City, Activism & Agency

This short text, published alongside other texts that discuss and visually explore the project Oasis No. 8 by Markus Jeschaunig, argues that interventions such as this ephemeral banana-plantation fed by waste heat from refrigeration units contribute to a growing body of work around the critical reading of the city and (urban) development, production and reproduction, appropriation and re-appropriation of space through the lens of art and architecture. Secondly, the bananahood group should be considered in the context of the emergence of urban (activist) spatial practices that have an interest in articulating wider ecological concerns through projects that mobilise and actualise alternate socio-politico imaginaries. And, thirdly, it is the role, work and functioning of these networked practices that potentially suggest ways in which normative ways of making can be interposed and interrupted.

Schneider, Tatjana. ‘City, Activism & Agency’. In Urban Oasis, edited by Markus Jeschaunig, 30–35. Bielefeld | Berlin: Kerber Verlag, 2018.