It’s been already two weeks after I’ve spent my time in Pixelache. It was rather short, in part because I was ill for a day, but also Pixelache’s mode of operations was quite hard to comprehend in the beginning as to why Pixelache is interested in Food-Info-Activism.

Having started mainly with electronic arts in its inception, it seemed Pixelache and its staff have found themselves increasingly involved in food-related discourse in the recent years. Indeed, Pixelache has initiated a network and organised a seminar on Herbologies/Foraging Networks (2010), installed a Windowfarm in Kiasma art museum (2010), supported the curation of groWorld bazaar with FoAM (2011), co-organised the Open Data Cooking workshop (2012), and a Coop Camp focusing on food-related cooperation (2012). Still, Food-Info-Activism sounds far from what seems to be at the heart of Pixelache’s operation, and the question for me is how Pixelache will make an explicit thread that joins all of these with the other things that Pixelache is doing.

The biggest gain for me was getting acquainted with Pixelache and its people, getting to know a number of initiatives in Helsinki, and the area where those organisations and initiatives seem to operate – Suvilahti and the neighbouring area. Even this Monday (4.3.), I talked to Nathalie once again to make sure that we’re on the same page and we’re headed roughly to the same direction. As Nathalie said, I feel that the micro-residency was only the beginning of my contribution with Pixelache, as the ‘Foodycle’ event will take place in September with the aim to combine art, design, science and system-thinking to investigate, explore, provoke and urge thought in Finnish food culture.

Soon after I went to Slow Food Helsinki‘s meeting and have had a very positive discussion on the collaboration for ‘Foodycle’ event. Also, on Tuesday that same week at Nordic Sustainable Campus Network Seminar I met Hanna-Liisa of WWF Finland and was told that food is one of the main themes of WWF this year! I am hopeful all these coincidences will lead to collaborations and a great success of Foodycle.

After all, I feel I have earned and learned more from the experience than I contributed to Pixelache, but I know this is only the beginning. Thank you Andrew and Nathalie, I will be looking forward to the projects to come!

Pixelache is an organically developing, transdisciplinary platform for experimental art, design, research and activism in Helsinki, Finland. Organised by non-profit association Piknik Frequency Ry, it consists of an annual festival in Helsinki, as well as experimental art-science and technology productions, an educational programme called Pixelversity, residencies and other activities since 2002.

Pixelache Festival has its long history and has reputation as a professional event internationally, which has dynamically developed its content and contexts. It has been the largest electronic arts festival in Nordic region, and is part of an international network of festivals focused on open-source culture.

Having started mainly with electronic arts in its inception, Pixelache has evolved to include experimental interaction and electronics, renewable energy production/use, bioarts and art-science culture, grassroots organising and networks, politics and economics of media/technology, alternative economic cultures, VJ culture and audiovisual performances, media literacy and engaging environmental issues as its interest areas over the years. Taken together, it sounds like, at least to me, sustainability discourse through participatory art form and activism in digital era.

In the past years Pixelache and its staff have found themselves increasingly involved in food related discourse. Pixelache has initiated a network and organised a seminar on Herbologies/Foraging (2010), installed a Windowfarm in Kiasma art museum (2010), co-organised groWorld bazaar with FoAM (2011), Open Data Cooking workshop (2012), a Coop Camp focusing on food-related cooperation (2012).

What’s great about my micro-residency is that Pixelache does not have any specific agenda in working with me as this is not a production-driven one but a rather experimental and organisational one in order to explore what strategic design can bring to the table for activities of Pixelache. As for me, this week will be a very nice vacation from my doctoral study and Beyond Beef Finland panel discussion both of which I have been too close to for quite a while. However, my intention naturally will be somehow embedding my research and the panel discussion to the upcoming event in September if possible.

Besides the topical area Andrew and I will be working on this week, I have become very much interested in where Pixelache office is located – Suvilahti and its neighbouring area. We took a nice short walk to Restaurant Vanha Kalasatama where many of the construction workers come to have lunch. Right next to the restaurant is the coal-fired Hanasaari power plant that not only generates electricity but also provides district heating to even where I live. This power plant is still included in the development plan, but many speculate that the power plant will likely be gone in a few decades as the site around it is being developed to be one of more expensive residential areas. The food was affordable and fairly good, and the view was magnificent – no wonder there is strong drive to redevelop this area rather that giving back to the nature.

I have spent most of the day absorbing what Pixelache has been doing in the recent past and where it can go from here. Also, the burdensome question of “what extra strategic design can bring to Pixelache” remains untouched as I would like to broaden up the question a little more than what I have been doing myself as well. Please come back for my reflection on the micro-residency by the end of the week.

We were lucky to have people with many different backgrounds: industrial and strategic design, architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture, which enabled each of us to focus on a few topics to develop deep insight so that we could help others see problems from various perspectives while working in teams. Nightly briefings kept everyone clued in and these discussions were very fertile. We were also lucky to have students from different parts of the world in the course, as well as working with Cambodian students during our stay, which made the whole visit fluent and fruitful. Soon we’ll return to Helsinki and form groups with those who did not travel, expanding the diverse set of perspectives even more.

We are free to choose a site for our studio projects. Among the most terrible of the relocation sites was Trapieng Krasang, where the urban poor from four different places were involuntarily relocated to some 20kms outside the city and they now struggle to survive. This is a population of Tuk-Tuk drivers, Moto-Dub drivers, bakers, street fruit vendors, waiters and waitresses who have been relocated away from their jobs and now have no income. One lady, for example, makes two and a half dollars a day if she goes to the city to sell vegetables. However, it costs two dollars to get to the city! The relocated families were each given nothing but a 5 by 12 meter plot on a former rice field. The earth is fertile there, but the plot is far too small to be the source of living, let alone the money to build a shelter.

This is compounded by the issue of unclear entitlements, which dates back to the Khmer Rouge regime when many citizens were herded out of the city. One third were killed and many of the survivors never returned. Eventually, those who did return to the city settled wherever they could – with whatever means they could. A few decades later, the Cambodian government, challenged with deep-rooted corruption, is selling the prime locations of Phnom Penh city to private investors who are taking advantage of murky land ownership status.

Development in the city of Phnom Penh is another significant problem. Two years back, a private investor bought the Boeung Kak Lake area which is about 1 square kilometer and began filling in the lake to build a hotel and resort. People near the lake have been forcibly relocated and a large fire during our stay in Phnom Penh cost hundreds of families their homes in a single night. Now Boeung Kak Lake is as small as one third and soon will be 10 per cent of its original size. As summer brings monsoon season we will see the impact of the such radical environmental changes. Recently the Royal University of Fine Art as well as the National Museum have been sold to a private investor and the students are under threat of eviction.

Some can say that development in Phnom Penh is giving jobs to construction workers, hopefully boosting the economy, and making the city a better place to live in the end. However, the number of the people evicted from the city is much higher than the number of workers hired. Does development have to be at the expense of so many homes, jobs, and lives lost?

The economy of urban poor in Phnom Penh is shallow and fragile: many of their livelihoods are very much dependent on tourism, a competitive industry with significant competition from nearby Bangkok. Cambodia imports many things, including foodstuffs, from Thailand and Vietnam, thus making commodities expensive. The shift from agrarian to industrial society, then an industrial, and on to a service and knowledge-based economy appears to be a long journey for Cambodia.

City in Crisis course does not pretend that problems of this nature can be mitigated immediately. Rather, it aims to have us students aware of and ready for the real problems of architecture and design for a longer term.

Back in Helsinki, we’re focusing on five different projects: a master plan including urban farming solutions for the relocation sites, in particular Trapieng Krasang as a case study; a “sub-center” concept for relocation sites, which brings markets and basic facilities to the area; the rehabilitation of remaining lake areas south of Phnom Penh, with specific attention to management of sewage flow; disaster management for slum inhabitants; and finally mine, a strategic road map and a framework for the economical development of the urban poor of Cambodia.

My question started from the living condition of Trapieng Krasang but my interest has soon extended to the economy of urban poor and the mindset: what does a pathway to economic stability look like for the relocated families of Trapieng Krasang?

As I type this, I’m 8000km away from home, waiting for a return flight from Phnom Penh, Cambodia back to Helsinki. I’ve been here for two weeks with nine of my fellow students as part of the City in Crisis course. Although I came to the airport three and a half hours early, I don’t mind because I wanted to escape from the city: there’s been a lot to digest after two quick weeks of fieldwork.

During that time we’ve been visiting Angkor Wat, the floating village near Siem Reap, Silk Island, a few slum areas and few eviction sites in Phnom Penh as well as relocation sites where those evicted now struggle to survive. We’ve also met and learned from representatives from various NGOs: STT, OPC, UN Habitat to name a few. Corruption, lack of secure tenure, almost no industry, false development, lack of education, slavery… this is the reality for many of Cambodia’s urban poor.

Architects in the wealthy parts of the world have a tendency of being primarily interested in what their more successful counterparts in other wealthy parts of the world are busy with. The professional magazines in Europe, North America and the rich parts of Asia are concentrating on the “wow-factor” and its various manifestations. It is far less common that these publications deal with the everyday problems of the majority of the world’s problem. –Hennu Kjisik, Veikko Vasko, & Hunphrey Kalanje. The Final Report of City in Crisis, May 2009

This phenomena is evident in recently published Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary Architecture that introduces 16 Finnish projects among 588 European projects, but only 26 projects from whole Africa and 184 projects from Asia. As pointed out by Hunphrey Kalanje, one of teachers of the course, architecture is in many cases political: it works with capital, for capital, and by capital.

The City in Crisis course has been offered since 1993 by the department of architecture in Aalto University School of Science and Technology with an aim of strengthening the global awareness and social conscience of its students, as well as increasing our understanding of the realities of life and conditions of professional work in developing countries.

Since these things are notoriously difficult to be taught in lecture halls and studios, the annual fieldwork period has become an essential part of the teaching and learning process since the beginning. After a total of ten years in Africa – Rusfisque, Benin and Grand Popo in particular – City in Crisis has turned its eyes to the east, and the first group of students traveled to Cambodia at the end of February 2008.

The course is designed in two parts: the first of which aims to acquaint its students with various development issues all over the world and local vernacular principles. During the autumn semester in 2009, we read about and studied about four themes: development discourse, global issues, urban agendas, and construction in developing economies, which was followed by research into the vernacular principles of indigenous architecture in different climates.

The second part consists of lectures and seminars dedicated to issues in Cambodia, the fieldwork to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and eventually the studio work back in Helsinki. From January of this year invited lecturers have talked about issues in relation with water, development, corruption, environmental issues, capital, and speculation in Phnom Penh.

After studying these issues from a range of scales, both from the global to the local in Cambodia, and from the past to the present we packed our bags for two weeks in Cambodia. It was time to see and to “live” the reality.

Continue to read the part II.