Universal Forum of Cultures - Barcelona 2004, Inc.
permanent page for information and coordination of proposals -
updated 29/11/2002
re-updated 10/2003
"The event will be an apotheosis of 'cultures' as a theme for political demogogy and mediatic trivialization, a novelty in which cultural diversity will be reduced to pure parody for mass consumition and institutional good concience. A circus, in which human diversity will be exhibited as a grand and wonderful show of lights and colors."
[ El gran circo de las culturas de Manuel Delgado (anthropologist)]
align="right">..::.: k0mpArIng Di$cOur$es :.::..
URBAN AREA :: renovated, remodeled, modernised
"The first Universal Forum of Culture will take place in Barcelona. The initial cermemonies will take place in new buildings, of around 50 hectares, located near to the Beso`s river, just where the Avenue Diagonal meets the sea, being in part the municipality of Sant Adria`. With the regeneration of the zone and the construction of better infrastructure, following 2004, Barcelona will have gained an urban area, a new residential, cultural and economic quarter."
[THE SETTING, official Forum web page]
"Pilar Prim believes that Forum 2004 has a double defect: the architechtural excess and the lack of relevance to everyday life.
In a world in which the growth of cities is unstoppable, the understanding that its problems are what to a great extent define the parameters of our lives, of peace and of sustainability."
[Comunicado from the Barcelona Association of Arquitechs Pilar Prim, November 2001]
the fayre of diversity :: CULTURES
"The Forum will be a great celebration and demonstration of the creativity and cultural wealth of all peoples. The the same time it will offer a framework for reflecting collectively upon the questions that affect the development of societies and which are preconditioned with the new forms of world-wide relations, communication and interchange." [From the
Diary of Principles and Values of 2004]
"... nowadays culture has become a mere substitute of the discredited idea of race and serves, but much more subtly, the same goals, which are none other than the naturalisation of social imbalance and ideological justification of social exclusion.
Discrimination, segregation and ostracism are today in essence "cultural". When once one spoke of "inferior races", one now speaks of "cultures that are incompatible with our values"
[Declaration of the 11th Anthropological Congress]
PARTICIPATION :: citizenship democracy welcome exclusion good government
·This is the reason why, convinced that convivence and dialog among cultures is impossible without an explicit spirit of solidarity, Barcelona Forum 2004 invites international organizations, public administrations, institutions, foundations, corporations, churches, and NGOs of all the world, to present, in the space of the "Plaza", its activities and campaigns meant to accomplish the tasks of UN's Millennium Declaration"
[
SOLIDARITY AND COOPERATION, offical Forum web page]
"Early in the morning, the Barcelona city police forced the entrance of the cement mixers. The parks and gardens of Forat de la Vergonya, are being substituted for a concrete square. One neighbour in a nerby street, forgotten by the police, comments "... by force, like as if being raped ..." [Forat de la vergonya, 19/11/2001
>>>]
new technologies develop :: SUSTAINABILITY
"The city of knowledge is the city that we already have, but it is richer and better connected with the world. It is the city that replaces the old industrial chimneys with the bits and neurones of the knowledge revolution. It is an intelligent city, with ideas and the capacity to make them reality, which translates as a better quality of life for its inhabitants."
[The mayor of Barcelona, Joan Clos' speech, El Perio'dico, 9/10/2002]
"We want to speak of the many citizens of Barcelona whose properties and whose comfort are suffering because of this style of aggresive, speculatory, unjust and immoral urbanisation.
You can see how in Poblenou they are carving up a neighbourhood. Where, using the alibi of the renovation of obsolete industrial zones and the name 22@, social cohesion is being broken-down and they are taking from us hundred-year-old homes, productive industries and our historial heritage."
[COMUNICADO for the Association of those effected by Plan 22@]
LINKS
:: web page of resistance to the Forum ::
:: ARTICLES @ indymedia ::
- Declaration
of the 11th Anthropological Congress, september 2002
- Comunicado of the Association of Architects Pilar Prim, Barcelona, November 2001
- Open letter from Oficina 2004 to the Forum
- Debate 1 september 2002 (a tv channel for the forum)
- Debate 2 july 2002 (the MRG and the forum)
- Debate 3 july 2002 (civil disobedience)
:: MORE INFO @ indymedia :: links to sections
>>>$pekulation
>>>immigration
>>>state and Power VS cultural communities
Would you like
to receive forum news directly in your mailbox?
to be a member of "Club2004"?
..::.: and now -- WhAT aNtIFoRuM d0 wE wANt??? :.:..
so, on with ideas! we only have to give them shape and color!
>>>proposals in indymedia year 2002 :: PUBLISH your own proposal! (remember to classify them as FORUM2004)
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