Ansökan: Återbrukets kulturella ekonomi

Tidsperiod:

1 januari 2014 – 31 december 2015

Projektledare:

Per Strömberg

Finansiär:

Vetenskapsrådet

Bidragstyp:

Projektbidrag

Budget:

1 120 000 SEK

FROM INDUSTRIAL WASTE SPACES TO FANCY ARCHITECTURE.

You have probably been to an old factory turned into a fancy art gallery, a cool live stage, or maybe, an arty lifestyle hotel. Today, this kind of adapted reuse is a rather common phenomenon worldwide, not least in Sweden. At Fårösund, Gotland, an old bunker fortress has been converted into a design hotel. A few kilometers away, a former limestone factory, Fabriken Furillen, has been turned into another lifestyle hotel whose industrial setting also works as a showcase for exclusive design brands. Similarly, a product launch of a new car model of Saab took place at a former subterranean Cold War-bunker in Säve outside Gothenburg in 2007. But why has reuse of leftover spaces become a trendy way of express creativity?

With the move of Western hemisphere industries to other parts of the world since the 1960s, vacant factories and warehouses, industrial ruins and disengaged waterfronts became desirable urban areas. They have become the new temples of culture in the so-called post-industrial society, creating space for art, cultural events, and commercial activities such as galleries, concert halls and museums, as well as marketing-events, shopping centers, restaurants and lifestyle hotels. Such creative reuse seems to constitute an economy in itself, a cultural economy. Place-making based on the principle of reuse is important to the economy as is their capacity of expressing creativity. It implies a sort of creative reuse which is more or less aesthetically grounded. The principle of these transformation acts is utterly based on appropriation, which is a well-established art practice of borrowing or stealing, making new uses for and changing the meaning of the objects, images and artifacts of a culture.

This research study aims to explore the practices of reuse of buildings as part of a cultural economy in which reuse value is created, staged and traded as a cultural capital. There are many observations but little existing theory on post-industrial reuse value. The coffee table book Industrial Chic. Reconverting Spaces is an example of such observation. It presents a range of projects involving reconverted industrial buildings, but there is no relevant meta-reflection made aside from claiming: ?One of the most important benefits of reusing an old building is the retaining of the energy within, in other words, the energy involved in all the associated processes when building (sourcing raw materials, manufacturing of materials and equipment, transport).? But what exactly is the meaning of this energy within? What makes it interesting to convert a former factory into a design hotel?

In my initial studies, I suggested that these appropriation techniques of converted buildings in fact resemble the artistic means used by the modernist avant-garde to express new meanings and revolt against the art of the bourgeoisie in early 20th century. For example, the modernist artist Marcel Duchamp exhibited everyday objects as art, such as a urinal, by transforming manufactured everyday objects or by simply signing them. His art was later called readymades or found art. What happens if we apply his readymade concept on spatiality, on reused buildings? My theory is that the notion of readymade space, alternatively found space, is useful as a theoretical metaphor in order to describe, categorize and analyze these cases of adapted reuse. It might be helpful in order to understand the connection between art, consumption and reuse, and the way we re-appropriate our cultural heritage.

The goal of this project is to generate new knowledge about the nature of aestheticization processes in consumer society. Such a discussion would also help us to understand the role of and the interests in post-industrial reuse in relation to urban redevelopment and the growing concern for environmental and cultural sustainability.