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Summary

School of Missing Studies [SMS] is an open collaboration initiated by Liesbeth Bik, Katherine Carl, Ana Dzokic, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Marc Neelen, Ivan Kucina, Milica Topalovic, Jos Van der Pol, Sabine von Fischer and Stevan Vukovic and guests. 

SMS provides a flexible educational platform for international study and exchange on cultural issues related to the urban environment in cities marked by or currently undergoing political, social, and cultural transition. SMS provides productive research and project opportunities for young professionals in architecture and art who are struggling with what is “missing” in their studies with regard to processes of rapid urban change. SMS is a program of lectures, workshops, seminars, lectures and research studios that will develop depending on local conditions and need. SMS works with existing institutions to open new and unexpected paths of dialogue as well as furthering newly-formed independent initiatives. These activities will engage a mix of international participants who are established practitioners in the fields of art and architecture and local staff and participants in each of the key project cities.

Through multiple years of sustained study, participants develop knowledge and critical thinking skills that can be applied to interventions in the current urban crisis through cultural programs, particularly innovative architecture and art practices. Participants gain qualifications in their field and an understanding of the importance of being a part of an international professional network for sharing knowledge and questions on urban transition and cultural practice. 

SMS is generated out of the strong positive response in Serbia to the methodology and topics of art and architectural inquiry raised at Interactive Normalization in November 2002. Participants in Belgrade and Novi Sad expressed the need to continue these international and interdisciplinary discussions in more depth over a sustained period of time. Even though political and social changes and improvements in this region are underway, culture in Serbia has been deeply affected by a decade of relative isolation, and there is a continuing “brain-drain” of intellectuals leaving the region to pursue jobs and post-graduate studies in Europe and the US.

SMS facilitates tools for understanding and examination of urban transition and contemporary culture, which are key themes in the fields of architecture and art, by facilitating in-depth research and projects by participants who would not otherwise come in contact with each other. The gulf between academic studies and everyday experience of the urban environment and cultural production is discussed in universities, museums and cultural non–governmental organizations in the US, Europe and Eastern Europe, however it is rare that these institutions use the elements of crisis itself as an opportunity for creative research. Additionally research and exchange programs that do exist have not been established between particular cities that are on the periphery and that are themselves in various phases of transition--as is the case with cities in the Balkans, forging their ways towards democracy. Current urban and architectural studies done at the universities and institutes do not deal with phenomena of change in cities. Independent solitary endeavors do exist, however they remain fragmentary and disconnected from one another. SMS fills this void by positioning itself effectively between separate research efforts that lie in disparate disciplines and geographic regions.

Project description

Taking the notion of 'school' as a thinking model and deploying education as an instrument for developing cultural options in a region that has been fairly isolated for the past decade, the School of Missing Studies (SMS) establishes an organic and flexible research and exchange organization for the realization of missing studies. SMS creates a platform for meetings and experimental learning by scouting and utilizing interdisciplinary areas between architecture, arts, technology and media.

SMS is generated from the notion that there is an increasing crisis in urban culture, which has to do with historical limitations and continuous circulation of knowledge. Cities are in constant transition (social, migratory and immaterial); they are places where reality reflects uncertainties from both future and past. As a result, learning from transitional culture itself has never been so close, yet paradoxically, so far away from cultural production. Education has fallen behind other forces like politics and economy that more forcefully generate our perception of culture. SMS approaches this crisis not as something negative, but as a situation from which to extract opportunities.

Observing these developments and reconsidering the notion of ‘lack’, SMS explores processes of transition, change, and the resulting gulf between cultural phenomenon and cultural education. SMS will work with agents of future cultural production in different fields, to expand these participants’ knowledge and abilities to shape the cities they inhabit. SMS does not dwell on the missing, but has the goal of developing necessary tools and knowledge to turn what is missing into a mission – an activation of itself.

SMS reaches beyond confirmation of "what is known," to confirm the existence and sustenance of the creative possibilities of that which we are not yet, or no longer, aware. Acknowledging imbalances in access to knowledge across disciplines and cities. SMS connects vacuum with surplus and vice versa, often by creatively re-using existing situations, institutions and independent initiatives. Circulation and exchange of knowledge and experience, discoveries and re-use of existing and surplus ideas, forms and situations, are important strategic tools for critically and constructively addressing situations that may not function well but have come to be accepted as “normal.”

Initially, SMS focuses on Belgrade, Münich, Rotterdam, Zürich and New York. These cities are not randomly chosen, but are good examples of places that have experienced momentous change in this century. Our understanding of these places comes partly from inside and partly from outside, as the core group is dispersed geographically. This perspective has already enabled SMS to attract participants from other cities in the region who are also experiencing change, including Zagreb, Croatia, Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Tirana, Albania.

SMS is getting further advice and support from different local institutions and individuals. For example, SMS collaborates with the School for History and Theory of Images, Belgrade, and Kunstverein Munich and also will insert itself into informal local situations.

SMS is aware of the need for (formal and informal) exchange programs, since the best way to transform “missing” to “mission” is to create a platform to put active people in touch with each other. In the end, these formal and informal exchange programs will result in concrete projects for artworks and architecture interventions, critical writing, and cultural programming.

SMS will engage people with energy, ability and the ambition to be experimental learners, with participants ranging from students, professionals in architecture, arts, cultural studies, philosophy and independent practitioners, to people who want to learn from and generously contribute their ideas, contacts and experiences.

Aims

· Activate an in-depth, multipart program of missing studies, by creating a platform of formal and informal exchange.

· Create and reach an expanding network of artists, curators, architects and theorists in the former Yugoslavia, Western Europe, the United States and Eastern Europe.

· Find, research and produce critical work on the discrepancies between cultural practice and theory, especially in urban cultures in transition.

· React flexibly to different localities and their particular knowledge bases by mixing participants geographically and culturally.

· Open interdisciplinary discourses to look beyond existing approaches and situations based on hierarchy and fixed notions about the origins of knowledge.

· Learn from independently-organized cultural situations to activate an awareness and self-consciousness that will nurture engagement with ‘the city you live in.’

· Develop architecture and art projects, as well as critical writing initiatives that grow out of this exchange, learning and research

Forms

There will be multiple forms for SMS to achieve the aims of experimental learning, research, exchange and their instrumental relationship to cultural production. Depending on the situation, SMS may take the form of a workshop over several days, seminars, master-classes with visiting established practitioners, or longer-term research studios. Some of these forms will be independent while some will be developed in collaboration with local institutions.

The SMS workshops will be open, intensive and fast. In each city, participants will present their backgrounds to each other over the first three to four days. The next phase of the workshop will be development of individual or collective projects. The process will be documented to form a publication discussing the projects in relation to pressing issues, like debates on public space. The resulting ideas and proposals will be presented in different cities and on the Internet in close collaboration with local institutions. Finally, each SMS workshop will conclude with presentations, reviews and talks to exchange and evaluate experiences and results.

The master-classes will be informed by the workshops and will focus on specific cultural phenomena in which the invited established practitioner is an expert. Their curriculum, focus and topics will be designed to hypothesize situations, research conditions and propose architectural, art, or theoretical projects over two to three weeks. SMS will invite specific individuals whose work already has had a significant mark in the field and will work together to create or scout a cultural topic for each master-class, whether it comes from the field of architecture, art, theory or life.

As the concept of SMS stems from an openness to learning both from our environment and cultural fields, the seminars will be organized for situations ‘external’ to the core disciplines of art, architecture, theory. SMS will invite scientists, sociologists, economists, politicians, biologists, historians and others who could add to the platform of exchange.

The research studios may take a few months to examine in more depth a topic that has been addressed already or propose a new topic concerning the urban sphere. Through this intensive process, a smaller group will work systematically to bring to fruition the research, proposals and projects (both theoretical and practical) so that these ideas will have resonance in the professional fields.

Depending on the situation and levels of active collaboration with the local institutions, this combination of workshops, seminars and studios are meant to generate forms of education that are sustainable. This process provides the participants with a number of accomplished works reflecting on what was missing in their environments so that they can proceed with an active, knowledgeable and critical stance to influence the shaping of cities over the years to come. This work should inform their practice so that they can create professional roles for themselves as well as innovatively and critically participate in existing employment structures.

Program

Although this is a preliminary list that is subject to changes and additions during the working process, the topics and case studies that SMS has in mind for further development will examine the following issues:

social fabric and urban space; physical & social cartographies and mapping; ideology & space; identity as a defense of globalization, politics & memory; urban genetics and urban gentrification; reclaiming individual and collective space, local-specific sensitivities; art & activism; self- organization and new dimensions of responsibility; migration & cities; pop music and popular architecture; un-popular architecture; the importance of improvised and temporary solutions.

Underlying thoughts and observations

Societies are more and more concentrated in and around cities, which are therefore becoming of increasing importance globally, and are regularly exceeding the national interests of these societies. Cultural conscience of architecture, art and theory - when understood beyond the consideration of culture as an indication or expression of identity only - is a fabric combining existing and potential flows. This conscience is indispensable for generating and provoking developments in urban theory and practice today. This awareness is largely generated through art and architectural education as a way of navigating our urban environments with its standard forms as well as peculiarities. It is, at the same time, under pressure anywhere where transition has had a momentous impact on urban ways of life. Is there an awareness on the part of artists and architects today of the image and impact of these cultural objects? Is there an awareness of mechanisms that perpetuate these images and embed them into cultural fabric?

Usually, education is one of the instruments to analyze and understand these transitional processes and their impact and to promote critical thinking and access to new knowledge. However, static education is struggling to learn from dynamics from transitional processes and most often becomes hermetic and isolated. In this situation, SMS has identified this lack in current education of architecture and art and poses the following question: once this isolation has occurred how can a lack of critical awareness be pointed out? How can forms of education be created to promote such critical awareness, and how can they be inspired by learning from the urban reality that experiences systematic lack of self-awareness? Furthermore, can this process derive from “bottom-up,” and can an artificially produced lack of culture produce a real need for culture? Then, can one establish a network of learning that is driven by the knowledge of the lack at a certain place, a certain time in transition. As these processes prove to be dynamic, SMS sets up interdisciplinary networks that are similarly dynamic, in motion and in process. SMS strives to simultaneously detect what is missing in order to make it productive for learning about urban and cultural environment.

The cities

To start with, SMS focuses on Belgrade, Munich, Rotterdam and Zürich. These cities are not randomly chosen. They are all located in Europe, yet the four cities have gone through different national histories, economies, populations and international relations. The choice of these cities stems from the following perceptions: we are experiencing a shift, a transitional situation which can be seen in all bigger cities in Eastern Europe. Cities in Western Europe, such as Rotterdam, Munich and Zurich are significant because they experienced similar transitions 50 years ago because of World War II. Additionally western cities are increasingly becoming homes for Eastern European immigrants.

We acknowledge that there are many programs today that deal with the changes in Europe. However, the choice of the cities of Belgrade, Munich, Rotterdam and Zurich comes from core group’s experience and knowledge. These cities are initial points of departure and more lines of the network will surely be created in the future.

SMS takes the differences and similarities of these cities into careful consideration, to create tools for learning from each other, and to question each of these places from new points of view. For example, parts of the cities of Munich and Rotterdam were destroyed during WWII, and both were rebuilt. Munich chose to rebuild all that was destroyed and therefore the city has an authentic appearance. Rotterdam rebuilt its city center with modern architecture and it has a sea harbor; this gives the city an international feel, based on the economy driven by harbor activities. In turn this promoted the idea of rebuilding the city with a new master plan and new infrastructure, thus taking something destructive as an opportunity to generate change.

The history of the past 45-50 years in Belgrade is also a history of modern and post-modern urban experience. Because of ideological and political shifts in this period, architecture was an important strategy in the process of successive acquisitions (and discarding) of collective identity. Belgrade has gone through a full circle in its search for identity. Before the WWII national identity was constructed by borrowing from both history (Byzantium-Middle Ages) and modernity. Then through a short period of alignment with Stalin and Social Realism national identity was borrowed from neo-classical sources. After the break-up with Stalin national identity was now forged by the new ‘liberal’ forces of Communism by importing the Western International Style. Four decades later, during the recent wars in the Balkans, national identity returned to a hybrid of neo-traditional, neo-national styles combined with an image of new high technology. Finally, Belgrade is experiencing a period of uncertainty of what its identity should be in the future.

The economy in each city is rooted in areas that are the leading global industries: oil and transportation of goods (Rotterdam), digital electronics and transportation of information (Munich), the management and transfer of monetary services (Zurich) and gray-market industries (Belgrade). The average population in Rotterdam is getting younger every year, and their roots lay more and more in immigrant pasts. Munich's population is less mixed and more middle class. Zurich promotes itself as the 'little big city' and an international focus point for the transfer of finance and art, while trying to hide its prominent position in less desirable ‘trades,’ i.e. drugs. Illegal trade in Zurich is forced to migrate continuously, from streets into the trains and buses, thus shaping new population distribution in the city. Belgrade's migration consists of the brain-drain of emigrating intellectuals and massive population growth because of war refugees from Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo.

Initiators and organizers: 

Liesbeth Bik (artist, Rotterdam)

Katherine Carl (writer/curator, New York)

Ana Dzokic (architect, Rotterdam)

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss (architect, New York)

Ivan Kucina (architect, Belgrade)

Marc Neelen (architect, Rotterdam)

Milica Topalovic (architect, Rotterdam)

Jos Van der Pol (artist, Rotterdam)

Sabine von Fischer (architect, Zurich)

Stevan Vukovic (writer/curator, Belgrade)

Relationship to other activities in the field

The crisis in architectural and art education, and the gulf between studies and everyday experience of the urban environment and cultural production, is discussed in universities, museums and cultural non–governmental organizations, however it is rare that these institutions use the elements of crisis as an opportunity for creative research. Additionally research and exchange programs that do exist have not been established between particular cities that are on the “periphery” and that are themselves in various phases of transition--as is the case with cities in the Balkans. Furthermore, even though social changes and improvements in this region are underway, there is still a constant brain-drain of intellectuals leaving the region to pursue jobs and post-graduate studies in Europe and the US.

Exchanges between universities do exist. For example, Columbia University in New York held an urban design studio focused on Belgrade, which proposed solutions for the troubled urban condition of the city. In spite of sophisticated efforts by the organizers and trips from New York to Belgrade by the participants and the staff, in-depth sustainable mutual exchange of knowledge and analysis was missing. This is due in part to the hermetic and one-way organization of such research studios, which is necessary to a certain extent for academic research. Another similar example was an exchange between the University in Delft, and the Faculty of Architecture, Belgrade, that took place in Belgrade in 2001. After a delay of two years, the Delft project is now mounting an exhibition of the project results in Stroom Center for Contemporary Art in Den Haag. However no further exchange nor continuous research has been planned. These projects are one-time efforts which certainly can be seen as a first step towards a more substantial exchange.

Current urban and architectural studies that deal with phenomena of change in cities are solitary endeavors that remain fragmentary and disconnected from one another. SMS will bring a number of these projects in direct conversation with each other. One such project is the research on the nature of “uncontrolled urban change” led by the Rotterdam/Belgrade Stealth Group, This work has reached significant results in the nature of urban studies, and gradually becomes a known resource for further work. Another research project, conducted by Normal Architecture, addresses the nature of “the new urban identity and politics of memory” with a case study that approaches Belgrade’s turbulent changes not as a historical exception, but a historical normality. This research has been presented in international venues and has been developed to new stages for further use. The third effort that is taking place, conducted collectively by the staff of the School of History and Theory of Images in Belgrade, is a qualitative analysis of the effects of communism on the development of artistic expression. This effort is in the nascent stages.

Research on the history of ideological transitions is being conducted also in the United States at Harvard University by a group surrounding Prof. Rem Koolhaas, project mentor, and Jeff Inaba, project coordinator. This research analyzes the history of communist ideology in the most broad sense, viewing it from a place located outside of that history—the United States. Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss has collaborated with Prof. Koolhaas in the past, on Harvard Project on the City – Shopping, in-depth critical research on the forces of Shopping and how it shapes and ‘melts’ our cities. This research has been published in 2002 as a book: “Harvard Guide to Shopping” by Taschen.

What is lacking is a connective tissue between these efforts that provides an organic and flexible platform for broader exchange that will not divert the separate efforts, but share and make accessible their findings and results.

SMS is therefore envisioned as a flexible platform that can position itself effectively between separate research efforts that lie in disparate disciplines and geographic regions.