Corporate urban furniture, public space, and money. A sketch for an artistic research project

Jan Bovelet

The basic idea of the project is a Marx-inspired analysis of the economic logic of corporate urban furniture with a focus on exploring it's spatial patterns. It's not about a rigid application of the Marxian technical apparatus, but, as a start, about embracing his critical perspective on economic patterns. The first step in Marx' critique of political economy was a sorrow historical analysis of how economic surplus is generated: in order to be able to critique economic inequality one has first to understand the regime of capital accumulation that produces the inequality. The first volume of his Das Kapital is a minute analysis of contemporary modes of the generation of economic surplus with a particular focus on Great Britain and the so-called Manchester-capitalism, as well as of then current theories of economic surplus such as e.g. Riccardo's and Smith'. Only after this empirico-historical analysis Marx sets out for his own theoretical description of capitalist accumulation and economic surplus in the subsequent volumes of the Capital, posthumously published (and edited) by Friedrich Engels.

Hacking Urban Furniture: Case studies, conference, presentation, research essays co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Senate Department of Culture.

Shared Cities: Creative Momentum (SCCM) is a European cultural platform addressing the contemporary urban challenges of European cities. SCCM is a joint project of Goethe-Institut (DE), Czech Centres (CZ), reSITE (CZ), Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (SK), Association of Belgrade Architects (RS), Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre – KÉK (HU), Katowice City of Gardens (PL), KUNSTrePUBLIK (DE), Mindspace (HU), Old Market Hall Alliance (SK), Res Publica – Cities Magazine (PL). Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.