Joachim Eckl participated in the project of the group of artists WochenKlausur

July/August 2006
Leeds

 

In the course of the Leeds city regeneration WochenKlausur was invited to implement a proposal to improve the communication between diverse quarters of the city.

 

Leeds is regarded as one of Englands economically most succesfull cities. That was different in the past. The setting up of innovative companies in the service sector brought the change in the 1980ies after the postwar depression.

 

This growth in economy also brought about a shift in urban development: A lot of low-cost housing stocks and former industrial areas located close to the city center are increasingly converted into high-class apartments and office buildings. Many residents who expected new workstations and better living condititons from the renewal processes had to learn that housing in these areas was no longer affordable because of increasing rents. Mainly low-income residents had to move in another district.

 

One example of such a redevelopment is HUV – Holbeck Urban Village which is located in Holbeck a district that was originally only known as to be inadequate featured with local supply as well as for its high unemployment and crime rates. Today a small part of Holbeck – the one which is located right next to the city center - is renamed into HUV and reshaped into a zone for the creative industry. Spaces for restaurants and a few single apartments can also be found.

 

WochenKlausur was invited by BaumanLyons Architects to do a project in this district and to revitalize a long since abandoned viaduct which marks an isolating border between economically and culturally privileged districts like the City Center or HUV and deprived areas in Leeds.

 

Das von der WochenKlausur dafür entwickelte Vorhaben verfolgte das Ziel, diverse Organisationen aus den unterschiedlichen Stadtteilen zusammenzuführen. Sie sollten in temporären Partnerschaften, in und um das Viadukt, jeweils kleine Projekte gemeinsam realisieren.

 

The intention of WochenKlausur was to team up all sorts of organizations from the divers city districts. Thogether they should realize small projects in temporary partnerships across the social borders in the city and across the disconnecting viaduct. The group found over 50 associations, NGOs, businesses and local politicians who were interested in translating this idea. They all agreed to make their time and capacaties available once in a while for such co-operations. A graphic design studio from HUV started the first collaboration and worked together with a prositutes´ right organization from Holbeck and Beeston on the layout for an exhibition catalogue.

WochenKlausur
The artist group WochenKlausur has been conducting social interventions since 1993. The concept of intervention, whose usage in art has undergone an inflationary trend in recent years, is often used for any form of change. In contrast, WochenKlausur, at the invitation of art institutions, develops and realizes proposals - small-scale but very concrete - for improving sociopolitical deficits. In the context of many twentieth-century artists who understood how to actively take part in the shaping of society, WochenKlausur sees art as an opportunity for achieving long-term improvements in human coexistence. Artists' competence in finding creative solutions, traditionally utilized in shaping materials, can just as well be applied in all areas of society: in ecology, education and city planning. There are problems everywhere that cannot be solved using conventional approaches and are thus suitable subjects for artistic projects. Theoretically, there is no difference between artists who do their best to paint pictures and those who do their best to solve social problems with clearly fixed boundaries. The individually selected task, like the painter's self-defined objective, must only be precisely articulated. Interventionist art can only be effective when the problem to be solved is clearly stated.

 

Wochenklausur

 

Further pictures