As part of its ongoing multimedia exhibition project ‘Endless City’, MAMA is launching an open-submission competition: ‘Reclaiming the Street’. ‘Endless City’ is a multi-part project, initiated in the summer of 2009, in which MAMA explores the relationships between skateboard culture, the public realm and (visual) art, with a wink to the heritage of the Situationist International.

‘Reclaiming the Street’ is an open-submission competition aimed at established and emerging artists, architects and skateboarders who have or wish to establish a relationship with skateboard culture. We are looking for unpublished and unrealised concepts for the (re)organisation of urban public spaces in order to create a place for multiple user groups including skateboarders. Whereas in the past skateboarders were driven away from public spaces and then ‘caged up’ in purpose-built skateparks, we envisage a new phase in which youth culture and skateboard culture will be integrated within the public realm. In addition to our wish to provide a valid place for skateboard culture, we see skateboard culture as an instrument for improving the quality of certain public spaces.
‘Reclaiming the Street’ takes the idea of skateboard culture as ‘homo ludens’ as its starting point for building bridges between the all those who make use of the public realm. continue reading