across subjects and age groups, with artistic practice at the heart of all activities.

Arte Útil archive nr:

066

Initiator:

Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée (AAA)

Location:

France

Category:

urban-development, environment, social

Users:

AAA functions as a collaborative network with variable geometry, which organizes itself according to different topics, contexts of intervention, competencies and availability of participants. AAA: Constantin Petcou, Doina Petrescu, Denis Favret, Giovanni Piovene, John Sampson, Giada Mangiameli, John Roberts collaborators : Béatrice Rettig, Jean-Baptiste Bayle, Bordercartograph (Marion Baruch, Miriam Rambach , Arben Iljazi), School of Architecture/University of Sheffield, Antoine Quenardel and inhabitants of La Chapelle area including Fabienne Molinier, Catherine Sachet, Richard Laquitaine, Michèle Chevillon, Phillipe Serret, Abdulaye Sy and many more.

Maintained by:

Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée (AAA)

Duration:

2001 - 2006

Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée (AAA)
-
ECObox
-

Description:

Goals:

To encourage residents to get access to and critically transform temporary misused or underused spaces.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Offering the inhabitants the chance to occupy an abandoned space and transform it into a participatory garden and a place for debate.

Arte Útil archive nr:

554

Initiator:

SALT, Fritz Haeg, November Paynter

Location:

Turkey

Category:

urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Users of SALT, Community gardeners, Workshop participants, Youth and children, Researchers, Chefs, Urban theorists, Architects

Maintained by:

Slow Food Youth group Istanbul and Fevzi Cakmak, SALT Beyoğlu.

Duration:

2011 - 2015

SALT, Fritz Haeg, November Paynter
-
Edible Estate #11: Istanbul, Turkey
-

Description:

A glass greenhouse with south and west exposure on the top floor of the cultural venue SALT Beyoglu in central Istanbul houses an evolving experimental edible garden environment. Scavenged materials, construction detritus, empty containers, and local finds were gathered to create structures accommodating plants and people. SALT staff and visitors use the casual handmade environment as a green living room and gardening retreat, participating in its creation, use, and development. Local urban gardeners occupy it as an occasional headquarters and seed-starting facility. The planted, structural and furniture elements of the hothouse evolved through time with the growth of the plants and the changing desires of the users, while built elements are continually constructed, adjusted, and reconfigured. The Rooftop Hothouse is a casual laboratory for modest and year-round urban gardening activity cultivating a diversity of edibles. The garden is now managed by Slow Food Youth Group Istanbul.

Goals:

The aim was to create an edible estate that would act as a casual laboratory for modest and year-round urban gardening activity cultivating a diversity of edibles. At the same time it was hoped that the space would launch a series of questions, discussions and reflections on cultural agency, urban issues, the environment, what a cultural institution can and should be or do etc.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The garden created an alternative environment to the gallery spaces of the institution and sparked debates around what art is and can be, and what it means to present something in an unfinished or developing state. It created a hub for people to gather, to meet, to learn about edible plants and food production. It offered a space for workshops and discussion around urban issues and the environment. Ultimately it opened a series of propositions without offering answers.

Arte Útil archive nr:

337

Initiator:

Chemi Rosado-Seijo

Location:

Puerto Rico

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Chemi Rosado-Seijo, inhabitants of El Cerro.

Maintained by:

Chemi Rosado-Seijo, inhabitants of El Cerro

Duration:

2002 - ongoing

Chemi Rosado-Seijo
-
El Cerro
-

Description:

The project consists in painting the houses of the residents of El Cerro, a community that was initially founded by workers of a coffee plantation that was located there in the past.
Over the years, over 100 buildings have been painted in green for free by residents, volunteers and students.The artist has implemented an extensive plan for painting the houses within the community using different shades of green to match the surrounding mountains; in doing so, he has altered the area both aesthetically and socially. The project also includes workshops for residents of all ages covering different subjects, ranging from art to law. With the help of curator Pablo León de la Barra, it was possible to create El Cerro Museum in an abandoned building that now is a community centre.

Goals:

Formulate new relations in the social context and renovating the buildings.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The exchange of knowledge between people that normally wouldn’t share knowledge.
It generated an open community for other artistic or social projects, activities and workshops.

Arte Útil archive nr:

449

Initiator:

Asunción Molinos Gordo

Location:

Egypt

Category:

politics, urban-development, economy, environment, social

Users:

The artist, residents in Art El Lewa, University professors and unemployed youth.

Maintained by:

Idea and production by Asunción Molinos Gordo. Hosted by ́ Artellewa Art Space. Collaborators: Elisabeth Shoghi, 5 star international chef: Om Islam, Om Mohamed, Om Karim y Wafea: ́ traditional cooks, Solafa Ghanem: mediator, Salima Ikram: archaeologist.

Duration:

2012

Asunción Molinos Gordo
-
El Matam El Mish Masry
-

Description:

The project was based on the creation of a restaurant in the neighbourhood of El Lewa, Cairo – one of the many neighborhoods built illegally, known as Ashguahiyats, a term meaning 'leaving things to chance'. Using different kinds of menus, people have been able to deal with issues relating to food and agriculture such the substantial loss of fertile soil as a result of uncontrolled growth in suburban areas on top of agricultural land; or the impact of export/import policies on Egyptian diet.

Goals:

Lack of food sovereignty is one of the main factors that sparked the ongoing Egyptian Revolution. This project’s main goal is to reintroduce into public discussion facts about the food and agriculture situation which are crucial to the country’s future. The restaurant was designed as a meeting point where, rather than through mass media, users and initiators could start a conversation. The project also aims to ‘translate’ into real dishes some data that would normally be presented under the abstract coding of mathematical percentages.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Facilitating casual meetings between residents, university professors, researchers, activists, visiting artists who all sat at the dining table. In a time when public discourse is being shaped in order to divide the population according to ethnic group or religion, the project’s main beneficial outcome was to remember what is common among the variety of people than life in Egypt: food, a basic need.

Arte Útil archive nr:

103

Initiator:

Luis Garden Acosta and Frances Lucerna

Location:

US

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Users:

Inhabitants of Williamsburg

Maintained by:

Aetna Foundation-- Help Portrait, Andy Harris (through BNY Wealth Management), Brooklyn Community Foundation, Coca-Cola Company (Fitness Program), Environmental Protection Agency, Green Jobs Green NY--NYSERDA, Hispanic Federation- Aetna Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)--Community Arts, New York Community Trust, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), NYC Department of Education - Academy for IAP, NYC Department of Youth & Community Development, NYS Council for the Arts, NYS Dept. of Education - 21st Century, NYS Dept. of Health - Health Research Aids Institute, NYS Office of Alcoholism & Substance Abuse Services (OASAS), Rockefeller Family Fund, Rockefeller NYC Cultural Innovation Fund, The Scherman Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, William B. Weiner Foundation, Winslow Foundation, Youth Development Institute (YDI)

Duration:

1982 - ongoing

Luis Garden Acosta and Frances Lucerna
-
El Puente
-

Description:

Goals:

Its goal is to promote social justice through direct community engagement in the arts, education, scientific research, and environmental action.
It was founded to complete the holistic transformation of North Brooklyn from one of the most challenged neighborhoods in New York City to a more equitable, healthy and green community.

Beneficial Outcomes:

They have improved the life of the community. The Academy for Peace and Justice is one of the NY "A" rated public school with 100% students graduated.
In 2003, the Academy was recognized by the Department of Education’s Chancellor as one of New York City’s 200 Schools of Excellence and remains among NYC’s A-rated schools. In 2009, it was recognized for achieving the highest 1 year graduation rate increase among Brooklyn High Schools. The Academy is highlighted in the Eisenhower Foundation report, “What Works: Public School Reform” and is currently part of a Stanford University Study sponsored by Linda Darling Hammond researching best practices in schools focused on social emotional development and social justice. It is also part of the NYC DOE’S Expanded Success Initiative focused on the academic success of Latino and African American male students.

Arte Útil archive nr:

044

Initiator:

José Antonio Abreu Anselmi

Location:

Venezuela

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Kids and adolescents at risk of social exclusión, public schools, teachers, and those who have directed the orquestra: José Antonio Abreu Anselmi, Frank Di Polo, Ulyses Ascanio, Sofía Mühlbauer, Carlos Villamizar, Jesús Alfonso, Edgar Aponte, Florentino Mendoza, Carlos Lovera, Lucero Cáceres, Claudio Abbado, Eduardo Mata, Zubin Mehta, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Daniel Barenboim, James Judd, Sir Simón Rattle y Gustavo Dudamel.

Maintained by:

Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Longy School of Music of Bard College (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Bard College (New York) and the Goverment of Venezuela

Duration:

1975 - ongoing

José Antonio Abreu Anselmi
-
El Sistema (The System)
-

Description:

El Sistema is a pedagogical, artistic and social model to systematize the musical education. It has been operating since 1975 as the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras and Choirs of Venezuela (Sistema Nacional de Orquestas y Coros juveniles e infantiles de Venezuela) recently renamed to Fundación Musical Simón Bolívar.
The program was created primarily focused on offering free classical music education for kids at risk of social exclusion. Under the motto "play and fight" the Sistema is based on a network of music centers called "nucleos" that work together with local communities to organize the instruction, the collective and individual practice of music among kids and youth through symphonic orchestras and choirs, as instruments of social organization and human development.
The program begon with 11 participants in a garage in Caracas. From that, the network expanded to 300 youth orchestras and choirs, with approximately 700,000 young people involved.

Goals:

- Giving free access to classical music education, symphonic orchestras and instruments to kids and youth at risk of social exclusion.
- Offering Individual intellectual development and integral personal capacitation through the music.
- formulate local shared spaces as generators of culture, breaking the elitism of the high culture and recovering Art as a social right.

Beneficial Outcomes:

El Sistema runs lessons and workshops for children and young people, in which they learn to play, construct and repair special instruments, besides offering programs for children with disabilities or learning difficulties. It also provides technical and organizational assistance to all public schools that request their integration into the musical system and relies on neighborhood associations, parents, town halls and institutional representations to provide them with the necessary rehearsal rooms or musical instruments.
The system is a model that can be replicated and implemented in other countries and it has inspired multiple educational programs in USA, Canada, UK, Portugal, Spain.

Arte Útil archive nr:

256

Initiator:

WochenKlausur

Location:

Austria

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Seven former drug users who had completed rehab therapy and were willing to start working.

Maintained by:

Anton-Proksch-Institute

Duration:

2003 - ongoing

WochenKlausur
-
Employment of Former Drug Users
-

Description:

The project consists of a series of upcycling workshops to help former drug users who have completed long-term therapy work, with the reintegration in the first labour market.
Through the workshops, participants redesign and sell discarded products or worn-out pieces of furniture for a new use.
Every year, a new group of people who have completed therapy are employed by the business.

Goals:

To help people who have completed long-term therapy work creatively for a year and adapt to a structured workplace.

Beneficial Outcomes:

A number of participants have been able to find jobs in the primary sector of the labor market following their employment at gabarage. The workshop has been invited by Trigos Awards to design their contest trophies.

Arte Útil archive nr:

480

Initiator:

Ala Plastica

Location:

Argentina

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, politics, economy, environment, social

Users:

Community of Isla paulino and visitors in general.

Maintained by:

Community of Isla paulino

Duration:

2000 - ongoing

Ala Plastica
-
Energia Alternativa para Isla Paulino
-

Description:

After another tragic oil spill from the petrochemicals situated at the banks of the canal in the La Plata harbour in 1999, Ala Plástica proposed to the local community to install 32 solar panels to supply the lack of electricity on the island.
They encouraged a group of inhabitants to organise themselves into an association in order to manage the installation. The strategy was dialogical to involve a community formed by diverse actors (neighbours, associations, religious groups, policymakers, local institutions, and collectives) with experts in different fields (political experts, biologists, engineers, artists, etc).

Goals:

The project was aimed to protect the natural and cultural landscape; provide solar energy for inhabitants and to conceive a plan based on the understanding of the ecosystem and its infrastructure. The final goal was to create a national law to keep this landscape protected.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Electricity was provided for many local houses. The whole process was guided by ideas based in the values that the community wished: the energy installation; the building of a citizenship; strengthening of the community and the territorial design.

Arte Útil archive nr:

157

Initiator:

Dan Peterman and Connie Spreen

Location:

United States

Category:

Users:

Artists, curators, critics, general public, students

Maintained by:

Grants and individual donations

Duration:

2002 - ongoing

Dan Peterman and Connie Spreen
-
Experimental Station
-

Description:

The project consists of a refurbished building where a broad range of social organisations and independent projects take place. In 2002, after a massive fire, the structure was renovated and reopened as the Experimental Station. The centre offers various forms of support for the residents of Southside Chicago, including workspace at discounted rents, meeting space, technology, and shared resources such as a greenhouse and roof gardens and small offices suites. At the same time, the users are asked to contribute offering lectures, exhibitions, etc. that are free and open to the public. Areas of primary interest include art, ecology, cultural criticism, independent publishing and alternative models of education.

Goals:

To provide essential resources that enable vulnerable, yet valuable initiatives to stabilize and flourish. To maintain a diverse and interdisciplinary balance of participants and activities and generate events, lectures, and exhibitions which are free and open to the public.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The building now hosts a number of initiatives and programs attending to local needs: a nonprofit community bike shop, a farmers market featuring educational programs, an investigative journalism production company called the Invisible Institute, and other public events such as conferences, concerts and readings.

Arte Útil archive nr:

220

Initiator:

Billy Klüver, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman.

Location:

United States

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, economy

Users:

Billy Klüver, Robert Whitman, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and Robert Whitman among the others. Notable engineers involved include: Bela Julesz, Billy Klüver, Max Mathews, John Pierce, Manfred Schroeder, and Fred Waldhauer

Maintained by:

Julie Martin

Duration:

1966 - 2001

Billy Klüver, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman.
-
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)
-

Description:

E.A.T. was a non-profit foundation established to promote collaborations between artists, engineers and scientists. The organisation responded to artists' request for technical help by matching them with an engineer who could work with them and develop new projects using new technologies. E.A.T created a collaboration between these actors, through cooperation and sponsorship. In the late 1960s, 28 regional E.A.T. chapters were created throughout the U.S. to promote collaborations between artists and engineers and expand the artist’s role in social developments related to new technologies.

Goals:

The organisation placed artists working directly with engineers in the industrial environment where technology was being developed.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Projects realized at this time included developing methods to produce instructional programming for India's educational television; a communication net of linked public spaces by telex in New York (U.S.), Ahmadabad (India), Tokyo (Japan) and Stockholm (Sweden) by telex; a pilot project enabling children in different parts of New York City to speak over the telephone, telex and fax equipment; a pilot programme to devise methods for recording indigenous culture in El Salvador, etc.

Arte Útil archive nr:

100

Initiator:

Daniela Brahm, Les Schliesser

Location:

Germany

Category:

politics, urban-development, economy, social

Users:

A third of the space is rented to local, production-oriented businesses; a third to art and culture; and a third to community outreach organizations or non-profit associations. There are also a canteen, a project room for events and two guest apartments.

Maintained by:

ExRotaprint gGmbH (non-profit limited liability company) founded by renters / the planning team consists of artists Daniela Brahm and Les Schliesser, and architects Bernhard Hummel and Oliver Clemens.

Duration:

2005 - ongoing

Daniela Brahm, Les Schliesser
-
ExRotaprint
-

Description:

After the Rotaprint company went bankrupt in 1989, the 10,000-square-meter manufacturing facility was left without any future prospects. In 2005, artists Daniela Brahm and Les Schliesser formulated a concept for taking over the property through renters already on site. The goal was to develop the location to serve a heterogeneous mix of Arbeit, Kunst, Soziales (work, art, and community).

Goals:

To create a common space for people with different occupations, and different backgrounds and histories, fighting against the delimiting tendencies of culture and money. To prevent real estate speculation. To keep rents low.

Beneficial Outcomes:

After successful negotiations in 2007, the non-profit company ExRotaprint owns the buildings through a 99-year heritable building right and is responsible for all aspects of its development. The legal structure prohibits selling the property again and the income from rents is linked to declared non-profit goals.

Arte Útil archive nr:

213

Initiator:

Jeanne van Heeswijk

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

pedagogical, urban-development, social

Users:

Students of the Professor Einstein Elementary School, students of the Calvijn Junior College (lower secondary professional education), Jeanne van Heeswijk, Dennis Kaspori, Slotervaart’s design department and outside experts, inhabitants of Slotervaart

Maintained by:

SKOR, Amsterdam City Council.

Duration:

2005 - 2011

Jeanne van Heeswijk
-
Face Your World
-

Description:

The project was set up as a tailor-made educational program for the youngster to explore and participate in the process of city renewal. To help them it was developed the so-called Interactor software, an interactive tool to enable users to rebuild their neighbourhood. The software creates a virtual environment which represents the neighbourhood and enables users to see the result of its modification while it has been used.

Goals:

The project enables young people to investigate the environment in which they live. It gives them instruments so that they can – like a genuine town planner – change their environment.

Beneficial Outcomes:

In the Stedelijklab which is essentially a gym hall converted into a design studio, students designed a new park, Staalmanpark. The designs were not only based on their own wishes, but also on those of other local residents.
In 2011, their new Staalmanpark was opened.

Arte Útil archive nr:

468

Initiator:

David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young

Location:

Worldwide

Category:

urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Initially the maps were intended for the homeless, however their use has broadened to local residents and others as the maps live online and are reproduced freely and widely on the internet.

Maintained by:

Fallen Fruit

Duration:

2004 - ongoing

David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young
-
Fallen Fruit – Public Fruit Maps
-

Description:

Fallen Fruit began as a collaboration between David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young in 2004 and originally focussed on mapping the fruit trees on or over public property in Los Angeles. Its focus grew to other urban, public spaces; sidewalks, streets and alleys. They termed these findings as ‘public fruit’ and started to think about how they could expand this project to regenerate neighbourhoods and urban spaces. Hand drawn maps were produced and distributed covering various urban cities and towns – intending to encourage others to continue in this way by wandering, foraging and seeing the new potential in their urban spaces. For this reason they’ve avoided geo-tagging online maps, which give exact locations for the trees. However, a separate project exists called ‘falling fruit’, which works on very similar lines, does use this method. Fallen Fruit’s maps in contrast do not follow exact spatial proportions, but each map has a certain amount of play in the choice of which streets are included, so that often these express unusual shapes present in the landscape: an animal, a mythical shape of just a gesture used to break the grid on which most cities are built.

Goals:

To change the way we think and live in our cities and neighbourhood by challenging the meaning of place and the way our familiar spaces can be put to new use. To highlight the way in which fruit can be used to rethink the way people live, to evoke a utopian possibility whilst being solidly pragmatic. To encourage explorative wandering, foraging, and discovery.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The maps have a liminal life and are widely circulated and often copied. Fallen Fruit often activate the maps by using them to lead tours through actual sites. These tours start in the evening so they can meet the residents and talk to them. The residents are often as surprised as the people on the tour. The intangible benefit of these maps is most important to them: the emergence of new conversations around cities and neighbourhoods, gardens, public space and the meaning of food. Fallen Fruit believes in a kind of art-making in which the product is social and generative.

Arte Útil archive nr:

436

Initiator:

Caleb Phillips, Ethan Welty

Location:

Online

Category:

economy, environment

Users:

Everyone

Maintained by:

The creators and the users

Duration:

2013- ongoing

Caleb Phillips, Ethan Welty
-
Falling Fruit
-

Description:

The Falling Fruit project was born from a passion for food and the environment. It is organised in an open-source database that brings together the entirety of maps made by foragers from the Internet. The database also includes edible species found in municipal tree inventories: databases of street (and sometimes private) trees used by many cities, universities, and other institutions to manage the urban forest. Through the quantification of these resources on a map, Falling Fruit hopes to facilitate intimate connections between people, food, and the natural organisms growing in their own neighborhoods.

Goals:

Foraging in the 21st century is an opportunity for urban exploration, fighting the scourge of stained sidewalks, and reconnecting with the botanical origins of food. Foragers and private tree owners are encouraged to donate their surplus to charity and to the organisations specialized in rescuing and distributing fresh produce.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The map is open for anyone to edit. The entire database can be downloaded with just one click, and our code is open-source.

Arte Útil archive nr:

545

Initiator:

Lisa Ma

Location:

China

Category:

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Users:

Factory community, People that eat, People that use technology

Maintained by:

Factory workers-owners community

Duration:

2011 - onwards

Lisa Ma
-
Farmification
-

Description:

Farmification is a part-time farming scheme to help migrant workers gain control over their futures in relation to their past values. Before, these workers were farmers, producing food for themselves and for others, but now having migrated into factories these producers became consumers. Who’s making all the food now? Over years, Farmification as a quiet meme migrated in making statements indirectly, without a voice of conflict from the doer.
Since 2012 onwards, the largest iron factory, losing demand as a result of a burst property bubble, took Farmification into practice by invested billions of dollars into pig farming, starting a series of weekly newspaper comic strips and uprooting the national idealism of progress and profession.

Goals:

Create a global dialogue about how technological demands impact world food economy. Initiate large-scale transitions between industries; a form of passive activism that is productive.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Allow communities of factory workers to retain their community despite technology renewal.

Arte Útil archive nr:

562

Initiator:

Futurefarmers

Location:

Norway

Category:

pedagogical, urban-development, environment

Users:

Farmers, oven builders, astronomers, artists, soil scientists, bakers, city officials and citizens

Maintained by:

Situations, Bjørvika Utvikling

Duration:

2012 - ongoing

Futurefarmers
-
Flatbread Society
-

Description:

Flatbread Society is a permanent project created in a common area amidst the waterfront development in Oslo, where farmers, oven builders, astronomers, artists, soil scientists, bakers and city officials work together with local people to establish an aligned vision for the use of this part of the land. Using grain as an excuse to analyse the interrelationship of food production to knowledge sharing, cultural production and socio-political formations, they built a bakehouse and a cultivated grain field resulting in the formation of an urban gardening community. The project functions as a shared resource for urban food production and the preservation of the commons. A full-time farmer was hired in collaboration with the Norwegian Farmers Union to maintain the project.

Goals:

The project provides a multi-functional oven and glass house which facilitates various types of bread baking and public programs around agriculture and grain. The activators of the project collected and planted seeds that have been “rescued” from various locations in the Northern Hemisphere to display thousands of years of a complex hand-to-hand network of knowledge and genetic resources.
The project inserts make-shift production into the highly planned and controlled public space of the new Bjørvika, in Oslo. The space offers an alternative approach in building methodology of urban design, creating a place in which people might actively contribute to the life of the public spaces.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Users can learn how to cultivate grain in a urban setting, how to bake and they can use the facilities for free.

Arte Útil archive nr:

158

Initiator:

Haha

Location:

United States

Category:

scientific, economy, social

Users:

The artists.

Maintained by:

Sculpture Chicago provided the materials and rent.

Duration:

1992 - 1995

Haha
-
Flood
-

Description:

The project consisted of a hydroponic garden built in a storefront in Chicago. The artists collaborated with a group of people to grew kale, collards, mustard greens, swiss chard and other therapeutic herbs used as therapy for HIV-infected patients. Flood provided free meals, educational activities, a public programme of events related to alternative therapies, nutrition and horticulture. After the project was over, Flood users and activators continued to volunteer at social service organisations especially related to the support of people infected with HIV/AIDS. Thanks to Flood an HIV/AIDS facility opened in Chicago and it contained a food pantry, an alternative high school and a community centre. Flood was developed in other communities (Dekalb, Illinois; Cedar Rapids, Iowa), each of which developed the project relative to the local context.

Goals:

To promote community health care.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Flood served as a service provider, offering educational activities, public events, biweekly meals, and information on alternative therapies, local HIV/AIDS services, nutrition, and horticulture.

Arte Útil archive nr:

218

Initiator:

Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Location:

United States

Category:

pedagogical, social

Users:

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maintenance workers, visitors of the museum.

Maintained by:

C.7,500 Exhibition, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum or Art

Duration:

1973

Mierle Laderman Ukeles
-
Four actions of Maintenance Art
-

Description:

After the birth of her first child, Mierle Laderman Ukeles wrote a Manifesto for Maintenance Art and embarked on a career that has mixed maintenance performances and public art. Through the Manifesto she attempted to question and break down the barriers between the idea of 'work' and what can be labelled 'artwork'.
Initially the work consisted of a series of solitary performances in Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. She performed 4 actions called 'The maintenance of the art object': a ritual sequence of three cleanings of a glass vitrine in the Museum’s Egyptian mummy section (by the maintenance person, by the artists and the conservator respectively); the keeping of the keys intended as maintenance as security where she took control of the keys closing the museum's main entrances, during open hours; 2 acts of Washing/Maintenance: she washed the stairs to the main entrance of the museum with water, stone and diapers (normally used by the conservators to clean works of art). Later, the artist washed the marble floor of Avery Court with the same materials.

Goals:

To blur distinctions between work and art, to do publicly what women often do privately, to highlight how housekeeping and maintenance are essential acts in a domestic, urban and global context.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The work of maintenances was underlined and the vitrine, the stairs and the court floor were washed. The value of maintenance work was highlighted.

Arte Útil archive nr:

232

Initiator:

Temporary Services

Location:

United States

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Temporary Services, Tony Alamo, Matti Allison, Anonymous, María José Barandiarán & Michael Bulka, Baur Au Lac Zürich, Bible Helps, Shawn Calvert, Charm School Industries, Coalition for Positive Sexuality, Credit Suisse, Wilfrid Désir, Jim Duignan, Anthony Elms & Joel Score, Ending the Begin Tract League, Evangelical Tract Distributors, Fellowship Tract League, F.T.L., Nicolas Floc'h, Grace & Truth, Emily Jacir, Jews For Jesus, Kevin Kaempf, Kim and Mike, Nance Klehm, Kate Kranack, Liberation Rock, Josh MacPhee, Ryan McGinness, Adam Mikos, Mr. Nash, Ralph Nielsen, Leah Oates, Old Paths Tract Society Inc., Krista Peel, Michael Piazza, Pilgrim Tract Society, Inc., Ben Rubin, Bob Shaw, David Shrigley, Shy Girl, Owen Smith, Dana Sperry, Jocelyn Superstar 2000, Temporary Services, Threadculture, Several Unknown Individuals, Vladlen Voronin, Oli Watt and visitors.

Maintained by:

It was part of an exhibition titled "6/6". It was located at the School of Fine Arts Gallery at Indiana University.

Duration:

2000

Temporary Services
-
Free for all
-

Description:

Over 50 artists, individuals and organisations have been asked to realise a work to be distributed for free at a one-day-only event. Artists' work were integrated with a wide range of material submerging the work in a broader context. Religious tracts, booklets, flyers, stickers, matchbooks, posters, audio tapes, and postcards were among the items given away for free. Visitors could collect the artworks in free boxes provided by the organisers, no restrictions were placed and what or how much works visitors could take. A series of instructions suggested how people could use and display the portable collection.

Goals:

Point out the vast amount of sheer surplus that American Culture generates.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The visitors could get anything they wanted for free. And they can re-enact the action to get for free the products samples of medicines, food, booklets.

Arte Útil archive nr:

192

Initiator:

Joseph Beuys

Location:

Germany

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy

Users:

Beuys, Klaus Staeck (1st chairman), Georg Meistermann (2nd chairman) and Willi Bongard (secretary), students.

Maintained by:

Its users

Duration:

1972-1988

Joseph Beuys
-
Free International University (FIU) for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research
-

Description:

A school outside the academic system that admitted all students. It was founded as an "organizational place of research, work, and communication" to ponder the future of society. One of the most pressing issues for the project was how to help realise the capacity of all individuals to be creative beings by advocating cross-pollination of ideas across disciplines as well as how to formulate the concept of individual freedom as the ability to shape social forms, through the transformation of resources.

Goals:

As a Free University it was intended to supplement the state educational system while at the same time campaigning for legal equality with that system.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The idea of the Free International University was revisited and taken further by various people and groups, including the author Rainer Rappmann under the FIU-Verlag and the F.I.U.s in Amsterdam, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, and Munich, which were begun by students of Beuys. They also include the organization Mehr Demokratie e.V. and the Omnibus for direct Democracy.

Arte Útil archive nr:

116

Initiator:

Critical Art Ensemble

Location:

Germany, Austria

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, politics

Users:

Critical Art Ensemble (Steve Kurtz, Steve Barnes, Dorian Burr, Beverly Schlee, and Hope Kurtz), Beatriz da Costa and Shyh-shiun Shyu, general European public who wanted to test their foods for markers indicating that they are genetically modified.

Maintained by:

Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt); Esc Gallery (Graz)

Duration:

2003 - 2004

Critical Art Ensemble
-
Free-Range Grain
-

Description:

The project consisted of a portable and public lab which used molecular biology techniques to test food for the more common genetic modifications (GM). Users were invited to bring food to the gallery that they thought it could be suspect. The initiators tested the food over 72-hour period to see if users' suspicions were justified.

Goals:

To contribute to an idea of public science by focusing on issues such as food production that are of direct interest to people, and to make scientific initiatives more immediate and concrete.

Beneficial Outcomes:

To popularize scientific techniques the general public can use to test foods themselves, instead of relying on the potentially dubious labeling and testing provided by their governments and corporations.

Arte Útil archive nr:

086

Initiator:

Jeanne van Heeswijk

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Jeanne van Heeswijk, Dennis Kaspori, the inhabitans.

Maintained by:

Kosmopolis Rotterdam, Fonds BKVB - Intendant Culturele Diversiteit, Stichting DOEN, Europees Fonds voor Regionale Ontwikkeling van de Europese Commissie, Pact op Zuid, Vestia, CVAH en VETRA.

Duration:

2008 - ongoing

Jeanne van Heeswijk
-
Freehouse
-

Description:

The project has focused on the micro-urbanism emerging in small communities across the city of Rotterdam. After a research in the Afrikanerwijk in particular, the initiators developed a foundation with the help of the residents. Freehouse comprehends 3 studios: Wijkatelier, wijkkeuken (kitchen­) and wijkwinkel (shop). Here residents can share their skills and create new products in the communal workshops, which are then sold in the shop. Every activity is based on community participation, co-operative cultural production and self-organisation. Freehouse has recently developed a skill-based neighbourhood co-operative.

Goals:

To try and instigate projects that challenge people to play a more active part with respect to the space in which they live and work by bringing skills and qualities of local people together.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The sewing atelier has already received commissions from several designers to produce their clothes; the wijkkeuken has become in a catering service; all the participants are earning money for their work; the market has improved its offer and services, after a struggle against municipal rules.

Arte Útil archive nr:

483

Initiator:

Jaime Iglehart

Location:

Online, Berlin.

Category:

pedagogical, politics, urban-development, economy, social

Users:

People leaving in Berlin.

Maintained by:

Jaime Iglehart, Eric Brelsford.

Duration:

2009 - ongoing

Jaime Iglehart
-
Freiräume Map Berlin
-

Description:

An internet-based map depicting various forms of Freiräume (‘free spaces’) in Berlin today, including Hausprojekts (legalised squats), Wagenplätze (trailer communities), co-housing, social centers, tool-shares, hacker spaces and community gardens, all of which engage in what is commonly known as ‘free culture’. Free culture is practised purposefully by social and political movements as well as ‘non-politically engaged’ people every day. The map allows users to find spaces that match certain criteria, and also narrow down to their particular areas of interest, such as community meals, wood/metal-working spaces, free building materials, film screenings, guest rooms and donation-based health and legal counselling.
So far, they have plotted 230 spaces on the map. They have 60-100 more spaces yet to add, and they expect the map to grow when they make it available to the public as a Wiki.

Goals:

To provide a tool for connection, historical analysis, and community organising between autonomous, DIY, and/or ‘free’ spaces.
To chart spaces which exist either in opposition to, or somehow otherwise wedged within the cracks of capitalism.
To explore the edges between subcultures and spaces with different agendas and the even greater 'edge' where the illusive mainstream and the countercultural meet.

Beneficial Outcomes:

In addition to the many concrete uses of Freiräume Map Berlin, the map also provides affirmation and inspiration as a counter-power to the dominant narrative that free spaces are on the decline. During the course of the research, the project identified approximately 200 more spaces than usually encountered in day to day life. It is the hope that users of the map will have a similar experience and become inspired to make new connections.

Arte Útil archive nr:

180

Initiator:

Azra Akšamija

Location:

Germany, The Netherlands

Category:

social

Users:

Contemporary refugees.

Maintained by:

Exhibition Liminal Spaces / Grenzräume, Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig (Germany); project Liminal Spaces, organised as a collaboration of the Israeli Centre for Digital Art Holon (Israel), the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Arts PACA and the University of the Arts Berlin (Germany).

Duration:

2006

Azra Akšamija
-
Frontier Vest
-

Description:

The Frontier Vest is a prototype of a contemporary vest design, which can have different functions, both sacred and profane. It can be worn as a tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl, but it can also turn into a Jewish prayer rug. Inspired by the nomadic life of the Bedouin, the Frontier Vest also represents a useful garment for a contemporary refugee.

Goals:

The Frontier Vest allows for individual expressions of different belief systems. This individual wearable architecture can also be combined to generate a communal space. For this, it needs a congregation of minimally ten in Judaism (minyan), two in Islam (masjid) and three in Christianity. Yet more importantly, this individual territory can only become collective through overcoming the fear of mutual otherness.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The vest can be worn by both men and women, and can be used in Jewish and Islamic religions within individual religious communities in the future.

Arte Útil archive nr:

425

Initiator:

Fallen Fruit

Location:

United States

Category:

urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Buurtgroepen, vaak geholpen door kunstinstellingen zoals het Watts Towers Arts Center of Machine Project in Los Angeles.

Maintained by:

Fallen Fruit (Gevallen Fruit) – een samenwerking tussen David Burns, Matias Viegener en Austin Young

Duration:

2007 - ongoing

Fallen Fruit
-
Fruit Tree Adoptions
-

Description:

Fruit Tree Adoptions is project created in collaboration with donors, civic groups and organisations like Treepeople in Los Angeles and San Diego (CA). This work proposes to plant fruit trees seedlings in various urban contexts – both public spaces or on the peripheries of private property. Each recipient signs an adoption form that promises to care for the tree, initiating a relationship with it. This project aims to develop new forms of community life based on generosity and sharing. The work was moreover recalibrated in a kind of performance to engage individuals and also to put the focus onto the fabric of the neighbourhood.

Goals:

The core of Fallen Fruit’s work is social, finding ways to get strangers to develop relationships and to create new consciousness about public space and social collaboration. Neighbourhoods change over the years to become both greener and more social and cooperative; fruit trees are not a silver bullet to urban problems, but they are a uniquely playful glue towards a more inclusive social fabric.

Beneficial Outcomes:

In 2010 the most successful Fruit Tree Adoption at the Watts Towers Community Arts Center was organised. The director of the centre was scared to work in the neighbourhood of Watts, because she reminded us that it was an historically oppressed neighbourhood, where residents were more involved in more in violence than with developing a culture based on sharing. The event went on and at the end of it, every single resident was agreed to plant a tree.

Arte Útil archive nr:

257

Initiator:

WochenKlausur

Location:

United States

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

WochenKlausur, employees of the Smart Museum, students of the University of Chicago Art Department, students of the Illinois Institute of Technology, students of Harrington College of Design, social institutions and their users.

Maintained by:

Exhibition ‘Beyond Green: Towards a Sustainable Art’, Smart Museum & University of Chicago.

Duration:

2005

WochenKlausur
-
Furnishing Social Institutions
-

Description:

WochenKlausur developed an initiative for reusing materials discarded by cultural institutions. The network established by WochenKlausur gets involved: nine cultural institutions in Chicago supply materials they no longer need at regular intervals, and the usable items are converted by students at design institutes into furnishings and everyday objects that can be used by social institutions. The group visited homeless shelters, soup kitchens, clothing distribution centres and other similar institutions in the neighbourhood, evaluating their need for furnishings, interior remodelling and everyday objects.
Simultaneously, theatres and museums were asked to join the network on a permanent basis, and to supply at regular intervals materials that otherwise would be thrown away. The project’s final task was to found a non-profit organisation that could manage the long-term operation and coordination of the network. This new organisation, is named Material Exchange.

Goals:

To create a more sustainable use of materials used by cultural institutions, repurposing them for organisations that needed better facilities.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Using the materials from the cultural institutions, the students design and build-to-order the items needed by the social organisations.

Arte Útil archive nr:

021

Initiator:

Christopher Robbins, John Ewing, Matey Odonkor and Carmen Montoya (since 2009).

Location:

Ghana, Cuba, El Salvador, Serbia, Mexico, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, Kosovo.

Category:

social

Users:

Ghana ThinkTank staff including Christopher Robbins, John Ewing, Matey Odonkor, Carmen Montoya, and citizens.

Maintained by:

Ghana ThinkTank staff and participants.

Duration:

2006 - ongoing

Christopher Robbins, John Ewing, Matey Odonkor and Carmen Montoya (since 2009).
-
Ghana ThinkTank
-

Description:

The Ghana ThinkTank is a worldwide network of think tanks creating strategies to resolve local problems in the ‘developed’ world. Ghana ThinkTank collects problems from the developed world, primarily in the US and Europe, and then seeks solutions by working within the communities where the problem originated. The network began with think tanks in Ghana, Cuba and El Salvador, and has since expanded to include Serbia, Mexico and Ethiopia. Some of these actions have produced workable solutions, but others have created intensely awkward situations, as different cultures' assumptions about each other are played out.

Goals:

To collect problems from developed countries and seek solutions from think tanks in developing countries. Solutions are then played out in developed countries.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Exploration of the friction caused by solutions that are generated in one context and applied elsewhere, while revealing the hidden assumptions that govern cross-cultural interactions.

Arte Útil archive nr:

585

Initiator:

Owen Griffiths, Now the Hero/Nawr yr Arwr, National Museum Wales

Location:

Wales

Category:

pedagogical, urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Local communities

Maintained by:

National Museum Wales, Owen Griffiths and the community of users

Duration:

2017 - ongoing

Owen Griffiths, Now the Hero/Nawr yr Arwr, National Museum Wales
-
GRAFT – A Soil Based Syllabus
-

Description:

GRAFT consists of a garden and workshop based at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea. The project works with local communities, schools and adult learners to grow food, preserve seeds, keep bees, as well as teaching cooking skills in a clay oven and exploring an alternative, museum-based curriculum. Volunteers are invited to join an intergenerational curriculum of outdoor learning, wellbeing and making connected to food. The garden is a social and educational resource within the museum and provides somewhere for people to gather to grow and cook food, work collaboratively and learn collectively. All of the garden’s infrastructure has been built by the team and participants who are learning woodwork and metalwork skills, alongside horticulture. GRAFT became recognised as an important example of green infrastructure in a city which has undergone endless regeneration cycles and has seen a huge number of trees and green spaces cut down or removed.

Goals:

The project creates a new system of practical pedagogy: to connect to food, sustainable development and the creation of a green infrastructure in the centre of the city; to create a sustainable and long-term project that could exist as a useful community resource after the project’s initial 2 year development; to influence the museum as a site of collaboration and co-production; to reimagine the museum's carbon footprint and responsibility to the community in a time of global climate change; to create a new green space in the heart of the city where food can be grown and people can meet and work together to explore culture and community; to create an environmental green space that would influence and affect use of local green and civic spaces.
Through its interpretation and aims, GRAFT seeks to make connections and educate visitors on issues of climate, food production, sovereignty and poverty. The initiators work with local Community Supported Agriculture Projects, signposting to organisations such as La Via Campesina, the Land Workers Alliance and local community food initiatives and banks, and support other community gardens across the region. GRAFT’s key goal is to explore the museum as a community resource and how it can support its local constituents.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The garden provides a space for people to grow and cook food, work and learn collectively, and it fosters the development of a long-term green civic space. The project develops an intergenerational curriculum connecting soil and place with community development. It also works with a local pupil referral unit at a Comprehensive School to train pupils to become beekeepers, learning about biodiversity and climate. Users have made seed bombs, harvested seeds and have sent out hundreds of packs of seeds to community centers across the region. The museum provides participants with accreditation, training and support to explore new skills through the project, which has been designed as wholly participatory. Users share produce with projects and institutions across the city to cook for those in need. GRAFT has influenced the culture of National Museum Wales who are now exploring the possibilities of similar land-based community gardens at all of their 7 sites. The project has also impacted on how the museum accesses the collection, making connections between the processes of the garden and the museum’s focus on industrial heritage, exploring links to capitalism, land use, labour and colonisation.

Arte Útil archive nr:

532

Initiator:

Granby Residents Association, That blooming Green Triangle, Granby Street Market, Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, Granby Somali Women's Group, Steinbeck Studios, Assemble, A Sense of Place. Terrace 21 Co-op

Location:

UK

Category:

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Users:

Residents of the 'Granby Triangle', Liverpool 8, the wider Liverpool Community and visitors.

Maintained by:

Granby Community Land Trust

Duration:

1998 - ongoing

Granby Residents Association, That blooming Green Triangle, Granby Street Market, Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, Granby Somali Women's Group, Steinbeck Studios, Assemble, A Sense of Place. Terrace 21 Co-op
-
Granby Four Streets Regeneration
-

Description:

Granby Four Streets Project emerged from the activism of a group of residents in one of Liverpool's neglected inner-city wards. The previous activism led to a call for arms against the status quo, which led to the community forming a Community Land Trust, securing assets from the Local Authority and taking the regeneration of their immediate surroundings into genuine community ownership. They have done it and will continue to invest in collaborative, participative action to creatively use their immediate environment for the benefit of all community members.

Goals:

The aim is to build a thriving, vibrant and sustainable community; filled with a diversity of creative local's empowered by the history of the area. The CLT is a vehicle in which community assets will be owned by the people, be used for the people and benefit their immediate surroundings.

Beneficial Outcomes:

A vibrant, sustainable, affordable and desirable community to live in for local residents. A place in which the urban environment forms communal spaces in which activities are the basis of neighbourly interactions. They have proved that taking the people's concerns, lives and love into the streets forms the basis of a prosperous community working outside the realms of the housing profit motive.

Arte Útil archive nr:

568

Initiator:

Negar Farajiani

Location:

Iran

Category:

pedagogical, environment, social

Users:

Pupils from the age of 5 until the age of 18 from 22 districts in Tehran

Maintained by:

Tehran Monoxide Project and Biloba Green House

Duration:

2011 - 2017

Negar Farajiani
-
Green Corners
-

Description:

The project focuses on creating green spaces as effective elements which ameliorate air quality absorbing chemicals from the atmosphere. In order to develop an alternative pedagogical approach into Tehran's public schools, the initiator, in close collaboration with the botanist Shahrouz Hakimi, formed different teams of people with different backgrounds such as art, physics, chemistry, biology, statistics, math, and agriculture, who can collaborate and shape the program. After a year of negotiation with some private and public schools, they all contribute to a series of workshops for pupils to improve the school conditions as well as achieve results that benefit both pupils and the school staff. Such activities lead to creating a sense of accountability which will, in turn, contribute to a cultural and artistic exchange between pupils and teachers. After a research about the educational system and its curricula, and after reading the school books, the initiator noticed a lack of environmental topics and botany, which are fundamental aspects of student's training. Educating pupils about the basics of caring for indoor plants can lead to more attention to plants, trees and the problem of climate change.
"Green Corners" is the fifth phase of "Tehran Monoxide", a cultural and socially engaged art project, which has been going on since 2011, in the form of independent projects, in collaboration with artists and citizens from Tehran in public spaces.

Goals:

To offer practical solutions to the problem of air pollution in Tehran by creating and redefining new spaces. It reflects the viewpoints of people from all walks of life, from children to adults in terms of the issue of air pollution, what they cannot see, but do breathe. To educate pupils aged from 5 to 18 about caring and maintaining indoor plants. To offer environmental education and art practice, that students cannot find in their school books.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Creating green spaces as a beautiful and effective element not only to turn educational environments into more charming places, but also familiarizing students with plants that promote air quality, absorb chemicals and aerosol and transpire. Instilling a sense of responsibility and collaboration in pupils to take care of plants and public green spaces. Teaching pupils how to take care of indoor plants step by step. They started with caring for low-maintenance plants, and after the completion of the program, they received a certificate and move onto the next level where they were offered new plants to take care of.
The initiators succeed in proposing and accessing the public school system in Iran with their workshops.

Arte Útil archive nr:

212

Initiator:

Liz Christy

Location:

United States

Category:

politics, urban-development, environment

Users:

Gardeners-citizens

Maintained by:

Volunteers, citizens, Donald Loggins

Duration:

1973 - ongoing

Liz Christy
-
Green Guerrillas
-

Description:

In the early 1970’s, Liz Christy and the original band of “green” decided to do something about the urban decay they saw all around them. They threw “seed green-aids” over the fences of vacant lots. They planted sun flower seeds in the center meridians of
busy New York City streets. They put flower boxes on the window ledges of abandoned buildings. Soon they turned their attention to a large, debris-filled vacant lot in the Lower East Side, where they created the Bowery Houston Farm and Garden – and they sparked a movement. On April 23, 1974, the City’s office of Housing Preservation and Development approved the site for rental as the Bowery Houston Community Farm and Garden for $1 a month.

Goals:

The Green Guerillas began rallying other people to use community gardening as a tool to reclaim urban land, stabilize city blocks, and encourage people to work together to solve problems.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Green Guerillas were running workshops and planting experimental plots to learn how a wide range of plants could be grown in hostile conditions. The garden became a site for many plant giveaways, where plants grown on-site or donated from nurseries, professional horticulturists and local gardeners were given to new gardens all over the City.

Arte Útil archive nr:

124

Initiator:

Avital Geva

Location:

Israel

Category:

pedagogical, politics, environment, social

Users:

Avital Geva, Rafi Shapira, students

Maintained by:

Creative Time and the Queens Museum

Duration:

1977 - ongoing

Avital Geva
-
Green House
-

Description:

Green House project was originally a municipal greenhouse where families were growing their vegetables each on its own plot but under one roof. The aim of the project was to bring together Arab and Jewish families to work together on the same site. From 2004 it was reorganized as a nonprofit organization, and has became an educational center for Iron Mevo'ut high school students, opened its doors to 12 schools whose students, both Arab and Jewish, have joined activities in the greenhouse, expanded the fields of study, and risen the scientific level with research into the branching zooplankton, alternative energy, technology, agriculture an other fields.

Goals:

Promoting education, ecology and social involvement in Israel (with an emphasis on coexistence).

Beneficial Outcomes:

Arab and Jewish students learn sharing space and knowledge with researchers from all over the world.

Arte Útil archive nr:

101

Initiator:

Superflex

Location:

Brazil

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen, and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, local cooperative of farmers, Bikstok Røgsystem.

Maintained by:

NIFCA, a São Paolo-based foundation called Extra Arte and the Amazonian government (Research), Kiasma, Helsinki (Exhibition), the 50th Venice Biennial, 2003; Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, Los Angeles; Socle Du Monde, Herning Kunstmuseum; Danish Design Center in Copenhagen, Harbobar , Copenhagen

Duration:

2003 - ongoing

Superflex
-
Guaraná Power
-

Description:

The artists group SUPERFLEX in collaboration with guaranà farmers cooperatives from Maués in the Brasilian Amazon, produced a soft drink called Guaranà Power. As Superfelx say: “The farmers have organised themselves in response to the activities of the a cartel of multinational corporations whose monopoly on purchase of the raw material has driven the price paid for guaraná seeds down by 80% while the cost of their products to the consumer has risen.” Through workshops this group of artists tried to give help the local cooperative with economic and productive problems. With the aid of SUPERFLEX this soft drink was promoted using the facilities of art field: galleries, exhibitions and biennials. Thanks to this support it has created a large scale economy that uses guaranà, the raw material present in this area.

Goals:

The intention with Guaraná Power is to use global brands and their strategies as raw material for a counter-economic position, and to reclaim the original use of the Maués guaraná plant as a powerful natural tonic, not just a symbol. Guaraná Power contains much more original Maués guaraná for energy and empowerment.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Since 2010, GUARANÁ POWER is produced by organic soft drink and beer manufacturer NaturFrisk - Ørbæk Bryggeri.

Arte Útil archive nr:

556

Initiator:

Jessalyn Aaland

Location:

United States

Category:

pedagogical, politics

Users:

Educators, youth workers, students/young people ranging from around 10-24, parents.

Maintained by:

Jessalyn Aaland

Duration:

2017 - ongoing

Jessalyn Aaland
-
Guide for Youth Protestors
-

Description:

The project consists of a double-sided, hand-drawn 8.5" x 11" quarter-fold sheet available to print and distribute freely.
It features such topics as basic information on police tactics (kettling, LRADS, tear gas or pepper spray), ways cops might try to get you to talk to them, and your rights as a student.
This guide was created to distribute to high school students walking out of attending protests in January 2017, when an educator expressed concern to the artist that educators contractually could not be seen walking out with students during the General Strike on January 20, 2017. A former high school teacher, the initiator used her knowledge of teenagers to create a guide using humour to engage students while informing them about how to maintain their rights and personal safety, knowing many might be protesting for the first time in their lives.
Key players include the following: celery cops, a burrito cussing out a celery cop, and her new favourite youth-oriented 501(c)3, "Cool Youth Org."

Goals:

To inform youth about how to take care of themselves and their peers while protesting; police tactics used to intimidate protestors, and how to deal with them; their rights as student resistors; possible consequences of arrest and how to avoid talking to the police.

Beneficial Outcomes:

These guides have been printed and distributed widely by educators in the past couple weeks; a user copied 500 to help students prepare for an upcoming walkout. In addition to educators, parents have also found them helpful.
The initiator constantly distributes these guides to youth (particularly unaccompanied minors) and educators during protests. The guide has a secondary benefit of helping youth feel included in protest because they've been giving something made just for them. Empowering youth and helping them see their voice as equally is critical in the struggle for justice.

Arte Útil archive nr:

329

Initiator:

Krijn Giezen

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

urban-development, environment

Users:

Krijn Giezen, Hamilton Finlay, Remco Scha, Herman de Vries, Bertus de Jong, residents of Den Haag.

Maintained by:

IFLA (International Federation of Landscape Architects), 'Artivisual Landscapes' congress.

Duration:

1991 - 2000

Krijn Giezen
-
Haagse Beek
-

Description:

The artist was commissioned by the Foundation Artivisual Landscape and the International Federation of Landscape Architects to research the context of The Hague Stream in order to propose a project for a new perception of the stream. As a result of his research, he speculated on its purification, using elements that were already on site. It emerged that the 7,5 kilometres long course were a relocated, unnatural and canalised watercourse with no visible source and that it was heavily polluted and contaminated.

Goals:

Adding the least possible, using what is available on the spot, rearranging already existing elements, combining future building activities and art at an early stage.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Krijn Giezen has made visible the source of the Haagse Beek, a stream running through The Hague and flowing out into the Hofvijver, in the middle of the city centre.

Arte Útil archive nr:

077

Initiator:

Darren O'Donnell

Location:

United States, Canada, Australia

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Darren O´Donnell, Students, inhabitants.

Maintained by:

Duration:

2006 - 2007

Darren O'Donnell
-
Haircuts by Children
-

Description:

Darren O'Donnell worked with children between the ages of eight and twelve trained by professional hairstylists and paid to run a real hair salon, to offer free haircuts, both in public parks and in salons.

Goals:

The project asks both those who submit to haircuts and those who merely watch to see children as creative and competent individuals capable of aesthetic decisions, just as they will one day be citizens capable of political decisions.

Beneficial Outcomes:

By interacting directly with the community, creating relationships and involving rigorously framed participation, audience members not only got free haircuts; their awareness about children citizenship rights was also raised.

Arte Útil archive nr:

233

Initiator:

Huit Facettes

Location:

Senegal

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Huit Facettes (Abdoulaye N'Doye, El Hadji Sy, Fode Camara, Cheikh Niass, Jean Marie Bruce, Mor Lisa Ba and Amadou Kane Sy (Kan-Si)), residents of Hamdallaye

Maintained by:

Huit Facettes, Vredeseilanden, Local practitioners

Duration:

1998 - ongoing

Huit Facettes
-
Hamdallaye Project
-

Description:

Goals:

The goal was to improve the residents' core competencies and turn them into professional skills (i.e., under-glass painting, ceramics, batik dyeing, carving, weaving, embroidery).

Beneficial Outcomes:

The participants enhance their skills and creativity in a useful way. The relationships that Huit Facettes initiated with various social groups have been maintained even after the conclusion of the workshop.

Arte Útil archive nr:

514

Initiator:

Doris Denekamp, Noah Venezia

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

economy, social

Users:

People without regular homes, people interested in recycling, re-using the surplus of the food industry, eating wild plants and other critical practices. And people who aim to get a deeper understanding of what it means to live in the fringes of society, both in the Netherlands and the US and Brazil.

Maintained by:

Handboek of de Stadswildernis was published by the Dutch Art Institute in 2011 as part of DAI Publications. The book was produced in close collaboration with Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem and the designer Noah Venezia. Distributed by several book stores like 'De Rooie Rat' in Utrecht, 'Fort van Sjakoo' in Amsterdam and 'Printroom' in Rotterdam as well as by Doris Denekamp through her website.

Duration:

2011

Doris Denekamp, Noah Venezia
-
Handboek voor de Stadswildernis
-

Description:

Handboek voor de Stadswildernis is a guide for survival in the fringes of Dutch cities. The handbook contains sections like Sleeping & Shelter; Food; Equipment; Clothing; Washing; Sickness; Emergencies & Services. The book also provides a guide for edible city weeds: a short description of the plant, the location where it can be found and how it should be cooked. All the information, tips and tricks in the book is based on a series of interviews with homeless people that have developed similar strategies for survival. Through their practices of recycling, reclaiming the surplus of the food industry and their use of local, informal economies, they are developing useful alternatives for our wasteful society.

Goals:

To validate and distribute the knowledge of people living without a regular home.
To help others living in similar situations or those who are looking for an alternative to the dominant practise of waste and extravagance.
To investigate the possibility of a life off the grid in a densely populated area of the Netherlands.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Arte Útil archive nr:

500

Initiator:

Grizedale Arts

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

politics, economy, environment, social

Users:

Church and village community of Coniston.

Maintained by:

Village church

Duration:

2010

Grizedale Arts
-
Harvest Festival
-

Description:

The old tradition of a harvest meal and festival was revived by a community dinner and frozen meal distribution created from donations in the village of Coniston.

Goals:

To reinvigorate the harvest dinner tradition by producing freezer meals for the elderly, made using local produce.
To bring together different groups in the village.

Beneficial Outcomes:

A community day of cooking, a large scale village dinner production, and distribution of 200 freezer meals for the elderly.

Arte Útil archive nr:

003

Initiator:

Superflex

Location:

Tanzania, Tailandia, Camboya, Zanzíbar, México

Category:

scientific, economy, environment

Users:

Superflex, ingenieros de biogás (Jan Mallan, Tomas Peterson), ingenieros daneses y africanos, SURUDE (Sustainable Rural Development).

Maintained by:

University of Tropical Agriculture (UTA) y Tomas Peterson, ONGs (Dantan y ZALWEDA), OPA y TOA.

Duration:

1997 - a la fecha

Superflex
-
Herramientas/Supergas
-

Description:

Supergás es un sistema sencillo de biogás que funciona con materiales orgánicos, como estiércol humano y animal. La planta de biogás produce aproximadamente de 3 a 4 metros cúbicos de gas al día, suficiente para una familia de 8 a 10 miembros que cocina y utiliza una lámpara de gas por la noche.
La planta se diseñó y se construyó en colaboración con un equipo de ingenieros europeos y africanos.
En agosto de 1997, Superflex instaló y probó la primera unidad en una pequeña granja en el centro de Tanzania, en cooperación con la organización africana SURUDE (Sustainable Rural Development).

Goals:

Desarrollar una manera sustentable, en lo económico y lo medioambiental, de producir energía a utilizarse en el Sur global.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Se han instalado sistemas de supergás en Tanzania y Camboya, y se está desarrollando un prototipo para su producción masiva en México.

Arte Útil archive nr:

268

Initiator:

Frank van Klingeren

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

urban-development, social

Users:

Children and their parents, Geestenberg inhabitants.

Maintained by:

SALTO Eindhoven, Municipality of Eindhoven.

Duration:

1970 - ongoing

Frank van Klingeren
-
Het Karregat
-

Description:

The architect Frank Van Klingeren designed a community centre for the new district of Herzenbroeken in Eindhoven. Het Karregat included all the shops' under one roof —an umbrella-like structure— alongside other social, cultural, health and educational facilities like the school, the public library, the general practitioner doctor, the bar and the supermarket. His aim was to bring people into contact with others more easily fostering mutual understanding. He did it removing the walls and combining the different functions of the facilities. The community centre had a central space that functioned as a public square where the community programmed and organised all kind of cultural activities and events.
In 1977, the structure was modified because of noise problems in the open-plan school, erecting walls and reverting the school to traditional lessons. Finally, by the 1990s the structure had been changed drastically moving away from Van Klingeren’s community vision.

Goals:

To involve residents in the decision making concerned the local conditions of a new area and their interests. To build a community bringing the people closer together and challenging architecture, creating for fluid, open structures.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Het karregat was a social experiment that succeeds in ist time involving residents in the decision making concerned the local conditions and interest for a new district. It provided a new cultural and social space for the inhabitants.
In the long term, it contributed to the democratisation of architecture so that openness, mixed functions, and occupant involvement in planning are topics still discussed today, as illustrated by proposals to redevelop Hoog Catherijne and the railway station area in Utrecht.

Arte Útil archive nr:

090

Initiator:

Apolonija Šušteršič

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

pedagogical, urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Maintained by:

Casco Utrecht and the artist

Duration:

2001

Apolonija Šušteršič
-
Home Design Service
-

Description:

The artist repurposed and adapted a mobile bagel selling cart - called Casco Mobile - in order to create a nomadic info point, whose function was to give free advice on interior design to the residents of Leidsche Rijn neighbourhood in Utrecht. The project provided a library with books, periodicals and catalogues available for visitors focused on interior design, domestic space and a housing development-information brochure about the neighbourhood development.
The project ended with a workshop on interior design addressed to the residents.

Goals:

Home Design Service addresses the process between finished plans and finished buildings. The situation in between is temporary and changeable. Once the buildings are completed, the occupants move in and the decorating and furnishing begins with the interior becoming a reflection of individual and personal ideas about living.

Beneficial Outcomes:

To give users access to information and knowledge on Home Design

Arte Útil archive nr:

278

Initiator:

WocheKlausur

Location:

Israel

Category:

economy, social

Users:

WochenKlausur (Haim Burshtein, Yoad Earon, Claudia Eipeldauer, Brett Hunter, Martina Reuter, Alon Schwabe, Wolfgang Zinggl), local community centre, the Israeli Center for Digital Art, the Municipal Social Welfare Department and a representative from the public housing company, neighbourhood

Maintained by:

Israeli Center for Digital Art

Duration:

2012 - ongoing

WocheKlausur
-
Home Improvement Service
-

Description:

In 2011 a protest movement started in Israel. Citizens expressed their demand for a fair distribution of resources, claiming for the lack of housing and maintainence of the buildings and apartments, due to the privatised housing schemes. In these instances no one feels responsible for maintaining buildings and those in need are forced to live under poor and risky conditions. The Home Improvement Service, therefore, set up a structure to provide apartment renovations in the Jessy Cohen neighbourhood with no cost to residents who can´t afford it.
First, they started to visit different apartments in order to be able to prepare a list of needed renovations. With this information, it was possible to find project partners who were willing to donate the necessary material, expertise and time to repair these damages. Partnerships were established with local businesses and professionals. Also community groups, schools and youth groups were asked to participate in volunteer work.

Goals:

Improve the conditions and the maintenance of housing in the neighbourhood.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The structure provide small home improvements, at no cost, to the residents of the Jessy Cohen neighbourhood in Holon.

Arte Útil archive nr:

115

Initiator:

Jeanne van Heeswijk

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Jeanne van Heeswijk, Architects URBED and other design specialists, Sue Humphreys and more than 200 participants.

Maintained by:

Liverpool Biennial, Homebred Community Land Trust

Duration:

2010 - ongoing

Jeanne van Heeswijk
-
Homebaked
-

Description:

Goals:

Provide a way for local people to “take matters into their own hands” and make real social and physical change in their neighborhood

Beneficial Outcomes:

Today, the bakery is open as a social, independent and sustainable business 6 days a week. It is a meeting point to gather the community that now have a strong voice for future developments. Nowadays, they are promoting participation in the decision making process about the design for news houses in the area (Homebaked Favorites wall).

Arte Útil archive nr:

010

Initiator:

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Location:

United States

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Homeless people in New York City.

Maintained by:

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Duration:

1987 - 1989

Krzysztof Wodiczko
-
Homeless Vehicle
-

Description:

A hinged metal vehicle, which can be extended to provide sleeping, washing, and toilet facilities as well as a can-storage compartment. The product was tested by a panel of homeless people and adapted to the precise subsistence needs of these prospective users.

Goals:

To create a tool for increased self-sustainability and survival of urban nomadic workers who opt out of the shelter system. To create mobile architecture which communicates the relationship of the homeless to the rest of the city, as legitimate members of the community and citizens.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The homeless become actors, orators, workers, all things which they usually are not. The Homeless Vehicles let them speak and tell their own stories and legitimate them as actors on the urban stage.

Arte Útil archive nr:

472

Initiator:

Grizedale Arts

Location:

Coniston, United Kingdom

Category:

economy, environment, social

Users:

The local community, village producers and suppliers, visitors/tourists to the area.

Maintained by:

Coniston Institute

Duration:

2012 - ongoing

Grizedale Arts
-
Honest Shop
-

Description:

A village shop in Coniston is stocked by local producers with everything from farm meat and vegetables to paintings and knitted goods. The produce is all homemade and brought in by local suppliers. Customers are invited to buy goods in the shop for an 'honest' price, there are guideline price tags attached to the items by the producer but customers are expected to pay what they consider an honest, suitable price for the item. On paying for and taking this item they must make a note in the sales ledger of what they bought and for how much so the suppliers can get honest feedback on their produce. This practise encourages a move to closer communal way of living. 80% of takings go to the supplier whilst 20% goes to the general upkeep of the Coniston institute.

Goals:

To provide a retail outlet for local producers.
To create a portrait of the village community.
To rejuvenate the Coniston Institute and generate local production.
To create stronger community bonds whilst working toward a better way of life.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Restored building; sales point; income generation; created local economy and a meeting place.
It also improved visitor numbers to other facilities.

Arte Útil archive nr:

509

Initiator:

Vito Acconci

Location:

United States

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Citizens of San Francisco

Maintained by:

Manilow Sculpture Park at Governor's State University, Chicago

Duration:

1983, 1988

Vito Acconci
-
House of Cars, #1 and #2
-

Description:

The artist built housing complexes with junk cars that had been gutted and then welded together. The original 1983 version was four battered, painted cars, stacked two-high in an abandoned vacant lot in San Francisco. Acconci's upgraded designs for living on the streets are biting commentaries on gentrification and urban reality. He never considered the works as models but hoped they would be lived in.

Goals:

To create real, usable housing out of society's throw-aways.

Beneficial Outcomes:

People could live in the car-houses for free.

Arte Útil archive nr:

070

Initiator:

Susanne Bosch

Location:

Spain

Category:

urban-development, social

Users:

Susanne Bosch, inhabitants of La Latina, Local Schools, local organisations.

Maintained by:

Madrid Abierto

Duration:

2009 - 2010

Susanne Bosch
-
Hucha de los deseos
-

Description:

‘Hucha de deseos: ¡Todos somos un barrio, movilízate!' collected the Peseta coins (former Spanish coin) and banknotes in a public collection site in Plaza Puerta de Moros, La Latina neighbourhood. Along with the Peseta collection, the project asked the neighbourhood and the users of the area what they would like to realise with this public and worthless money in and for La Latina. The project collected and published the wishes. The first phase of the project was realised in the neighbourhood of La Latina. With the help of a website (designed bij zoohaus and the artist) 512 wishes in and for La Latina and approximately 85,000 Pesetas were collected. The project created a dialogue and neighbours of La Latina met for a day in El Circulo de Bellas Artes. Together they decided what would happen with the collected wishes and the Pesetas, worth €513.70.

Goals:

The project served as a model to empower people and offered a creative platform that allowed people to work together, to develop a collaborative spirit and inclusion. The project offered the experience of a collective decision-making process. It combined an aesthetic appearance in the form of a multi-media collection site, a blog, posters and public interventions with a meaningful invisible sculpture in form of an ongoing public debate.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Open Space event led to the selection of two proposals. The frequently-voiced wish for more green space in La Latina was realised through planting eight plum trees in Cornisa Park. The Asociación Amigos de la Cornisa-Las Vestillas realised this wish with a collaborative action. The second wish, putting a letterbox in La Latina to exchange ideas and inform each other of events, was also realised in the shape of public black boards. Since Spain’s current precarious situation within the Euro Zone arose and the resulting May uprisings in 2011 occurred, La Latina became one of Madrid’s neighbourhoods, which responds to the current economic crisis with weekly neighbourhood assemblies. The locals took ownership of their public space. El Campo de Cebada, the former leisure center site, is a derelict building site that, since 2011 and in negotiation with the city council, is used by the locals for cultural activities, which proved the artists' methodology could be sustained and continued in the future without her presence.

Arte Útil archive nr:

046

Initiator:

Teddy Cruz, David Deutsch

Location:

United States

Category:

pedagogical, urban-development, social

Users:

Teddy Cruz, David Deutsch, (Studio Teddy Cruz - Active Associates: Cesar Fabela, Jesus Fernando Limon, Rastko Tomasevic, Megan Willis), citizens of Hudson

Maintained by:

The plan is being supported by the city’s mayor, Richard Scalera and Parc Foundation (nonprofit foundation that sponsors arts programs in Hudson, NY, founded by David Deutsch)

Duration:

2008

Teddy Cruz, David Deutsch
-
Hudson 2+4
-

Description:

The project consists of an unconventional redevelopment plan aimed at reintegrating poor, immigrants and dispossessed people, into the everyday life of the city of Hudson. Starting with workshops conducted with immigrants and the elderly, the project includes communal gardens, playgrounds, an amphitheatre and other spaces in the city to be used for art or job-training. The project also includes the creation of a residential mixed-use housing complex, around a series of public zones.

Goals:

To use the architectural model in order to create a series of subtle but unexpected connections between east and west, poor and privileged.

Beneficial Outcomes:

To use the architectural model in order to create a series of subtle but unexpected connections between east and west, poor and privileged.

Arte Útil archive nr:

243

Initiator:

Wooloo

Location:

The Netherlands, Greece, Spain, Germany, Romania, Denmark, United States, Finland, Hong Kong, Portugal, United Kingdom, Mexico, France, Italy, Brazil, Georgia, Canada, Armenia

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Artists, citizens, activists.

Maintained by:

Wooloo, citizens and Copenhagen Municipality, New Ideas City Musuem,

Duration:

2009 - ongoing

Wooloo
-
Human Hotel
-

Description:

The project was conceived as a practical solution for the activists who were travelling to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009. The city was not ready to provide affordable accommodations for the huge amount of activists so the project secured free homestays for more than 3,000 people. Since then, the collective has developed an international network of guests and hosts matching locals and visiting artists, urban planners and activists with the specific knowledge and talents of residents. Human Hotel has become a curated travel network for creatives and visionaries open to applications from individual members.

Goals:

The aim of the project is to implement a practical change in the ways in which both artists and cultural institutions work with—rather than around, or apart from—the people and structures of a particular place.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Free housing for over 3 000 climate activists coming to Copenhagen from over 100 countries.

Arte Útil archive nr:

237

Initiator:

Núria Güell

Location:

Cuba, Spain

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

The winner of the love letter contest

Maintained by:

Produced by Casa de Cultura de Girona / Maintained by the artist and her spouse.

Duration:

2008 - 2013

Núria Güell
-
Humanitarian Aid
-

Description:

With this project Núria Güell offered herself as a bride to any Cuban who wanted to immigrate and obtained the Spanish citizenship. The aspiring husbands were invited to write a love letter which was submitted to a jury composed by three prostitutes who then declared the winner letter.
Once married and having obtained Spanish citizenship it was possible ask for a divorce. This project focuses on issues related to immigration restrictions and the social consequences that they involve.

Goals:

This project gave a chance to the contest winner to live legally in the country and consequently to receive a Spanish residence permit. The project also shows a possible strategy to be used by other immigrants who are in the same situation.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Through the project, Güell’s husband has obtained a legal residency in Spain and a residence permit to be abroad from the Cuban government. From now on, he is free to enter and exit Cuba whenever he wants and has all the rights of a Spanish national.

Arte Útil archive nr:

512

Initiator:

Henriëtte Waal, Sophie Krier

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, politics, environment, social

Users:

nature volunteers, local entrepreneurs and inhabitants, nature lovers from the city, policy makers, scientists, farmers, hunters, fishermen, maintainers etc.

Maintained by:

Zorgboerderij Amstelkade icw Hunnie Foundation and Staatsbosheer.

Duration:

2010 - 2014

Henriëtte Waal, Sophie Krier
-
Hunnie
-

Description:

‘Hunnie’ ('them' in local slang) is a collaboration project between Henriëtte Waal and Sophie Krier, which addresses our approach to nature ‘now that cows and greenhouses are disappearing from the landscape’. In the course of a years field work new forms of recreation and maintenance in De Bovenlanden in the Dutch Province of Utrecht were designed and tested. The area, known as a polder, was destined to exchange its agricultural function for a nature reserve in the context of a European wide plan to link ecological zones and allow flora and fauna to migrate and diversify. Hunnie's focus is the role of humans in relation to this man-made 'new nature'. The initiators invested time into acquainting themselves with inhabitants and local clubs with very specific knowledge of the area. Fishermen; hunters; historians; geologists; biologists; dieticians; artists; water engineers were given the role of guides, while scientists and thinkers were asked to provide a reflective framework. New nature lovers from the surrounding cities were attracted through a series of seasonal adventures, products and a field workshop related to water, clay, grass, fauna, wilderness and willow. Because Project Hunnie ran ahead of the Provincial realisation plans for ‘new nature’ it was possible to implement insights from Hunnie’s fieldwork into the decision-making process.

Goals:

Explore, appoint and visualise the current natural and cultural potential of De Bovenlanden.
Design and test new forms of nature experience and nature maintenance. Address the urgency of new exploitation models for ‘nature’ in the Netherlands with policy makers. Challenge ideas around the role of users and maintenance issues. Empower entrepreneurs and nature volunteers making them more visible in the transformation process of De Bovenlanden from a rural area into a new nature resort. Equip participants with skills and knowledge of their surroundings.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Characteristic guided walks to explore and imagine today's potential of De Bovenlanden. Linking the wisdom inherent in local activities to expertise in art and science. The knowledge that is released is then processed in custom made attributes for the future visitors of the area. Specially designed outdoor equipment. In a farm yard where Hunnie products can be bought or borrowed by visitors.

Arte Útil archive nr:

068

Initiator:

N55

Location:

Denmark

Category:

economy

Users:

The artists, anyone interested in build the hygiene system

Maintained by:

N55

Duration:

1997

N55
-
Hygiene System
-

Description:

The Hygiene System is a unit to satisfy the minimum needs for personal hygiene.
The unit consists of three parts: a toilet module, a module for bathing, and a supply module. It's easy to build, install, and everybody can use it.
The design is simple, compact and it can be constructed with minimal means. At the same time, the Hygiene System is easy to clean and durable. A DIY manual for constructing a hygiene unit is available online.

Goals:

To be an accessible, mobile hygiene unit to be used anywhere.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Everyone can build the Hygiene system using a free manual that is available on the website.

Arte Útil archive nr:

217

Initiator:

Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Location:

United States

Category:

Users:

Mierle Ukeles, Bank workers, Visitors of Whitney Museum, citizens of New York.

Maintained by:

Whitney Museum of American Art / New York Department of Sanitation.

Duration:

1976

Mierle Laderman Ukeles
-
I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day
-

Description:

Mierle Laderman Ukeles collaborated with 300 hundred maintenance staff at a bank in Manhattan. She took Polaroid photographs of men and women doing routine jobs and asked them to discuss their labor as either art or work. Jobs were often discussed by the same person, at different times, in different ways. Later, she exhibited the workers' narrative statements alongside pictures of their daily chores.
In 1976, Ukeles accepted an unsalaried position as artist-in-residence with the New York City Department of Sanitation. She proposed to do work that would incorporate dialogue, community participation around life-centered issues, and ecological sustainability.

Goals:

She asked viewers to challenge the social constructions of aesthetic and cultural values that define what work and art mean and provided visitors and citizens with points of access to issues of urban waste management.

Arte Útil archive nr:

042

Initiator:

Ruben Santiago

Location:

Spain, France

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

The persons that took the documents

Maintained by:

Passage Souterrain

Duration:

2007 - ongoing

Ruben Santiago
-
ID: a criminal project
-

Description:

The artist has collected passports, identity documents and credit cards from robberies carried out by burglars in Barcelona. The city, do to its urban organisation, is the ideal setting for this type of crime, because burglars can quickly empty the content of bags, get only cash and abandon the rest. Santiago collected 25 documents that were camouflaged as artistic objects and transported in Paris with the aid of a company specialised in artwork transport, to be displayed on a gallery – becoming available material for anyone who may wish to take them, recovering their criminal origin.

Goals:

Transform the artistic system into a screen to conceal crime, as the possession of this material is a criminal activity in itself held against the state (the documents do not belong to the individuals, but to the state) and therefore, a punishable offence.

Beneficial Outcomes:

All the documents were taken by Passage Souterrain visitors.

Arte Útil archive nr:

249

Initiator:

WochenKlausur

Location:

Austria

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Wochenklausur, seven immigrants that participated, relief organizations, families of kurdish cities of Dohuk, Erbil and Sulemanija, Childrens of Bonia and students of the University of Graz.

Maintained by:

WochenKlausur

Duration:

1995

WochenKlausur
-
Immigrant Labor Issues
-

Description:

In order to pursue an occupation legally in Austria, foreigners must have a work permit. At the time of the project, the Minister of Social Affairs set a yearly quota for the number of work permits issued. The group used the special arrangement for foreign “artists” (that allowed artists to remain in the country without a work permit as long as they could prove that they lived from their artistic activity). Seven immigrants were commissioned to produce "Social Sculptures". It was necessary to find patrons who would provide the “artists” with an income by commissioning them. The commissions and their honoraria provided the proof of income required for the refugees to take advantage of the exception made for artists. Each Social Sculpture would consist of preparing aid materials for relief efforts.

Goals:

Circumventing strict legislation concerning foreigners.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project assured the participants legal residency in Austria. Afterward the materials were transported to their destinations by relief organizations. Through the project the refugees secured legal residency in Austria for one year. Several of them (especially the Bosnians) later returned to their home countries. One of the participants married in Austria, and two others obtained further commissions as artists.

Arte Útil archive nr:

250

Initiator:

WochenKlausur

Location:

Austria

Category:

politics, social

Users:

WochenKlausur, Inmates of Salzburg Police Detention Centre

Maintained by:

Salzburger Kunstverein

Duration:

1996

WochenKlausur
-
Improving Conditions in Deportation Detention
-

Description:

The Salzburg Police Detention Centre is one of the largest deportation detention facilities in Austria. Nevertheless, conditions in deportation detention are significantly worse than they are in any correctional facility. The group’s initial research for the project, in which relief organizations, counsellors, lawyers, detention inmates and former guards were interviewed, confirmed the rumours that were circulating about inhumane conditions. Many of the inmates were not informed of their status or of their rights. The group worked toward establishing a social service agency in the detention centre to coordinate the efforts of the various initiatives involved with deportation detention.
WochenKlausur organized discussion groups with key representatives from politics, the media, scholarship, the church, police authorities, the Ministry of the Interior and relief organisations. These discussions were held in a tiny cottage built especially for the purpose in Salzburg’s historic centre. The talks led the police chief to allow the establishment of a social service agency in the facility.

Goals:

Improve detention conditions for inmates.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Protestant Refugee Service agreed to oversee the agency’s permanent operation. Since then each inmate was assigned a volunteer counsellor, and thus it was possible to ensure that basic social, legal and hygienic services were available. After the police administration agreed to the creation of dayrooms in the detention centre, WochenKlausur found donors and sponsors for fitness equipment, table soccer games, television sets and radios as well as board games, books and newspaper subscriptions in a variety of languages. A telephone was installed, with the social service agency providing telephone cards according to need.

Arte Útil archive nr:

230

Initiator:

Jenny Polak

Location:

United States

Category:

politics, social

Users:

Jenny Polak, Art Gallery, undocumented immigrants

Maintained by:

Jenny Polak, Exit Art

Duration:

2003

Jenny Polak
-
In situ Sanctuary
-

Description:

The project is a site specific prototype created to match the space of a gallery. The initiators designed fake column and fake beam which visitors could climb up inside. A monitor connected to a surveillance camera showed who was inside the structure. The initiator designed a series of structures replicating some hidden places which either immigrant workers or persecuted people have been using to hide from the authorities.

Goals:

To hide people form the authorities.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The structures could keep their users purposely invisible and safe when immigration officers arrive.

Arte Útil archive nr:

453

Initiator:

Various Activists

Location:

Website – (the website is translated in English, Spanish, Greek French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Hebrew and Arabic)

Category:

politics

Users:

Activists, Journalists, Politicians, Citizens

Maintained by:

The creators, the users, private donors.

Duration:

1999 - ongoing

Various Activists
-
Indymedia.org
-

Description:

The Independent Media Center (IMC), established by various independent and alternative media organizations and activists, is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate journalism. Indymedia was founded as an alternative to government and corporate media, and seeks to facilitate people to publish news as directly as possible.

Goals:

To empower people to use the media by presenting honest, accurate, powerful independent reports, to develop as much independent media as possible.

Beneficial Outcomes:

IMC collectives distribute print, audio, photo, video media and newswires, sites where anyone can publish news from their own perspective.

Arte Útil archive nr:

057

Initiator:

Ant Farm

Location:

United States

Category:

urban-development

Users:

Chip Lord and Doug Michels, Hudson Marquez and Curtis Schreier

Maintained by:

Ant Farm

Duration:

1968 - 1978

Ant Farm
-
Inflatables
-

Description:

The project consisted in a anti-architectural structure that was cheap, easy to transport and quick to assemble. The structures had no fixed form and they promoted a type of architecture outside the expert knowledge field. Inflatables hosted conferences and various events like festivals, university campuses, conferences, lectures, workshops and seminars. To move the structures, they used a customized Chevrolet van, called Media Van, that turned into a mobile studio to share information and images. The van was also indispensable as a power generator to inflate the structures. The artists produced the Inflatocookbook, a manual for making your own structure.

Goals:

To promote ideas that have no commercial potential, embracing the latest technologies at the same time as they criticize American culture.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Conferences and various events were conducted freely because they developed in their architectural inflatables.

Arte Útil archive nr:

252

Initiator:

WochenKlausur

Location:

Germany

Category:

Users:

WochenKlausur, inhabitants of Berlin.

Maintained by:

Kunstamt Kreuzberg, NGBK.

Duration:

1998 - ongoing

WochenKlausur
-
Initiatives for Unemployed People
-

Description:

Kreuzberg was the Berlin district with the highest percentage of unemployed people and welfare recipients. WochenKlausur conceived a workstation, consisting of an “Info Tank” that would help unemployed people develop their own ideas of what they could do for a job, and a “Think Tank” that would aid them in realizing individual projects. Announcements were put in the newspapers, the employment office and other counselling institutions were contacted, public presentations on the issue were organised, and numerous experts from various fields were invited for talks. A great deal of cooperation was stimulated by these efforts: the district government made available an office in a good location, a “job creation program” contributed computers, and Frauke Hehl from the unemployment initiative Springboard took over the permanent administration of the workstation initiative. The final decisions were made at a summit meeting held on a boat excursion on the river Spree.

Goals:

To provide opportunities and advice for the unemployed.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Info Tank supplied information about existing opportunities in Turkish and German and offered individuals support in developing and formulating their own ideas and plans. In the summer of 1999, the Think Tank launched its first projects, drawing up exact plans for their realisation, testing their feasibility and contacting possible cooperation partners.
Today the workstation has a staff of more than twenty – some working on a volunteer basis – and is located in nearby Friedrichshain.

Arte Útil archive nr:

114

Initiator:

José Miguel de Prada Poole, Carlos Ferrater and Fernando Bendito

Location:

Spain

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

José Miguel de Prada Poole, Carlos Ferrater, Fernando Bendito and students that participate in the congress.

Maintained by:

International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID)

Duration:

1971

José Miguel de Prada Poole, Carlos Ferrater and Fernando Bendito
-
Instant City
-

Description:

The instant city was a self-built structure made with inflatable plastics and staple-guns, that could disappear after use without any trace in the landscape. It was designed as a solution to overcome the lack of temporary accommodation for students and participants of the VII Congress of International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) in Ibiza. The Manifesto of the Instant City was sent to architecture and design schools all over the world as an invitation to participate. It was a symbol and, at the same time, the implementation of an alternative ideology based on participation and experimentation that characterised that edition of the Congress. The organisation provided the materials, but everyone should build his own habitation that was integrated into the whole structure.

Goals:

Imagine, create and implement a model of cities with buildings that could disappear after used, without any traces of human constructions.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The participants got free accommodation during the Congress.

Arte Útil archive nr:

513

Initiator:

Delphine Hesters, Jacob Koster, Renzo Martens, Els Roelandt, Guido van Staveren van Dijk

Location:

Congo

Category:

economy, environment, social

Users:

International and local artists, scholars, local community, inhabitants of the rainforest.

Maintained by:

The IHA is funded by Akademie der Künste der Welt Amsterdam Fund for the Arts
 Mondriaan Fund
 Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
.

Duration:

2012 - ongoing

Delphine Hesters, Jacob Koster, Renzo Martens, Els Roelandt, Guido van Staveren van Dijk
-
Institute for Human Activities
-

Description:

The Institute for Human Activities (IHA) began its operations on a former Unilever plantation, located on a tributary to the Congo River, 800 kilometers upstream from Kinshasa. Here, in one of the most disadvantaged regions of the world, the Institute launched its five-year Gentrification Program in order to recalibrate art’s critical mandate.
The Settlement serves as an in-vitro testing ground where the IHA mobilizes the modalities of art production, seeking to acknowledge the economic mechanisms through which art has the greatest impact on social reality. The institute uses capital accumulation as a tool for artistic intervention, enabling art to make productive use of its dependence on existing economic structures.

Goals:

In the Congolese interior the IHA is building an art center which will generate a sustainable source of income for the local population through the production of critical art. It thus endeavors to make critical artistic reflection profitable for the poor.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The results of the Gentrification Program will be shared with audiences in Africa and around the world through lectures, exhibitions, film and television.

Arte Útil archive nr:

075

Initiator:

Zoohaus

Location:

Online, Colombia, Perú, Chile, Uruguay, Spain, Hungary, Santo Domingo, Germany, Sahara.

Category:

pedagogical, economy, environment, social

Users:

Zoohaus, citizens

Maintained by:

Zoohaus

Duration:

2010 - ongoing

Zoohaus
-
Inteligencias colectivas
-

Description:

An online free database where different construction techniques from every region of the world --and every degree of industrialization and development--, can be accessed and exchanged.

Goals:

This methodology is used in order to promote a type of technical know-how that is at once inclusive and public. A horizontal learning system—through tinkering with material prototypes—helps to weave together a tight network of people and collectives.

Beneficial Outcomes:

A catalog with record files, a “human network” of persons and collectives from around the world, and detailed edited plans and instructions, can be accessed for free and implemented anywhere in the world.

Arte Útil archive nr:

219

Initiator:

Núria Güell

Location:

Spain

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

Homeless people and people evicted by banks

Maintained by:

Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca de Torrevieja y Vega Baja

Duration:

2012

Núria Güell
-
Intervention #1
-

Description:

58,241 evictions were conducted in Spain in 2011, mostly through real estate speculation by the Mediterranean Savings Bank. In Intervention #1, the artist created a cooperative through which she contracted a construction worker (who himself had been evicted from his own house) to remove the entrance doors to other foreclosed properties. In this way, houses were accessible and open to public use, and occupants were not liable for housebreaking. Since the process of hiring the worker was done through a legal entity, it prevented the worker who removed the doors as well as the occupants from being legally liable.

Goals:

To reinstate to public use houses and warehouses that were purchased by banks through public bailouts at 50% less of their appraised value. To make visible the legal strategies used by banks to steal from the state and citizens with total impunity.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project offered houses to citizens who do not have homes. Instead of the citizens, the project itself assumes responsibility for opening the houses. On a pedagogic level, the project promotes legal strategies which citizens can use to avoid legal liability, adopting similar strategies to those that banks themselves use to avoid culpability.

Arte Útil archive nr:

236

Initiator:

Núria Güell

Location:

Italy

Category:

politics, urban-development, economy, social

Users:

People who have been evicted by banks and homeless

Maintained by:

Produced by VIVA Performance Lab / Maintained by Prendocasa Cosenza (activists)

Duration:

2012

Núria Güell
-
Intervention #2
-

Description:

Palazzo Morelli in Cosenza, is a building that was renovated with public money in order to create a place for social housing. Actually, the state then transferred the management plan to the Bank BNP Paribas from 2005 until 2017, using the space as an investment fund selling virtual sales through listing on the stock exchange. Many of the families that inhabited the Palazzo were thus left homeless – evicted by the police. Afterwards, the main entrance of the building was walled-up to avoid future occupations inside the building. On Sunday, December 8, 2012, during a demonstration, the artist, together with the collaboration of Collettivo Prendocasa, began to demolish the wall in order to open a new entrance to the building.

Goals:

‘To enable citizens who do not have access to housing to inhabit the Palazzo Morelli, which was originally refurbished with public money from the budget set aside for social housing. Through this demonstration, we denounce the fact that the bank uses the space with the endorsem*nt of the state as an investment fund, selling virtual property through the stock exchange, and corrupting its initial use for which it was refurbished.’ (N. Güell)

Beneficial Outcomes:

‘To offer houses to citizens who do not have a home. In a legal phase, the action benefits the users since the artist broke down the wall and therefore assumed all the legal consequences and responsibilities for that action. The users can get in without any legal consequences since there is an open entrance which allows a free entry.’ (N. Güell)

Arte Útil archive nr:

253

Initiator:

Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirg, Pauloosie Qulitalik and Norman Cohn

Location:

Canada

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Inuit community, artists, filmmakers, people worldwide

Maintained by:

Zacharias Kunuk, Pauloosie Qulitalik, Norman Cohn

Duration:

1990 - ongoing

Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirg, Pauloosie Qulitalik and Norman Cohn
-
Isuma Productions
-

Description:

Goals:

Isuma's mission is to produce independent community-based media – films, TV and Internet - to preserve and enhance Inuit culture and language and to tell authentic Inuit stories to Inuit and non-Inuit audiences worldwide.

Beneficial Outcomes:

It creates jobs and economic development in Igloolik and Nunavut community.

Arte Útil archive nr:

234

Initiator:

Miranda July

Location:

United States, Australia, Europe

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Miranda July, Filmmakers and film lovers.

Maintained by:

Miranda July

Duration:

1996 - ongoing

Miranda July
-
Joanie 4 Jackie
-

Description:

The project consisted of an underground and independent film network for women to share their movies. In a pre-Youtube era, the project functioned as a platform to share and see each other's work in a field where women were massively underrepresented. The network connected directors and filmmakers internationally throughout screenings, and over 200 movies was distributed through a 'chainletter' system: filmmakers contacted J4J sending their work and they received a compilation with nine others. In 2017 the Getty Research Institute acquired the complete archives, which consist of 27 boxes of tapes, posters, letters and the archives of artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Robert Mapplethorpe and Carolee Schneemann.

Goals:

To enable female film directors to share their movies.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Promoting the widespread circulation of material, which might never be seen otherwise.

Arte Útil archive nr:

147

Initiator:

Florian Schneider

Location:

Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Online

Category:

politics

Users:

Immigrants and refugees in various locations.

Maintained by:

Hybrid Workspace, Documenta X, Kassel

Duration:

1997 - ongoing

Florian Schneider
-
Kein Mensch Ist Illegal
-

Description:

The project is an international network of local immigrant and refugee rights advocacy groups. What began as a conference on June 28, 1997, developed into a national campaign. More than thirty anti-racist groups present at the conference issued an appeal for greater attention to migrant workers' rights, such as healthcare, education, and housing for migrant workers. Schneider's subsequently initiated several projects in the same vein, like the "no border network" and the online platform KEIN.ORG.

Goals:

Support free movement and equal rights for all, and unity between all.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The campaign culminated in 2001 with an online demonstration in conjunction with Libertad!
Today, No Person Is Illegal continues to work on problems of labour and immigration, focusing on the connections between economics and racism.

Arte Útil archive nr:

427

Initiator:

Kesuke Ikeda

Location:

Japan

Category:

environment, social

Users:

People in the disaster area (northeast Japan)

Maintained by:

Kesen Festival organised by the people from the area

Duration:

2012

Kesuke Ikeda
-
Kesen Transplant
-

Description:

The region of Kessen located in the north-eastern part of Japan, is an area seriously damaged by the tsunami in 2011. The same region was the basis of a project entitled Kessen Transplant – the goal of which was to renovate temporary infrastructure, for artists and visitors to live again in this place In particular, Kesuke Ikeda made a local power plant, Kesen-Art Power Plant, using rubble This still remains in Rikuzen Takata. The "power plant" provided energy to the house located next to it. In this house artists and participants enjoyed local foods from the area while talking about the future of the region.

Goals:

The purpose of the project is creating our lifestyle in relation to the richness of the land, surround by mountains and the sea. Our hope was that the experiences of a project on livelihood and energy would be a good opportunity for everyone to grow the future vision of the stricken area together.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The house became a place for participants and artists to enjoy gatherings and local foods in a hot pot, using the natural energy produced by the Kesen Art-Power Plant. Many visitors (most of them victims of the tsunami) came to enjoy and rediscover the fascination of the area while talking with artists who came from outside.

Arte Útil archive nr:

409

Initiator:

Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDL)

Location:

Kenia

Category:

urban-development, economy, environment, social

Users:

Kounkuey Design Initiative, Inhabitants of Kibera, Buro Happold, Knyan Architecture Firm, volunteers.

Maintained by:

Eco-Build Africa

Duration:

2006 - ongoing

Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDL)
-
Kibera Public Space Project
-

Description:

Design interventions oriented to sustainably revitalize one of the largest informal settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa. The group of Harvard School of Design students partnered with residents, local design students, private sector experts and government officials to build a flood control system, a bridge to open a circulation route and a shade pavilion to accommodate more than 200 residents and their income-generating activities. Each enterprise contributes a percentage of their profits to site maintenance.

Goals:

Reinforce sustainability: social, economical and environmental.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Productive public space, and income-generating activities. Several community-based groups have been created, and construction is ongoing.

Arte Útil archive nr:

565

Initiator:

Soheila Moayed Jafari, Shaghayegh Cyrous

Location:

Iran

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Women Weavers, Local young and emerging artists in fashion industry, Supporters who use the weaving products and a culture in their daily life.

Maintained by:

Soheila Moayed Jafari, Hooshyar Cyrous, Shaghayegh Cyrous, Khashayar Cyrous

Duration:

2014 - ongoing

Soheila Moayed Jafari, Shaghayegh Cyrous
-
Klozar Weaving
-

Description:

Klozar is an organization aimed at supporting women weavers residing in the rural areas of Iran, such as Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Bijar, Hashtgerd, Eslam shahr, Tehran, Nezam Abad. Through supply and distribution of high-quality crafts, Klozar creates a market for Iranian craftswomen whose art is at the edge of deterioration. The initiators hand picks the highest quality weaving, compensates the weavers twice the national average, and commission waivers before they start weaving. Women weavers produce bags whose labels identify who made them and where. The bag labels give the name of the traditional design that has been passed down through the weavers' families for many generations. Most of these patterns are passing to the next generation of waivers by a song that tells the weaver what pattern and colour they should use as they keep singing and weaving.

Goals:

Entrepreneurship and supporting women weavers in all over Iran in creating a safe space for them to use their talents. Support women to become independent financially. Collecting stories from women weavers who were always hidden behind the weaving industry. Bringing back the traditional colours and patterns that were going to disappear and repurpose the weaving for a more contemporary use introducing it to the next generation that will keep the handwoven industry alive. Allowing people to use the handmade weaving component in their daily life by getting introduced to different patterns, colours and the information of provenance and who are the weavers behind the woven product.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Since the creation of Klozar more than 40 weavers joined the organization from more than 25 cities and villages around Iran. Klozar supported women in negotiating and changing mindsets of their husbands and families, who are not allowing them to be financially independent, because of the cultural and traditional expectations and barriers. The project supported weavers' families by providing healthcare - such as medicine that is not available, because of being expensive or rare, as a result of Iran's sanctions by 5+1 world power countries - and home supplies or children's school material. Klozar gives a platform to emerging artists in the fashion industry. It brought back the attention to handwoven industry that was fading by new machines and China's industry. The project has received many awards including the best cultural entrepreneur of Iran by cultural heritage of Tehran in 2015.

Arte Útil archive nr:

406

Initiator:

Shin Egashira

Location:

Japan

Category:

pedagogical, urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Shin Egashira, Students and professors of AA School of Architecture, inhabitants of Koshirakura.

Maintained by:

AA School of Architecture, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.

Duration:

1996 - ongoing

Shin Egashira
-
Koshirakura Landscape Workshop
-

Description:

Koshirakura Landscape Workshop is a visiting school programme of the AA School of Architecture in which students plan interventions of architecture and urban design, with the participation of the local community of Koshirakura village. Located in the disused elementary school, international students work with local people in order to create an infrastructure for the social sustainability of the village which consists of only 100 inhabitants. Considered temporary residents rather than visitors, students are an active part of the community and they are integrated into the everyday life of the village. Recent projects consist of a communal oven, an Azumaya (a summer pavilion), the design and making of vehicles that could be used in celebrating the traditional Maple Cutting Festival, the transformation of Masuke House into an open-house for semi-communal use, and the conversion of the abandoned school into a communal area.

Goals:

Because the majority of the inhabitants of the village is over 60 years old, the purpose of the project is to avoid the shrinking of the community using architecture as a tool for the development of resources to be used by the residents.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Infrastructures constructed, cultural exchange, and enrichment of community dynamics.

Arte Útil archive nr:

481

Initiator:

Shirin Homann-Saadat

Location:

Kosovo, The Netherlands, United Kingdom

Category:

politics, urban-development, social

Users:

Women of Vushtrri / Kosovo, Radio Vushtrri, Metropolitan School of Architecture London, School of Architecture, Prefecture Architecture UK, Prishtina, Shirin Homann-Saadat.

Maintained by:

School of Architecture Prishtina, Metropolitan School of Architecture London, Architectural Summer Hamburg, Uta Homann Minden, Kunstlerhaus Hamburg-Bergedorf, galerie Xprssns Hamburg

Duration:

2001 - 2006

Shirin Homann-Saadat
-
Kosovo Box
-

Description:

The project consists iof a construction manual, conceived as a recipe book, dedicated to women in Kosovo addressing the lack of sheltering space after the Balkan War. The content of the box has been created throughout worksps by women from Prishtina and Vushtrri and it was developed in collaboration with the School of Architecture in Prishtina and in London.

Goals:

Propose a solution for the lack of shelter for women.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Some of the Kosovo Box‘s architectural ideas were integrated into an architectural local proposal; women of Vushtrri formed a group and occupied the building site for their ’women only-building’ (finally the site was not given to the women and the house was not built); the project was published in architectural journals in England and Germany and shown on Kosovo media.

Arte Útil archive nr:

254

Initiator:

WochenKlausur

Location:

Italy, Kosovo

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

WochenKlausur, Ardit Misliu, Refugees, Austrian Pavilion’s visitors

Maintained by:

Austrian Pavilion, 48th Biennale di Venezia ; Vienna City School Board, University of Vienna, Caritas; KulturKontakt, the Rotary Club of Vienna and the Women’s Initiative Against War; Veuve Cliquot company; Austrian Pavilion’s visitors; Austrian film production company PPM, Macedonian civil rights organization ADI (Association for Democratic Initiatives).

Duration:

1999 - 2003

WochenKlausur
-
Language Schools in the Kosovo War
-

Description:

During the Kosovan War numerous young refugees had found shelter with families in small Macedonian towns and had not had access to any schooling.
WochenKlausur decided to establish a network of language schools. Initially seven spaces were rented on the Kosovo border – around Gostivar and Pristina – and furnished as classrooms. Organizations like KulturKontakt, the Rotary Club of Vienna and the Women’s Initiative Against War, as well as the Veuve Cliquot company and many private individuals, contributed a total of €48,000. The group held a lottery in the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennial: for 20 euros visitors could choose from an array of surprise bags containing prizes sponsored by a variety of Austrian and Italian companies.
The language courses were organized and administered in cooperation with the Macedonian civil rights organization ADI (Association for Democratic Initiatives). ADI also hired the teachers, who offered courses in English, German, Italian and French. Additionally, Biennial visitor Jeannette Armer, a teacher from Cambridge, spontaneously agreed to teach on a volunteer basis for an entire year.

Goals:

Take the chance to involve 200,000 visitors in a project to help refugees of the Kosovo War – a mere 300 km from Venice and help to improve the professional
qualifications of the refugees.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Upon completing a course, each participant received an official diploma. As a civil rights organization involved in training for NGOs, ADI was certified by government authorities to award these certificates. Funding was sufficient to operate the language schools for three years. At the end of 2000 the courses in Macedonia were discontinued, because most of the refugee families had returned to Kosovo. Four classes were transferred to Kosovo and ran there for
another year.

Arte Útil archive nr:

118

Initiator:

John Ruskin

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Users:

Readers

Maintained by:

John Ruskin

Duration:

1860-1900

John Ruskin
-
Lectures and other essays
-

Description:

John Ruskin was the greatest British art critic and social commentator of the Victorian Age. He fiercely attacked the worst aspects of industrialization and actively promoted art education and museum access for the working classes. His prophetic statements on environmental issues speak to our generation as well as to his own. Ruskin’s social view broadened from concerns about the dignity of labour to consider wider issues of citizenship, and notions of the ideal community. Just as he had questioned aesthetic orthodoxy in his earliest writings, he dissected the orthodox political economy espoused by John Stuart Mill, based on theories of laissez-faire and competition drawn from the work of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. Ruskin became an increasingly popular public lecturer in the 1850's. His work Lectures is a compilation of his most important pieces. The Lecture III is "The relation of Art to Use".

Goals:

He emphasized the connections between nature, art and society.

Beneficial Outcomes:

His ideas inspired the Arts and Crafts Movement and the founding of the National Trust, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and the Labour
Movement.

Arte Útil archive nr:

089

Initiator:

Apolonija Šušteršič

Location:

Sweden, The Netherlands, Canada

Category:

scientific, economy, social

Users:

Museum visitors

Maintained by:

Moderna Museet Stockholm; Bildmuseet, Umeå; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; MOCA, Toronto

Duration:

1999

Apolonija Šušteršič
-
Light Therapy
-

Description:

Light Therapy was originally made as a project for Moderna Museet in Stockholm,1999. The idea was to focus on the program and typology of spaces within the contemporary museum today: how it functions as public space, and as a social or healing device in itself. Light Therapy became an addition to, and a comment on the museum’s program. It is clear that museums today not only function as exhibition space, but that they are also generators of city development and places that offer visitor various other activities and outlets, such as an education program, library and reading room, restaurant and shop etc.
Light Therapy is always designed with a generous amount of light simulating a bright, sunny day. The light elements used in the room are specially developed in relation to medical light treatments that affect our behavior. Everything in the room is white in order to keep the amount of light at the level of 10.000 lux. The room is furnished with white furniture, visitors get white coats, all objects and elements of the furniture in the room need to be white. There are Light Therapy instructions on the wall for visitors to consider as advice on how to use the room. Reading material is available for visitors to read and it is usually selected as a comment to the current issue discussed in public within specific situations / contexts where the room is installed.
Invitations to use Light Therapy are placed in local newspapers and flyers are handed out in the urban realm to inform the public that light therapy is available to everyone. The logo for Light Therapy is developed by each hosting institution, to imply that the therapy is an authentic part of the museum experience.

Goals:

To allow visitors of contemporary art museums to experience feelings of happiness and make them aware of its meaning within our everyday life.

Beneficial Outcomes:

This treatment is used to fight Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), milder winter blues and sleep disorders caused by jet leg and overwork, or lack of daylight. It is a therapy with no proven side effects, which everyone can use. Light therapy creates an artificial condition to improve our busy lives: "it is a ‘new prosthesis’ to make our everyday lives easier. It is a tool, which artificially makes you happy”. However, the subject of happiness is always related to a specific context or situation where Light Therapy is installed which makes the visitors of a contemporary art museum aware of its role in society today.

Arte Útil archive nr:

477

Initiator:

Luca Pucci

Location:

Italy

Category:

politics, social

Users:

Hypothetical suicide committers in a confused and hesitant phase.

Maintained by:

Publisher: VIAINDUSTRIAE; Editor: Emanuele De Donno, Amedeo Martegani; Collaborators: Franco Troiani, Alice Mazzarella.

Duration:

2010 - 2012

Luca Pucci
-
Lonely
-

Description:

Lonely is a guide book to Ponte delle Torri (Towers Bridge), which is one of the favourite destinations for travellers, artists and suicides. It is a small publication of extreme explorations, on the border between travel literature, fiction and crime dossier. This is a publication along the lines of the touristic guide ‘Lonely Planet’ which deals with the concept of travelling and its historical, artistic and sociological context, in a transversal way. Several themes are included and debated: timing of fall, jump, damages, history, environment, hotels and restaurants for the last meal, art and a wide section dedicated to other places connected to suicide in Italy and across the border. In this way, instead of pushing the tourist toward the act of committing suicide, this guide tries to bore him and to ‘spoil the party’.

Goals:

This research starts from a ‘discovery’, so to speak. Many suicides, before entering the void, plan, in detail, their suicide by choosing the last restaurant,
the right time, and so on. Considering the importance of this phase of preparation for death, the idea was to ‘consume and formalize’ this ritual: to neutralize the practice of suicide. This manual also tries to stop the ’procedure’ through a guide and at the same time, tries to educate the audience about death and the
censured topic of suicide.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Lonely is a practical, detailed and funny guide to the city of Spoleto and its ‘Bridge of Suicides’. It introduces the city and to its restaurants, museums, monuments. It is an original publication that deals in a specific and deep way with the historical and artistic aspects of the bridge that could not be found in a standard touristic guide. Moreover, the book is also an archive of interventions of contemporary art recently installed over and around the bridge.

Arte Útil archive nr:

313

Initiator:

Bik van der Pol

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy

Users:

Bik van der Pol, readers of Loompanics publications and users of the museum

Maintained by:

Duration:

2001- ongoing

Bik van der Pol
-
Loompanics
-

Description:

The project includes a selection of 140 books from Loompanics Unlimited publishers, Washington. Out of business since 2006, this publishing house had for decades published manuals that ‘your mother and the state would rather you didn’t read’. Subjects varied from practical handbooks on ‘How to Develop a Low- Cost Family Food- Storage System’ to less generally acceptable publications as ‘Gourmet Cannabis Cookery’ and controversial self-help books as ‘How to Start Your Own Country’, ‘Homemade Guns and Homemade Arms’, or ‘How to Clear Your Adult and Juvenile Criminal Records’. Users are invited to read the publications and make copies of the manuals, meaning they can follow instructions and realise projects on their own.

Goals:

To allow users free access to material, bypassing reproduction rights and encouraging them to use the manuals themselves.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Users gain free access to Loompanics publications

Arte Útil archive nr:

164

Initiator:

Fallen Fruit, Islands LA

Location:

United States

Category:

urban-development, economy, environment

Users:

Fallen Fruit (David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young), Islands of LA (created by Ari Kletzky), citizens of LA

Maintained by:

Fallen Fruit/Islands LA

Duration:

2008

Fallen Fruit, Islands LA
-
Love apples
-

Description:

The initiators, in collaboration with residents, planted 72 tomato plants in 12 traffic islands around the city. Tomatoes were planted on empty and irrigated public space to suggest an alternative use and occupation of the public space. Users were invited to sample but not hoard the produce. At the end of the project, a map was created to invite users to discover these new urban spaces and taste the tomatoes.

Goals:

The project tested the definition and use of public space in the city of Los Angeles, imagining new ways in which such spaces could be utilised differently.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The re-use of public spaces and the fact that public sampled the tomatoes.

Arte Útil archive nr:

112

Initiator:

Michael Connor and Brian Finkle

Location:

United States

Category:

Users:

Mad Hoursers, donations

Maintained by:

Duration:

1987 - ongoing

Michael Connor and Brian Finkle
-
Mad Housers
-

Description:

Mad Housers is a non-profit organisation, comprised entirely of volunteers, who engage in various forms of social, charity and educational work. The project provides shelters in various areas in the city of Atlanta for homeless families and individuals, without differentiating between the nationality, religion, age and sexual orientation. It develops low-income housing for people in need, and workshops to help people developing skills and knowledge for refurbishing housing and shelter.

Goals:

To help the plight of the homeless in Atlanta and low-income families.

Beneficial Outcomes:

To develop low income housing for people in need, to help people develop the skills and knowledge to construct housing and shelter, and also to act, if necessary as an advocate for the homeless, to ensure that their moral and civil rights are protected.

Arte Útil archive nr:

111

Initiator:

Mark Bradford

Location:

US, Mexico

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Mark Bradford, Mexican border police, Maleteros (Luggage carriers)

Maintained by:

inSITE 05

Duration:

2005

Mark Bradford
-
Maleteros
-

Description:

Malteros are the porters who transport luggage and goods between the border of the US and Mexico. Working with a group of maleteros in 2005, artist Mark Bradford collaborated on a system of maps and signs that placed the marginalized work of the unofficial maleteros alongside that of the sanctioned labor of policemen and taxi drivers. Along with the map, the collaboration resulted in new stations for the maleteros to work out of and store their carts, as well as the creation of a large sign that reads “MALETEROS” under the taxi and buses sign.

Goals:

To provide visibility, improve business and legitimize the work of the maleteros operating in the informal economy

Beneficial Outcomes:

The signs provide visibility for the maleteros as well as demarcated stations for facilitating business and storing carts.

Arte Útil archive nr:

575

Initiator:

Paola Sánchez, Héctor Juárez (Primal).

Location:

México

Category:

pedagogical, politics, social

Users:

Hablantes de diversas lenguas en todo México, —Hablantes de diversas lenguas en todo México, activistas de la lengua que desarrollan proyectos sobre el tema.

Maintained by:

Primal

Duration:

2017 - 2018

Paola Sánchez, Héctor Juárez (Primal).
-
Matria
-

Description:

Goals:

-Poner a las lenguas originarias en el futuro y en el pensamiento contemporáneo.
-Revalorizar y crear puentes entre diferentes tradiciones, cosmovisiones, códigos y prácticas culturales.
-Promover que las lenguas deben estar en el uso diario
-Entender colectivamente que no se requieren de grandes infraestructuras o tecnologias para poder llevar la lengua a la vida contemporanea, es una cuestion de voluntad politica, personal y colectiva.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Los talleres se plantean para brindar herrramientas a los asistentes, quienes podrán hacer uso de ellas en su vida cotidiana, ej. un taller de doblaje para brindar a los hablantes la posibilidad de doblar peliculas a su lengua originaria.
Algunos textos de pensamiento contemporaneo ya han sido interpretados a lenguas originarias (acceso libre en la pagina web) y se ha doblado "Blade runner" al nahuatl.

Arte Útil archive nr:

575

Initiator:

Paola Sánchez, Héctor Juárez (Primal).

Location:

México

Category:

pedagogical, politics, social

Users:

Speakers of various languages throughout Mexico, language activists who are developing projects on the subject

Maintained by:

Primal

Duration:

2017-2018

Paola Sánchez, Héctor Juárez (Primal).
-
Matria
-

Description:

Goals:

-Put the original languages in the future and contemporary thinking.
-Revalue and create bridges between different traditions, worldviews, codes and cultural practices.
-Promote that languages should be present in daily use
-Understanding collectively that large infrastructures or technologies are not required to be able to bring these languages to contemporary life. It is a matter of political, personal and collective willpower.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The workshops are designed to provide tools to the attendees, who will be able to make use of them in their daily lives, e.g. a dubbing workshop to give speakers the ability to translate movies into their original language. Some texts of contemporary thought have already been interpreted into native languages (free access on the website) and "Blade Runner" has been dubbed to Nahuatl.

Arte Útil archive nr:

140

Initiator:

WochenKlausur

Location:

Austria

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

Homeless population, people without health insurance. The clinic has over 700 patients per month

Maintained by:

Vienna Secession; sponsors and Council.

Duration:

1993 - ongoing

WochenKlausur
-
Medical Care for Homeless People
-

Description:

After receiving an invitation from the Vienna Secession, WochenKlausur decided to develop a project to improve the situation of homeless people, instead of putting on an exhibition. At the time of the project, Karlsplatz, the square in front of the exhibition building, was known throughout the city as a meeting place for homeless people. WochenKlausur customized a van into a mobile clinic that provided Vienna's homeless population with access to health care, free of charge. To pay the salaries of the physicians, WochenKlausur resorted to a trick, asking a correspondent for the German news magazine Der Spiegel to conduct an interview with the councilor of Vienna and pretend that he was interested in reporting on the project. Since the politician did not want to appear in the German press as the cause of the project’s failure, he had no choice but to provide funding for the physicians who would staff the clinic – initially for one year.

Goals:

To provide health care for homeless population and to people without access to healthcare.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Since 1993, 600 people per month have received medical care from the clinic. In 1998 a larger vehicle replaced the old van and the relief organization Caritas has taken over management of the entire project. The mobile medical clinic has become a permanent institution, also offering treatment to foreigners without Insurance.
If you are in need of free of charge healthcare you can go find the Louise-Bus at these locations: Mon 16.00–19.30: Franz-Josefs Bahnhof, 9. District, Spittelauer Platz; Tue 09.00–12.00: Praterstern - Ladezone BILLA (U-Bahn Exit Nordbahnstraße/Heinestraße) and 15.00–18.00: Behind the Day Center Josefstädterstraße, 8. District, U6 Station Josefstädterstraße; Wed 09.00–11.00: Lacknergasse 96, 18. District, next to the second Gruft and 11.30–14.30 & 19.30–21.30: In front of the Day Center Gruft, Barnabitengasse 14, 6. District; Thu 09.00–12.00: In front of the Day Center at the Main Train Station, 4. District, Wiedner Gürtel 10 and 14.00–18.00: Haus Grangasse, Grangasse 6, 1150 Wien; Fri 09.00–13.00: Behind the Day Center Josefstädterstraße, 8. District, U6 Station Josefstädterstraße and 13.30–15.00: Next to the FrauenWohnZentrum, 2. District, Springergasse 5 - Treatment only for Women.

Arte Útil archive nr:

017

Initiator:

Minerva Cuevas

Location:

Mexico, United States, Canada, Belgium, Germany.

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

Minerva Cuevas, citizens

Maintained by:

Minerva Cuevas, volunteers and those art Institutions that host the project

Duration:

1997 - ongoing

Minerva Cuevas
-
Mejor Vida Corp (Better Live Corporation)
-

Description:

Mejor Vida Corp (M.V.C.) is a non-profit corporation that creates, promotes and distributes products and services for free. Besides, they can be delivered anywhere in the world without charge. Among a variety of goods, M.V.C. provides subway tickets, safety pills, cheaper barcodes stickers, self-stamped envelopes, lottery cards, student identity cards or services like cleaning service, recommendation letters, etc.
M.V.C. explores and react on the general practices of the large corporations and institutions analysing every particular context like Mexico D.F., Toronto, Hasselt, Frankfurt, etc. MVC doesn't discriminate against gender, race, religion, sexual preferences or economic status.

Goals:

To question the capitalistic economic system employing ordinary things and everyday issues, challenging the very idea of the artistic production and reversing the notions of commodification and profit.

Beneficial Outcomes:

M.V.C. has given away thousands of subway tickets in Mexico city's subway stations, and they have issued numerous student Identity cards. These student's Cards can be used internationally to obtain free or reduced museum admissions, public transportation, travel accommodation, discounts on airfares, as well as many other benefits. Besides, the website provides a printable barcode database for products of supermarkets chains in Mexico, Toronto, Ottawa and San Francisco. Every product from M.V.C. is reproducible by the users.

Arte Útil archive nr:

215

Initiator:

Memetro

Location:

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

Subway users

Maintained by:

Members of Memetro

Duration:

2010 - ongoing

Memetro
-
Memetro
-

Description:

Memetro is a non-profit cultural organisation, which has developed a web application for smartphones for all people who have a transitory memory upset. The term ‘memetro’ is a merging of two concepts‘Meme’ from the Spanish expression, and the film ‘Memento’. People with TMG (Transitory Global Memetro) very often forget to validate their ticket of public transport, especially on the subway. Memetro is therefore a social and artistic project, anyone with this memory disease could become a member and get live updates at every moment (via Facebook and Twitter) about the locations and timing of inspections on all subway lines, thus helping these people to avoid the fine that controllers generally impose on those travelling without a ticket.

Goals:

Providing support and help to the TGM-affected population through cultural activities and information campaigns; to give recognition of the victims of TGM.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Memetro employs a members’ fee (7 Euros/month) to form a common fund for collectively paying the fines imposed on any member. If a member is trapped in a control line and asks help via Facebook or Twitter, any other member can buy a ticket and give it to him, just on time, before being fined.

Arte Útil archive nr:

177

Initiator:

Somkiat Tangnamo

Location:

Thailand, Online

Category:

pedagogical, politics

Users:

Students

Maintained by:

Midnight University

Duration:

1997 - 2014

Somkiat Tangnamo
-
Midnight University
-

Description:

Midnight University is a free educational project and an academic forum online. The project was committed to democratic ideals and social justice. Since its foundation, it has been a dissenting voice in the country's larger political landscape becoming a valuable resource for artists, academics, and activists.
After Thailand 2006 coup, the University website was temporarily shut down after some scholars led a protest in Chiang Mai againts the Junta's draft interim constitution.
In Mei 2014, Thailand’s military junta blocked access to the ‘Midnight University’ website. The user was redirected to a Junta's annoucement that stated: Temporarily closed down according to the order of the National Council for Peace and Order.

Goals:

The primary task of this website is to be an educational tool for citizens, providing a forum to discuss social and political issues.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Midnight University website receives over 2.5 million unique visits per month and offers users from around the world access to over 1500 scholarly articles. Most of the materials are in Thai and some are in english.

Arte Útil archive nr:

507

Initiator:

Yao, Jui-Chung + Lost Society Document (LSD)

Location:

Taiwan

Category:

urban-development

Users:

Students and citizens.

Maintained by:

Department of Fine Arts at National Taipei University of the Arts, the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University, and the National Taiwan University Photography Club.

Duration:

2010 - 2013

Yao, Jui-Chung + Lost Society Document (LSD)
-
Mirage—Disused Public Property in Taiwan
-

Description:

Goals:

To underline the government negligence and to foster some action to use the buildings.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Forced this issue into the forefront of the government's consciousness so they would reinvestigate the issue.
To put these disused spaces back into social use.
A new social awareness emerged in the student body as to the absurdity and unfairness of their society.

Arte Útil archive nr:

198

Initiator:

Hannah Hurtzig

Location:

Germany, Poland, Austria, Turkey, United Kingdom, Israel, Finland, Switzerland

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy

Users:

Experts and participants

Maintained by:

Hannah Hurtzig with changing collaborators

Duration:

2005 - ongoing

Hannah Hurtzig
-
Mobile Academy: blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge
-

Description:

The project consists of an audio recording archive, which can be displayed in public venues. For every activation of the project, the initiator arranges between 12 to 100 individual tables that are occupied by experts (scientists, artists, philosophers, craftsmen, etc) who are invited to offer a 30 minute one-to-one session to users. Users are able to book an expert and to acquire her or his knowledge. Each conversation is made available in an online archive.

Goals:

To organise a community college in which learning and unlearning, knowledge and non-knowledge, and strategies of living and surviving will change ownership in a non-institutional way. To transfer knowledge as a communicative and performative act that becomes a collectively, whispered story of knowledge.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Transfer of knowledge between participants and experts. Talks are made available online and in an Encyclopedia.

Arte Útil archive nr:

486

Initiator:

Fernando García-Dory

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

scientific, politics, economy, environment, social

Users:

Church and village communities.

Maintained by:

Cheese enthusiasts

Duration:

2011 - ongoing

Fernando García-Dory
-
Mobile Dairy Unit
-

Description:

An instructive, mobile unit that tours the country showing the process of sourcing dairy products and how they are then processed into cheese and other dairy products.

Goals:

To teach people to make their own cheese to provide a herd of goats and cheese-making facilities on a short term basis.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Cheese understanding: the science of cheese and fermented cultures social interaction.
Small business development.
Understanding of where food comes from.

Arte Útil archive nr:

510

Initiator:

Vito Acconci

Location:

France, Spain, Italy, Austria.

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Citizens, artists, museum's visitors

Maintained by:

To Acconci's disappointment it is now dismantled and storage in Vienna.

Duration:

1991

Vito Acconci
-
Mobile Linear City
-

Description:

The artist built portable housing that can be replicated to become an entire 'city'. A semitrailer truck carries six self-contained housing units that can be telescoped down into one compact module for hauling, to be set up wherever housing is needed. Inside each house, the wall panels can turn down to form a table, a bench, a bed and a shelf. There are five living units, each essentially a studio apartment with the unit housing shared utilities.

Goals:

The artist had hoped it would become a lived-in 'traveling city', but soon he realized that it was not possible due to problems of legal responsibility, permits etc.

Beneficial Outcomes:

People could live in a 'traveling city'.

Arte Útil archive nr:

447

Initiator:

Mosireen

Location:

Egypt

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Users:

Mosireen and participants

Maintained by:

Mosireen

Duration:

2011 - ongoing

Mosireen
-
Mosireen
-

Description:

Armed with mobile phones and cameras, thousands of citizens record events as they occur in front of them, wrong-footing censorship, and empowering the voice of those with a street-level perspective. In the wake of president Hosni Mubarak’s fall, a group of film-makers and activists founded the non-profit media collective Mosireen to film the ongoing revolution, to publish videos that challenge state media narratives, to provide training, technical support and equipment, to organise screenings and events, as well as host an extensive library of footage from the revolution.

Goals:

Support citizen media of all kinds.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Mosireen runs free training courses. Their videos are available to download or stream for free and openly for all non-commercial viewing, screening, and distribution.

Arte Útil archive nr:

134

Initiator:

Colectivo Cambalache

Location:

Colombia, Slovenia, Spain, Puerto Rico, France, Switzerland, Turkey, Italy.

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Colectivo Cambalache, inhabitants of the neighbourhood.

Maintained by:

Colectivo Cambalache (Carolina Caycedo, Adriana García Galán, Alonso Gil and Federico Guzmán).

Duration:

1998 - ongoing

Colectivo Cambalache
-
Museo de la Calle
-

Description:

In the district of El Cartucho, an impoverished area in the centre of the city of Bogotà, a group of students of the University of Los Andes, organised themselves in the "Colectivo Cambalache". The aim of the group was to foster an alternative economy of sharing, exchange and recycling. They use a traditional recyclers’ full cart (a wooden box on wheels) to pick up objects on the street, take donations and redistribute them.

Goals:

The project “Museo de la Calle”, proposes to generate an alternative economy through the gift, barter, exchange and distribution of goods with unlimited transactions.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Everybody is welcome to take something from the cart, as long as they also donate an object in exchange.

Arte Útil archive nr:

201

Initiator:

Kamiel Verschuren and Jaap Verheul

Location:

The

Category:

Users:

NAC members, artists and the inhabitants of Oud-Charlois district, Wolphaertstraat, the housing block ‘t O-tje at Verboomstraat and the neighborhood Wielewaal.

Maintained by:

NAC, district council of Charlois, Housing corporations, The Mya NAC culture fund.

Duration:

2004 - ongoing

Kamiel Verschuren and Jaap Verheul
-
NAC Foundation (New Ateliers Charlois)
-

Description:

The project is an independent non-profit organisation who manages affordable studio spaces and two guesthouses for emerging artists and other cultural workers. Located in the district of Charlois in Rotterdam, the foundation promotes cultural activities in the neighbourhood focused on urban development.
Users pay a fee to a collective fund, which is used for maintenance of the spaces, management and to support the cultural activities in collaboration with the local associations and authorities.

Goals:

NAC works on the basis of trustful relationships and within the notion that freedom is generated through responsibility: “everything is possible and allowed as long as one can, and will take full responsibility for ones” actions.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Over 250 artists and architects have made use of the studios. NAC provides Dutch language courses for it members, cultural trips to exhibitions, public art works, and other artists’ initiatives, supports all applications under 500 euro. NAC is now an example for new ways of urban development.

Arte Útil archive nr:

058

Initiator:

Constant

Location:

Everywhere

Category:

urban-development

Users:

Constant, hom*o ludens, artists, critics

Maintained by:

Constant

Duration:

1956 - 1974

Constant
-
New Babylon
-

Description:

New Babylon was a situationist and utopian city, designed around the abolition of work; it was intended as a form of propaganda that critiqued a conventional, bourgeois and utilitarian society.
The idea was to create an anti-capitalist society of total automation and where land was collectively owned by its citizens. Work was replaced with nomadic life, creative play and experimental architecture. New Babylon was structured as a network of megastructures floating above the ground, interconnected with bridges and pathways where the post-capitalist inhabitants could roam in search of a new and free kind of life. Constant always saw the project as a concrete and realizable proposal for a future city.

Goals:

Self-fulfillment and self-satisfaction were Constant's social goals. Deductive reasoning, goal-oriented production, the construction and betterment of a political community: all these were avoided.

Arte Útil archive nr:

244

Initiator:

REV

Location:

United States

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Users:

Nannies, housekeepers, elder caregivers, and their employers. REV-, People’s Production House, Domestic Workers United, MIT Center for Civic Media, Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center.

Maintained by:

Tribeca Film Festival, Rockefeller Foundation, Funding Exchange, North Star Fund, MIT Community Service Fund, MIT Council for the Arts, NuLawLab, individual donors.

Duration:

2011 - ongoing

REV
-
New Day New Standard (now the “Domestic Worker App”)
-

Description:

The Domestic Worker App is a hotline outlining rights and laws for nannies with funny episodes about topics such overtime wages, taxes, vacation time, etc.
When you call the hotline number, you hear what sounds like a radio talk show, ‘hosted’ by Christine Lewis (a real nanny), who explains to you the worker’s rights and laws. It operates as an open-source tool that effectively reaches low-wage workers with low print-literacy levels.

Goals:

The aim is to create a collective of artists, advocates, media makers, low-wage workers, immigrants, and youth to spark social change through constituency-led campaigns.
The Domestic Worker App was designed to inform the 200,000+ nannies, housekeepers, and caregivers in New York State about the landmark 2010 Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Fundamentally, better working conditions for nannies.
The Domestic Worker App functions as a key component of a various state's campaigns that seek to encourage domestic workers and their employers to comply with the law.
It has grown to a nation-wide initiative intended for 2.5 million workers across the U.S.

Arte Útil archive nr:

555

Initiator:

Emily Hesse, James Beighton

Location:

United Kingdom

Category:

social

Users:

Communities of Teesside, users of Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. Approximately 741 have made in workshop sessions to date (August 2016)

Maintained by:

Emily Hesse, James Beighton, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Duration:

2014 - ongoing

Emily Hesse, James Beighton
-
New Linthorpe
-

Description:

New Linthorpe is inspired by the original 19th century Linthorpe Pottery, Middlesbrough. It re-purposes the idea and value of a social enterprise but hands it directly back to the community. Workshops are set up in the locality where people are invited to 'make' with their own earth. The physical reclamation of the land by the community allows a space for discussion as to the future of the region based on personal and shared experience. The users of the project formulate the outcomes by suggesting direct uses for the project itself within the Tees Valley. The work carried out is guided by the belief in not just the ability but also the responsibility of art to make a difference to lives.

Goals:

To find new uses for local clay: Community vessel production, Honesty shop, as art world currency, medium for export, production of brick or architectural material for rebuilding local area; To create encounters that allow the community to take ownership of their own land/earth (clay); To utilise and establish skill sharing and social making as a platform for community building; To re-define the aesthetics of 'makerliness'; To respond directly to community input and transform into output.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Creation of a supported ecological system, which encourages the growth of self-empowerment and the development of a positive shared community identity, assisting to end local declinist narratives.
During activities and workshops, ceramic vessels were made based upon a community members need and some of them were put up for sale on a no questions asked basis. Income from sales went directly back to the makers. Working with asylum seekers living in the area, workshops acted as a classroom for learning English.

Arte Útil archive nr:

202

Initiator:

Kamiel Verschuren

Location:

Cameroon

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Kamiel Vershuren, Lucas Grandin, inhabitants of New Bell (Douala)

Maintained by:

SUD2010 , Duala'Art

Duration:

2010 - ongoing

Kamiel Verschuren
-
New Walk Ways in New Bell
-

Description:

The city of Douala in Cameroon had a huge problem associated with malfunctioning water drainage systems. This is due the fact that in many illegally constructed areas of the town, the sewers are without cover, and after heavy rainfall, this would generally lead to floods and related threats to public health.
Verschuren covered approximately 2km of open-air gutters in the New Bell neighbourhood, with long wooden boards on which the artist wrote texts and
words associated with water.

Goals:

The project offers inhabitants the possibility of mastering and improving their living conditions, inviting them to lead spontaneous collective activities such as
the functional work of Verschuren.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project was much appreciated by the people living in New Bell, including the 'chief', who took it upon himself to make sure that people gain more consciousness on how to deal with garbage produced in the neighbourhood in order to keep the sewer – and the drinking water – from becoming more polluted.

Arte Útil archive nr:

473

Initiator:

Jonas Staal

Location:

Germany, The Netherlands, India, Belgium, West-Kurdistan, Norway.

Category:

pedagogical, politics, social

Users:

Progressive artists, politicians, political parties, non-parliamentary political movements, diplomats, lawyers, academics, students, journalists, aimed at citizens at large

Maintained by:

1st Kochi Muziris Biennial; 7th Berlin Biennale; De Veenfabriek; Farook Foundation; Kulturstiftung des Bundes; Kunst_werke; Mondriaan Foundation; Stichting Doen; Museum De Lakenhal; Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Delhi; Farook Foundation, Dubai; Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Center for Visual Arts, Rotterdam; The Art of Impact, Amsterdam; Stichting Democratie en Media, Amsterdam; K. F. Hein Fonds, Utrecht; Promoveren in de Kunsten, Amsterdam; PhDArts, The Hague/Leiden, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Municipality of Dêrik, Kurdish Cultural Foundation, Eindhoven; Demned – Council of Communities from Kurdistan in the Netherlands; Jineolojî Center of Research for Human and Social Sciences of Women; NOW Fund, Amsterdam

Duration:

2012 - ongoing

Jonas Staal
-
New World Summit
-

Description:

The New World Summit is an artistic and political organisation dedicated to hosting 'alternative parliaments' for those organisations that are currently excluded from democracy. Such lists include terrorist organisations considered a threat to international security. In the European Union, a secret committee, called Clearing House, compiles this list. The six summits organized facilitated the discussion of 36 groups so far. All the editions of the project are supplemented by an online archive documenting the histories, aims, locations, symbols of each organization represented during the summits.

Goals:

New World Summit contributes to the promise of a ‘fundamental democracy’. The organisation has no fixed geographical location; it represents no nation state; no properties or indefinite claims on the right to speak. With each summit, a growing international political coalition of progressive groups, excluded from the society. Each summit can be considered as a democratic experiment. The goal is to expand the existing notion of politics by showing the current radical diversity of ideological struggle, while also creating the first international parliament for non-statist politics in the world.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The outcomes of the New World Summit are the development of an alternative global political infrastructure for non-statist politics. Through this project, the alternative parliaments aim at destabilizing existing power centres, and to prove that all political power starts with its imagination. Artists, architects, and designers are the ones who help give a human face to an increasingly suppresive form of capitalist-democracy (which we refer to as ‘democratism’). We can
imagine the world anew through our fidelity to the forces of an international democratization movement.

Arte Útil archive nr:

584

Initiator:

Suzanne Lacy, Annice Jacoby, and Chris Johnson

Location:

United States

Category:

pedagogical, social

Users:

The youth from Oakland, the police, Also including Unique Holland, Frank Williams, Stan Hebert, Jacques Bronson, Mike Shaw, Steve Costa, Officer Terry West, Honorable Elihu Harris Chief Joseph Samuels, Captain Sharon Jones and Greg Hodges of Urban Strategies Council.

Maintained by:

Mayor’s Office, Oakland Sharing the Vision, Oakland Police Department, Midnight Basketball and Club One at City Center as part of the Oakland Youth Policy Initiative led by Council- woman Sheila Jordan

Duration:

1995 - 1996

Suzanne Lacy, Annice Jacoby, and Chris Johnson
-
No Blood No Foul
-

Description:

The project consisted of a basketball game as a performance between local youth and police officers in which the rules were changed every quarter. It included pre-recorded and live video interviews by youth reporters with local residents. During earlier phases of the project, the artists and her collaborators worked to propose a Youth Policy Initiative to be discussed during the performance through a series of telephones in the lobby that was connected to a hotline for audience response to the policy. The project is one of eight major works that comprise 'The Oakland Projects', a series of installations, performances and political activism created by the artist in collaboration with multiple artists, high school students, youth activist, educators, law enforcement agencies and government officials in Oakland, California.

Goals:

This yearlong project consisted of a performance, policy interventions, collaboration with the city council, a media strategy, video documentary and screening, and direct services to participating youth in order to propose a Youth Policy Initiative and to raise funding for the development of a youth-to-youth program.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The event was attended by the mayor and city council members, who eventually passed the Oakland Youth Policy Initiative and funded $ 180,000 for a youth-to-youth granting program.

Arte Útil archive nr:

083

Initiator:

Colectivo de Acciones de Arte

Location:

Chile

Category:

politics

Users:

Colectivo de Acciones De Arte: sociologist Fernando Balcells, the writer Diamela Eltit, the poet Raul Zurita and the visual artists Lotty Rosenfeld and Juan Castillo; citizens

Maintained by:

Colectivo de Acciones de Arte and users

Duration:

1983 - ongoing

Colectivo de Acciones de Arte
-
NO+
-

Description:

No+ (No more) was a slogan to be completed by the citizens of Santiago de Chile according to their specific demands during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The action was used by the Colectivo de Acciones de Arte (CADA) to challenge and oppose the dictatorship, and it included theatrical and art performances as strategies to intervene in everyday life in order to fill the gap between artists and spectators. No+ spread all over the country and it became a symbol of political resistance and dissent. Citizens appropriated the slogan for political intervention in the public sphere.

Goals:

Colectivo de Acciones de Arte promoted the fusion of art and life as a strategy to fill the gap between spectators and artists. Throughout different performances and art actions, they understood the necessity for a theoretical and practical renovation of the artistic debate in Chile, which needed to be contextualised for the development of political resistance and critical thinking among intellectuals and citizens.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The slogan was soon used by different collectives all over the country as a massive public symbol of political resistance and non-conformity.

Arte Útil archive nr:

204

Initiator:

Centro de Desarrollo Cultural de Moravia (CDCM), El puente_lab collective and STEALTH.unlimited

Location:

Colombia

Category:

economy, environment, social

Users:

Inhabitants of Moravia district.

Maintained by:

Centro de Desarrollo Cultural de Moravia, Alcaldía de Medellin and COMFENALCO Antioquia; Mondriaan Foundation (Netherlands); Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto (Italy), Moravia community

Duration:

2011 - ongoing

Centro de Desarrollo Cultural de Moravia (CDCM), El puente_lab collective and STEALTH.unlimited
-
Nodo de desarrollo cultural #1 ‘El Morro’
-

Description:

The neighbourhood of Moravia grew as an illegal settlement of communities that arrived to the city in the 1960s. The municipal dump "El Morro", established in the area in 1977 and closed in 1984, became a source of neighbourhood’s survival, based on recuperation of recyclable materials. In 2004 the Municipality of Medellín under the guidance of mayor Sergio Fajardo, began an integrated strategic plan to promote development through actions aimed toward recovering the urban area and improving the social and environmental conditions. A sign of the neighbourhood’s rebirth is the Centro de Desarrollo Cultural de Moravia / Cultural Development Center of Moravia (CDCM), whose aim is to promote culture, education and arts.

Goals:

Beyond being a process of architectural design, the cultural node gives a possibility of decentralising successful activities of the CDCM. The main objective of this process, that expands the range of existing cultural institution by multiplying its space with temporary cheap structures, is to increase access to cultural activities for community and strengthen community development processes.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project has become prototype to explore possibilities of similar interventions in other neighbourhoods in Medellin and beyond.

Arte Útil archive nr:

092

Initiator:

Apolonija Šušteršič

Location:

Slovenia

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Users:

Apolonija šušteršič, Maria Lind, Irena Wölle

Maintained by:

Mala galerija, Moderna Galerija, Ljubliana

Duration:

1999

Apolonija Šušteršič
-
Non Stop Video Club
-

Description:

The project consisted of a video club where people could sit down and view a selection of videotapes or borrow videos for home viewing,
Non-stop video club provided films which were not available in any other video stores, because a restrictive video distribution law that allowed only films which have been subtitled in the Slovenian language, To borrow the tapes, people had to be members of the club. Membership and rent were free of charge, so this allowed anyone to become a member of the club while at the same time, it legitimised its function.

Goals:

Ultimately its goal was to give access to international films to a Slovenian audience, and to foster a new relationship between art institution and its audience.

Beneficial Outcomes:

It offers a free selection of videotapes composed by Art videos from the collection of the Moderna Galerija and Art videos by international artists.

Arte Útil archive nr:

538

Initiator:

Juan William Chàvez

Location:

United States

Category:

pedagogical, urban-development, economy, environment

Users:

Inhabitants of North St. Louis, students, children.

Maintained by:

Old North St. Louis, Kranzberg Arts Foundation, Lumeier Sculpture Park, World Chess Hall of Fame, CAM, City Academy, Confluence Charter School.

Duration:

2010 - ongoing

Juan William Chàvez
-
Northside Workshop
-

Description:

Northside workshop is a non-profit art initiative dedicated to addressing cultural and community issues in North Saint Louis, Missouri. In collaboration with Old North St. Louis Restoration Group and the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, the artist restored a historic brick building in danger of being destroyed and transformed it into a cultural space. The program focuses on beekeeping classes, cooking classes and urban agriculture on-site. They host a Workshop Incubate program which aims to help individuals develop their programming and/or non-profit by providing them with a space and support for activities and events.

Goals:

To rescue a historical building developing a program that focuses on incorporating socially engaged practices and education in order to foster social progress in North St. Louis. To provide space and support for independent activities developed by inhabitants of the neighbourhood.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Kids and inhabitants of the neighbourhood can join the classes for free and learn beekeeping and growing food through urban agriculture. Independent groups can use the space for free through the Workshop Incubate program and initiate their own organisation.

Arte Útil archive nr:

001

Initiator:

Location:

Started at France, now in 8 European countries (France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Finland, Sweden and Great Britain).

Category:

social

Users:

Maintained by:

Foundation de France

Duration:

1991 - ongoing

-
Nouveaux Commanditaires (New Patrons)
-

Description:

Goals:

Giving to all people – independent of financial means, educational or social status – the means to assume responsibility to commission the work of an artist for the benefit of the public.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Over 250 projects have been implemented (some of them are still in progress) responding to specific, local urgencies.

Arte Útil archive nr:

239

Initiator:

Núria Güell

Location:

Spain

Category:

pedagogical, politics, social

Users:

Núria Güell, the hired immigrant

Maintained by:

Produced by DINA4 cultural association

Duration:

2011

Núria Güell
-
Offside
-

Description:

'Offside hired an illegal immigrant to play hide-and-seek within the space and duration of the exhibition. This working contract removed the need for him to hide from the police in his everyday life because the contract provided him with the opportunity to ask for legal immigration papers. The contract was made in one of the numerous places in town where unemployed immigrants meet at dawn to offer themselves as cheap labour. In this piece I implement a common strategy of capitalism: to use the play-based aspect of games as a cover for social, political and/or economic purposes.’ (N. Güell)

Goals:

‘Allow the African immigrant who was hired, to apply for his residence permit and therefore become legal in Spain. On a pedagogical level, I am interested in making visible the legal strategy that other citizens in the same situation could use.’ (N. Güell)

Beneficial Outcomes:

‘The immigrant was able to receive his residence permit and by this action, he did not need to hide from the police anymore. He no longer needed to live with a permanent fear of being taken to an immigrant centre or being deported to his country of origin. He also had a work contract and a month salary.’ (N. Güell)

Arte Útil archive nr:

138

Initiator:

oil21.org, CAMP, Majlis, Point of View, the Alternative Law Forum

Location:

India

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Berlin's 0x2620.org (oil21.org), Bangalore's Alternative Law Forum and three groups from Mumbai: Majlis, Point of View, and ChitrakarKhana/CAMP, website users.

Maintained by:

HIVOS. Currently Bohen Foundation and the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.

Duration:

2008 - ongoing

oil21.org, CAMP, Majlis, Point of View, the Alternative Law Forum
-
Pad.ma
-

Description:

The project consists of an ongoing public access digital media archive of footage and unfinished film available online. The whole collection is searchable, viewable and free to download for non-commercial use, it uses video as a medium of documentation collection, argumentation and exchange. It currently has about 2000 hours of published videos. The majority of material is from Mumbai and Bangalore and it consists of the documentation of changing cityscapes, street and domestic life, commercial and intellectual activity, protests, chance meetings, police raids, train-rides, horse-carriages and other transports, conversations with various community, state and corporate interests, players and agents, artworks, phone taps, audio recordings, "found" footage, etc.

Goals:

Pad.ma is a way to access the images, intentions and effects present in video footage, that have tended to suppress for a log time. This expanded treatment then points to other, political potentials for such material, and leads us into lesser-known territory for video itself.

Arte Útil archive nr:

071

Initiator:

Pedro Reyes

Location:

Mexico

Category:

politics, economy, environment, social

Users:

Pedro Reyes, local chain store, schools, inhabitants.

Maintained by:

Botanical Garden, Culiacán (2008); Vancouver Art Gallery (2008); San Francisco Art Institute (2008); Maison Rouge, Paris (2008); Lyon Biennial (2009); Marfa, Texas (2010); Denver, Colorado (2010)

Duration:

2008 - ongoing

Pedro Reyes
-
Palas por pistolas
-

Description:

The project involved the citizens in the public destruction of weapons using a steamroller in a military base. Subsequently, the metal was reused to create shovels, which served to plant trees. On the handle of each shovel blade, there is a description that shows how the weapon has now become a peaceful instrument. The project was supported by a local TV station, which invited citizens to give up a weapon, and also, a local chain store which gave a coupon to be used for shopping by anyone who gave up a weapon.

Goals:

To make the public aware that there is a direct relationship between crime and the number of weapons in circulation.

Beneficial Outcomes:

During the first campaign, 1527 weapons were collected.

Arte Útil archive nr:

016

Initiator:

Michael Rakowitz

Location:

United States, Slovenia

Category:

economy, social

Users:

Artist, homeless people

Maintained by:

Lombard-Freid Fine Arts

Duration:

1997 - 2011

Michael Rakowitz
-
paraSITE
-

Description:

A series of inflatable shelters for homeless people that only can operate when attached to heating or ventilation vents of buildings. The air from the building simultaneously inflates and heats their double-membrane structures. The name of the project emphasises the relationship of the parasite that uses the energy of a host.
Rakowitz designed the paraSITE units in collaboration with the homeless people that would use them meeting their requirements and were built using temporary materials available on the streets, such as plastic bags and tape. The units are easy to transport.

Goals:

paraSITE proposes the appropriation of exterior ventilation systems on existing architecture as a means for providing temporary shelter for homeless people.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Built and distributed to over 30 homeless people in Boston, Cambridge, New York City, Baltimore and Ljubljana. These shelters functioned not only as a temporary place of retreat, but also as a station of dissent and empowerment; many of the homeless users regarded their shelters as a protest device, as a refusal to surrender, and made visible the unacceptable circ*mstances of homeless life within the city.

Arte Útil archive nr:

566

Initiator:

Wok The Rock, Casco — Office for Art, Design and Theory.

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

economy

Users:

Casco, Platform BK, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Das Spectrum.

Maintained by:

Wok The Rock, Casco — Office for Art, Design and Theory

Duration:

2016 - ongoing

Wok The Rock, Casco — Office for Art, Design and Theory.
-
Parasite Lottery
-

Description:

Adapting and fusing a lottery model for art funding that survives despite the dwindling of other cultural budgets and ‛arisan’, a commons-oriented micro-crediting system popular in Indonesia, Parasite Lottery invites a number of art organisations of different scales together as bidders, winners and hosts of lottery drawing events that are open to the public. The winners receive a sum of money to be used as a “fee for deviation”. In other words, the prize money should be spent on something that the winning organisation would usually never have the budget for.
Beyond the prize itself, Parasite Lottery is a collective exploration of chance effects, not just in the thrill of winning, but also through a series of gatherings that will take place around it, including talks, food, and music.

Goals:

To create a collective-funding system for different scale of art organisations through funding redistribution and social engagement.
To invoke key issues relating to cultural policies and their effects on art organisations, ranging from post-crisis austerity measures
—included particularly draconian budget cuts in the cultural sector which were legitimised by the portrayal of artists as “parasites”—, and precarity to the debt economy, and questions concerning sustainability and solidarity.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project is intended as a tool that can be used by any community and collective.
Following this system, the small organisation gets fund from the bigger institution, while the big one gets money for a deviation.
It turns to new strategies to face the lack of funds necessary to produce new art and its conditions of existence. Parasite Lottery experiments with a game of chance and desire vis-à-vis ways of redistributing funds among art institutions—a redistribution that, in the future, will hopefully include artists and other cultural workers. At the same time, it intervenes in the economy governing artistic production.

Arte Útil archive nr:

159

Initiator:

Hafenrandverein (Harbour Edge Association)

Location:

Germany

Category:

politics, urban-development, social

Users:

Christoph Schäfer, Margit Czenki, Hafenrandverein (Harbor Edge Association), Ellen Schmeisser, and residents of St. Pauli neighborhood.

Maintained by:

Hamburg, Germany Culture Department

Duration:

1995 - ongoing

Hafenrandverein (Harbour Edge Association)
-
Park Fiction
-

Description:

Goals:

Introduction of art and playful elements into emancipatory politics, link the urban everyday and the imaginary to be visible in the design of the park, city to be a product of the people who inhabit it, social interaction, participatory planning movements, and social imagination.

Beneficial Outcomes:

In 1997, the neighborhood stopped the development of the costly building that was originally planned. After ten years of struggles the park was inaugurated in 2005.

Arte Útil archive nr:

403

Initiator:

Nikolai Vavilov

Location:

Russian Federation

Category:

economy, environment, social

Users:

Nikolai Vavilov, botanist, scientists, students

Maintained by:

N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry

Duration:

1926 - ongoing

Nikolai Vavilov
-
Pavlovsk Experimental Station
-

Description:

The project is an agricultural experiment station and gene bank that is included in the Institute of Plant Industry in St. Petersburg.
Started as one of the first seed banks out of 11 that Vavilov created across the former Soviet Union, it contains an extensive collection of more than 5000 varieties of fruits and berries. The collection survived the 28-months Siege of Leningrad during World War II, when several botanists starved to death rather than eat the collected seeds. The institute houses one of the world's largest collections of seeds and planted crops, it includes almost a thousand types of strawberries from more than 40 countries, blackcurrant varieties from 30 countries, 600 apple types from 35 countries and more than a hundred varieties each of gooseberries, cherries, plums, red currants, and raspberries.

Goals:

To preserve seeds for the future, for the study and improvement of wheat, corn, and other cereal crops.
These varieties are needed to provide genes to protect commercial varieties against new threats ranging from pests to climate change. The station was established with the idea that seed banks are repositories of plant diversity that could be used to breed new varieties in response to threats to food production.

Beneficial Outcomes:

His theories and the seed bank itself have been used as resources for numerous studies.

Arte Útil archive nr:

432

Initiator:

Critical Art Ensemble

Location:

Germany

Category:

scientific, economy, environment, social

Users:

CAE (Steve Kurtz, Lucia Sommer and Steve Barnes), Inhabitants.

Maintained by:

Exhibition ‘Natur/Kultur’, curated by Anke Haarmann and Harald Lemke

Duration:

2008

Critical Art Ensemble
-
Peep Under the Elbe
-

Description:

The project aimed at providing residents of Wilhelmsburg, a poor and neglected neighbourhood in Hamburg, a water testing kit for analysing the quality of the canal water near their homes in order to find out clean swimming and fishing areas.

Goals:

Try to encourage populations who use the canals for recreation to move around a bit, finding where the safest places were for the popular activities of swimming and fishing.

Beneficial Outcomes:

It empowered people with tools, CAE tested the quality of the local water, and gave the inhabitants water testing kits to monitor their own environments.

Arte Útil archive nr:

518

Initiator:

Inhabitants of Berkeley

Location:

United States

Category:

politics, urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Students, artists, urban designers...inhabitants of Berkeley

Maintained by:

Inhabitants of Berkeley

Duration:

1969-ongoing

Inhabitants of Berkeley
-
People’s park
-

Description:

People's Park is a park located near the University of California. The University bought this plot of land containing residences for future development into student housing, parking, and offices. However, they ran out of funds leaving the lot only partially cleared of demolition debris and rubble. After years of abandonment, local merchants and residents held a meeting to discuss possible uses and presented a plan for developing the under-utilised land into a public park. An article was published in a local counter-culture newspaper, to call for help from local residents. On Sunday, April 20, 1969, over 100 people arrived at the site to begin building the park, contributing trees, flowers, shrubs, andil. Free food was provided, and community development of the park proceeded. The park was essentially complete by mid-May but Berkeley Vice Chancellor released plans for a sports field to be built on the site. Governor Ronald Reagan considered the creation of the park a direct leftist challenge to the property rights of the university and he sent 300 police officers into People's Park. The officers cleared the area around the park destroying a large section of what had been planted and a perimeter chain-link wire fence was installed to keep people out. About 3,000 people congregated nearby UC Berkeley for a rally to discuss the Arab–Israeli conflict and, responding spontaneously, moved down toward People's Park. The protesters were met by the remaining 159 police officers assigned to guard the fenced-off park. The huge clash was called Bloody Thursday, it finished with more than one hundred residents and police agents injured, hundreds of protesters arrested, one student blinded and one dead. On May 30, 1969, 30,000 Berkeley citizens secured a city permit and marched without incident past the barricaded People's Park to protest Governor Reagan's occupation of their city, the death of James Rector, the blinding of Alan Blanchard, and the many injuries inflicted by police. The protests and demonstrations continued for two years. In 1972, the Berkeley City Council voted to lease the park site from the university. The Berkeley community rebuilt the park, mainly with people working for free and donated materials. Various local groups contributed to managing the park during the rebuilding.

Goals:

To give a new green use for an urban abandoned plot of land, developing a free community area that was uncontrolled.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Today, People's Park is a free public park.

Arte Útil archive nr:

546

Initiator:

Michael Pineschi

Location:

Worldwide

Category:

scientific, pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Smart-phone users

Maintained by:

Molleindustria

Duration:

2013 - ongoing

Michael Pineschi
-
Phone Story
-

Description:

Phone Story is an educational game about the hidden social costs of smartphone manufacturing. Follow your phone's journey from the Coltan mines of the Congo to the electronic waste dumps in Pakistan through four colorful mini-games. Compete with market forces in an endless spiral of technological obsolescence. You can keep Phone Story in your favorite device as a reminder of your impact on this world. All revenues from the sale of this app will be donated to organizations working to solve the issues mentioned in this game.

Goals:

"Do not pretend that you are not complicit." Creating awareness of the sacrifices in the production of the phone using a mainstream engagement platform.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The "dark side" of electronics manufacturing became a prominent issue in the public debate. Donated to a Foxconn factory worker who suffered serious injuries from attempted suicide.

Arte Útil archive nr:

384

Initiator:

Aspra.mente, Ninanó, Orizzontale, Publink

Location:

Villa del Conte, Italy

Category:

urban-development, environment, social

Users:

Workers, Employees and citizens of the industrial district of Villa del Conte.

Maintained by:

The artists, March Foundation, LAGO s.p.a.

Duration:

2013 - ongoing

Aspra.mente, Ninanó, Orizzontale, Publink
-
Piazza dell’Artigianato 0
-

Description:

Piazza dell'Artigianato 0 aims to redevelop industrial sites, turning them into self-sustainable parks with an edible garden, realised in accordance with the rules of permaculture. Architectural structures and urban design furniture are made using waste materials provided by surrounding industries. In this green revitalised space, people can meet each other, relax, and eat the produce for free. Piazza dell'Artigianato 0 is a prototype, the purpose of which is to develop a model that can be applied in all industrial areas with the involvement of local workers and citizens.

Goals:

To reconstitute an unused space in the industrial district of the little town of Villa del Conte (Northern Italy) into a green, accessible and sociable place for visitors.
To provide a space people can freely visit and benefit from.

Beneficial Outcomes:

After one month the local school decided to use the space for some events for the students. The choice was totally autonomous and spontaneous.

Arte Útil archive nr:

247

Initiator:

Christoph Schlingensief

Location:

Austria

Category:

politics, social

Users:

Immigrants and asylum-seekers in Austria.

Maintained by:

Vienna International Festival

Duration:

2000

Christoph Schlingensief
-
Please Love Austria
-

Description:

This project, which resembles the Big Brother reality show, was attended by 12 asylum-seekers, that have lived one week in a shipping container nearby the theatre in the center of Vienna. Every day, through a vote by phone or internet people could choose the two least popular people that were ejected and then deported to their native country.
The project was carried out during a period a tense discussion in Austria around immigration and nationalism with Jorg Haider’s nationalist Austria People’s Freedom Party enjoying strong support.

Goals:

To initiate a discussion concerning the stage-managed cynicism of TV and the cynicism of a society that judges asylum policy on the basis of its majority mandate.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The winner can look forward to a cash prize and the prospect, depending on the availability of volunteers, of Austrian citizenship through marriage.

Arte Útil archive nr:

522

Initiator:

Andreja Kulunčić

Location:

Croatia, travelling

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Users:

civil society representatives, activists, high-school students, workers

Maintained by:

Andreja Kulunčić and group Direct Democracy in School

Duration:

2014 - ongoing

Andreja Kulunčić
-
Početnica – Toolkit for Joint Action
-

Description:

The context of the Toolkit for Joint Action is determined by the erosion of social security, massive unemployment and the unstable labour market in Croatia, which brings crucial themes to the fore: the new poor, workers' self-organising, direct democracy, social solidarity, self-organised citizens' activities, and contextual theology. In addition to activities that include workshops, lectures, discussions and screenings related to the main themes of the project, the central element takes the form of a portable modular spatial unit - a toolkit - that was created by all the participants in the project.

Goals:

Initiated in the Gallery Nova in Zagreb the toolkit travels around Croatia and the region with the purpose of educating, informing, opening a dialogue, networking and archiving of previous material.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Using art's resources to establish wider infrastructural support for different forms of social activity, this project does not reject art as its starting point, but, beginning as well as one can, uses it as a possible initiator of critical pedagogy, in which art is not the ex-clusive means of representation but a cohesive force, able to mobilise ideas, encourage discussion and initiate action.

Arte Útil archive nr:

008

Initiator:

Bonnie Ora Sherk

Location:

United States

Category:

environment, social

Users:

Bonnie Ora Sherk, neighbourhood residents and art community.

Maintained by:

Bonnie Ora Sherk

Duration:

1970 - ongoing

Bonnie Ora Sherk
-
Portable Parks I-III
-

Description:

Portable Parks I-III was a series of performances and installations in the public space, where the artist created natural environments into unexpected urban locations like elevated freeways and by the sides of major roads in San Francisco. The artist brought sod, palm trees, picnic tables, bales of straw, farm and domestic animals to create a new understanding and relationship with the space people share and inhabit.

Goals:

To create temporary green environments for the public to use within the city.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The citizens could enjoy the parks sitting beside the trees, the plants and on the banks.

Arte Útil archive nr:

560

Initiator:

marksearch team - Sue Mark, Bruce Douglas

Location:

United States

Category:

environment, social

Users:

Any pedestrian: Power Call has traveled around the neighborhood to the library, transit hubs, cafes and small businesses.

Maintained by:

Philanthropic contributions and the initiators

Duration:

2015 - ongoing

marksearch team - Sue Mark, Bruce Douglas
-
Power Call
-

Description:

Power Call is a nomadic, interactive energy commons in San Francisco to the Bay Area. Using low-tech systems, Power Call harnesses, stores and dispenses energy for recharging a variety of cell phones. Anyone can contribute to the energy commons by spending a few minutes pumping the machine, creating a charge for yourself or a future person in need. The amount of energy generated will be relatively small, enough to make a meaningful last phone call or text message. In exchange for participation, the initiators ask that users share their story on a rotating public message board, which answer these questions: who would you call if you had only this one last call? What would you say?

Goals:

Power Call relies on good will to generate energy while simultaneously diffusing the anonymity of people in public spaces. In order for the energy commons to function, passers-by engage in an unusual and collaborative experience.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project creatively brings together contemporary issues around hand held technology and social spaces, environmental concerns about a need for alternative energy sources, and anxiety over natural disasters and a potential state of emergency, where figuring out ways to work together to share resources is going to be necessary.

Arte Útil archive nr:

440

Initiator:

WochenKlausur

Location:

US

Category:

urban-development, economy, social

Users:

Kivalina inhabitants and experts

Maintained by:

Alaska Design forum, Wien Kultur

Duration:

2012

WochenKlausur
-
Problem solving through networking
-

Description:

The inhabitants of Kivalina, a small island situated in the arctic circle in northwest Alaska, live endangered by erosion caused by climate change, without running water or waste disposal. To address there issues WK teamed up with residents and experts to work on implementing solutions for specific problems. Their living space, surrounded by water, is constricted. Toilets are not available. There is no running water. In addition the world-largest zink mine
discharges into the water shed of the Wulik river. In summer 2012 a big storm ruined the existing pipe-system and flooded the local landfill.
Disposal of all waste is up to the residents as well. People still do traditional hunting and fishing, a local store provides canned and frozen food. Access to green vegetables is limited and expensive. Endangered by global climate change causing their land to be washed away the residents of Kivalina are in need of relocation.

Goals:

WochenKlausur found so called “Agents of Change”, experts who are now sharing their knowledge and resources with the little arctic town of Kivalina. Together with the village they are developing alternatives and implement them on-site. To assist communication the online platform relocate-ak.org was created. A curatorial team coordinate the work of all Agents of Change and address more when needed.

Beneficial Outcomes:

WochenKlausur set up an office in the ACFNY Gallery's Upper Mezzanine, where several meetings with New York-based associations, interest groups, and activists took place. Each of the organizations was invited to use the space for one or two weeks for their purposes.

Arte Útil archive nr:

018

Initiator:

Rick Lowe, James Bettison, Bert Long, Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, George Smith

Location:

United States

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

People in Houston’s Third Ward District, young mothers, children, youth, artists, activists, architects, designers, visitors, art lovers, tourists.

Maintained by:

Project Rowe Houses Community Development Corporation, The Brown Foundation, Bruner Foundation Inc., Chevron, Houston Endowment Inc., Joan Hohlt & Roger Wich Foundation, The Kinder Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Lewis Family Foundation, Marc Melcher, John P. McGovern Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Nightingale Code Foundation, Betty Pecore and Howard Hilliard, Picnic, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Simmons Foundation Inc., Surdna Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, Susan Vaughan Foundation, City of Houston, Houston Arts Alliance

Duration:

1994 - ongoing

Rick Lowe, James Bettison, Bert Long, Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, George Smith
-
Project Row Houses
-

Description:

Artists and community activists transform the social environment in one of Houston's oldest African American neighborhood - which lacks of affordable housing - providing to low-income residents refurbished houses. Taking into account the historical and the architectural richness of the neighbourhood, the project includes 6 blocks of housing, 49 properties,12 artist exhibitions and residency spaces, 7 houses for young mothers, office spaces, a community gallery, a park, and commercial spaces. In 2003, after noticing the rise of property prices in the area, Project Row Houses (PRH) founded a separate Community Development Corporation (CDC) to preserve community and equal opportunity for low to moderate income residents to live in Third Ward.

Goals:

The project increases affordable housing opportunities for low income residents by expanding affordable rental conditions. It revitalizes the neighborhood developing a design that considers the existing architecture in the community. It raises social responsibility in Houston’s Third Ward through art in daily life, quality education with multigenerational exchange and architectural preservation. Finally, the project is a catalyst for economic development by fostering cooperation between residents to reshape the community identity.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The project provides affordable housing for people in the community. Through the Young Mothers Program provides up to two years of subsidized housing, counseling on parenting skills to mothers in need. PRH offers free tutoring to students who need assistance in their studies as well as a learning service project to provide hands-on experiences beyond the classroom. It hosts a community market to sustain local creatives and an incubator program that provide space, time and mentorship to early career artists and individuals.

Arte Útil archive nr:

533

Initiator:

Promedios

Location:

México

Category:

pedagogical, politics, economy, social

Users:

Chiapas Media Project, Promedios France, CLACPI (América Latina), Comunidades zapatistas.

Maintained by:

Angelica Foundation, Daniele Agostino Foundation, Chace Fund, Funding Exchange, Fund for Global Human Rights, Goldman Environmental, Foundation Global, Fund for Human Rights, Honor the Earth Fund, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Joshua Mailman Foundation, Peace Development Fund, Reebok Human Rights Award, Riverside Sharing Fund, Solidago Foundation, Unitarian Universalist Service Commitee, US-Mexico Fund for Culture Vanguard Foundation, William H. Donner Foundation.

Duration:

1998 - a la fecha

Promedios
-
Promedios de comunicación comunitaria
-

Description:

CMP es un proyecto establecido por un grupo de cineastas y artistas de los medios que fueron a Chiapas a cubrir desde ahí las violaciones a los Derechos Humanos y la situación de las comunidades zapatistas. Este grupo decidió proporcionar a las comunidades indígenas marginadas del sur de México equipo de video, computadoras y el entrenamiento que les permitiera crear sus propios medios de comunicación.
Los instructores de CMP trabajaron en estrecha colaboración con las comunidades autónomas zapatistas compartiendo sus conocimientos, técnicas y aptitudes. Como resultado, jóvenes indígenas con poca educación formal, y que a menudo trabajan sin una fuente confiable de electricidad, han producido videos sobre asuntos fundamentales como los colectivos agrícolas, el café de comercio justo, los colectivos de mujeres, educación autónoma, medicina tradicional y la historia de su lucha por la tierra.

Goals:

Responder a las necesidades de acceso a los medios de las comunidades zapatistas. Ofrecer entrenamiento y recursos para documentar y denunciar las violaciones a los Derechos Humanos, construyendo su propia autonomía mediante la comunicación.

Beneficial Outcomes:

CMP ha distribuido más de 6000 videos producidos por indígenas. Estos videos han sido proyectados ampliamente en universidades, museos y festivales de cine y video en todo el mundo. Todos los participantes recibieron un entrenamiento profesional completo.
Actualmente, CMP funciona sólo como un distribuidor de las producciones zapatistas y otros documentales de México, y Promedios de Comunicación Comunitaria continúa trabajando con las comunidades zapatistas.

Arte Útil archive nr:

088

Initiator:

Apolonija Šušteršič

Location:

Germany

Category:

economy, environment, social

Users:

Apolonija šušteršič, Carola Beerhues, Marga Chirazi, Ursula Haverkamp. Jutta Maier, Gisela Overloeper, unemployed women of Warendorf region.

Maintained by:

Skulptur Biennale Münsterland

Duration:

2003

Apolonija Šušteršič
-
Prototype For Self Employed Economic Unit (Street shop box)
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Description:

The project consisted in a red box which functioned as a stall, placed closed to a garden into the local market. Unemployed women in their fifties from the Warendorf region, could use the stall to sell local products produced from the land associated with the stall. Women would take care of the land, production and sale of the products in the Market. The stall was designed as a sculpture which could change into a market stand on working days.

Goals:

The idea was to create a very simple economic unit for one or more unemployed women from the Warendorf area. The new business model was based on the use of the land and sale of the products produced from the land.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The Street Shop Box was designed and built as a transformable object, which can change from a sculpture on non-working days, into a market stand on working days.

Arte Útil archive nr:

451

Initiator:

R. van Duijn, R. Stolk, J. Berk, H. Metz, P. Dekker, P. Bronkhorst, K. Calliauw, F. Burlage, J. Dielemans, R. de Groot, B. van Heerrikhuizen, G. Kroeze, M. Götze, L. Schimmelpenninck, C. Piesaar

Location:

The Netherlands

Category:

politics

Users:

Activists, Politicians, citizens

Maintained by:

Activists, politicians

Duration:

1965 - 1967

R. van Duijn, R. Stolk, J. Berk, H. Metz, P. Dekker, P. Bronkhorst, K. Calliauw, F. Burlage, J. Dielemans, R. de Groot, B. van Heerrikhuizen, G. Kroeze, M. Götze, L. Schimmelpenninck, C. Piesaar
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Provo
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Description:

The anarchist movement and counterculture called Provo carried out several actions in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities, attacking the social structures of the state. Provo is a both an artistic and a political movement. Through their actions they spoke to an entire generation in the Netherlands, and were the predecessors of the hippie movement that was born two years later. Their ideological position focused on issues such as health, environmental conservation and turning private property into public property.

Goals:

Trough humour, cynicism and intellect the group has tried to awaken the critical spirit of citizens to instigate social change.

Beneficial Outcomes:

The “White Plans” or strategic proposals for speculative politics on the political scene, drew attention to social problems and aimed to make Amsterdam a more user-friendly city for its inhabitants. The White Bicycle Plan proposed the mass use of bicycles as a means of urban transport in order to reduce pollution; the White Housing Plan encouraged the occupation of empty buildings and apartments in order to solve the acute housing problem. They also worked in other areas, such as opening up spaces for drug use in controlled conditions (predecessors of today’s safe injection sites).

Arte Útil archive nr:

296

Initiator:

Claudia Fernández

Location:

Mexico, United States

Category:

pedagogical, economy, social

Users:

Claudia Fernández, architects, designers, sociologists and psychologists and artists as Manes-Massun, Andrano, Julia and Renata, Ximena Fernandez, Carla Fernandez, Thierry Jeannot, Sebastián Romo, Richard Mozska, Juan Rosales, Xavier Rodriguez, and Valeria Florescano (Mexican young designers who have done well recognized social work) and the youth and children living on the street.

Maintained by:

Laboratorio de Arte Alameda, La Colección Jumex Foundation, Pfizer Foundation, Fundación Bilbao Vizcaya-Bancomer, Banorte and the artist Francis Alÿs, who entirely donated the Blue Orange Prize, awarded by the cooperative banks in Germany and then continued to sponsor the project for the next 5 years.

Duration:

2003

Claudia Fernández
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Proyecto Meteoro
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Description:

The project consists in an art and design school structured by workshops for young homeless people which live in extreme poverty. Through the workshops participants create design objects which are sold, raising vital funds to support housing, health and mental care whilst empowering the youths.
Through these workshops, children are given the chance to enter into a market, where they show their design objects, made by second hand or recycled materials. The purpose of the project is to rehabilitate and reintroduce these young people into society.

Goals:

To promote creativity, as well as stimulate the development of those assisting, creating a better integrated community. The project uses art as a tool to change even the most difficult realities, creating new strategies for social transformation and the healthy development of global communities.

Beneficial Outcomes:

This project has worked successfully with tangible results and has had a huge impact in the community of young people on the streets of Mexico. Some of the participants went back to their towns, some got jobs, some got over drug addiction but some others are still living within prostitution and on the street.

Arte Útil archive nr:

426

Initiator:

Juan William Chavez

Location:

United States

Category:

urban-development, environment

Users:

The artist, Middle School students residing in North Saint Louis, teaching artists and experts

Maintained by:

Northside Workshop

Duration:

2012 - ongoing

Juan William Chavez
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Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary: Living Proposal
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Description:

The interdisciplinary project Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary, aims to transform the urban forest where the Pruitt-Igoe housing once stood, in public space for urban agriculture – thereby addressing the theme of urban abandonment and also finding some creative strategies to solve it.
Through summer workshops for Middle School students, art and agriculture are utilised as a means of engaging them in education, encouraging them to exercise critical thinking skills that contribute to overall academic success.

Goals:

The Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary proposes to transform the Pruitt-Igoe site into a public space for community and education. Keeping students engaged in learning will keep them on a path to success including a better understanding of natural science applications, increased confidence through knowledge, greater awareness of healthy food choices, and educational success.

Beneficial Outcomes:

Middle School students participating in the Living Proposal workshops receive an introduction to new art forms and learn the benefits of an urban garden which include access to fresh produce and knowledge of basic food preparation and cooking skills.

Arte Útil archive nr:

557

Initiator:

Derek Curry

Location:

Online Application

Category:

politics, economy, social

Users:

Anyone with access to the internet and a social media account can use the application. It is also mobile device friendly for coordination with physical on-site protests.

Maintained by:

Derek Curry

Duration: