Alternatives of Active Life in the City of Pécs

The title European Capital of Culture raises a number of questions. Namely, how it is possible to avoid the “capital of culture” becoming a mere “projection surface”, where cultural roles and products are represented in extraordinary magnitude; to what extent the lifestyle of the residents is affected; how much room is given for the community – the population – that forms the structure and cohesive force of the city, to participate in the process; what democratic potentials are invoked by its presence and possible participation.

Pécs is European Capital of Culture in 2010. The city’s original “capital of culture programme” was a grassroots initiative, the local intelligentsia and activists able to keep track of its development, with most of its ideas based on their conceptions and claims. The project would have developed an already existing civil infrastructure further by involving existing domestic and international relations while administering no considerable change to the cityscape. The original programme was modified considerably in the years following the conception of the project, shifting its focus: under the control of the ECC office established in 2006, the alteration of the cityscape has played a much greater role. By 2010, the city has become one enormous architectural performance, receiving a stream of tourists with the spectacle of grandiose constructions.

Beyond the official programmes offered by the city, the impact of the ECC is also considerable in the self-organised alternative cultural scene, if not devoid of contradictions. For these organisations and alternative modes of using public space, which have been present years before the ECC, change lies in an active and creative life. While existing independently, the civils and activists of Pécs, as well as its “underground” art and music scene, have fostered ever more diverse international relations. They organise workshops and festivals, make attempts at filling the gaps of the alternative market (cheap bicycle repair shop, youth hostel, ateliers, involving the underprivileged, independent radio channels, etc.) with their “craftivist” approach. The beneficiaries (as opposed to consumers) of these events and cultural products are primarily young people, and anyone who is receptive. The feasibility of the system is guaranteed by the unlimited human resources (university students, creative intellectuals, etc.), its complete freedom from politics, and its open structure. This “grassroots” activity does not concentrate exclusively on the city centre: rewriting the cultural topography of the city, it temporarily resorts to unused spaces on the peripheries, giving rise to the emergent city through micro-festivals and communal workshops involving residents; a city where the intermingling of various subcultures has a mutually catalysing force.

According to the city’s capital of culture concept, the propelling force of development is infrastructure, real estate and city image; the civils, in contrast, see this in communities, groups and individuals, based on the idea that the a city is essentially defined by its residents. Decentralised and utterly non-bureaucratic practices can rapidly adapt to new circumstances and can be revived in different locations and contexts. On the following pages, I will discuss these cultural practices and civil initiatives.

Approach Art Association, a group of people dealing with contemporary art, always organises art programmes outside its exhibition space: in industrial compounds (Zsolnay Porcelain Works), temporarily closed cinemas (Apollo Cinema), the TV Tower on Mecsek Hill, as well as sensitive areas in the city. From all these initiatives, perhaps the 2009 series of programmes Temporary City is the most interesting. Its basic idea was provided by the vacant shops on Király Street, which were transformed into exhibition spaces for two weeks, occupied by various international artists and projects. The placement of art in spaces out of the ordinary (museum, gallery), together with the street performances, brought the abstract and alienated notion of art closer to the people, encouraging them to interact. Programmes of institutional culture are rarely capable of this, since they either delegate the manifestations of art into the sphere of leisure, or fail to carry any meaning for those outside a narrow elite. The projects of Approach Art Association resort to the methods of public or urban art to effectively confront the citizens with the meaning of art and contemporary culture today. The Temporary City action, however, also raised urbanistic issues in addition to artistic ones: how is it possible that the main street of a city (capital of culture, in fact) hosts a number of vacant shops, while its cultural players are constantly looking for places to occupy, and exist in constant fear of losing their headquarters, sites, galleries? Drawing on the opportunities opened up by real estate that had “freed up” owing to the economic crisis and had thus become accessible, the projects of Approach, exploiting their capacity for the innovative and spontaneous use of space, laid the foundations of an alternative urban policy.

The objective of Market Platform, yet another initiative, was to highlight the significance of the last marketplace in the city centre. The organisers asked sociologists and artists to reflect on the situation. The common end brought different social groups together: the merchants themselves, whose sole remaining option to defend their position was an artistic scenario (cf. direct democracy), took part in a number of projects until the market was shut down for good.

Cult Street (Franciscan Street) was brought to life through a collaboration of shopkeepers and citizens. With music and exhibitions, the shopkeepers created a sort of street parade atmosphere, from which their sales also benefit. The event is quite popular, as consumers like to be entertained while spending their money, like listening to live music while buying books. We also have to devote a word to the Culture Lab Cooperative, which was created by civil organisations around the city as an organisation for the protection of their interests. The group maintained an experimental cultural space on the border of city centre and periphery for two years, accommodating, among others, non-popular genres of music and art. Having lost the industrial building that housed these experiments (as it was taken over by the city’s ECC project), Culture Lab now rents several spaces on Király Street, which they renovate from grants funding, as well as their own means. One of these spaces is their “headquarters”, with offices, sleeping quarters, a kitchen and ateliers; another one is an alternative bicycle repair shop (Velosophie bike kitchen), and they also plan to start a youth hostel. The Lab’s significance in the city’s culture is essential: they have organised several street festivals and programmes involving residents, focusing their events on the goal of calling attention to the opportunities that lie in the unused spaces around the city. This kind of “soft urbanism”, the “rehabilitation” of public space and unused real estate via communal use, is a realistic alternative to mega investments that are themselves destined to fail without the support of the citizens and in want of a programme that is in harmony with the architectural designs.

The Lab’s latest programme took place in a long abandoned mine-shaft. Krétakör Mayfest could be realised because the renowned theatre director Árpád Schilling, also participating in the programme, created a performance based on the programme proposals submitted by the civils of Pécs in the early stages of the project. In the course of a long and intense cooperation, Krétakör (theatre company Chalk Circle) and the Lab put together an event from these that would involve different local social groups, as well as student age groups. Meanwhile, the spectators were also offered the opportunity to participate, and the entire event, in terms of infrastructure and logistics, relied on creative civil groups.

With Collegium Utopium, Krétakör appeared in the city more as a catalyst than a theatre group, fostering local initiatives. Despite its financial fragility and unpredictability, there are a number of lessons inherent in this logic: exploiting the potentials of the city, building on existing capacities and needs could be informative for larger institutions and programmes, which are often unable to represent subcultures, the visibility and active representation of which is essential to democratic urban culture.