The Park—Investigation in a Post-Productive Cluster: Kunstraum Lakeside

December 12 to February 2

Peter Spillmann / Katja Reichard / Marion von Osten

The Park—Investigation in a Post-Productive Cluster

Throughout the history of human common areas, the park has played the role of both model and stage, functioning as artificial paradise, as a showcase for innovative technologies, as a masterpiece of the latest engineering arts, as proof of man’s mastery over nature, as a mirror of its times, as a celebration of the transformation of ideology into materiality, as a political arena, as governmental terrain, as teatrum mundi, as pars pro toto, and also as a place of retreat, idyll, freedom, as a place outside of society’s utility zones.

The Baroque park, for example, was designed in accordance with the latest scientific findings – manifesting sophisticated engineering that helped create a symmetrical, ceremonial stage setting with the ruler at its focal point. Baroque society promenaded through the park, remaining in perpetual motion (panoptically controlled through the sightlines dictated by status at court), past illusionist special effects, perspectival ornament and reflecting pools, through the theatre of nature, produced on the basis of the grid and according to the rules of Euclidian optics and geometry.

In the English landscape garden by contrast, the hierarchic Baroque ideology is replaced by an idealized nature in keeping with the new liberal worldview and economic order. The self-aware subject wanders down winding paths through a terrain shaped by overlapping perspectives, and calls out, astounded “Aha!” when suddenly encroaching on the previously invisible boundary ditch separating the designed garden from the surrounding landscape. The individual finds his own way and discovers on his own the surprises that await him within the defined framework. The park acts as a reformative educational project, the invisible hand that formed it also molding a new subjectivity in man’s commercial understanding of the world. The landscape garden’s function as a model for emulation thus also prompted reforms in agricultural production and in the education system, beyond the trench separating the park from the outside world.

In the park, the world shows itself in its subtlest variation, and the world comes to the parks to be entertained there, to contemplate, to perceive and to encounter. Today, park-like ensembles are conceived as consumption zones or amusement parks, or as places to live and/or work. The future trend in architectonic projects calls for an island separated from the surrounding urban or rural landscape, a gated community in which all daily needs are covered within a park-like setting. The rules of concentration foresee having everything in one place in the future. The citizen becomes a parkizen.

Since 2005, we have been conducting discussions with companies, technicians, employees and operators on the grounds of Lakeside Science & Technology Park. As we learned more and more about their fields of activity and their visions, we started asking ourselves with increasing frequency what role the suffix “park” actually plays in the economic and social model of the science & technology park? Is “park” supposed to signify a new style of working? We began our project with the idea in mind of the freeform working conditions often found in the IT industry. In the course of our research, however, we discovered that work at Lakeside Park proceeds in a quite regimented manner, with free time usually spent outside the park. We therefore wondered whether the word “park” is used here more in the sense of “industrial park,” solely to describe the fact that different companies occupy the same grounds, which are then labeled as such in the cityscape? Or does the term “park” convey, like historical park layouts, the concept of consolidation and the enclosure’s role as social model? What is a science & technology park then actually – particularly when an art space is located in it that exhibits works by artists who take a critical view of the economy? What community and what knowledge are supposed to be produced in this park, and what role does culture play in this process?

Science & technology parks as described in the literature represent a widespread model for the local organization of globalized production structures. Their goal is innovation in the fields of research, development and design, culminating in marketable prototypes, the production of which is then usually outsourced, i.e. takes place elsewhere. Gathering together established businesses, start-ups and research institutions that complement one another in their offerings and competencies allegedly makes the contingent economic processes easier to plan and control. A park often specializes in a certain field, such as mobility management for example. The aim here is to generate momentum in the local economy. In the regional context, science & technology parks therefore take on a strongly symbolic character, used as political instruments to activate and promote local economic processes that are compatible with the invocations of globalized business. Governments in economically weak regions all over the world initiate such parks as incubators to stimulate the development of new businesses. In most cases, these projects receive public subsidies to support their development and maintenance. The companies located in technology parks are sometimes directly or indirectly state-supported, or lured there with the promise of subsidies; after all, the symbolic power inherent in an engine for innovation and progressive entrepreneurship depends to a large extent on the actual composition of firms a park can boast. Various actors are brought together in a park who would ordinarily come into contact with one another only rarely due to the asymmetry of their significance on the global market (multinationals, local small- to medium-sized enterprises, start-ups). These parks are thus only made possible through private-public partnership constellations. As a public-private entity, they must themselves make a profit, reinvest it and be in a position to expand. Science & technology parks are hence an artificial agglomeration called forth by the logic of the free market, in which competition and exchanges between various actors can apparently be harnessed to the benefit of the local economy.

Another central feature of science & technology parks is their affiliation with existing educational institutions, such as universities and universities of applied sciences. In terms of the educational sector, technology parks have the special function (which extends beyond the local context) of pushing applied science for the benefit of the companies involved, helping them to deliver products that are marketable both today and tomorrow. In this sense, science & technology parks are the sign and the locus of a learning economy. They stand for new developments and reforms, and can also serve to politically legitimize the privatization and commercialization of the educational sector. With their campus-like feel or striking architectural forms (architecture of excellence), they represent a fusion of company grounds and research institution designed to visibly convey the concepts of “prosperity,” “innovation” and “future opportunities.” They often enjoy a public impact far exceeding their actual economic significance, sometimes dominating public discussions. The park concept as a condensed economic and social model therefore influences our ideas about knowledge production, culture and education.

Lakeside Park in addition functions as a cultural model that not only promotes art in architecture, but also sponsors critical art projects involving ongoing processes. As artists in the Lakeside Park art space, we no longer represent an outside world, but are insiders here. We view the park in its character as both model and practical example as the attempt to “insource” knowledge and social conscience/commitment into the nucleus of the postfordist economy, while at the same time outsourcing inhibitions to innovation and production areas that are viewed as inferior. Our film is therefore about rationality and affect, the calculation, planning and artificially created/simulated environment that structure the park, and the borderline between inside (model for the future) and outside (the present day in need of development) from the perspective of insourced “parkizens.”