ZiM Debate #01

[ 23 June 2004 ]

INTEGRATING SAVIOURS OR STORMTROOPERS OF GENTRIFICATION?

the role of art in "urban regeneration"
Presentation by Bettina Springer/ Berlin
with following discussion
@ ZiM kantoor, Zwaanshals 283 A, Oude Noorden/ Rotterdam


"....Springer investigates the possibility of using art as a service provider for real estate renovating purposes."

Bettinga Springer is currently writing her PhD in urban- and regional sociology in Berlin on the theme "upgrading properties an neighborhoods through art". She has nearly finished her six month stay in Amsterdam due to a research fellowship at the UvA.
Here she has been analyzing different case studies (among others also ZiM/ Zwaanshals in Motion, as 'De Witte Ruijter' - a project in De Baarsjes) in order to compare them to one of her main research objects in Berlin.

Springer chose ZiM/ Zwaanshals in Motion as one of the case studies for her research. She recently spent a week in Rotterdam to conduct interviews and get insight in the whole project.
At ZiM Debate #1 she will present some findings concerning the connection between socially oriented art projects and urban revitalization.

ZiM - Zwaanshals in Motion

ZiM is a community art project in the street of Zwaanshals, from Noordplein to Zaagmolenstraat.

It attempts to bring new perspectives, innovative input and artistic visions into the neighborhood.

In cooperation with shopkeepers, locals, artists, designers and many other creative people ZiM tries to develop new forms of visual communication and representation.
ZiM Debate will be a monthly series of presentations, lectures and discussions, with the aim to develop an ongoing discourse about topics which touch projects like ZiM - migration, cultural clashes, (loss of) identity, image culture, codes, empowerment, participation versus autonomy in the arts, urban politics, methods and different approaches of projects related to ZiM.

"...This short strip of a few hundred meters called Zwaanshals is a very lively and colorful shopping street, mainly populated by an 'allochton' [immigrant] community. It shows in a microcosmic representation many of the problems Western cities are coping with. Zwaanshals stands for many streets with a similar structure of non-communicating segregated populations - not only in Holland. Between the 'foreign' and 'native' shops is a clear division or borderline. This division manifests in the way people do or do not communicate with each other, which ethnic group frequents the different shops, bars, restaurants. The Dutch, white stores remain white, and the Moroccan, Turkish and other communities stay also hermetically closed. Hardly anybody takes the first step to cross those border. ZiM aims and experiments in bridging those parallel worlds and focuses on the potential of a multicultural society. Questions of migration and integration are one of the big challenges of today's Western societies and artists are invited to take a stand inside the context of ZiM to work in the street and create mental as well as physical spaces."

Daniela Swarowsky