Marjetica Potrč is a Ljubljana-based artist and architect whose work has been featured widely in exhibitions throughout Europe and the Americas and who has received numerous awards, including the Hugo Boss Prize (2000) and a Caracas Case Project Fellowship (2002) from the Federal Cultural Foundation, Germany, and the Caracas Urban Think Tank, Venezuela.
Marjetica Potrč is often described as an urban anthropologist: her work identifies cities as living and breathing entities, highlighting their changing landscapes and how they redefine and reinvent themselves. Potrč is interested in cities in transition, and in the actions of individuals aiming to take control of their lives and to create self-sustaining solutions to the problems they face. Her work promotes the drive of individual initiative and self-organisation that exists within global urban settings and illustrates the shifting of power-and the tensions this can create-from central institutions to individual self-determination in urban planning. A good example of this is the Dry Toilet project, a collaboration between Potrc and Liyat Esakov in La Vega barrio within Caracas. The project involved the construction of a dry, ecologically safe toilet in an area of Caracas without access to the municipal water supply. The toilet reduces water consumption, providing a long-term, sustainable solution to the problem of waste water. The project contributes to increasing the general awareness within poor communities of self-sustainable technologies, and thereby points to a shift in power away from institutions and towards individuals.
As has been described elsewhere, Potrc's work illustrates the differences between 'urban planning'and 'urban nature'. For Liverpool, Potrc's work is of critical interest, her subject matter helping to remind us of the complexity of dealing with the evolving urban organism. For Liverpool, a city redefining itself and embracing its radical population decline, her work helps to highlight the need for more individual action within the context of urban regeneration. In many parts of Liverpool, disenfranchised communities will need to be at the heart of the emerging change to the urban landscape. At the present time it is clear that these changes are still driven by central institutions who have yet to unleash the creative spirit and self-sustaining nature within individuals.
Paul Kelly
[LESS]Marjetica Potrč is a Ljubljana-based artist and architect whose work has been featured widely in exhibitions throughout Europe and the Americas and who has received numerous awards, including the Hugo Boss Prize (2000) and a Caracas Case Project Fellowship (2002) from the Federal Cultural Foundation, Germany, and the Caracas Urban Think Tank, Venezuela.
Marjetica Potrč is often described as an urban anthropologist: her work identifies cities as living and breathing entities, highlighting their changing landscapes and how they redefine and reinvent themselves. Potrč is interested in cities in transition, and in the actions of individuals aiming to take control of their lives and to create self-sustaining solutions to the problems they face. Her work promotes the drive of individual initiative and self-organisation that exists within global urban settings and illustrates the shifting of power-and the tensions this can create-from central institutions to individual self-determination in urban planning. A good example of this is the Dry Toilet project, a collaboration between Potrc and Liyat Esakov in La Vega barrio within Caracas. The project involved the construction of a dry, ecologically safe toilet in an area of Caracas without access to the municipal water supply. The toilet reduces water consumption, providing a long-term, sustainable solution to the problem of waste water. The project contributes to increasing the general awareness within poor communities of self-sustainable technologies, and thereby points to a shift in power away from institutions and towards individuals.
As has been described elsewhere, Potrc's work illustrates the differences between 'urban planning'and 'urban nature'. For Liverpool, Potrc's work is of critical interest, her subject matter helping to remind us of the complexity of dealing with the evolving urban organism. For Liverpool, a city redefining itself and embracing its radical population decline, her work helps to highlight the need for more individual action within the context of urban regeneration. In many parts of Liverpool, disenfranchised communities will need to be at the heart of the emerging change to the urban landscape. At the present time it is clear that these changes are still driven by central institutions who have yet to unleash the creative spirit and self-sustaining nature within individuals.
Paul Kelly
