[spectre] The Unconquered City: The Issue of Housing - Connecting Cities Network / Invisible Cities

[Darko Fritz]

The Unconquered City: The Issue of Housing
The Women's Anti-Fascist Network of Zagreb, Katarina Duda and Iva Ivas in cooperation with Petra Milički

The Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Media Façade
21 Dec 2015  – 6 Jan 2016

Connecting Cities Network / Invisible Cities
Mediator: Tactical Technology Collective, Berlin
"Interrupting Everyday" Workshop: m-cult, Helsinki (CCN)

Project Manager: Tihomir Milovac
Curator: Darko Fritz

http://www.msu.hr/#/en/20856/


The idea for a media façade was conceived during the Interrupting Everyday Workshop, held in June 2015 in Helsinki, led by the Tactical Technology Collective and organized by Helsinki's m-cult in the frame of the Connecting Cities Network (CCN) project. The aim of the workshop was to bring the activist group and designer together to jointly develop a media contribution. Thus, work for the Museum's media façade, developed during this workshop, is directly linked to the practical work of the Women's Anti-Fascist Network of Zagreb (MAZ) and emerges from the topic of the latest issue of the association's magazine, elaborating on the issue of housing and housing policy. The project is the work of Katarina Duda and Iva Ivas of MAZ in co-operation with graphic designer Petra Milički.

The media façade of the Museum of Contemporary Art is used as a reflection of neighbouring façades surrounding the museum. The façades of the residential buildings in Novi Zagreb, a quarter built with the community in mind, are represented through a fragmented image shown on the three video channels of the media façade. The site-specific video installation on the media façade as an examination of apartments and housing conditions raises the question of the right to housing: above all, it is a reminder of the priority of housing rights over proprietary rights.

The authors explain the social and economic context of the project: "The housing crisis shaking Croatia and the entire EU has not emerged due to a shortage of housing. It is a consequence of hikes in rent prices, loans, the gentrification process and the migration of people from city centres. Analyses of housing policies in Yugoslavia identify the period as one of a state of permanent housing crisis. Although there were many issues, ranging from the mode of apartment assignment, the absence of a consistent housing policy, an insufficient number of apartments and their inadequate amenities (an inconsistency with European standards), to the incongruities between state- and market-driven housing policies, it does appear that the egalitarianism of the period was on a higher level than it is today. If we are to refer to this as a period of housing crisis, how then are we to describe the housing policy in Croatia after the 1990s? We live in inherited apartments or, if we are not that lucky, we buy apartments (for ourselves or for our children) by taking out loans we will then repay for some 20 years. The increasingly uncertain working conditions and temporary work contracts make us uncreditworthy, resulting in a growing number of young people facing no other choice than to become tenants. A better conceived housing policy that would include social housing is a national interest because housing is the basic prerequisite of the social integration of citizens, i.e. a prerequisite for their contribution to the social and economic development of the country. Unlike many European countries Croatia's constitution makes no mention of the right to housing or of the state's obligation to provide its citizens with housing. It is time we started considering the right to housing as a fundamental human right that represents not only the wellbeing of the individual, but also of the entire community."

The Women's Anti-Fascist Network of Zagreb (MAZ) has been active since 2007. It functions on the principle of direct democracy – there is no hierarchic structure, and all decisions are made at monthly meetings by the about thirty active members. The work of MAZ, in the spirit of the anti-fascist struggle, is based on the principle of solidarity and implies knowledge production and the creation of a venue for the gathering of various organizations and individuals with the objective of ever stronger and more intense integration, networking and the creation of a social space. MAZ's activities include the Solidarity March and Antifanight, the Unconquered City magazine, the Radio Borba ("Combat Radio") radio show, cleaning hate messages from city façades, etc. In 2015, the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Zagreb was celebrated with a bonfire on the Sava River embankment. Find out more at http://maz.hr

Unconquered City is the MAZ association magazine, the objective of which is to discuss the topic of anti-fascism, its heritage and contemporary meaning within a broad range of topics, and thereby to continue in other media the knowledge production taking place within the association through forums, workshops, self-education circles and event organization. The magazine is issued twice a year with the support of the Ministry of Culture and is the product of the associated labour of MAZ members.

Petra Milički is a visual communication and networked media designer (School of Design, 2011 / Piet Zwart Institute, 2013). In her self-initiated work she deals mostly with the interpretation of existing, collectively produced material and the development of media that encourages such production. She is currently working on the topic of culture and memory policy in the new media environment. She works as an independent graphic designer and web developer, mostly for institutions and initiatives in the domain of culture.