Belgium, London, and Barcelona host offices of the nonprofit City Mine(d), an organization that creates interventions in public spaces and supports similarly-minded people and initiatives. With more than 70 interventions to their name, City Mine(d) is accredited, living up to their self-description as a “production house.”
Several influential initiatives have come out of City Mine(d), whose action-research arm, Generalized Empowerment, revisits and scrutinizes each action, feeding back a constant commentary on the influence of their interventions on urban development.
Precare, for example, is responsible for 14 building reappropriations, serving since 1999 as an intermediary between property-owners of temporary vacant premises and artistic or social initiatives in need of workspace.
After a first phase of informal support, (1999 – 2003 ), and a second more systematic laboratory phase in which instruments were designed, tested and disseminated ( 2003 – 2005 ), PRECARE has been working in a structural way on the actual use of a series of creative workspaces in empty buildings for almost two years.
City Mine(d) is currently in the stages of pre-planning Precare‘s extension into London and Barcelona.
Another, Towards A Subjective Collective Cartography, is an attempt to represent the territory of Brussels in a subjective way, done in collaboration with Recyclart, Constant, and the graphic designers from Speculoos.
Towards has divided into two parts, one resulting in the creation of a subjective atlas of Brussels, the other (Trésor) a concatenation of existing cartographic softwares, aimed at extending their functionality.
An ongoing list of City Mine(d) projects, including those in which the organization played a support role, is available on their website.
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