As urban landscapes embody a series of injustices (including displacement, gentrification, and marginalization), alternative cultural places (ACP) have diversified their action, extending beyond the cultural sector, to contemporary forms of solidarity. These renewed practices and somewhat undisciplined paths are developed by ACPs communities to open their spaces and inhabit them with new sets of competences focusing on care, transmission, pedagogy, co-creation, and any form fostering and welcoming diversity of expression and selves. However, ACPs are faced with tensions, backlash movements, official censorship as well as hidden forms of self-censorship. Our panel explored ACP strategies and challenges associated with such transformations and issues, including work organization, alliances, censorship, and instrumentalization – as well as the space for hope that cultural spaces and communities can nurture in a contemporary urban environment.

Laura Aufrère was for 5 years a coordinator of the French network gathering cultural professional initiatives rooted in the solidarity economy movement (UFISC), developing a diversity of discplines : music, theater, outdoor and circus, visual arts, etc. She is a PHD in management, looking specifically into cultural commons and social and solidarity economy cultural initiatives from a critcital perspective and the Theory of organization, focusing specifically on work and labour organisation, cooperation and governance, and social protection. Her dissertation answers the following question: “How can commoning help an infrastructure to emerge as a space for artistic professionalisation? The case of an artist-run space” (2023). As a coordinator in La Main (since 2023), the French cooperative community landtrust dedicated to independant and alterative places, she is in charge of the research and innovation through its support program to help them develop sustainable and collective organisational models, in the perspective of collective ownership or long term occupancy. She is also the coordinator responsible for the development of its resource center, the production of the Handbook for independent cultural real-estate (supported by the French Ministry of culture); participating in academic research programs and trainings. She has been a volonteer membre of the International Alliance of Independant Publishing since 2016.… to come

ANASTASIA PONOMAREVA is Co-founder of Urban Curators agency (est. in 2015) and CO-HATY project. Before the full-scale Russian invasion, she worked in Kyiv with projects at the junction of art, architecture, urban design, and the development of territorial communities. CO-HATY is a project to create housing for internally displaced people. Project team implements architectural and urban expertise, cooperate with local governments and property owners, raise budgets for repairing and furnishing, coordinate the construction process, and design furniture for retrofitted spaces.

https://urbancurators.com.ua/

https://www.cohaty.org/

ANASTASIA GULAK is a Ukrainian architect, innovation manager, architect, strategy developer. Curator of IZYUM_recovery project. Project aims to create a visible and attractive sustainable concept for rebuilding of an residential area in Izyum city (highly damaged by Russian attacks) that will take into account all the factors of change that need to rethink living spaces for their effective functioning and communication with Nature and Humans.

https://www.izyumrecovery.com.ua/

LOUNA SBOU is a curator, mentor, and cultural producer. She is the director of Oyoun in Berlin, the anti-disciplinary arts centre with a particular focus on queer-feminist, decolonial and class-critical perspectives. Her lived experience as a queer Muslim and first generation immigrant led to an unconventional journey allowing her to actively engage in shaping contemporary curatorship while experimenting with a non-Western approach to collective-making. She has curated numerous exhibitions, performances, and interdisciplinary festivals including Un:Imaginable in Rwanda and Bosnia (2022/2023) with Hope Azeda, Moudjahidate* (2022) with Nadja Makhlouf, Maya Inés Touam and Sarah El Hamed, Embodied Temporalities in Berlin, Birmingham, Prague and Lesbos (2022) with Ahmed Baba, Gugulethu Duma, Sujatro Ghosh, Backbone (2021) with Mazen Khaddaj. She worked as director of be’kech in Germany (2016-2022), independent curator in Japan (2016-2019) and program director at Station with late artist Leila Alaoui and Nabil Canaan in Lebanon (2013-2015), collaborating with Bernardine Evaristo, Seloua Luste Boulbina, Dr. Tiffany Florvil, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Mary Maggic, Donatella Bernardi, Renata Salecl, Panashe Chigumadzi, Lamin Fofana, Tewa Barnosa, and more. Over the past year, Louna held lectures at  West Den Haag Museum, Transformation Marseille, Ubumuntu Kigali, Berliner Festspiele, Caisa Helsinki, Performing Arts Festival, University of Arts Berlin, Bozcaada Festival and won a number of fellowships in Japan, Spain and Greece. She holds a master degree from University of Wales (Cultural Entrepreneurship, 2014) and University of Applied Sciences Südwestfalen (Law, 2012). Louna takes no bullshit though afraid of heights, a mother of two and vegan since 1991.

https://oyoun.de/fr/

OLIVIER LE GAL is the producer and artistic coordinator of Collectif MU, that he founded in March 2003 as an art group in Paris with 3 former colleagues of Le Fresnoy. Installations or performances, MU’s creations operate a series of reality shifts by the means of sound and video projections, ambulation in a natural setting or a scenography... In the meantime, MU develops a programmation activity in the field of contemporary art, music and cinema. In 2006, Olivier Le Gal also founded REMU, a company dedicated to implement MU R&D programs and to provide a technical support for other artistic projects. In 2016, he coordinates “La Station - Gare des Mines” project, a former railway warehouse in the North of Paris : a new third-place dedicated to emerging art scene and a sound-art laboratory gathering several other collectives.

https://lastation.paris/

https://www.mu.asso.fr/

https://coucoucrew.wixsite.com/website

CASEY WEI’s interdisciplinary practice in filmmaking, writing and performance is informed by participatory activities such as editing, publishing and programming. She is the co-founder and Editor of ReIssue magazine, and the Short Forum Programmer at Vancouver International Film Festival. Recent works include the book Tuning to Oblivion: an artist residency (M:ST Performative Art, 2023), and the album Stimuloso (Mint Records, 2022) with her band, Kamikaze Nurse. Since 2015, she has been programming (and sometimes playing) in her concert series, art rock? which saw its 33rd and 33 1/3rd iterations in 2023. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, where she is researching the history of communes in Maoist China and North America in the 1950s and onwards.

https://www.caseywei.com/news

https://www.unitpitt.ca/updates/unitpitt-presents-wrong-wave-2014-art-rock-reprise/

Quotes have been edited for readability and flow.

“Of course, residents always say they want to have these sustainable changes (green hydrogen, solar panel roofs, car-free quarters), but [at the same time, they may be saying]: ‘we have a hole in our roof, we have a hole in our walls, our canalization does not work.’ So there are sometimes other issues which we need to [address] immediately.”

"It [can be] better to [approach change] slowly, when we have time for a slow walk and communication with our neighbours. It’s important to build trust with community, and to keep the trust, because people [are vulnerable in times of crisis] and if you speak about [a possibility of] reconstruction, they will want to believe that it will happen immediately.”

“People hesitate to flee from cities under siege, [depending on  what they understand their options to be] for housing. After the first consideration of an ability to escape safely [. . .] very often the second question [potential evacuees] will ask themselves is whether there will be available space or not [. . .] Recent evacuation processes in the Kharkiv region resulted in 7,000 people refusing to be officially evacuated because they [didn’t] know where they would be moved.”

“We are aware of this huge amount of work we need to do, but we don't want to [be overwhelmed by challenges] and [. . .] not act. Because people need spaces [to survive.] And we need to manage this rapidly.”

Underlying the development of many ACPs is an implicit practice of responding to need or opportunity – through any means available, with or without permission. Such efficient and self-sufficient behaviour means that these communities are often the first to provide solutions to problems, on the ground. 

“Our first action was to open a water supply, just to allow neighbouring refugee camps access to water, because the city of Paris closed some fountains around that time [due to “maintenance”]. When we opened that water supply, a lot of people gathered around our place. The whole start of those camps was because we opened that supply. Shortly after, we became a kind of logistic base for some NGOs distributing food to these refugees.”

"Collaborating to build trust and connection: “It was not so easy also to connect with the people living in the social housing. Now we have started a new project by opening a restaurant with neighbours who had been unemployed [for a long time].”

"It’s matter of empowerment, I think. It's also about giving people energy, who outside are being chased by police [. . .] It’s important that when people enter our space, they have time [to not have to think about this] and also [to be able to] organize themselves: they are talking with artists, but also among themselves. So [. . .] this kind of space also builds capacity for people to act.” 

“Just having these spaces available to people who may not feel welcome elsewhere can perform a needed service. [In addition to its role as a venue, Gallery Gachet in Vancouver] is also a space where marginalized people can come in from the streets and just hang out; they know they are welcome. There are participatory workshops and programs in addition to exhibitions, but the gallery [. . .] also serves as a kind of a refuge. In the summer, it's a cool place where people can get out in the heat for a while.”

“We need spaces specifically for marginalized communities to create, to come together and to have an exile within this hostile environment and this hostile society that we live in.”

“We made a day shelter [co-designed and co-constructed in collaboration with neighbour refugees . . .] without authorization of the mayor of the [18th] district street in Paris. He expected me to ask him for authorization, but I didn't. If I would have asked, maybe he would have said no.”

"As cultural spaces run by and for marginalized communities, “we often have to navigate between being tokens and being those who are just put in place to represent a certain image.”

"The building which we took over in 2020 in Berlin is in a working class neighborhood of Neukölln. It's state owned. In 2019 [when the leftist party was in power . . .] we had a senator looking for something that was young, radical, queer, migrant led. We are considered a grassroots movement, because we are predominantly queer, trans, Black, Indigenous and people of colour running the space, being in the space, creating space, hosting events, etc. New elections came up last year, and everything changed from there. We are being evicted. In response to our hosting a Jewish group that was offering a vigil in the space for both Palestinians, Israelis, and everyone else, the organization’s funding was cut by last December. [Our experience] seems to be a blueprint for what may come in the future. I'm speaking of the political discourses and the developments in Berlin, Germany.” 

“China’s Bishan Commune was conceptualized as an artist utopia, but over time shifted in practice to become a rural economic revitalization project [. . .] the project ended because China, being an authoritarian state, could not accept that any agent independent of the communist party was responsible for improving people’s lives.”

“We are predominantly a team of QT BIPOC people, and we serve QT BIPOC people: which means that we are traumatized people, dealing with traumatized people. One thing that was completely a mass underestimation was our mental health and well-being.”

“We introduced a life somatic code that was available for the team to cover therapy for those who cannot afford or don't have health insurance [. . .] We have workshops around healing and empowerment, particularly for the BIPOC team. When it comes to verbalizing someone's lack of well-being, I have a listening hour every week. Anyone can come, I just listen, and I don't respond necessarily unless I want to.”

“But we're not equipped or trained to respond to mental health issues [. . .] There was one incident that completely blew my mind, when someone tried to commit suicide because they were completely overwhelmed by an event that took place. That's when we realized we needed to equip.”

“We have several places in Kharkiv where we can move, depending on where the bombing is active at any given moment. For example, if [Russia] is attacking the centre of the city for many days, then we work in another district. If [they are] attacking the industrial zone, then we can work in the office in the centre.” 

“I think in our situation we need to start to think about speculative architecture because we have so many empty houses. We [generally] think that every apartment in a building needs to be filled to justify its function. But perhaps [we could consider] empty space as always ready to invite newcomers, [with the possibility of] infinite circulation through our buildings. It's like a model of our Ukraine now because we [are constantly moving].”

"Per adapting neighbourhoods damaged in the war: “We created a website where people can come and see the development process of a [sustainable residential] project [in order to] attract investment and stakeholders.”

“We've been able to kind of create this massive international network of alternative cultural workers who are also activists. This cultural activism [and collectivism. . .] builds the foundation of the room. [That’s] one thing that I feel makes it a safer space. There are no [truly] safe spaces for most of us, but there are spaces where we can be surrounded by people that [actually] represent us.”