Squat Place
The squat (from English "crouch") means the facility in a place to live without the agreement of the legal owner of the place. It can qualify the French "occupation without title." The squat is by definition illegal. By extension, squatting means the place so busy.
Summary |
From the seventeenth century, the term appears to mean squat illegal occupations of land by English peasants, the Diggers. On 1 April 1649 around London held the first known occupation, it is led by Gerrard Winstanley.
Variety of squats
A squat can accommodate a single person as several dozen in a small apartment downtown, an industrial wasteland of suburban or rural site. The living conditions can be varied depending on the initial state of the site, the means and motivations of people: young runaways refusing to integrate a home, migrants, artists without studio truckers nomadic Travellers private area host addicts homeless , advocates of the cause libertarian , people looking for an area of social life and community ...
Spaces and community
For a large majority of the squatters, the occupancy is therefore in a residential history marked by instability. This is why many squats explicitly provide a space dedicated to hosting people from crossing: the sleep'in. In addition, they often combine dwelling place and activity space: they try to develop a collective management of everyday life, through the rehabilitation of the site, the organization of meetings and discussions, the creation and dissemination of culture the establishment of workshops (or workshops), and of course information and political action. There are also squats that host free shops , commonly called free shops or "free zones" (thrift stores, internet, etc..).
The difficulty in finding property "available" and often unsanitary condition of these buildings may present problems of overcrowding and sanitation, although this is not always the case.
Why squatter?
By necessity
One can thus consider that the squat is involved in building a model of economy alternative. And indeed, the occupation has often leading cause of financial reasons: individuals, families or groups of people seeking a place to live, then they can not pay rent.
For example, in France, the first squatters appear after the Second World War. To protest against the administrative obstacles that hinder the implementation of the law of requisition, they proceed to the occupation of empty dwellings. Deriving from the Popular Movement for families , itself close to the Young Christian Workers , this movement was born in Marseille before moving to other towns. In five years, some 5000 families are resettled. These occupations are accompanied by a press campaign, including Catholic ( Spirit ), and an advocacy that educates the public on the issue of the housing crisis.
This example clearly shows that economic and political issues are ultimately not separable. And therefore, the Abbe Pierre at the Libertarian Communist Organisation (OCL), through Right to Housing (DAL), there are many who define the act of squatting as an expression of a social movement demanding the right to dignified life.
By conviction
Some squatters are close to the ultra-left , of the anarchist or autonomous movement and putting into practice the idea of rejection of private property. They argue that abolishing the rent and to share resources and costs, the squat can reduce dependence on money and help reclaim his life time.
They seek to test in a dedicated space, forms of social organization based on use values for the common good rather than on the right of private property and to promote cultural and political alternatives through the self. All residents shall meet as often as necessary, to take and take collective decisions involving the operation or development of the site. This mode of organization, according to its proponents, the advantage of not favoring the emergence of leaders.
Finally, in squats the most stabilized, there are systems of mutual aid and solidarity to protect individuals from excessive vulnerability. The squat can play a safety valve , and host populations for which there is not much room elsewhere. For example, the image of the slums of 1970's , it allows recent immigrants to benefit from the learning acquired by those who preceded them. Alternatively, there may be an acceptable alternative to psychiatric detention for certain psychotic.
Legalization and sustainability
Squats are a European phenomenon growing, following the tightening of access to housing, and the parallel increase in the number of vacant dwellings. Cities like Barcelona each have nearly a hundred squats in constant renewal. In France , despite the existence since 11 October 1945 a law known to requisition empty houses (which sought to regularize squatter made consecutive to the housing crisis in post-war) and the Besson Act of 1990 The occupation remains illegal in principle, it is a continuing offense , which means that each day of occupancy is a flagrant offense. On request of the owner, and after a procedure more or less long, so it is not uncommon for police to intervene to make the exclusion of the occupants. The issue of legalization arises to them. As such, we can distinguish schematically two factions among them:
- Proponents of legalization, which want to negotiate the right to occupy the premises for the long term. As in France, some squats artists (such as wasteland in Lyon) and even politics (like the Tanneries in Dijon), they negotiate with the government arguing the benefits of cultural and political presence in the neighborhood or sometimes get their legalization as a result of a power relationship (demonstrations, occupation of City Hall, etc. ...). It is sometimes viable solution, since in the Netherlands or Italy (social centers), many squatters have been well authenticated.
- The proponents of illegality, which are in a logic of confrontation with authority and refuse any negotiation. They believe that legalized squats and their inhabitants are involved in the repression against the other squats, less "acceptable" and is less accepted by the powers that be (squats Policy, "undocumented" and "poor" in general, etc..).
Shifting squats in France
The political movement
According to The Squat, AZ . This is a collection of documents and testimony of squatters in the 1990s (with a chapter on the history of squats).
The artistic movement
In a different approach, squats art emerged in Paris and major cities in France since the 1980s, including the movement Art Bell (1981). Responding to the need for space felt by many young artists, these places can be created or not run, manned, rehabilitated, open to the public, host events (concerts, alternative rock , exhibitions, happenings, parties, etc..). They can claim great old (the name of the boat wash-house, then occupied by Picasso impecunious, in the early twentieth century, a recurring theme in interviews with the artists squatters).
However most of squats before the 90 artists have been negotiating with the owners, a kind of rent being paid by the occupants. The arrangements are more affluent than we target buildings owned by state enterprises, communities, and institutions. It is so famous for refrigerators (91 Quai de la Gare), belonging to the SNCF, and invested in 1980: a very fast occupancy agreement is reached with the national society gradually, and this time thanks to the activism reasoned an association of defense, refrigerators will not only survive the development plans of the Paris Left Bank neighborhood, but in becoming the hub of living art, next to the pole and cultural heritage represented by galleries in the rue Louise Weiss, University of Paris VII and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.
The artistic movement of the squat after the Fall of the Wall
Any other history is squats born in the 90s, in the shock of the fall of the Berlin Wall. At that time Berlin is indeed the Mecca of artists including squatters. This rush of young Europeans to supermarkets abandoned the East will learn a whole generation of artists with tenure of public space which they then implemented back home. Identify a place to invest, build and develop very quickly in order to give meaning and legitimacy to the occupation, and organizing collective life ... In Paris the kickoff is given in a disused school in 1996: High School Diderot become a hive for 2 years gathering 300 artists in search of workshops, Pole Pole Pi Pi is also exemplary in that it fails on the pitfalls common to open areas, even as their openness to the presentation 'opportunistic exploitation of what is becoming a "zone" a-law. Squat First, the center also attracts artists Pi cohorts of homeless or undocumented, but also drug traffickers, who bring it closed in 1998 after the assault and gang rape in a workshop.
The spirit pole Pi will then move to other places: SSOCAPI, Pastourelle (Marais public) Matignon, Alternative, where you find the figures of the underground, Eduardo Albergaria, the "political" squats (d. 2000 in the squat, it promotes the precarious lease existing systems abroad) but also Yabon ((Franck Hiltenbrand) better known media today squat Coach, twentieth, after Channel 35 and a coup bid radiance to the mayor of the tenth ... but the painters Pierre Manguin and Atlan (now at The Mirror, XX), the sculptor Tito ...
Given the success of some experiments and the plebiscite of the population, municipalities have turned some of them in official places dedicated to culture (La Forge, hospital ephemeral squat Street Rivoli in Paris). Some have tried to recreate the creative effervescence that made their interest.
In search of sustainability
From the 2000s in effect pay the mobilization and the image of artist squats becomes positive in the media, encouraging the application of stabilizing the open. cf. the few academic studies on the subject A good example is that of Chez Robert, the free electron, at 59 rue de Rivoli (opened in 1999 by Kalex, Gaspard and Bruno, KGB), whose facade is decorated with psychedelic way revealed to passersby in downtown Paris, the existence and the exuberance of the movement of Squats artists. In 2001 the squat Rivoli is designated by the statistics of the Ministry of Culture as the 3rd place contemporary art in Paris in number of visitors: 40,000 on the previous year. Able to propose to the Town Hall, new owner of the place, a credible project sustainability, the group expelled in 2006 created an association that administers the space now legalized, renovated and reopened in 2010. A similar path is followed by the center, more "social", Petite Arugula, for the General (Parmentier and Sevres).
At the other extreme, emblematic places close after failing to find the levers of sustainability: the strength of the (project) group and the existence of institutional interlocutors. The case of the Mirror (opened in 2000 at 88 rue de Menilmontant in an abandoned factory, mirrors, Bosch), illustrates: in spite of workshops housing a score of artists and musicians, a famous concert hall ( open unconditionally to 5,000 groups in 10 years, and Sunday jam sessions announced in the press over official), who drew the audience in a poor neighborhood where bloom now connected rooms (Bellevilloise) and art galleries, bought the place by a private developer has been sentenced to deportation in June 2010, despite the open support of a town hall supporter but devoid of all levers of action.
Attempts at historical inventory of squats (and dead): Soccapi (street Picasso Factory Pali-Kao , Rue du Dr. Potain The Recollets , the ephemeral Hospital , Squat Exchange, Collective La Grange aux Belles , Free Electron rue de Rivoli, The Forge in Paris, L'Usine Montreuil -Art Mix Myris in Toulouse, La Valletta near Old Ales (30), the Blue Devils and Pigeon in Nice ...
Still many places in Paris: The Carriage, Suite (closed in summer 2010), Alice's Garden, the Theatre of glass ... trying to unite and organize festivals coordinated through the intersquat.
The intersquat
International linkages between political squats existed since the 1970s. Before the proliferation of squatters in Paris of all persuasions, will coordinate actions was born in 1989.
Examples of squats
See also
- History of struggles for housing in France
- Association Right to Housing (DAL)
- Housing rights
- Informal waste recovery
- Requisition citizen
- Ownership in France
- Illegality
- Poor housing
- Reciprocating
- Autonomous movement
- Autonomous Social Centre
- Communitarianism places of life
External Links
- The squat from A to Z : little guide written by squatters and squatters to open a squat and prevent or delay his deportation.
- Infokiosques.net / Squat : Squat texts devoted to the movement of anarchistic tendencies.
- A section of Le Monde diplomatique.
- Jean Berthaut, Parisquat - Squats politiques in Paris 1995-2000 , Design Workshop, libertarian, 2008.
- "New Territories of Art": new cultural boundaries? by Emmanuel Larrouturou, study of cultural policy in terms of artistic squats.
- "War of the squatter" : investigate the movement of squatters in Barcelona.
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