WILD CAPITAL 
Thursday,
August 25		    

6 p.m.:
Opening reception in the World Trade Center, Dresden
Inaugural speeches:
Katrin Klingan (artistic director of relations), Christiane Mennicke (director of Kunsthaus Dresden, artistic director of WILD CAPITAL), Iara Boubnova (artistic director of Visual Seminar, Sofia)

(text Christiane Mennicke)
"People say that the weather was better in the old days", says Iara Boubnova. "We talk about it everyday".
"For those who are just arriving, please help yourselves to earphones for the translation!" says Christiane Mennicke.
  

7 p.m.:
The City in the Tug of War between Investor Interests and Public Administration
Torsten Birne (architecture critic, Co-curator Wild Capital / Wildes Kapital, Dresden):
Producing the City – the Altmarkt in Dresden
(text)
Milla Mineva (cultural scholar, Sofia):
Wild Longing for Capitalism
 (text)

Torsten Birne is explaining how Dresden's City Council is fighting the disfigurement of public space by regulating intrusive advertising boards and by stipulating the use of sandstone panels for cladding facades. In Dresden, two standard sized panels are in use, "An industrial production of artificial naturalness", explains Torsten.

Milla Mineva presents Mafia Baroque, with its towers and columns. It's getting late. She hopes that Luchezar Boyadjiev will present a project which she has mentioned, "But", she adds, "hopefully not this evening!" I admire the interpreter's ability to keep up with Milla's pace.

Then Adam Scrivener talks about the Friends of Dresden and The American Friends of Dresden. They see Dresden's post war, socialist rebuilding as a second bombing, they being "just as ideological as the ideology they criticise", he tells us. Adam describes the millimeter precision of the reconstruction of the Church of Our Lady, it being only 10mm off the original. "This precision", says Adam, "is a process far deeper than I can speak about.”

 

  

8 p.m.:
Adam Scrivener (artist, London / Toulouse): City as Will and Idea
(material)