Following the exhibition at Galerija Miroslav Kraljević a two-day conference was organized with the conceptual participation of Mario Kikaš, Tomislav Medak, and the Multimedia Institut (mi2), bringing together a number of participating artists, relevant experts and theoreticians, as well as activists. Within the conference framework, there were lectures by Boris Buden and Neil Brenner. Inspired by the Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina project partnership, the conference was envisioned to serve as a platform for discussing neoliberal privatization in an attempt to draw connections between the process as experienced internationally as well as locally, thereby sharing experiences of struggles for public space in disparate sites, as well as discussing certain artworks showcased at the exhibit.

Neil Brenner’s lecture abstract follows:  The “city” has become a major focal point–both a site and a stake–of intense social, political and ecological struggles.  Such struggles are powerfully mediated through urban ideologies that attempt to naturalize or normalize the profoundly unequal power relations and destructive socio-ecological arrangements upon which everyday city life and worldwide urbanization processes are grounded.  One of the key tasks of critical urban theory is to illuminate the origins, operations and implications of such ideologies and, in so doing, to help construct alternative vocabularies and cartographies that might facilitate new forms of urbanism based upon radical-democratic empowerment, sociospatial justice and ecological rationality.  This lecture surveys the role of urban ideologies in contemporary capitalism and outlines various ways in which the methodological orientations, historical-geographical metanarratives and normative-political agendas of critical urban theory might destabilize and transcend them.  Building upon collaborative work with Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, the lecture concludes by relating this approach to contemporary debates on neoliberal urbanism.