A contribution on behalf of N.EST Napoliest project to Emanuele Guidi's edited book URBAN MAKERS

Digging the memories, performing the future. Once upon Naples East
Edited by: Danilo Capasso and Diana Marrone
words: Diana Marone
Graphic layout: Danilo Capasso
Images: Danilo Capasso, Vincenzo Cavallo, Danilo Correale, N.EST, Masssimiliano Rianna, Marco Zezza
Translation: Sean Altamura, Diana Marrone

This work is a contribution to the book edited by Emanuele Guidi and published by B_BOOK Berlin in 2008, URBAN MAKERS. Parallel Narratives of Grassroots Practices and Tensions
ISBN 978-3-933557-92-6

All contributors are: Can Altay, Deniz Altay, Cecilia Andersson, Olivier Bedu, Franco Bianchini, Jude Bloomfield, Stéphane Brenier, Danilo Capasso, Martine Derain, Orhan Esen, Deniz Gül, Fabrizia Ippolito, Francesco Jodice, Diana Marrone, Michel Peraldi, Till Roeskens, Imogen Stidworthy, Paul Sullivan.

Urban Makers – Parallel Narratives of Grassroots Practices and Tensions presents research based on the case-study cities – Istanbul, Liverpool, Marseille and Naples – through essays and projects by artists, architects, urbanists, anthropologists, cultural planners and activists. The four cities were the starting point for the development of a multi-voice discourse that seeks to highlight the complexity of urban space and numerous problematic aspects of its production and representation.

The project analyses the spontaneous and informal practices developed in the urban sphere which are affecting the imaginaries through which the four cities are perceived: parallel economies, temporary occupations of public spaces, unauthorized inhabiting solutions as well as the self-organized actions against gentrification processes. Individuals or small 'communities of circumstance' perform those everyday tactics and acts of resistance within an ever-changing landscape, in which opportunities for spontaneous and unfiltered dialogue with the city are being narrowed down day by day.
Thus, it is by understanding the city dwellers as potential storytellers that the research capitalizes on the specific knowledge carried by people who remain largely invisible within dense urban fabrics. A specific knowledge that, on emerging, is able to re-subjectivise and re-configure the territory.

In this sense these city dwellers can be defined as urban makers, for they are the producers of a fluid, invisible urbanity that stratifies day after day, changes the face of the city, and contributes to building its imaginaries. Moving outside of official circles and mechanisms, they escape statistical analysis and exist as an instance of street-level politics, in constant tension with official policies.
The project has been part-funded by Liverpool Culture Company under the Cities on the Edge Programme. Cities on the Edge (CoTE) is a unique partnership of six European cities: Bremen, Gdansk, Istanbul, Liverpool, Marseilles and Naples. It is a major strand of our cultural celebrations during Liverpool`s year as European Capital of Culture and our major transnational project. These six cities have come together to explore their roles as historic ports and their sense of themselves as city-states, as islands within their nation.