Every last Fri­day of the month, cyclists meet in both large and small cities to take to the streets in con­voy and as sheer mass. The prin­ci­ple of this gath­er­ing uses a rule of the road traf­fic reg­u­la­tions accord­ing to which a group of at least twelve cyclists is con­sid­ered a vehi­cle and can, there­fore, pass through a traf­fic light that turns red. Those who cycle in front decide where to go. The cyclists want to draw atten­tion to the fact that even today, the car-friend­ly city from the last cen­tu­ry is still a real­i­ty in many places. Thus, Crit­i­cal Mass is a peace­ful and sol­idary protest against the hege­mo­ny of motor­ized traf­fic in urban plan­ning worldwide.

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Prison reforms, fair nation­al bud­gets, jus­tice for immi­grants, the appro­pri­ate deter­mi­na­tion of tax bur­dens, the erad­i­ca­tion of racial seg­re­ga­tion in schools, the fight against cor­rup­tion, or the ques­tion­ing of police sur­veil­lance of the broad public—all of these are top­ics for the Cen­tre for Artis­tic Activism (C4AA). What is unique in their work is the com­bi­na­tion of art meth­ods and for­mats with social move­ments. In work­shops, sem­i­nars, sum­mer acad­e­mies, and oth­er pro­grams, they dis­cuss the motives and work­ing meth­ods of dif­fer­ent groups togeth­er with artists and peo­ple who are pri­mar­i­ly active in social move­ments. This is intend­ed to sharp­en demands and orga­nize actions in a more direct­ed man­ner. Every­thing else, accord­ing to the founders of the orga­ni­za­tion, would be an unfor­giv­able strate­gic mistake.

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The Fair Build­ing project is about pre­cise­ly those who are often for­got­ten when archi­tects or pub­lic fig­ures talk about spec­tac­u­lar new con­struc­tions or large-scale urban plan­ning. In con­trast to the film indus­try, where every role, no mat­ter how small, is list­ed in the cred­it roll, archi­tec­ture tends to keep a low pro­file when it comes to the work and the work­ers whose labor allows for build­ings to emerge: work­ers who are employed in pre­car­i­ous con­di­tions, work­ers who tem­porar­i­ly live far from home in inhos­pitable places, work­ers who ply their trade on unse­cured build­ing sites, and work­ers who toil away for days and weeks that are too long. These are the peo­ple who play the lead here.

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