VILNIUS COOP exhibition venue
Gediminas Avenue no. 27
Wednesday 18 November, 7pm


Siarhei Liubimau picks the example of the recent multi-level attempts to re-brand Warsaw district Old Praga as a district, where creativity is the dominant constituent for its modernization, in order to think in which way such re-branding means multi-level manipulation of space for tactical ends. The terms of ‘re-branding’, ‘modernization’, ‘manipulation’, ‘new production’ and ‘re-scaling’ [of Old Praga space] – all frequently used in order to signify the processes of the shift to a ‘new’ or ‘creative’ economy within a relatively limited spatial unit – are juxtaposed with the term ‘re-bounding of space’, which promises to give access to more layers of such a shift.


Siarhei Liubimau is teaching at the European Humanities University (Vilnius) and writing doctoral dissertation at the Graduate School for Social Research, Polish Academy of Science (Warsaw). He was trained in the fields of cultural studies (EHU, Minsk), sociology (CSS, Warsaw) and urban studies (Bauhaus Kolleg, Dessau). Currently he does research and writes about spatial forms and practices present in urban units on state borders and on the urban culture and alcohol-based cultural industries. In the year 2007 he was a co-founder of the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism, serving as a platform for the scholars and practitioners interested in urban research.