Riga durational dialogues #4 and 5: Love Enqvist and Jonas Büchel

posted: 30 October, 2012

The last two interviews are combined into one file, and unfortunately we were limited by time and couldn't keep going. Love Enqvist is a Stockholm-based artist who was coming to Talinn to lead the Diggers and Dreamers workshop, and was willing to come to Riga a bit early to participate in this project. Our conversation began from his work researching intentional communities, and began with a discussion about utopianism and communities in general before getting into further flung topics. Jonas Büchel was a very pleasant addition to the day's activities - the head of the Urban Institute Riga, he was recommended by the Linnalabor crew back in Tallinn and he proved to be an amazingly insightful and energetic guest who I hope to collaborate with more in the future.

The Little Dipper part 4: Love Enqvist and Jonas Büchel

Love Enqvist is an artist based in Stockholm. His book Diggers and Dreamers - Intentional Communities in a New Age, draws upon a myriad of utopian visions which are expressed through architecture, communities and personal reflections. What sets these intentional communities apart from other utopian dreams of a society, free from private property and from commercial exchange either of goods or of labor is that they survived into the present, seemingly against historical odds.

Jonas Büchel is a  Riga, Latvia based free social planner, community worker, mediator and supervisor; designer and consultant for regional and urban development projects with specific foci on remote communities as well as highly dense populated urban neighbourhoods. Passionate supporter of cvic education and member of the "Network of European Civic Education" (nece). Co-founder of the Urban Institute in Riga and lecturer at the University of Latvia, Faculty of Geography and Earth Sciences.

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