Katharina Rohde

“The only important thing about design is how it relates to people.” (Victor Papanek 1975 in „Design for the real world.“)
In Johannesburg an approximate number of 10.000 informal traders work within the boundaries of the Inner City, showing very creative skills in using materials and in construction. Learning from their spontaneous ideas, smallsmartshops collaborates with street vendors translating informal design strategies into innovative approaches that relate to the traders needs.

smallsmartshops aims to respond to the necessity of creating flexible spaces for street trading.

Pavement Economies/ THE HAPPY HAWKER investigates spatial, social, and economical strategies of street vendors in Johannesburg, and aims to uncover their potentials. How do traders use and appropriate (public) space? How do they set up social networks in order to support each other? How do they arrange trading areas? How do they access materials and goods? How long does it take them to wrap up their businesses and run away from the police? Observing street traders creative skills, learning from them, and taking them further the project develops various artistically interventions that make existing potentials obvious.

The aim of the Pavement Economies/ THE HAPPY HAWKER Project is to challenge the question of whether consciously or subconsciously informal strategies contain an Act of Resistance e.g. against spatial regulations, predominant neoliberal economic concepts or existing social divide, and could therefore in this context challenge the Activist side of Art.

funded by Goethe Institute Johannesburg