Informality. Again. And Autumn.

Maybe you remember my post about Zamimpilo? The time is just right to remind you about it ...

I spent my day in Braamfontein today and I must say: I was not aware that there is another gentrify-related spot in the city with a sense of community (the other), but now I am (thanks to).

While drinking the morning coffee (there), I browsed through articles concerning the topic of a project series coined "Informal Studio" (this links to the former project in Ruimsig). The Goethe-Institut and the University of Johannesburg cooperation addressed this last year: Marlboro South, a small squatter slip located between Alexandra and Marlboro Gardens, created during Apartheid-heydays as a buffer zone between rich, white suburban and township life (other links: here, here, and here). 50 architecture students were involved in it and tried to experience something the project director called "in-situ upgrading". Over the course of seven weeks they met with residents and documented (photographically, with interviews, with videos, in mapping approaches) how the community is organised, how it 'works', what can be done about it (improved?). 

It is always interesting to read and see how communities develop out of nothing. Marlboro is special, as Ares Kalandides (inpolis) describes (taxi ranks) it in his mini-blog-series about informality (settlements) in (art) and (architecture) around Johannesburg out-of-his (white, european) perspective.

But still: the gap between Braamfontein and Marlboro South or Zamimpilo could not be larger - actually it can be named nearly insurmountable.
Maybe this refers also to my own impressions, f.i. in Hillbrow (as described here). It is not so much the missing infrastructure, because this seems to be a misunderstanding (some residents say, that they would have access [the wide sense] to meet their needs, getting water and electricity for free). It is more a lack of integration. Those fifty students needed to be admitted, to some kind of guidance and guard ("Right of admission reserved"), they needed someone with knowledge to the languages and networks, otherwise they would have been chased out of this area as if every stranger would be a transgressive intruder (what she/he is when you put on your philosophical glasses), as if the area would not be a public space (anymore).

So, how is it possible to live together, even if different in origin and socialisation etc., how to acknowledge differences while tolerate their consequences (materials, electronic devices, access [the wide sense again] through constant jobs)?

The difference starts in everyday life: having a coffee in De Beer Street, having a look over the city (Carlton Centre for starters to gain knowledge of its basic architecture), having more airtime than R5, having supplies at home versus the diametric opposite.

During the afternoon coffee, a flock of kids under ten years of age came to me with a paper list on which I was asked to sign and, after that, donate an amount of money to the Drum Majorettes, so that they can invest in proper uniforms.
I rejected their request, because I found it cruel to send children for money. But if asked about that they said, they are collecting the money because they like their centre where they would have more fun than at their homes. So, what is cruel now? Predicaments, all over.

PS The weather is perfect by now: brisk, chilly nights (temperature drops to 3°C) and warm, windy days (above 20°C) with a sky covered by racing clouds and a low sun which sends out a slow, shivering light, its beams touching the skin only from time to time, which makes Autumn so wonderfully, desirably unsatisfactory.