Industrial wasteland. A world european cultural mutation. A book of Fabrice Raffin (L’harmattan, coll. “Logiques sociales “, 2007, 306 p., 27,50€)
What is there in common between Generik Steam installed in Marseille in the municipal slaughterhouses, the Tacheles and Ufa-Fabirk in Berlin, the Factory in Geneva and the Confort Moderne in Poitiers ? In these places take place of the “cultural initiatives” marked by the search for certain musical forms. These are artistic activities, each taking on meaning in relation to its context of emergence, urban, local, but is also part of a network meaning and unifying these practices. This network is called the Trans Europe Halles (TEH), it groups together similar initiatives in national contexts and different urban.
The ambition of brownfield sites, from three lots – Poitiers, Berlin and Geneva, is to be captured in three experiments at once similar and different the meaning of these collectives. The initiatives considered in this book are born on a time period from the mid 70’s to the late 80’s. It is a dissemination activity and artistic production, urban, taking place in spaces of abandonment, industrial wastelands or market, old warehouses, former site of film production…The spatialization of these activities is important for their understanding. It gives a special value to these mobilisations, and to the registers of actions. The issue of registration urban of these initiatives, the second axis of the work of Fabrice Raffin, you can investigate the relationship of actors to the city. It comes to understanding the territorial effects of the development of artistic activities, the mobility and the exchanges that they induce in the urban space.
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