Editorial fellowship reSITE - Shared Cities Atlas - Lila Athanasiadou
Lila Athanasiadou
As an editorial fellow in the Shared Cities: Creative Momentum project, Athanasiadou was commissioned to research the notion of sharing within the context of Berlin, in relation to the ongoing project Hacking Urban Furniture initiated by ZK/U. The research was presented in the form of a micro-narrative, argument in a visual form, and follows the evolution of the bus shelter, its formative role in the creation of PPPs(Private-Public Partnerships.) It also elaborates on how the recent prototypes that were developed by Berlin-based company, Wall Gmbh, intersect with the open data discourse, the sharing of knowledge in public space, and its potential to empower local communities. The argument centers around the recent changes in the business model of the company from an economy based on attention (advertising) supported by production through time-labor to one based on intention (data extractivism) driven by speculation on possibilities to get monetized added value. Through making an argument for open data as distribution of public knowledge, Athanasiadou suggests to rethink speculation not as merely relying on predictive capabilities to turn a probability into a possibility, but rather as the inherent potential of an action to produce a variety of results therefore allowing space for a re-valuation of social values along with existing economic ones.
