To conclude IUD’s time at the People’s History Museum we are putting on line the talks from our Demand Utopia! event on January 12th.
Nick Mansfield delivering ‘Owenites, Chartists to Clarion Socialists and their educational spaces’
Professor Loretta Lees Gentrification & Displacement talk
We hope you had a great night. We did.
Recordings by Jamie Heerlyn
Photographs by Kenny Brown
We have been working with designer maker Tim Denton to develop a new temporary research space structure for our exhibition at the People’s History Museum. The new research structure will accomodate materials from our extensive documentation of the changes occuring to the Pendleton housing estate where we have worked on since 2004.
The structure will home a small library relating to council housing and a photographic archive detailing the physical changes to the housing and the local residential environment. Relevant donations of books and research materials to the space are welcomed.
The research space draws on a wide range of influences from Owenite Halls of Science, Soviet workers reading rooms, Lenin Corners, to the architecture of Constant and Archigram .
Former Director of the People’s History Museum Dr Nick Mansfield will be talking about the history of such worker’s educational spaces at the People’s History Museum at our late event Radicals Assemble! Demand Utopia! on January 12th 2017.
IUD Archive Imge (2016) Installation at PHM
Wang Bing’s immersive nine hour documentary epic explores the changing world of China between 1999 to 2001. Set in the North-East of the country in Shenyang, his observational style records the physical and social textures of the regions heavy industry in its final stages before closure through bankruptcy.
Divided into three sections (Rust, Remnants and Rails) the documentary uses a ‘direct cinema’ approach to faithfully witness the people caught up in the massive changes to their work and homes as a consequence of reform era changes to the former planned market economy. See Jie Li’s excellent article for a further analysis of the film’s context and cinematic style West of the Tracks – Salvaging the Rubble of Utopia.
West of the Tracks (2002)
How do workers coordinate a struggle when the bosses and Union are the enemy?
Inspirational radical documentary made in the late 1960’s in association with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The film charts the racism and exploitation of black auto workers in Detroit and their attempt to collectivize and gain a voice in their workplace despite the violence and corruption used to suppress them. The League didn’t just see the need for black workers to organise but emphasized the potential power of all the working class.
IUD recently visited the Treptow-Koepenick borough of Berlin to walk around the Falkenberg Gartenstadt (Falkenberg Garden City) with new friend and historian of the everyday, Andreas. Falkenberg is comprised of three streets, Akazienhof, Am Falkenberg, and Gartenstadtweg, with 128 homes developed by the modernist architect Bruno Taut between 1913 and 1915.
Berlin, Germany: 2015. IUD image.
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