In the case of the Situationists, these were university students and intellectual artists and theorists; in our case, an early sensitization of a student body that is increasingly affected in its living environment by processes of the transformation of its living space, i.e. by the gentrification of urban and cultural space, and thus also by a loss of cultural diversity, resulting from the displacement of certain classes along income and educational boundarie, was central to our endeavor. To put the focus of art education on an artistic practice that promotes the perception and appreciation of foreignness and foreign perception of one's own/urban living space, as well as a critical sensitization of the effects of capitalist realities on cultural ones, thus had the goal of sensitizing two groups of students who were strangers to each other for a reality they have in common and thus to give them the impetus to be able to face this challenge in a critical, constructive and actively creative way. The appreciation of foreign perspectives as an access and key experience for the development of solution strategies was in the foreground here, just as the situationist technique of wandering beyond habitual patterns had as its goal.
The opportunity and idea for our art project, as a school (Ida Ehre Schule Hamburg) with an art focus in the upper secondary school, arose and developed along the contact with the renowned school Antonio Arroio in Lisbon, which is a general education school, but has an international reputation for its art focus. In addition to a fundamental interest of both institutions in intercultural and transcultural exchange and education, which relies on situations of foreign encounters, an equally great interest in the artistic sensitization for the liberalist reshaping and influencing of socio-political processes and the associated change and appropriation of urban living space, was the context of our joint art project. This was significantly oriented to artistic principles of the Situationist International, which in the 1950s and 1960s developed techniques for the perception and transformation of urban living spaces and tried to find a more conscious approach to their capitalist / liberalist appropriation. The urban space of Lisbon, starting from the artistic institution Antnio Arroio, committed to an experimental holistic education, offered an exemplary opportunity for the artistic perception of urban space.