The making of the exhibition

The organisational method for this exhibition being hosted by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona has a great deal in common with the tactics of the post-it phenomenon and the way it develops spontaneously.
The same network of people, universities and platforms that have contributed to the exhibition with the most varied input have worked in absolute freedom, organising themselves with limited means. The large amount of works received over the past year and a half reveals that the intrinsic wealth of this project lies in its variety, an «anarchic» force which, at times, seemed to want to sideline the curator’s work.
Seventy-eight of the case studies included in the exhibition were selected from some 200 submissions, following a call for papers sent out to more than 2,000 contacts.
We rejected the proposals featuring «traditional» types of architectural and urbanistic interventions, although often the analysis that had generated them had a great deal in common with the intentions of the exhibition. We also ruled out artistic interventions and concentrated rather on research that had as its objective the narration of a phenomenon, of a tactic of conquering space, of its temporary or sporadic occupation.The informal, improvisation and marginality seemed to be, from the very outset, the most suitable themes, worthy of an attempt to build an archive in progress about the post-it phenomenon.
The main idea was to consider the post-it space as an available stage set, opposite in character to organised planning in controlled spaces; in other words, based more on the freedom of bodies and actions that move spontaneously through «open spaces». Maybe we should speak of a work presenting its effects rather than the search for a model of urban phenomenon.
Post-it is «neutral» in the sense that it isn’t a privilege for chosen individuals or social groups who have the power to impose rules to the benefit of their interests, but is extremely democratic, national-popular and impossible to impose. It moves along within «states of exception», at those points of imbalance between public law and political fact, like a seed that manages to proliferate due to its «low profile», adapting itself to situations, ready to disappear and reappear a few metres further away.
The compartmentalised, segmented territory of the society of control leaves behind it detritus, undigested waste, highly porous spaces where the excluded, the rebels or those without choice end up, showing a great ability to adapt and improvise.

The exhibition space

The first section of the exhibition is concerned with the genealogy of the post-it: it isn’t a didactic text, but a specific action, an unrepeatable flight from Berlin to Moscow’s Red Square during the years of the Cold War and a divided Europe. An unconscious gesture broadcast by television stations around the world.
With this latent enzyme the viewer enters the archipelago of case studies.
Designed as an archive, the aesthetic of the show is cold and severe. A lightweight box, measuring one metre by one metre, is the support for all the works, which it also protects during transportation: in this way costs are reduced and an «à la carte» menu offered to the art centres that will host the exhibition at a later date.
The exhibition isn’t an alphabet, but a non-serial collection of words, whose reciprocal relationships are free and open to interpretation, an ever-changing anagram.
The exhibition modules can be placed horizontally or hung on the wall, according to the available space. The vertical walls house the texts designed as technical charts, with short texts written by the authors or, in some cases, by the curators.
At the same time, 15 series of purpose-made photographs and videos are being presented, bringing together a fraction of the work by photographers who, in recent years, have dealt with themes closely related to those of the post-it.
We selected 78 cases, 16 of them from Europe (considering Barcelona as one case), five from North America, 11 from South America, 14 from Asia (five of them from the Middle East) and four from Africa (a land with a wealth of post-it situations where, unfortunately, information about them is hard to find).

Geographical origins are proof, if it were ever needed, that the economic and socio-political situations of the four continents are scarcely comparable and if we want to look at them from a single point of view it can only lead us to the wrong conclusions. The error may arise from the attempt to systematise materials drawn from such different experiences. This is why we have put together a glossary of words rather than precise categories. The phenomenon itself suggests that, beyond possible forecasts, the dynamics of public space diversify practices through processes that are impossible to categorise. Not categorising has also been a way of avoiding semantic hierarchies in its interior.
Throughout the exhibition itinerary, the case studies are organised in groups that aren’t declared explicitly, to give the viewers the freedom to interpret them for themselves. Thus, the Asian market, which still seems exotic to we Europeans, will seem an obvious topic for an Eastern visitor, but it is useful to make us understand that there is an alternative to the dominant economy that is so strong that it can change the appearance of entire neighbourhoods (above all in Asia and South America). The self-organisation that seems to us to be an almost lost value, or, from another point of view, that we are beginning to rediscover, is the mainstay and source of life of entire populations.
For instance, a stadium in Warsaw occupied by a market that has become an institution is on the side of the itinerant street vendors in Los Angeles, and the homeless in Milan, who hide in abandoned cars, look across to their counterparts in Tokyo, who can be recognised by the characteristic blue tarpaulin provided by the city council. It is clear that the setting for each case is different, but the forms of appropriation of space are very similar, although in different locations. The exhibition seeks to narrate this journey to a city made of geographical offcuts that are set at a distance, but which could be used to put together the puzzle of the informal city.
Some of the case studies stem from broader research being carried out by the artists at universities or come from direct life experience, and there is nearly always a close-knit relationship between the observation, production and dissemination of the work, thanks to the generosity of groups made up of young people who have worked free of charge, and offered their valuable materials.

The section on Barcelona is devoted to works created by students during a workshop held in June 2005 for the exhibition at the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica. Work groups made up of architects, geographers, artists and anthropologists have studied ways of appropriating public space in the city that is hosting this initial phase of the post-it city.
The intention is to maintain, at all times, a close relationship with the territory that will be staging the exhibition and to promote parallel activities, workshops and lecture series related to the specificity of each place.
A part of the exhibition is devoted to local research that will gradually enrich the catalogue of “on-line cities” which now features projects from 19 cities (Berlin, Santiago de Chile, Valparaiso, Bogota, Panama City, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Valencia, Porto, Volos, Vienna, Belgrade, Rome, Denver, Morelia, Glasgow, Seville, Cordoba, Malaga) and three journals that have dedicated their pages to these topics.

The final gallery, the Documentation Centre, which covers a floor space of 66 m2 with a Web 2.0 internet connection, has been designed as a workplace, a study and reference space where classes and encounters will be held during the exhibition and parallel projects presented. The CCCB is the nerve centre of this living, retransmissive space which reflects the desire that, after touching down in Barcelona, the project can be disseminated, with its incongruences and incoherences, which perhaps find their fundamental aporia in the exhibition: showing these phenomena – which often survive due to their scant visibility, officiousness, and the difficulties planning encounters when defining them and, consequently, suppressing them – means, in a certain sense, undermining them at their foundations, or, as we hope, making it possible for the awareness that an another city exists to become a useful element to be taken into account in the next urban planning scheme that is able to leave space open to the unforeseen and to accommodate an «inappropriate» use of space which often proves to be more stimulating.