¿Y después qué?

What next?

2021

Dalia Milián Bernal

About a year ago, I was sitting with three women at a bar in the city center of my home town, Queretaro (Mexico). Four years before our meeting, they had been my students in their first year of architectural education, but I had not seen them for a long time because I moved to Finland in 2017. Now they seemed so grown up, drinking beer, planning their final projects, and telling me all about their amazing topics of interest. 

Throughout the evening, our conversation diverged from one topic to the other, at times becoming profound thoughts about how architecture contributes to unjust processes of urbanization, how little such issues are brought up in architectural education, and the lack of spaces to discuss them in general. We also talked about us, women in architecture, and how our voices are constantly muted – this is particularly true in Mexico, but continues to be a global issue – and what we could do about it without money and being so far apart. 

It was this fruitful discussion that motivated the creation of the blog Interrogativa, a platform that provides a collective space for women to bring-up and discuss issues related to processes of urbanization. Soon after its creation, other women joined the team. The blog kicked off on January 2020 with thought-provoking posts related to women and the city, including contributions of women from Mexico, Finland, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Italy. In February, the list of contributions grew in a blog-post full of words and the meaning each author attributed to these concepts. I must confess, the February blog-post is my all-time favorite because it crystalized the idea of a collective blog – that month the blog received 10 contributions. 

Then came Covid-19 and a pandemic. Our energy was low, but other women stepped in to write about urban activism , women’s marches in Mexico, thoughts of life in cities post-pandemic, the representation of women in urban art, discussions about racism and colonization of the Americas, women all over the world sent a song to create a playlist about cities in music, and a friend shared a personal experience about the meaning of home in times of Covid. Other women decided to send us an ‘interrogative’ they wanted us to explore, and I was challenged to write a poem about a special place.

So: what next?

Now it is time to reflect on the aims of the blog, what needs to improve, and how to move forward.

One of our main concerns is that the blog is misunderstood as being for women only or that it discriminates based on sex. We want to make something clear, while it is true that we publish the thoughts of women, we hope that everyone, regardless of gender, reads this blog, because we truly believe it broadens the discussions of urban issues. Interrogativa is not to be seen as a gendered space, it is to be understood as a platform where women of all backgrounds can share their thoughts with society at large because we feel such a space was missing. Particularly in Finland, it is hard for my colleagues to understand the need for this space because women and men are thought to be on equal terms. Yet, as I have brought up before, until recently our school of architecture had not a single woman professor, gladly this has changed, now there is ONE (an awesome one by the way).

A big task ahead of us is to continue to work on our aims to make this blog more inclusive, please do share your ideas with us on how to achieve this. In the meanwhile, we decided that in 2021 we will move towards action! We ask: What are women doing to contribute to better and more just cities? The year kicks-off with a text by Anna Kobierska who writes about Urbanismo Feminista*. Stay tuned!

In addition, Interrogativa will become a quarterly blog, publishing posts every three months and the interrogatives will be asked in English only. However, interrogatives may be answered in any language. We will also continue to develop our website, invite women from all over the world to share their thoughts and experiences, and reach out to other groups to join us. If you would like to contribute with an interrogative or to answer one, you may contact us any time.

Last but not least, to all of the women who contributed to this blog in 2020, thank you so much for your inspiring words, links, images, and thoughts, we hope this is only the beginning of a long and adventurous road ahead. My best wishes to all of you for 2021.

*Urbanismo Feminista by Anna Kobierska will be published January 31, 2021.

Un lugar antes de ahora y en el futuro, ¿es diferente?

A place before now and in the future– is it different?

Pensamientos | Thoughts

Reflections about a place called home?

Anna Koskinen

Last summer I moved into a new apartment. Finding it was not an easy task; none of the numerous apartments I visited felt just right. When I went to see this one, I was half an hour early (by mistake, I had written down a wrong meeting time with the realtor). There was not much else to do than just wait. It felt awkward to just stand there right next to the entrance, nodding shyly to the people entering the building, who took a quick glance at me saying “why does she just stand there?” Luckily, there was a bus stop right opposite of the entrance, so I took a few steps forward and pretended I was waiting for a bus, while still keeping an eye on the entrance, in case the realtor would arrive early. I noted a few other people arriving about 10 minutes prior to the meeting time who had the same awkward appearance as I had; an appearance of a person who knows being on someone else’s territory.

Finally, the realtor arrived. We climbed up on the third floor with the two other people who came to see the same apartment. Since we lived already then in the pandemic world, we could enter only one at a time, me having the chance to be the first one. I stepped into the apartment through a dark entrance and immediately felt a that I needed to have this place. The apartment was still taken over by the previous resident’s furnishings; I remember her beautiful oriental carpet and how it was placed diagonally on the floor. I didn’t take any pictures, it didn’t even cross my mind, since it felt wrong to take pictures in a stranger’s private space. I made a little round in the 29,5 m² apartment, posed some random questions to the current resident who was standing near the wall in between the kitchen area and the living room, and then rushed out to tell the realtor that I would like to rent the apartment.

It was the special atmosphere in the apartment that won my heart. The building is built in 1920’s. Its walls have seen so many bigger and smaller pieces of different lives. Previous residents’ steps have made the same wooden floor to creak and their feelings, dreams, fears and longings have absorbed to the walls, between the layers of different colored paint. These memories can be sensed when the apartment is naked – emptied from the previous resident’s belongings, waiting for the new resident’s belongings to take over the space. Moving in is a brutal action, and for a short while, the apartment resembles more of a dump than someone’s home. But then, little by little, furniture starts to find their place, cups, glasses and plates get hidden behind closets’ doors, books are places on the shelves and clothing is hung on hangers. And tah-dah! The apartment is now the home of someone new, waiting for her/him to add another layer to its story.

A home is often not just a shelter, where we fulfill our basic needs –sleeping, washing and feeding ourselves, to mention a few. It is also a place for self-expression. We surround ourselves with objects that appear beautiful to us, remind us of something or someone and/or are useful for a certain purpose. Then we arrange them in a way that is best suitable for us. When we make a place to feel like ours, it also creates us a sense of safety. At home, we can be the purest version of ourselves. Behind the wall, the street creates a striking contrast to a home. Outside we become strangers, just other people standing at a bus stop, taking a dog for a walk, lingering in the shops, having a picnic in a park. Our window is just another window in a row of windows to the random passers-by, anonymous people on their journey from A to B.

The current state of the world has made many of us to rethink our relationship with our closest surroundings. People have been forced to spend much more time at home and this has evoked inspiration to redecorate or even change a home. Many of my close friends have recently bought or rented a new place, some because or even in a wish for a life change – a home can also represent that to us. New area, new home, new me?

Conoces algún cantautor(a) que describa ciudades en sus canciones como si fuera un etnógrafo urbano?

Do you know any song-artists that describe cities in their songs as though they were urban ethnographers?

Video musical | Music video

Click on the + sign and add a music video in which the city is one of the most important elements of the song or the video. You can also go directly to our Padlet board Music & The City and add a contribution there.

¿Qué pasaría si las mujeres fuéramos monumentos?

What would happen if women were monuments?

Ensayo | Essay

If we were women of public art?

Laura Uimonen

I will discover the question with an example from my everyday neighborhood from the Hämeenpuisto esplanade park at City of Tampere in central Finland. A young woman is described standing, hair open and wearing a long skirt. Today, at the very special spring, she is wearing a mask on her face. On the pedal we can read her name, nothing else – who was she and what if we would be like her?

At first, not even thinking why, if we were Minna Canth we would be celebrated more than 50 years after our death in the city we were born, but not really lived in. This baby girl was born here in my hometown as Ulrika Wilhelmina Johnson at Puutarhakatu 8 at Tampere to a working-class family in 1844. 

Fourteen years before a Scottish James Finlayson had arrived to small town of Tampere and started the cotton factory Finlayson, which was an entire society inside the town. Minna had an opportunity to get into school as a part of factory-working society. This background of industrialization lies behind the rather long development where girls got  finally a possibility to have an education and to study, to work and to live a independently thinking persons in the society. This development to improve rights of female sex is intertwined in Finland to the born of independence of the small nationality of Finnish people. She is celebrated as part of the development where her work and choices represent radical activism. Her statue stands for the unusual era of a female novelist, playwriter and first female journalist using Finnish language. She has got several statues and streets named after her, several studies and analyses have been published about her life, career and artworks. She is the only female in Finland celebrated with her own flag day 19^th March. The blue-white Finnish flag represents the special self-conscience of young independent nation with the long history under first Swedish King and later as autonomic part of Russian empire. The role of independent women in the society with right to vote, study and work in any profession have been important part of the development of democracy in Finland.

Generally Minna Canth seems to be rather an institution of cultural activism than a woman of flesh casted in the bronze. Maybe because the Finnish language was neglected by the ruling government, it became even more important and cherished treasure for the fight of own culture and in Minna’s life a powerful tool for critical realism.

So, back to the original thought of role play as a public art: if we were Minna, we would be known after the words we put on the paper with strong critical views in our mind and for the unusual courage in our time. In her shoes we would now ask what is wrong now and where we can tell it loud? She put her words in to work in novels, in plays, some of them written with secret name. The titles of work tell a lot: The wife of a working man 1878, Poor people 1886, Kids of hard luck 1888 and Anna-Lisa 1895 dealing a murder of a newborn child. Behind the statue is carved an act of the novel Anna-Lisa begging for mercy.

Trying to adjust myself into her position and aims I browse and find an audio chapter of her book Poor people. I listen, look to inner courtyard at the same city she lived in. Her words start to draw images in my mind of a mother and her child’s. While listening the words outspoken she becomes alive again. She would speak for the old people in their homes alone right now, pale faces in the window, she would write about people feeling poor in their lives with problem of the too many things and troublesome Kon Mari-principle. She would worry fragile minds of this time, of homeless and paperless people in the shadows of the city.

So, if we were standing here in the park as a statue, we might be remembered for the not for success but the compassion for the people, in Minna’s case for women and children. She visited prisons and among most poor people with empathy and curiosity of the real life in all colors and shades.

Statue is from year 1951 by sculptor Lauri Leppänen after a competition by Tampere foundation and several woman societies. Funding for the statue was started by a female factory owner 1950s.

Thinking of the bold life of Minna I must envy her courage. At the same time, I find myself crawling into a shoe as a creature in the micro-scale statue at the other park nearby where small little statues surprises people walking in the park. Tiny sculptures have interesting role in the city playing with the scale and tradition of monument as opponent for the classical monument. Minna’s monumental gaze in the park makes me rethink monuments, a monument for a brave girl, a brave mother and wife, a brave colleague, a brave human for another.

***

Próxima interrogativa | Next interrogative

Conoces algún cantautor(a) que describa ciudades en sus canciones como si fuera un etnógrafo urbano?

Format: Comparte el enlace del video | Fecha límite: 19 septiembre 2020

Do you know any song-artists that describe cities in their songs as though they were urban ethnographers?

Format: Share video Link | Submission deadline: 19 September 2020

Qué procesos de urbanización ayudan a exacerbar el problema del racismo en nuestras ciudades? Y, ¿qué se puede hacer, o se está haciendo, para revertir dichos procesos?

How are processes of urbanization helping exacerbate the problem of racism in our cities? And, what can, or is being done, to revert such processes?

Dalia Milián Bernal en comunicación con la historiadora Florencia Quesada Avendaño.

Dalia Milián Bernal

He estado siguiendo las protestas que han surgido en Estados Unidos en contra de la violencia policíaca. En breve, se pide se desmantele un sistema corrupto y violento, pero sobre todo, racista. 

Aunque ahora es inevitable quitar la mirada de lo que sucede en Estados Unidos por lo resonantes que son, en parte por la forma en la que el gobierno ha respondido, o sea, con violencia, pero en parte también por lo que parecen estar logrando. Uno de esos logros, creo yo, ha sido insertar en nuestro imaginario el concepto de ‘abolición de la policía’ y lo que eso significa e implica (muy inspirador, por cierto, tema para otro post). Otro logro ha sido que todos nosotros quienes no nos considerábamos racistas, reflexionemos sobre nuestras propias prácticas racistas. 

Regresando al tema de las ciudades, sobre el cuál estamos invitadas a escribir, me ha llamado mucho la atención la petición de quitar las estatuas y los monumentos de la Confederación de vías y espacios públicos, y reubicarlas a museos en los cuáles puedan ser explicados y contextualizados. Obviamente, no puedo evitar recordar nuestras primeras historias sobre las protestas en contra de la violencia de género y la reacción del gobierno para proteger los monumentos históricos de la Ciudad de México. Pero también me hacen pensar, querer entender, saber más y querer discutir contigo la ciudad colonial latinoamericana, y te pregunto ¿de qué manera, si siquiera, se compara o diferencia de esas estatuas y esos monumentos de la Confederación?

Florencia Quesada Avendaño

Gracias por la propuesta Dalia, justamente he estado reflexionando mucho, por el debate de las estatuas y varias polémicas que he seguido en diferentes ciudades del mundo desde hace varios meses.

Al hacer una analogía con las estatuas de la Confederación, quizás lo importante es no perder de vista que son contextos históricos muy diferentes. Claro que la atención mediática que ejerce Estados Unidos sobre el resto del mundo siempre es abrumante y hasta monopólica y tiene un mayor impacto.

No obstante, en Chile, con las protestas sociales que comenzaron a finales de octubre de 2019, la demolición de muchos monumentos ha sido habitual en muchas ciudades chilenas, pero no ha tenido la misma atención mediática mundial. Por ejemplo, en Temuco, capital de la Araucanía, se han derribado diversas estatuas, dentro del contexto de las protestas sociales. Una de ellas, la del conquistador español del siglo XVI, Pedro de Valdivia. Al caer la estatua de Valdivia, los manifestantes comenzaron a pisotearla y a golpearla con palos de madera, como si aún estuviera vivo. Otra estatua que derribaron en Temuco fue la Dagoberto Godoy, quien fue un militar y aviador chileno, el primero en sobrevolar la Cordillera de los Andes en 1918. Los manifestantes colgaron su cabeza del brazo de otro monumento, en honor al líder mapuche Caupolicán, y pusieron la bandera Wenufoye (bandera mapuche) cubriendo el monumento. Caupolicán fue el toqui (jefe militar) mapuche que lideró la heroica resistencia indígena contra los españoles. Es interesante notar que aunque Godoy no tenía ninguna relación histórica con los españoles, fue “víctima” simbólica del descontento social por ser un militar. En la ciudad de Concepción, fundada por Valdivia en 1550, derribaron nuevamente el busto del conquistador en la Plaza de la Independencia, estatua que había sido donada por el gobierno español para la conmemoración de los 400 años de Concepción. Las protestas en Concepción se iniciaron por el asesinato de Camilo Catrillanca, un año atrás, ahora dentro del marco de las protestas sociales nacionales. Catrillanca era un joven líder estudiantil mapuche de la comunidad de Ercilla a quien le dispararon por la espalda en la cabeza y que se ha convertido en un símbolo de las protestas en Chile.  En la ciudad de Collipulli, el busto de bronce del general Cornelio Saavedra, quien lideró la sangrienta «pacificación» de las tierras mapuches en el siglo XIX, tuvo un destino similar. Estos actos simbólicos contra monumentos, es necesario entenderlos como expresiones de descontento del pueblo contra un Estado opresor, autoritario y violento. Y en el caso del pueblo indígena mapuche históricamente marginalizado y reprimido. Son formas simbólicas de respuesta y resistencia dentro de una aguda crisis social y económica en una sociedad profundamente desigual y elitista.

Más en relación con tu pregunta, lo que es necesario entender, es que el inicio de la construcción y la introducción de monumentos y estatuas en las ciudades en América Latina es más que todo un proceso que comenzó hacia finales del siglo XIX. Como parte de importantes transformaciones urbanas en la ciudades latinoamericanas con la creación de avenidas, bulevares y parques modernos a finales del siglo XIX, fueron estos nuevos espacios públicos que se colmaron de estatuas y monumentos en honor de esos líderes o “padres” de las naciones en construcción. 

Estos monumentos, dentro de un contexto actual de crisis política y económica y de fuerte represión militar como en el caso chileno, se convierten en blancos materiales del descontento social, como símbolos materiales de poder en el espacio público.  Es importante relativizar la idea de que los monumentos son sagrados e intocables. Los monumentos responden generalmente a procesos llevados a cabo por las esferas de poder para materializar en el espacio público una concepción ideológica del momento.  Y, como tales, pueden preservarse o también reubicarse, o desaparecer como ha quedado muy claro con las estatuas del rey Leopoldo II en Bélgica. Uno de los más sangrientos y brutales colonizadores de lo que hoy es la República Democrática del Congo. 

Estos movimientos de protesta contra monumentos y personajes específicos en diferentes partes del mundo, son también una excelente ocasión para conocer la historia de esos “personajes” y hacer una crítica de la labor que tuvieron. Y repensar esas figuras, como símbolos de colonialismo, racismo o represión, como en el caso de Bélgica. En California, más recientemente, se removió la estatua de Cristóbal Colón en la ciudad de San Francisco, dentro del contexto de las protestas del Black Lives Matter. Es interesante subrayar que la decisión de quitar el monumento a Colón en San Francisco fue decidido por el comité de artes de la ciudad, antes de que fuera derribado durante alguna protesta social.  Según las propias palabras del comité, se justificó la decisión de remover la estatua: “ya que no va en línea con los valores de San Francisco y su compromiso con la justicia racial” (San Francisco Chronicle, 19 junio 2020).  

En Costa Rica, otro ejemplo de este tipo de discusión y controversia en torno a un monumento público, ha sido la estatua del expresidente León Cortés. El monumento se encuentra ubicado al inicio de uno de los bulevares de entrada a la ciudad: el Paseo Colón.  Un abogado inició una petición en línea para remover la estatua del expresidente justificando su propuesta en el pasado fascista de Cortés. La petición generó una gran polémica pública. Se ha defendido a capa y espada que el monumento es un símbolo intocable en San José y un referente urbano por su tamaño, diseño e ubicación. El monumento, tiene unos leones al pie de la estatua, donde generaciones de niñas y niños se han subido al lomo de los leones para jugar o tomarse fotos. Me llamó la atención, dentro de la discusión, las muestras de afecto de mucha gente hacia el monumento de manera física, justo por este lazo afectivo infantil. Aunque la propuesta no prosperó,  lo interesante es que la polémica ha permitido discutir y hablar sobre ese pasado fascista de Cortés, poco conocido, sobre todo para las nuevas generaciones. Aquí en Finlandia, un grupo de activistas también ha planteando que se quite la estatua del «padre» y mariscal Mannerheim frente a Kiasma..

Ya para concluir, lo que ha sido interesante de este activismo contra monumentos, es que se han generado discusiones públicas en muchas ciudades alrededor del mundo en cuanto a los personajes de estos monumentos y su representatividad, a la luz de protestas y luchas sociales. Y como resultado muchos de esos “personajes” han caído por tierra. Como ha quedado claro, los monumentos no son sagrados, ni intocables. Pueden ser demolidos o reubicarse en museos donde se explique su historia. Discutir, reflexionar y repensar la historia es siempre un ejercicio indispensable y un derecho de las sociedades democráticas.

***

Próxima Interrogativa | Next Interrogative

¿Qué pasaría si las mujeres fuéramos monumentos?

Ensayo por Laura Uimonen.

What would happen if women were monuments?

Essay by Laura Uimonen.

Si el futuro es femenino, ¿por qué no defender a todas las diseñadoras femeninas? Será que podemos redefinir el éxito y diseñar una profesión basada en el cariño hacia nosotras mismas como hacia los demás?

If the future is female why not stand up for all female-identifying designers? Can we redefine success and craft a meaningful career caring for us and others?

Pensamientos | Thoughts

 If we want to change the way architecture and planning are practiced, we first need to change the way they are taught

Dalia Milián Bernal

About a year ago, I attended the master thesis defense of a friend of mine, an Iranian woman, who is a feminist, an activist and an architect. The aim of her work was to develop a method inspired in Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed that would facilitate non-verbal communication in participatory planning processes. To test the method, she opened a call in different languages inviting people from different countries to attend a meeting that would take place inside a yurt, as to create a more intimate environment. The yurt was placed in a suburb about 7 km from the the European city where I live and according to my friend, the activity was well attended. The stories she told about the experience were quite interesting. She had found that the method had managed to bring together migrants from different parts of the world with locals and to communicate with one another through movement, not words. She then explained, that after testing her method, she analysed her experience through a Foucaultian lens – namely through power relationships. Needles to say, I found her work and presentation fascinating. 

Then it was time for her opponent to take the stage. At the beginning, the critique was good, the opponent, a male professor of planning, confessed it was the first time he had heard of the work of Foucault and he found the theoretical underpinning very interesting. However, it seemed to him that the method was a bit naive, because at some point in planning verbal communication is needed. He also argued that in the process of planning there are “very nice people” but also “very mean people”, such as urban developers, and asked her why she had not invited them to the table. 

Let me explain what is at stake here: there he is, a male professor of planning telling the female student that things cannot change! That above all, the status quo shall prevail. 

To be clear, an urban developer should not be invited to the table, first and foremost, because urban developers are not elected entities, they do not represent the interests of the folk nor the interests of the planet, their interest remains in making money, regardless of the method and completely uninterested in the consequences. That a professor of planning asked such a question represents the locus of the problem, if we want to change the way architecture and planning are practiced, we first need to change the way they are taught: often completely isolated from the communities that surround them and the different disciplines that are implicated, constantly rewarding individual performance, and continuously feeding and reproducing the same neoliberal system, a system obsessed with competition and growth.

The year my friend graduated, non of the professorships of the school of architecture where she did her studies were held by women professors, not a single one! Maybe we should begin there, but let us not stop there. Let us start talking to students of architecture and planning about the power structures that are at play when we plan cities and produce buildings, not to work with them or around them, but to change them! Let’s stop teaching them how to “negotiate with clients”. Rather, let’s explain to them why cities and buildings should not be treated as commodities to be consumed, why in treating them as such, we are damaging the livelihoods of many, depleting the natural environment and exacerbating the climate crisis. Let’s stop teaching them to view the world through a monitor, because then they cannot see for themselves that there are real people living in the most inhuman of conditions; that there are neighbourhoods in the city that lack the most basic infrastructure; that there are public spaces that have been completely privatised: and public spaces are the spheres that we use to achieve change, that is why they cannot be conceived of as spaces for consumption. Let us teach them that public spaces are part of the political arenas where we can all demand our egalitarian rights. Let us teach them about Lefebre’s and Harvey’s notion of the Right to the City, and then, let us learn together how we can, in the words of David Harvey, exercise our “collective right over the processes of urbanization”, and in doing so, lets transform ourselves and our role as architects and planners within our societies.

***

Próxima Interrogativa | Next Interrogative

¿Qué procesos de urbanización ayudan a exacerbar el problema del racismo en nuestras ciudades? Y, ¿qué se puede hacer, o se está haciendo, para revertir dichos procesos?

Formato: Varias voces|Recepción de textos: 31.07.2020

How are processes of urbanization helping exacerbate the problem of racism in our cities? And, what can, or is being done, to revert such processes?

Format: Various voices|Submission deadline: 31.07.2020