The Other City

The result of a collaboration between artists and architects, curators and institutions, The Other City is an international exhibition in two venues. Featuring works made on both sides of the Atlantic, the exhibition explores the ideologies behind the postwar initiatives of public housing projects, the conditions these buildings have provided for their inhabitants, as well as the agenda of those who support or criticize them. The two venues represent two different approaches: in the Romanian Gallery, we show works that deal with social reality, everyday situations, and personal narratives; in the Hungarian Cultural Center, the works address housing projects from a historical and ideological perspective. While the exhibitions mainly discuss the fundamental concepts, historical moments, and the current post-socialist climate, we believe they will also provoke the New York audience to contemplate and question housing projects in the US.

The works are in a variety of media, from films that trace the transformation of the cityscape over decades (Józef Robakowski) to research-based descriptions of personalized spaces (Mircea Cantor, Ágnes Dénes/Zsolt Keserue/Levente Polyák/Borbála Szalai) and installations showing possible future scenarios (Miklós Mécs, Mircea Munteanu). Ideologies appear as critical observation (Michael Rakowitz, Tadej Pogačar), playful speculation (Société Réaliste, Terence Gower) or narratives for reading the city (Florin Tudor and Mona Vătămanu).

Hungarian Cultural Center exhibition

DATES: Opening reception: Friday, October 19, 2007 at 7:00 pm.

Open October 20 - December 9, 2007

October 26, 7:00 pm: Artist talk with Miklós Erhardt, Terence Gower, Mircea Munteanu, and Tadej Pogačar at the Hungarian Cultural Center

PLACE: Hungarian Cultural Center, 447 Broadway, 5th Floor, NYC

ADMISSION: Free

Romanian Cultural Institute exhibition

DATES: Opening reception: Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 7:30 pm.

Open October 26 - November 22, 2007.

PLACE: Romanian Cultural Institute, 200 East 38th Street (at 3rd Ave.) New York, NY 10016

ADMISSION: Free

ARTISTS

Hungarian Cultural Center: Zbyněk Baladrán, Ágnes Dénes / Zsolt Keserue / Levente Polyák / Borbála Szalai, Terence Gower, Michael Rakowitz, Pia Rönicke, Société Réaliste, Miklós Mécs, Florin Tudor and Mona Vătămanu

Romanian Cultural Institute: Mircea Cantor, Miklós Erhardt, Mircea Munteanu, Tadej Pogačar,

Józef Robakowski, Sarolta Szabó

For more information, contact:

Hungarian Cultural Center: (212) 750-4450, www.culturehungary.org

Romanian Cultural Institute: (212) 687-0180, www.icrny.org

About ‘The Other City’

Postwar modernist housing projects have a massive presence in most cities of Europe and the United States. The site of urban legends and pop culture references the world over—from American gang violence, hip hop music, and horror flicks to the most idealistic and chilling stories of social life in the late Soviet block—the histories, problems, and inhabitants of these urban enclaves often stay hidden behind their high concrete or brick walls. Public opinion has deemed housing projects bad and inhuman, remnants of 20^th-century urban planning’s failures and relics of totalitarian culture. Still, the occasional demolition of such a building complex evokes some kind of public gloom or moral unease.

What has led to this situation?

Large-scale social housing projects were built around Europe and the USA after the Second World War, along modernist and collectivist ideas of social justice. The housing model based on standardized human needs and conditions was criticized from early on, though the development of projects took different paths in socialist and capitalist countries. Slowly deteriorating Eastern housing blocks were held as symbols of social accomplishment, and therefore were preserved and maintained, even if in poor condition. Immigration and marginalization resulted in dubious urban slums in Western Europe, while racial discrimination and neo-liberal expansion produced lawless, 3^rd World conditions in projects across the US.

What do projects mean today?

Huge housing blocks stand out from the urban fabric as fallen specters of the past. Unlike specters, however, it is their physical presence that has stayed with us while the ideals that once built them have long passed away. Yet they still provide homes for an estimated 25 percent of Eastern European urban dwellers. In the US, the story seems to have come to an end: accumulating problems that seem unsolvable, housing blocks are simply being demolished all around the country. Their inhabitants, for whom the projects served as both ghetto and community, disperse into metropolitan areas, giving way to new development projects on the often-valuable land.

Is the story really over?

In the ex-socialist countries, it is certainly not. The functionalist design of projects allows relatively cheap renovation; large open spaces provide options for new urban public facilities and landscaping, and for better or worse, these countries have a long relationship with these creatures of their past. In the US, demolition has already been in process since “the day modernism died” as Charles Jenks put it, reflecting on the 1972 demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, the first famous case of knocking-down an entire housing complex. New York City, where projects (or at least the buildings that once served them) are apparently surviving, seems to represent an exception.

Urban transformations of mass housing projects are taking place in both US and European cities, yet different social and cultural backgrounds channel them in remarkably different scenarios. It is our task to compare and combine the experiences of what became of modernist utopias, making visible whatever we can learn from them.

---Hajnalka Somogyi and Samu Szemerey, curators