Good day,today I want to talk to you about new spaces for knowledge and education and alternative spaces
if you look around where we are now, this is sort of the model I'll be talking about
and it's a new non-traditional way of receiving information
you don't go to school in traditional knowing of I'm gonna go through this level and this is what I'm gonna get
We're in an old city and this is just landed in the middle and now it's feeding you knowledge
about the future of vehicles, the future of gardening, the power of makers
I'm gonna talk about education as a project and how important it is to look at education as a major agent in making the future
and it has always been this urge of artist, maker of revolution to change old ways
in order to make the new, you have to change the pattern of thinking
and to change that pattern, you have to make new schools
and we all know when we look around when we look at this world
there is not a linear way to learn
There's not this thing that'll get you in one path
There's all these little bits and pieces we gather in this wider context
and what I suggest is when we look outside, when we look our cities
what if our city was giving us answers for questions we were asking
what if the cities contain tools we already need to make the change
This is a project that I work on in San Francisco since I was there in 2006
With a collective of rebar that was kind of a gathering of artists,landscape designers
the concept here was when the city was in crisis in 2008, there was no construction
Why can't the city give us the tools they have laying around?
Why can't they teach us to make our own cities?
Why can't we make our own bicycles with the tools they already have?
Why can't we find something that we can use in order to make our dreams happen
This is sort of a carnival of make yourself, do yourself, dig under the ground, see how your city build
learn your city, learn from it
and we also have representatives from the government here
and they are looking to us for answers
so we propose this kind of ridiculous carnivals, do it yourself, take the tools
they say, well, you know, we don't have much money
but we have this place that we've been thinking about changing a bit because of the bureacracy and lack of money
what we have is maybe this, can you use this and we give you some money
can you make something happen?
and we make this a temporary space
that create this kind of rescue from the traffic that brings some green space
that it's cheap, it's a task, we're doing something
you know, can it lead to something, we don't know, but we're gonna watch
whether the people are gonna come, whether the people are gonna love it
whether they gonna take ownership of the space, and if they are, the city is watching us
and they're seeing there's actions, activities, that people love it
so maybe in the next 5 years they'll give more money to other people, to create this kind of spaces
city give us old parking meters, we made a sculpture
and this sort of iniatives were popping up everywhere in the city in the moment of crisis
in the moment of economy being low
what does that tell you? That we can take advantage of any situation we just have to really know the context we're in.
This is a project that uses temporary space on this big lot that'll become a multi-residential new space
But why not use it for a farm for 3 years
Why not teach the people the ways that what we're talking about today, the empowerment
Why can't we gather, build a community, plant the seeds, learn how to do all these things
if you remember the illustration I showed you in the beginning, this ridiculous, let's drive the machine
dig up the city, well, it happend, you know, a year or later
in a way it was a surprise to us, somehow deep inside we knew that if you initiate the change, it leads to something
you just gotta try and do
and also for me, symbol of self for empowerment as a bicycle
In Shanghai I saw a lot of bicycles
Here, I haven't been here long enough
This is a bicycle music festival that I participated
to us, to this big group of people that put together, the musicians
it's a self empowerment symbols
we take them music through symbols, we take the music through the cities
but not even not, we have empowered the sound
we give all the sound to all the speakers
to ourselves it take 7 people to power a giant band
and this image represents to me, this combination of the few efforts that we brought together
the pedal power music, the pedal, the lighting, the square that was once, you know, hustling with traffic
and this is all made by efforts of the few people who are wanting to change something
and what I represent today is Strelka Institute, and I come from Moscow
which I don't know how many of you know much about
it's a big city, it's a huge city, it's growing, it's becoming out of control
it is out of orders, and what the city is really trying to do is grow
but how does the city grow, who makes it grow,is it the government, are we looking to government for answers?
we don't really know, this is where the institute is situated
right in the center, in an old factory
that used to make chocolate, now it's a creative cluster
and it was founded by a board of trustees
but only in Russia is this possible and there's this kind of spirit in Russia where
you have to find an opportunity and if you do, you jump on it
These people saw an opportunity and creating a new square, urban planning
and there is this whole missing level of layer of people who can speak the language of the govenment and connect them to designers
architects, it's privately funded by these people
and they contacted the rancohouse in the first year, who if you know, architects in the leading practitioners in urban design and architecture
So he created this program, the school
on the parallel effort, there's this interesting dynamic of spreading to these different directions
There's a consultancy that's developing
There's a publishing house, introducing books on urbanism
that Russia has been missing because of all different reasons you might know that we've been blocked off from the world for a long time
we didn't know much about the problems of the city, urbanism, the kind of humanistic approach
the public space, all this discourse is going on in the 60's and the growing cities
and U.S., Europe, for example
so now we're republishing the old works
and introducing the language of urbanism to Russia
and to top it off, we have a really popular bar
so bar, is one of the hubs for young people to come together, to also attract the energy
just like this space, you know, you have the bypassers, the people who walk by
and they might come in, they might get this part of the knowledge
and the bar is similar, it's so close to the institute, it intertwine together
so it attracts this kind of visitors
that might not know something about, but get interested
the heart of the space is really the open courtyard
which is a public space, and it introduces a series of events in summer where it opens up for all the public
that it invites experts from all over the world, to talk about issues of urbanism, public space, growing cities, data,
that we can now gather, and also economists, historians, political experts
that tell us about the context of Russia
the topics range, and there's is this multi discipline areas that introduces that just one way of thinking
but all these ways of thinking combine together
there's theme that really of course, architecture, urbanism,
but the topic of Moscow is really one main theme that we're noticing
the reason is because Moscow is changing
and what is happening in Moscow is the mayor has changed
the one has built the city for the last decade
we have this new, not new government, new people, young people in the government who are wanting the new
wanting the city to grow in certain way
but they are looking for answers from people
we have no people to tell them what we want
so Strelka is in part
responsible for creating this dialogue
the dialogue on changing Mosco
and the change is happening in Moscow
We're branding the change
We're participating in big Moscow compeition
which is the expansion of Moscow, the smart growth of Moscow
putting out to the public, the books, the publishing that I was talking about
also putting together Moscow urban forum for the second year which is a first attempt to introduce to the government, the discourse
because the government is very close to the institution and they do not,
they are not always eager to hear, you know, the experts, the international speakers
but here, we bring them together for 3, 4 days
and they're able to get into discussion, dialogue
and this is the way we learn, we learn through dialogue and discussion
Strelka is gonna be the one to put together the Russian pavilion for 2014 Venice Biennale
so it's a big opportunity to introduce to its discourse
and of course educational program, which feeds the brain and the heart of institute
it's only 37 students this year
most of the time it's 38, 40 students
an international crowd of researchers, professionals,journalist, economists
geographers, I'm an architect, and it's a mixture that create for 9 months we come together in this very intense program together
it's a series of workshop, simulators, discussions, forums
and they teach us , really, at the end of summer
reduce this critical outlook on what we on the problems that Moscow faces
future of Moscow and the problem that it exists now
the international students really add to the discourse because we all introduce different perspectives
of course there's lots of Russians because the discourse in Russia
But think of all these people from Columbia, China, Greece, India that come to Russia
and look at Moscow with fresh eyes, and they offer new perspectives
There's expertise in different fields and becoming more disciplinary which
we all work in different groups with each other
really listen to each other to understand how we think
because nobody thinks the same, we're all different
and then the program leads to summer events
so all the findings during the year we can all reintroduce in the events
we can lead the workshops that we will with our educational studios we will lead this year of workshops for the public
these are series of workshops in the past that really range from art, media, design, architect, urbanism
we also have this important factor, and this I think, one of the reason why I'm here
is this geographic field trip, this year we went to Shanghai, the founder of the school really believe that the school has to be about playing
and it has to be different, you know, it can't not be based on traditional institution
not only they pay us to be there through the year, but they also pay for our trips
they pay for our field trips to investigate
but we are responsible for the outcomes, responsible for the contents
so for example, I put together Moscow Shanghai Urban Forum with Richard
and we introduced this topic of microcity
the power of networks
and we created this forum that brought together leading professionals, activists, designers, who are really doing something in Shanghai
and they were able to share with us what they are doing, what are their problems
what is the issues they're dealing and talk to us
so in a way, this is also an urban forum that I help put together in Moscow which we talk to government, also to activists
and architects, and how do we talk to each other
what is the language we use, when the activists talk to the government
what is the pathway he can reach the government
and how should he do it, what is the languague
so in a way we are teaching, and we are being taught, how to be agent of change
how to introduce change into our environment and how to follow it up
how to make it a more social city, how to awaken
how to have an intuition to see this change in coming and also engage and be a part of it
these are the themes this year that are current in Moscow, it is everywhere we're looking into the future
but we do not want to forget about our past
we want to gather all these datas, becoming really prevalent with digital communications and all the things
and we talk about how to use these datats to inform the growing of the cities
we want to talk about the pattern of cohabitation, all the post Soviet landscape we're left with, which is mass sea of housing
and how do we introduce a human element to the socialists, this landscape
and the project I'm working on is education as a project
and how do we look at past of educaiton, what it is now and what are the things the learning is going to become in the future
of course we look at self education all the way
we look at institutions, the current state of institutions, I'm looking at problems of mobilities
which in Russia is really prevalent because what happens is
periphery empties all the people, and they go to all the big towns to study to the best university
that leave us with empty periphery, with a small town that's really asking for help
so I'm looking at ways we can introduce some sort of educational component into the periphery, into the regions
and interestingly, I come here, and this kind of maker movement, and this networking
if you see, this map I created before I came here, before I knew you, before I landed in this historic forum, this kind of agent
This is the network that she was talking about if we can make consistent to connect to other cities
what if there's one here, can we connect to Russia, can we create an independent system that functions
and makers, yes, to meet also represents this kind of energy behind the activism
behind the ecology that we talk about
let's take things back into our hands
let's realize we don't need a middle man, an agent in between, we can make it ourselves
you know, we can talk to the government once we start making it, maybe they will help us
this is a maker kind of initiatives
but all it really started with was one man
one man really led to this
and what if we make this make lab mobile
that we can travel with it, what if we give people tools to actually affect their own environment
what if they make, here's the tools, here's the new generation
what if they make stuffs for the cities
what if they look at the city as a playground
why can't they play in their city
so as our studios, this is one of the finishing part of our manifesto
but we confront the urgency and fuel the demand for new model of education
we pledge to be open, critical and rigorous
we're not afraid to fail
we will make space for trials and new discoveries
and the answers may exist between the lines
so this is Strelka, this is the website
and I'm really happy to be here, thank you very much.