Based on the research carried out regarding the juridical possibilities we posed ourselves some questions on  how the state influences property and consequently how we perceive it. We asked ourselves what the difference was between STATE and PUBLIC and COMMON.

Initially we took the path of turning over the land which we would buy to the OWNERSHIP OF THE STATE. We wanted to  tackle a process which no-one had tackled before now, an option which was subsequently rejected given that the property would still belong to the State.

Then we considered the possibility of renting the land, but also in this case the decisions regarding it would be up to the actual owner.

Among the various options we took a direction which seems a utopia: that of buying a piece of land and giving its ownership over to “EVERYBODY”.

We’re aware that at the moment there aren’t easy juridical possibilities which can enable us to reach our aim. This difficulty fascinates us, how the laws themselves limit the imaginary and the way in which we approach property and the consequences of living together.

During the meeting with Magnus Egger, our legal consultant, various juridical terms concerning the project were clarified and the limits of the juridical system in force regarding property were analyzed to evaluate the different alternatives for the creation of a common good. 

The starting point of the issue is the interest of donating a piece of land situated in the city of Bolzano to the collective and making it accessible. The goal is the consequence which arose around a reflection on land, on ownership and on their accessibility, on the social role and the subdivision of the ownership of the lands in the Alto Adige region.

The interest in the project lies in the effort to free up from private ownership as far as possible a piece of land purchased with the aims of this action.

Definitions/Possibilities

Property
Possession
Crown Land
Association of Owners
Servitude
Formal obligation

Dr. Hans-Magnus Egger LL.M.,
Lawyer in Bolzano, Partner of the Egger & Partner law firm

Artwork

// Looking for a piece of land, 4-9 qm, Bolzano central position, easily accessible. Project space Lungomare, Tel. 0471/053636 //

The project idea: to buy a private ground and transform it to "everybody's", to a common ground!
The concept of ground is extraordinary important to the city of Bolzano. On the one hand the city is subject to the obvious limits of  urban expansion, conditioned on the geographical location, and on the other hand it's a place where the social and political history has always been a history of border, political, social and cultural border. From the viewpoint of living together, to own or not to own land is for sure a confining element in the relationship with the other. Therefore the proposal is to buy a piece of land and to liberate it from preconceptions of the past, from private dimension and from the possibility to cramp onto something. A piece of  land of everybody and nobody where any relationship with the other has to be reinvented and reconstructed.

Idea version II

A piece of land in the centre of Bolzano is purchased using the means at disposal for the project. The land is converted into State owned land (State property not transferable and not privately owned. The action inverts the common process of privatization of State property. The conversion of a piece of land from private property into State property represents an exception in our juridical system and requires the writing and approval of a decree with the force of law.

First suggestions for the intervention in the public space in Bolzano-Bozen are discussed, regarding the arguments which came up during the research week.

Idea version I

A piece of land is purchased in the centre of Bolzano using the means at disposal for the project. The land remains empty and without any plan of use, it has the effect of a white pixel in the image of the urban landscape. This pixel can be broadened for the interest of a third party and enlarge the “free” surface of Bolzano.

Lungomare, 19.00 h

Discussion between Matteo Cavalleri and the participants

A monument makes one think. It indicates, inscribed in its own sensitivity, in its own materiality, the opening to a sense which exceeds it. In fact the monument is representation, or rather presence presented, mediated upon and suspended, of an idea. At the same time a monument makes one think. It’s an exercise and a problem of style, it’s the image of thought, a warning: a continuous restart of reflection on and critical analysis of and in its own time. It’s a device of a possible memory, a significant constellation in which a place for the past can be invented in the present; in which the past, redeemed, is transfigured into hope for the future.

Matteo Cavalleri is a philosopher and co-founder of the Millepiani collective. He is the curator of Building Site Block 21 – a study and restoration workshop of the Italian Auschwitz memorial.

Lungomare, 18.00 h

The community as an experimental of sharing a common space, current form of self-organization of students, workers and families. The presence and the forms of living together in communities can influence the human relationships within the districts of the city and also the very identity of the latter. The project Elective Neighbourhoods organizes meetings and discussions within some of Bozen’s communities. A project by Laura Lovatel and Federica Menin.

http://vicinatoelettivo.org/lungomare/

Lungomare, 13.00 h

With: Sabine Auer, Arno Dejaco, Martin Hanni, Eva Klein, Valentino Liberto, Stefan Nicolini; chaired by Waltraud Mittich

Could Bolzano become a central place of a "Middle-Europe", to think about and refer to as an imaginary land, in the memory of what it was and the idea of what it could become in the future? Round table III will try to understand this question viewing it as a place of flexible identities, passionately “on the border” and internally manifold.

Hypothesis for an agency of contemporary monuments

Whoever is prepared to fight for the cause of politics or against its death, must take into account public space, the symbolic and its surrogates. In this scenario the monument plays one of the leading roles. For many years artists and those dealing with them have earned a free exile from which they were able to launch warnings and accusations. Whilst real life followed other routs and others – precisely – with less noble motives took possession of places of public communication.
Faced with these reflections, we felt the need to tackle the symbolic. Stating our willingness to take on the responsibility of banality, perhaps of a decoration on a roundabout or taking into account the motivations which drive us towards looking at alternative models of public monumentality, as in the cases of the spontaneous monuments which history presents us with. That is: what does it involve? What must we do without?

Meeting place Piazza Verdi (in front of the Communal Theatre), 14.00 h

A walk to observe in person the phenomenons which characterize a city. During this walk some “daily practices” of Bolzano will be examined. How many cities overlap within the urban fabric? Who lives in them? How are their spaces used? What meaning is attributed to them? What traces and what local stories can be met along a route which explores built-up areas and spaces free from construction?

Roberto Gigliotti (1970, Bolzano) is an architect and lecturer at the Faculty of Art and Design of the Free University of Bolzano-Bozen

Map

Lungomare, 19.00 h

Networks have becoming the guideline of how to live in a community in the 21^st century. Through means of information technology and communication they have changed the forms of emersion and expression of cultural identity in a decisive way. Moving from this background, the conference discusses the dynamics and potential of the emerging social and cultural networks, and therefore the way in which they make their appearance as innovative forms of the experience of space. To examine the role which architecture takes on in the construction of cultural identity, the speakers will refer to their current research into spaces of conflict and the processes of trans-urbanization . Although the urban concrete seems to be progressively becoming an artificial construction, it remains – in updated form – a central scenario for relations between traditions, narrations, and “competing” values, as much in Europe as in other regions of the world.

Peter Mörtenböck is a professor of visual arts at the Technical University in Vienna and guest lecturer at the Department of Visual Cultures of Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Helge Mooshammer is a researcher at the Technical University in Vienna and lecturer at the Department of Visual Cultures of Goldsmiths College.

Lungomare, 19.30 h

with: Carlo Azzolini, Artan Mullaymeri, Renate Mumelter, Benno Simma, Monica Trettel, Susanne Waiz; chaired by Christine Helfer

Bolzano has a multiform identity card, which makes it be perceived as a city of the Alps, of bicycles and cultural events, tourist and economic attractions. But it is also a city, today, characterized by diverse cultural identities living together, changed and enriched compared to the past. What determines the character of Bolzano and its current articulation? How do individual districts relate to each other? What influence does a “missing” or “fragmented” identity have on the social and spatial structures, but also on the models of behavior of the inhabitants? Stammtisch II takes on these questions as a starting point.

Lungomare, 19.00 h

Mihnea Mircan’s conference will place at its centre his work which has been in progress for years on the idea of “monument” and how he has been designing in this direction. The idea of “third monument” appears at the centre of his speech, something different from the populist deformations of and uncertainties about the traditional monument and from the typical rhetoric of expropriation typical of the so-called “counter-monuments”. Mihnea Mircan will outline the project of a “monument” which intends neither to close a debate nor to glorify minorities, but rather to complicate the question of this theme.

Mihnea Mircan (1976) is an independent curator. He lives and works in Bucharest.

Meeting place Talvera Bridge (in front of Cafe Theiner), 10.00 h


The town of Bolzano crossed through the view of the seven project participants. A walk which touches crucial places of personal stories and experiences, and opens the urban space thanks to some of its multiple private shapes.

Map

Lungomare, 19.30 h

With: Siegfried Baur, Andrea Di Michele, Mauro Fattor, Christoph Franceschini, Teodora Lara Rivadeneira, Georg Rottensteiner; chaired by Giorgio Mezzalira

Border areas are places where there can be an alternation between the formation of reasons for conflict and the proposal of reasons for living together. Memories can present themselves as shared or with the uniforms of the respective blocks of identity and ethnicity. If we agree with the statement that memory and the culture of memory are important and powerful tools on which the organization of consensus and the legitimization of political power are founded, as well as being a patrimony the care of which consolidates the very image of a certain society, then we cannot avoid considering as central the issues which regard those means, those tools, which can represent and transport the memory/memories. Symbols and monuments are part of this set of tools. Bolzano, chief town which is applying to become European Capital of Culture in 2019, is our starting point.

We intend to reflect together on issues surrounding three themes, posed in the form of questions: Collective memory: How much weight does memory have on the relationships between linguistic groups, on their living together? Between history and memory: Why “defuse” the symbols and monuments to Fascism? Identity and public space: Erecting a monument to living together?

Introduction of the curators, the participants in the project are introduced.

Lungomare, 19.00 h

Lungomare is organizing a research week about the theme Symbolic Actions for our present. The starting point of the project is an alternative reflection on the current and social relevance of the concept of “monuments”, meant as a thought space. The place of action and the theme are the city of Bolzano-Bozen and South Tyrol in their inexorable characteristics and possibilities for future development: the way different cultures live together and interact. In the space of a week curators, architects, theorists, writers, historians, journalists and philosophers will formulate their opinions and initiatives on the theme. The research week – set out in a series of conferences, discussions, roundtables and guided tours of the city – constitutes the first part of the project. In the second phase during the year 2011, Lungomare will invite the artists, architects and designers: Brave New Alps, Jacopo Candotti, Helmut Heiss, Eva Mair & Katherina Putzer, Maja Malina to come up with a collective project on this theme. The project is curated by Angelika Burtscher and Daniele Lupo. The roundtables are held in collaboration with Christine Helfer, Giorgio Mezzalira and Waltraud Mittich.

Lungomare initiated the project "Symbolic Actions for our Present" out of the interest to connect the concepts "living together" and "monument" - apparently two opposed notions and contents - and to use this contradiction to start a certain consideration and action together with the artists, designer and architects. The project is meant to be a long term research project during the year 2010 and 2011.

Basic concept, August 2010