Videos & Presentations

EVICTES BY GREED Conference Report at Furtherfield

Schedule · Introduction · Full Programme · Speakers

Film Screening: PUSH · Subvertising Workshop · Berlin City Tour

#dnl19 · Berlin & on streaming · may 29-30 · 2020:

EVICTED BY GREED

GLOBAL FINANCE, HOUSING & RESISTANCE

Tactics of Empowerment – Part I

Streaming Conference on www.disruptionlab.org · May 29—30, 2020.
Virtual Tour · May 31. Outdoor City Tour · Aug 30.
Outdoor Film Screening · July 30.
Workshops · May 22 (Online) · Sept 3.

Uncovering how ghostly shell companies and real estate speculation evict real people from their homes – and what to do about it.

Schedule

Full Programme

Friday, May 29 · 2020

Fri 29.5 · 16:00—17:30

KEYNOTE · Anonymous & Aggressive Investors: Who owns Berlin & Barcelona?

Christoph Trautvetter (Public Policy Expert, Netzwerk Steuergerechtigkeit / Wem gehört die Stadt -RLS, DE).
Manuel Gabarre de Sus (Lawyer and Activist, Observatory Against Economical Crime. ES).
Moderated by Eka Rostomashvili (Advocacy and Campaigns Coordinator at Transparency International, GE/DE).

This keynote panel focuses on two different but related investigations in Berlin and Barcelona on real estate ownership and aggressive international investors. Berlin real estate has recently been among the most profitable investment opportunities globally. With exploding house prices and rents some investors have made returns far beyond 10% per year. At the same time, Berlin tops international list with about 85% of the population living for rent. Very active tenants and politicians trying to fight personal eviction and greed reshaping their city often face anonymity. It is only consequent that crowd-based and data-driven research projects for the first time allow a glimpse behind the curtains of the real estate market. Christoph Trautvetter will present for the first time at our conference the details and results of his investigation (more here), showing the different faces of anonymity and point to international private equity companies like Blackstone as one of the most obscure and greedy embodiments of policy failure.

On the other side, in the context of the Spanish real estate speculation, the rescue of the financial system of Spain provoked that hundreds of thousands of households were indirectly under public control. But the European Union and the Government of Spain decided in 2012 to sell these properties to opportunistic investors who came mostly from Wall Street. Since then, rent prizes have increased in percentages that overcome the 50% in the main cities such as Barcelona or Madrid. Housing has become a casino for opportunistic investors but a hell for most of the tenants due to rent prices have risen 30 times faster than wages. By means of a local example in Barcelona, Manuel Gabarre de Sus will disclose how these operations were executed and the economic, political and judicial ties of investment funds such as Blackstone or Cerberus.

Fri 29.5 · 18:00—19:30

PANEL · Foggy Properties & Golden Sands: Money Laundering in London & Dubai

Sam Leon (Data Investigations Lead at Global Witness, UK).
Karina Shedrofsky (Dubai’s Golden Sands investigation, Head of OCCRP’s research team, BIH).
Moderated by Rima Sghaier (Outreach & Research Fellow, Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights, TUN/IT).

In this panel Sam Leon and Karina Shedrofsky will analyse how money laundering, organised crime and corruption interfere and influence real estate, addressing respectively the contexts of London and Dubai. While at Global Witness, Sam Leon has developed a number of innovative web applications and visualisations for a range of campaigns. In this panel, he will speak about investigation showing how big chunks of Baker Street (£147 million worth of property) are owned by a mysterious figure with close ties to a former Kazakh secret police chief accused of murder and money-laundering (more here), as well as how tens of thousands of leaseholders are at the mercy of unscrupulous freeholders who hide behind anonymous companies in England & Wales (more here). Finally, he will present concrete practices and advocacy pieces to reach greater transparency of ownership of property in UK.

Karina Shedrofsky will discuss how OCCRP told the story of Dubai as a safe haven for money laundering and corruption, and the impact the stories had in countries like Armenia and Norway. In 2018 OCCRP received a leaked database of property and residency data in Dubai, prompting its cross-border project “Dubai’s Golden Sands.” The emirate has transformed itself into an extravagant metropolis, but its success is inextricably linked with the globalisation of organised crime and corruption. The leaked real estate data revealed that organised criminals, sanctioned individuals, politicians and the world’s wealthy have been flocking to Dubai to purchase property, hide their wealth and avoid sanctions or taxes. As part of the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, a collaboration by OCCRP and Transparency International, this story can serve as an example of how journalists and civil society are working together to fight corruption and drive real change.

Fri 29.5 · 20:15—21:00

LIVE CONVERSATION · PUSH - The Film

With Fredrik Gertten (Filmmaker, Producer & Journalist, SE) and Leilani Farha (Global Director, The Shift & Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, PS/CA). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Programme Director, Disruption Network Lab e. V., IT/DE) – Excerpts & live conversation.

In major cities across the world local working and middle class citizens are being pushed out of their very own homes – because living in them has become unaffordable. Join us for a discussion between PUSH: the film director Fredrik Gertten and activist Leilani Farha on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on real estate speculation and eviction.

Thu 30.7 · 20:00—22:00 + Bar after the screening

OUTDOOR SCREENING · PUSH - The Film

PUSH - The Film (2019, 1h 32m, English version).
A film directed by Fredrik Gertten. With Leilani Farha, Saskia Sassen, Joseph Stiglitz, Roberto Saviano.

ACUD MACHT NEU, Veteranenstraße 21, 10119 Berlin, Germany.
Outdoor screening with limited seats - reserve a seat via https://pretix.eu/disruptionlab

Housing affordability is decreasing at a record pace.
The local working and middle classes have become unable to afford housing in major cities across the world. London, New York, Hong Kong, Toronto, Tokyo, Valparaiso, Sydney, Melbourne, Caracas, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm… the list seems endless. People are being pushed out of their very own homes – because living in them has become unaffordable.

The high cost of housing and global investment funds push people to poverty, stripped of a fundamental right. The activist Leilani Farha reveals the perversity behind the speculation. PUSH is a documentary from award-winning director Fredrik Gertten, investigating why we can’t afford to live in our own cities anymore. Housing is a fundamental human right, a precondition to a safe and healthy life. But in cities all around the world, having a place to live is becoming more and more difficult. Who are the players and what are the factors that make housing one of today’s most pressing world issues?

The film had its World Premiere at CPH:DOX, 2019, where it won the Audience Award.
More about the film: pushthefilm.com

Saturday, May 30

Sat 30.5 · 15:40—16:30

TALK · Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co!

Volkan Sayman (Sociologist, Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen, DE). Moderated by Ela Kagel (Digital Strategist and Founder of SUPERMARKT Berlin, DE).

Last year a campaign to expropriate corporate landlords found broad support among Berliners and made global headlines. The campaign organises for a popular referendum that would take the assets of any Berlin-based, profit-oriented landlord owning above 3.000 apartments into public ownership, to be managed democratically by tenants themselves. Repeated polling showed a majority of Berliners in favour of that proposal, leading the state parliament to pass the strictest rent control bill in decades at breakneck speed. German real estate stocks plunged as a result. What caused the public uproar against corporate landlords? How would expropriation actually work? And where is the movement now? This talk will discuss Berlin's housing crisis as a result of the privatisation and financialisation of housing, highlight major milestones of the expropriation campaign, and give a glimpse on what's next in the struggle against displacement and for socialised housing in Berlin.

Sat 30.5 · 17:00—18:30

KEYNOTE · The Human Rights Solution: Tackling the housing crisis

Leilani Farha (Global Director, The Shift & Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, PS/CA). In conversation with Justus von Daniels (CORRECTIV / Wem gehört Berlin, DE).

This keynote event brings in conversation Leilani Farha, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, and Justus von Daniels, Editor-in-Chief of CORRECTIV, to discuss how civil society can be directly involved in fighting real estate speculation, and which measures can be adopted to guarantee the right to adequate housing on a global scale. Cities all over the world are in crisis - as housing prices skyrocket people are being pushed out of their homes and communities and some are falling into homelessness. While on the surface this seems like a problem of rents being too high or housing markets being too hot, when you dig a little deeper you find that this is a product of global financial investment, supported by governments, speculating on residential real estate to extract as much profit as possible from peoples’ homes and lands. The path cities are on is unsustainable. People all over the world are asking governments to accept the challenge presented by the current housing crisis and make the shift towards securing housing as a human right, and not solely a commodity. Now is the time for governments to show innovation and courage and implement a human rights approach to housing, so that housing’s social function is not displaced by speculation and corporate greed.

The keynote conversation is introduced by a short presentation by Justus von Daniels on the activity of CORRECTIV, a non-profit newsroom for investigative journalism, running the German crowdsourced projects "Who owns the city", which is based on community-powered investigations collecting data to gain a better understanding of the German housing market. It will be followed by a statement from Leilani Farha, who assumed the role of Special Rapporteur in 2014. During her time as Special Rapporteur, she has presented reports to the UN on homelessness, the connection between the right to housing and the right to life, and the financialisation of housing, the right to housing of Indigenous peoples, and most recently the Guidelines for the implementation of the right to housing. She has traveled on official missions to Portugal, India, Chile, Egypt, Nigeria and most recently New Zealand among others, to investigate and comment on the state of the right to housing. Leilani Farha has used her platform to start The Shift, a global movement to secure the right to housing, requiring housing to be treated as a human right and not a commodity.

Sat 30.5 · 19:10-19:30

SHORT FILM PRÈMIERE · StealThisPoster: Artivism & the Struggle of Lucha Y Siesta

StealThisPoster (Subvertising collective, IT/UK)

This short film prèmiere by the StealThisPoster collective introduces the practice of subvertising and focuses on the experience of "Lucha y Siesta" the squatted and historical women's house in Rome, in the Quadraro neighbourhood, planned to be put on auction by the city council of Rome on April 7 this year. Since many years LYS offers a voluntary help-desk and shelters for women victims of gender-based violence, to supply the lack of institutional solutions to this problem. Under the threat of an upcoming eviction, Lucha y Siesta formed a neighbourhood committee to buy the building, but the threat is still on and the fight is ongoing.

Sat 30.5 · 19:30-21:15

PANEL · Resisting Speculation: Ecological Commons, Subvertising & Fighting Tech Domination

Marco Clausen (Co-founder Prinzessinnengarten, DE), Yonatan Miller (Tech Workers Coalition, Berlin vs. Amazon, US/DE), StealThisPoster (Subvertising collective, IT/UK). Moderated by Iva Čukić (Co-founder & Coordinator, Ministry of Space, SRB).
Video contribute by Penny Travlou (University of Edinburgh, AARG! & Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research, GR).

The conclusive panel brings into dialogue different modalities of fighting speculation, sharing tactics of resistance in the political and media landscape, and presenting concrete interventions in the urban territory of Berlin and internationally. Marco Clausen will talk about the case of Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin, as a question around the commons, and the practice of social-ecological transformation in the context of privatisation and financialisation of real estate in the city. Started as a typical Berlin temporary use project in 2009, in 2012 the site was supposed to be privatised to a private investor, like 3000 other sites in Berlin before. Already in 2006 most of the residential and business areas around the garden, being owned by public housing societies, had already been privatised - first to a Goldman-Sachs-Funds, later to Deutsche Wohnen.
As one of the few cases in Berlin, in 2009 the collective managed with a campaign and 30.000 supporters to stop the selling process to an investor, getting another contract until 2018. When everyone thought that the profit driven development of the land by investors was unavoidable, as it happened for most of the properties in and around Moritzplatz (by now one of the most expensive sites in the centre of Berlin) a small group fought for two years to make the garden a commons, managing to prolong the contract for another six years and receiving public funding to rebuild the garden as an open learning and cultural centre.

Alongside, an unlikely coalition of anti-gentrification activists, artists, labour organisers, and tech workers have been mobilising together to fight the Amazon tower that is to be completed in 2023 in the area of Berlin-Friedrichshain. Due to property tech speculation, and tech entry into real estate market, Berlin has already seen the fastest increase in housing prices globally over the last five years. Berlin vs. Amazon aims to replicate the success stories of New York’s ouster of Amazon in 2019, and Berlin’s recent push back against a Google Campus in Kreuzberg. Yonatan Miller, a member of the Tech Workers Coalition and Berlin vs. Amazon, will discuss the challenges and prospects of such an alliance, presenting their strategy for the struggle ahead.

Finally, the panel describes possible media tactics of resistance via the activity of the StealThisPoster collective. Introducing stealthisposter.org, a network of subvertisers formed around the right to housing movements of London, they will present the practice of subvertising to argue how art and creativity can benefit struggles and convey change. StealThisPoster will present how they helped sensibilising the public opinion on the eviction of "Lucha y Siesta" the squatted and historical women's house in Rome, releasing various guerrilla actions, i.e. projecting the word "vendesi” (on sale) on many historical monuments in Rome. The evocative pictures of the roman's monuments at night lit by the words "on sale" became viral, other actions were made, a crowdfounding campaign started, and the city council was forced to postpone the suspension of the utilities four times.

The panel ends with a video contribute by Penny Travlou from the University of Edinburgh, and Co-Director of the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research, about the housing crisis in Athens. She presents the resistance by the local activist group AARG, Action Against Regeneration & Gentrification, to fight against eviction, financial speculation and for the rights of the refugees.

WORKSHOPS · Subvertising for the Right to Housing

PART 1: Friday May 22, 2020 · ONLINE
17:00-19:00 · Register here

with Vyvian Raoul (Author, Editor, Dog Section Press, UK).

PART 2: Subvertising for Data Cities - Thursday September 3, 2020 · Supermarkt Berlin 16:30-19:00 · Registration will open soon

With Steal This Poster, special patrol group (Subvertising Collectives IT/UK) and Kunstblock And Beyond (DE).

Max 20 participants, with registration.

PART 1: Subvertising for the Right to Housing

Friday May 22, 2020 · Online · 17:00-19:00 · Register here

with Vyvian Raoul (Author, Editor, Dog Section Press, UK).

Subvertising is the subversion of advertising. During this workshop we will work with Vyvian Raoul to learn the tactics and techniques of subvertising, particularly relating to property and the rights to the city.

This workshop shows how subvertising offers a creative way to rewrite the narrative about the housing market in the streets where gentrification operates. Outdoor advertising is the most emblematic form of consumerist propaganda. It privatises public spaces with the intention of conditioning mass behaviours and imposing specific (commercial) narratives. How can we untangle those narrations? And how can we take over those spaces subtracted from the public realm for private interests?

PART 2: Subvertising for Data Cities

Thursday September 3, 2020 · Supermarkt Berlin · 16:30-19:00

With Steal This Poster & special patrol group (Subvertising Collectives IT/UK) and Kunstblock And Beyond (DE).

During the second part of the workshop in the fall 2020 at Supermarkt we will work with StealThisPoster, Special Patrol Group, and Kunstblock to learn tactics and techniques of subvertising related to aggressive corporations in the context of data tracking. More about STEAL THIS POSTER · More about Kunstblock and Beyond.

This workshop is a co-production between the Disruption Network Lab & Supermarkt Berlin and it is part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

VIRTUAL TOUR · Visiting the Invisible: A Berlin City Tour to Anonymous and Aggressive Real Estate Investors

Sunday, May 31 · 2020 · 17.00-18.30 · On streaming

Sunday, August 30 · 2020 · 12:30-15:30 · Outdoor Tour in Berlin

Those who booked spots for March will be first in line.

live With Christoph Trautvetter (Expert on Tax Justice and Money Laundering, Netzwerk Steuergerechtigkeit and Wem gehört die Stadt (RLS), DE).

In partnership with rosa-luxemburg stiftung.

On our stroll from Potsdamer Platz into Kreuzberg - one of Berlin's most popular and dynamic neighborhoods - we'll discover houses that are owned by anonymous investors and hear the stories they have to tell about how those investors hide their identity, maximise their profits – often at the cost of the inhabitants – and how they avoid taxes and many other forms of regulation. We’ll also learn about some colourful examples of alternative approaches to house ownership, and get to know the neighborhood.
The tour draws on the findings of the project “Wem gehört die Stadt” of the Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung, including recent and forthcoming studies on the ownership structure of Berlin with data collected from various groups.
The participants of the outdoor tour will receive a small guidebook that contains further information on the investors behind the visited houses.

The tour is in partnership with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and is part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Speakers

Leilani Farha

Global Director, The Shift & Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, PS/CA
Twitter: @leilanifarha

Leilani Farha’s work is animated by the principle that housing is a social good, not a commodity. She has helped develop global human rights standards on the right to housing, including through reports on homelessness, the financialisation of housing, informal settlements and rights-based housing strategies. She is the central character in the documentary PUSH, on the financialization of housing and also the Global Director of The Shift, an international movement to secure the right to housing.

More: Leilani Farhha - UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing

Christoph Trautvetter

Public Policy Expert, Netzwerk Steuergerechtigkeit / Wem gehört die Stadt (RLS), DE
Twitter: @ctrautvetter

Christoph Trautvetter analyses ownership structures, illicit financial flows and tax issues for Wem gehört die Stadt, a project of the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation and for Netzwerk Steuergerechtigkeit, a German network of NGOs. He has worked as a forensic investigator with KPMG AG, as advisor to the European Parliament's budget committee and as a Fellow with Teach First. Trautvetter holds a Master of Public Policy from Hertie School of Governance and a BA (Philosophy& Economics) from Bayreuth, Germany.

More: Wem gehört die Stadt? · Wem zahle ich eigentlich Miete?

Manuel Gabarre de Sus

Lawyer and Activist, Observatory Against Economical Crime. ES
Twitter: @ManuelGabarre3

Manuel Gabarre de Sus is part of the Observatory Against Economical Crime – founded in Madrid in 2016. The organisation acts through research, conducting training workshops and litigation, and it is the charging party for corruption processes in Spain. Additionally, he is actively writing about housing issues in the Spanish newspapers, and he has contributed to writing the brochure of the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City - “Housing financialization: Trends, actors and processes” (2018). In 2019 he published the book “Tocar fondo. La mano invisible detrás de la subida del alquiler. Ed. Traficantes de Sueños”, which focuses on the damage done on the right to housing by the tax havens and the investment funds.

Learn more: Housing Financialisation: trends, actors and processes

Eka Rostomashvili

Advocacy and Campaigns Coordinator, Transparency International, GE/DE
Twitter: @Erostomashvili

Eka Rostomashvili works as Advocacy and Campaigns Coordinator at Transparency International in Berlin. She helps shape and advance the movement’s advocacy around the cases of cross-border corruption. Prior to joining TI-S, Eka was a communications associate at the Global Public Policy Institute - a Berlin think-tank working on a range of issues, from European governance to humanitarian aid. She has also previously worked with Transparency International Georgia, where she contributed to the organization's government monitoring and civic engagement efforts for four years. Eka holds a Master degree in public policy from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Justus von Daniels

CORRECTIV / Wem gehört Berlin, DE
Twitter: @justus_vdaniels

Justus is Editor-in-Chief of CORRECTIV, the first german-language based non-profit newsroom. He joined CORRECTIV in 2015 as an investigative reporter. He leads the longterm crowdbased project „Who owns the city?“ which so far ran in nine cities in Germany with local media partners. Before joining CORRECTIV, Justus worked as a freelance journalist for Tagesspiegel and Die Zeit. He is a trained lawyer and worked two years as a Postdoc in New York and Princeton before. 

More: Justus von Daniels at CORRECTIV

Sam Leon

Data Investigations Lead at Global Witness, UK
Twitter: @noeL_maS

Sam Leon has worked on numerous campaigns at Global Witness and has pioneered the use of digital investigation techniques since 2016. His work focuses on using publicly available and leaked data to expose corruption. Recent projects include an investigation into money laundering at the Trump Ocean Club, Panama, and an analysis of the corruption risk posed by anonymously owned homes in London. He has a BA in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge and Masters in the History of Ideas from University College London.

More: Joining the dots: from property deals at the Trump Ocean Club, Panama to Latin American drug cartels, how we’re using new technology to expose corrupt networks

Karina Shedrofsky

Dubai’s Golden Sands investigation, Head of OCCRP’s research team, BIH
Twitter: @karinashed

Karina Shedrofsky is the head of research at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Her team works with OCCRP’s network of journalists to trace people, companies, and assets across the globe. Since joining Investigative Dashboard in 2017, Shedrofsky has contributed research to a number of OCCRP projects, including the “Paradise Papers” and the “Daphne Project,” where she helped uncover the secret property holdings of Azerbaijan’s ruling family. She led the "Dubai’s Golden Sands" project: a cross-border investigation into a leaked property database that revealed how wealthy people from around the world take advantage of the Emirates’ secrecy.

Learn more: Dubai’s golden Sands

Rima Sghaier

Outreach & Research Fellow, Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights, TUN/IT
Twitter: @RimaSghaier

Rima Sghaier is an international citizen born in Tunisia and currently based in Milan, where she leads outreach and localisation efforts at the Hermes Center, managing and contributing to projects to support NGOs, media, and investigative journalists to create secure whistleblowing platforms. She is the program manager of Digital Whistleblowing Fund, a small-grant project by the Hermes Center and Renewable Freedom Foundation that enables investigative journalism groups and human rights grassroots organisations to apply to receive financial, operational and strategic support in starting a secure digital whistleblowing initiative. She has been active in various Tunisian and international human rights NGOs with a focus on youth empowerment, citizen journalism and the use of technology for social change.

More: Digital Whistleblowing Fund

Volkan Sayman

Sociologist, Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen, DE
Twitter: @volkan17658772

Volkan Sayman is a sociologist living in Berlin. He supports "Deutsche
Wohnen und Co Enteignen" because it is a powerful movement using
direct democracy for representing the interests of tenants.

Marco Clausen

Co-founder Prinzessinnengärten, DE

Marco Clausen co-initiated Prinzessinnengarten and the Neighborhood-Academy in Berlin. He contributes to the question of local self-organisation for social and ecological justice in urban and rural areas through lectures, publications, participatory research, international exchange programs, and cooperation with artists and activists. Clausen is specifically interested in non-institutionalised forms of collective learning.

Learn more: Ein Dauergartenvertrag für Berlin

Steal This Poster

Subvertising Collective IT/UK

Steal This Poster is a group of visual artists whose work is mainly focused on subvertising. With their designs they contributed to the creation of an online archive of political posters free of copyrights called Stealthisposter.org, which was recently presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art – MACRO in Rome. The aim of the archive is to become a network for designers that offer their works to radical political groups. With Special Patrol Group, a collective of subvertisers from London, they took part in several subvertising workshops in many different cities.

More: Steal This Poster

Fredrik Gertten

Filmmaker, Producer & Journalist, SE
Twitter: @FredrikGertten

Fredrik Gertten is an award-winning Swedish filmmaker, producer and journalist. In 2017, he was appointed as an honorary doctor at Malmö University. In 1994, he founded WG Film, a production company based in Malmö. Nowadays, he combines filmmaking with his role as a creative producer. His films have reached an audience in more than 100 countries. In 2015, Aktuell Hållbarhet named Gertten as the 45 most environmentally influential person in Sweden.

More: Push - The Film

Yonatan Miller

Tech Workers Coalition, Berlin vs. Amazon, US/DE
Twitter: @shushugah

Yonatan Miller is an activist turned technologist from New York. He moved to Berlin in 2015 and is involved with social movements in the streets and the tweets. He is a software developer and co-founded the Berlin Tech Workers Coalition (https://techworkersberlin.com/). When he is not busy organizing, he likes to collect maps and raccoon memes. He is active within “Berlin vs. Amazon”, a coalition of activists, local initiatives, tech workers and artists who want to mobilize against Amazon and the so-called Amazon Tower in Berlin

More: Berlin vs. Amazon · Der Turmbau zu Berlin

Iva Cukic

Co-founder & Coordinator, Ministry of Space/Ministarstvo prostora, SRB

Iva Čukić graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade where she earned her PhD in urban planning. The areas of her work include urban commons, models of governance, urban transformation and self-organisation. In 2010 she co-founded the Ministry of Space collective, active in the field of urban resource management, housing, commons, and areas relevant for genuine democratisation, focusing on the lower levels of governance; as well as nurturing local groups in their pursue of spatial justice, making a stronger bottom-up pressure for systematic change.

Kunstblock and Beyond

Open Association of Art and Culture Producers in Berlin, DE

Kunstblock and beyond is an association of art and culture producers who joined the Bündnis gegen Verdrängung und Mietenwahnsinn in 2018 to show their solidarity against segregation, gentrification and the sell-out of the city. Art is not outside, but often a part of the city's upgrading. Kunstblock and beyond explicitly resists any appropriation and instrumentalisation of artists, art institutions and cultural funding for city marketing or enhancement in the service of the profits of the real estate and tourism industry. They uncover art-commercial-marketing strategies, stimulate debates and make resistance to displacement visible in artistic actions and public relations.
More about Kunstblock and Beyond.

Vyvian Raoul

Author, Editor, Dog Section Press, UK

Vyvian Raoul is the co-author of Advertising Shits In Your Head and an editor with the Dog Section Press publishing cooperative. He co-produced the short film Subvertisers for London and has delivered practical workshops on subvertising in London and elsewhere in Europe alongside Special Patrol Group, Hogre and Double Why (Steal This Poster).

More: Steal This Poster