Urban Report is a cross culture programme bringing together theories and critical discourse on contemporary urban phenomena in 4 countries: Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria.
Urban Report team:
Ivan Kucina, Todor Atanasov, Peter Torniov, Miklós Péterffy, Samu Szemerey, Ştefan Ghenciulescu, Cosmina Goagea, Constantin Goagea
Institutions :
BINA, SAW, ZEPPELIN, KEK, Transformatori
Volume #1 – The Poetics of Ongoing Transition – addressed themes and clichés specific to societies emerged from the communist bloc: situations and fantasies that have enabled the chaotic development in the past 20 years; the presence and consequences of a symbolic communist fable on the one hand, and the birth of a capitalist culture, on the other; the emergence of modernity and modernization, causing equally good things and chaos, ugliness and corruption.
The forces to bring modernity in our cities are culturally genuine, violent and determined, a reason for which they generate good things to the same extent with chaos, ugliness or corruption. What is missing in those cities, from that new architecture? Th e added value, a coherent approach in time, a savoir fair or savoir vivre?
Th is issue records various types of clashes, research, critical stances in the four countries, whose common constant is the nostalgia and humour (be it involuntary) marking the final results. From the urban archeology in Budapest to the evacuation of the ghost in Bucharest, in the numerous materials coming from the ex-Yugoslav space which highlits sharply the urban identity in a cultural and political context, and then re-defining the pleasures and the individualism, as the case of the materials from Bulgaria, everything is a questioning of minor facts making up a glossary, a methodology, plus some contemporary history.
Edited by: Zeppelin Association.
Project funded by the Romanian Cultural Institute, through the Cantemir Program.
