idealurbs

Solitude Film Program at Storefront in New York

2007-10-22T14:46:00.000Z

Performance Z-A: a Pavilion and 26 Days of Events at Storefront for Art and Architecture
B: Oct 15 - Film Program »Searching for an Ideal Urbanity«

Recent video and film artworks by artists-in-residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude (www.akademie-solitude.de).  The film program was organized as an adjunct public event to the exhibition »Searching for an Ideal Urbanity« an interdisciplinary project curated by the Italian architect Fabrizio Gallanti in cooperation with fellows of Akademie Schloss Solitude, which was presented at Solitude in spring of 2007. The works in the film program deal with different forms of urbanity, taking a sociological, architectural or narrative approach.

(1) Alexander Schellow »Spots« (Series since 2005, DVD, based on approx. 36 drawings each, 9 x 16cm, felt pen on transparent paper)
(2) Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin »A small world« (1999-2002), 6.30 min.
(3) Susanne Bürner »Ohne Titel« (2004), 5.30 min.
(4) Susanne Bürner »50.000.000 can't be wrong« (2006), 6.24 min.
(5) Korpys/Löffler and Marcus Kaiser, »Super Sam« (2002), 13 min. (with English subtitles)
(6) Susanne Bürner »huts« (2007), 2.30 min.
(7) Krassimir Terziev »A Place (Playground)« (2004), 10 min.
(8) Daniel Kunle and Holger Lauinger »Neuland« (2006), 75 min. (with English subtitles)

Idealurbs go to NY

2007-09-22T16:25:00.000Z

A selection of videos and movies from The "Searching for an ideal Urbanity" show will be screened during the Performance Z-A: a Pavilion and 26 Days of Events at Storefront
in New York.

Searching for an Ideal Urbanity

2007-05-08T16:03:00.000Z

Images from the Opening - March 29, 2007

LECTURE, WORKSHOP AND FILM PROGRAM

2007-05-03T17:34:00.000Z

LECTURE, WORKSHOP AND FILM PROGRAM
»SEARCHING FOR AN IDEAL URBANITY«
THURSDAY, MAY 3 TO SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2007

Lecture by Matthias Sauerbruch
» On the Concept of Urbanity in German Architecture in the Past 20 Years«
Thursday, May 3, 2007, 8 pm

The architect Matthias Sauerbruch lectures on the use and misuse of the concept of “urbanity” in the German architecture scene over the past 20 years.

The architecture office sauerbruch hutton was founded in 1989 by Louisa Hutton and Matthias Sauerbruch. The office’s constructions and projects share a unified planning approach, which combines functionality, high architectural standards and ecological sustainability. Among already- realized projects are office and commercial buildings, laboratories and production facilities, schools and residential buildings, renovations and landmark preservation as well as urban-planning designs. Sauerbruch hutton has been awarded with numerous national and international prizes, among them the AIA award and the German architectural prize. Matthias Sauerbruch is a member of the Akademie curatorial board and has been a professor in the architecture department of the State Academy of Visual Arts Stuttgart since 2001.

The lecture will be held in German but there will be printed material available in English!

***
Public Workshop »Building Urbanity«
Friday, May 4, 2007, 10 am to 6 pm

In this public workshop, SMAQ discusses the 45 hectars of urban culture in the desert of Dubai, Jean-Francois Chevrier speaks on the philosopher Henri Lefebvre and the concept of urbanity, and Fabrizio Gallanti discusses current issues in urban planning with Pier Vittorio Aureli.

All discussions will take place in English. Detailed program attached!

***
Film Program »Searching for an Ideal Urbanity«
Saturday, Mai 5, 2007, 6 pm

The film program ends the official events connected to the exhibition “Searching for an Ideal Urbanity.” Films by Susanne Bürner, Daniel Kunle and Holger Lauinger, Korpys/Löffler and Q Takeki Maeda/Jay Chung will be shown starting at 6pm.

(1) Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda »Caducean City« (2006), 22 min.
(2) Daniel Kunle and Holger Lauinger »NICHT-MEHR | NOCH-NICHT« (2004), 82 min. (with english subtitles)
(3) Korpys/Löffler »Digging Deep« (1999), 42 min. . (with english subtitles)
(4) Susanne Bürner »Ohne Titel« 4 (2004), 5'30 min.
(5) Susanne Bürner »huts« (2007), 2'30 min.
(6) Florian Zeyfang, Judith Hopf and Natascha Sadr Haghighian »Proprio Aperto« (2005), 5'30 min.
(7) Christoph Wermke »Abhauen« (2004), 12 min.
(8) Susanne Bürner »Finistère« (2005), 5'40 min.
(9) Susanne Bürner »50.000.000 can't be wrong« (2006), 6'24 min.
(10) Korpys/Löffler and Marcus Kaiser, »Super Sam« (2002), 13 min. (with english subtitles)
(11) Daniel Kunle and Holger Lauinger »NEULAND« (2006), 75 min.

Between the screenings a three-second-video by Alexander Schellow from the »Spots« series will be shown.

***
WORKSHOP PROGRAM »BUILDING URBANITY«
May 4, 2007, 10 am to 6 pm

In this public workshop, SMAQ discusses the 45 hectars of urban culture in the desert of Dubai, Jean-Francois Chevrier speaks on the philosopher Henri Lefebvre and the concept of urbanity, and Fabrizio Gallanti discusses current issues in urban planning with Pier Vittorio Aureli.

All discussions will take place in English!

Program

10 am – 1 pm Introduction by Fabrizio Gallanti and Jean-Baptiste Joly
»Building Urbanity«, Pier Vittorio Aureli
»The Question of Urbanity and the Loss of Public Space Today«,
Jean-Francois Chevrier

Pier Vittorio Aureli studied architecture at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV) as well as earning his doctorate at the Berlage Institut of the TU Delft. He now is an instructor at the Berlage Institute and a guest professor at the Architectural Association in London and Columbia University in New York. Aureli is currently working on the publication »The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, a Study on the Representation of the City through Architectural Form, from Bramante to Mies«.

Jean-François Chevrier has instructed contemporary art history at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris since 1988. It is there he began his international career as an author and curator. In his essays, Chervier deals with the relationship between literature and art; in his catalog essays with photography of the 20th and 21st century. Chevrier is among the most recognized theorists in the areas of photography, literature and art.

Fabrizio Gallanti, a doctor of architectural history, is a cofounder of the architecture collective A12 (Genoa/Milan), which has participated in numerous international exhibitions. After a longer residence in Santiago de Chile as a professor for architecture at the Pontifica University Catolica, Gallanti now lives and works as an architect in Milan and writes for such architecture magazines as Abitare, Domus and 32. Gallanti was a Solitude fellow in 1997, and served as jury chairman from 2002 – 2006.

1 pm – 2:30 pm Lunch Break

2:30 pm – 6 pm » How to Develop a 45 ha Masterplan for a New Urban Area in Dubai?«, SMAQ
»Evasions of Urbanity«, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss

SMAQ (Berlin/Rotterdam) is a collaborative studio that operates in the field of architecture, urbanism and research. Directed by the architects Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau, SMAQ was founded in 2001 and is based in Berlin and Rotterdam. The studio has contributed to a number of urban research projects in Germany, Latin America and Africa. The two architects have been selected to present their work in exhibitions and installations and their projects have been published in books and journals internationally. SMAQ has received prizes in several renowned international competitions including Europan 5, 6, 7 and 8, the Sarajevo Concert Hall Competition and the competition Possible Futures’. SMAQ’s work has been awarded the prestigious Egon Eiermann Award and the Hans Schaefers Award. Sabine Müller was an Akademie fellow in 2001 and Andreas Quednau in 2004.

Sabine Müller (*1969 in Kiel) has worked for the offices of West 8 (Rotterdam), Asymptote (New York) and von Gerkan, Marg & Partner (Hamburg). She is currently assistant professor at Karlsruhe University of Technology (Germany). Andreas Quednau (*1967 in Berlin) has worked for the offices of Kees Christiaanse - KCAP (Rotterdam), Diller+Scofidio and Michael Sorkin (both New York) and Arata Isozaki & Associates (Berlin). He is currently assistant professor at Berlin University of Technology (Germany).

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss studied architecture at the University of Belgrade and at Harvard University’s School of Design. He realizes his architectural projects under the name »Normal Architecture Office«, and research projects under »School of Missing Studies«. In 2006 he published »Almost Architecture« during his Solitude fellowship, introducing architectural projects and interconnecting them with political texts about the impossibility of planning public space in post-communist countries with conventional architectural forms and content. Weiss is currently employed with Herzog de Meuron Architects in Basel. Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss was an Akademie fellow during 2004/2005.

2007-04-19T09:57:00.000Z

The Situational Drive.
A Weekend Conference at Cooper Union, New York.

2007-04-06T18:23:00.001Z

Urban Shelter by Annett Zinsmeister / searching for an ideal urbanity, contribution

Every dwelling is a construction of defense. Architectural spaces were made from the beginning as shelter; a horizontal sheet as awning and a vertical enclosure as protection from corporal threat. A vertical shield, first as a border to houses, then growing towns, needed to be transformed and adapted in its dimensions and shape to guarantee protection against an aggressive force. Due to the generated surpluses by urban co- production, towns have been an objective of aggression and armed raids since their very beginning.

The rapid development of war technology in the 20th century generated new dimensions of warfare. This fact leads to the question of urban defense today and in future times (even facing the use of conventional weaponry).

In Searching for an Ideal Urbanity, my installation shows elements of a research and design project starting in Sarajevo in 1996 (directly after the end of the siege). The installation contains the film „A trip to Sarajevo“ (1996, 8 mm), a screening of panoramic views and a presentation of spatial research and architectural design for an area at the former frontline in the city center of Sarajevo.

The research project is about the magnitude of urban destruction due to the use of specific weaponry and questions the spatial possibilities of urban shelters today.

In using different media, the installation reflects upon and demonstrates the impact of visual media and the customization of perception.

Hans Ulrich Obrist Intro

2007-03-28T15:10:00.000Z

Hans Ulrich Obrist was juror for literature at the Akademie Schloss Solitude between 2002 and 2004. He wrote this very beautiful preface to the book "Did someone say participate", edited by Shumon Basar and Markus Miessen and published by MIT Press.

I think it is very close to the working methodology that was used for the "Searching for an ideal urbanity" show. So instead of rewriting what was so clearly stated, I simply put his text here.

PREFACE

Participation Lasts Forever

Hans Ulrich Obrist

ESWAD
(Everything started with Alexander Dorner) As a high school student, I came across a second hand bookstore in St Gallen that had a copy of Alexander Dorner’s Ways Beyond Art. Dorner ran the Hannover Museum in northern Germany in the 1920s, defined the museum as an energy plant, a Kraftwerk. He invited artists such as El Lissitzky to develop new and dynamic displays for what he called the "museum on the move." While operating in the pseudo-neutral spaces that dated from the nineteenth century, dominant at the time of his Hannover "reign", Dorner managed to define the museum's functions in ways that are relevant today. On various occasions, he spoke or wrote of “the museum in a state of permanent transformation”; “the museum as oscillating between object and process”; the "elastic museum," i.e. flexible displays within an adaptable building; and crucially, “the museum as a bridge built between artists and a variety of scientific disciplines.” Of this last aspect Dorner said “We cannot understand the forces which are effective in the visual production of today if we don't examine other fields of life.” This is something that I have tried to introduce in my curatorial work – by inviting architects, philosophers, film-makers and political thinkers into the orbit of the exhibition. If we consider the life of an exhibition as ongoing, we can view it as a complex dynamic learning system. One should renounce the closed, paralysing homogeneity of the traditional exhibition master plan. Artworks would be allowed to extend tentacles to other works – and other fields of knowledge. The curator mustn't stand in the way of such growth.

GENERALIST
Harald Szeemann – considered by many as the first true independent curator – defined this long list of the “curator as generalist” which has been growing ever since:

The curator is administrator, sensitive art-lover, writer of prefaces, librarian, manager, accountant, animator, conservator, financier, and diplomat.

To which Barbara Vanderlinden and I added: fundraiser, researcher, teacher, editor, blogger, web-master, documentarian, and most important of all: someone who has conversations. Conversations with artists and other practitioners. Curators are agents of trans-disciplinarity. Last but not least there is the notion of the translator. The curator must negotiate between the different realities and fields implicated in exhibition-making. Indeed, there have been periods when I wondered whether I could spend my whole life in the art world or whether it was too narrow. As a result, I constantly ventured into other geographies and other disciplines. For example, my science research occurred through exhibitions like Bridge the Gap, Laboratorium, and
Art and Brain. In addition, ever since the exhibitions Mutations and Cities on the Move, I have retained a strong tie to architecture and urbanism – which continues through my involvement with Domus. But, I never left the art-world. The art-world permits this enormous degree of freedom. It allows you to make these external connections.

SELF-ORGANIZATION
One main difference to Szeemann is important. I think there is less a question of authorship – as in the “auteur” – but curating as teamwork. Curatorial teams started in the 1990s due to the complexity of more and more global research. Collaborative curatorial models replaced the single curator in phenomena like Manifesta and new Biennales. Questioning the need for curatorial master-plans also stems from my experience with urbanism. In the 1950s, many urbanists questioned Le Corbusier's master-planned structures, into which everything had to fit in a modernist way. They began redefining dialogues with the local and the global. I have been greatly influenced by theories of urbanism, namely by architects like Cedric Price's “Non-plan”, Yona Friedman's amazing capacity of self-organization, and Oskar Hanson's “open form”. This influence is on-going. The exhibition is not just one exhibition; it's more like an archipelago. And then obviously it’s the task of the curator to link all these archipelagos, to make it legible for an audience to experience: the convention is to have isolated distinct objects or distinct monographic presentations of artists, which is one possibility but there are many other possibilities. In the strictly segregated situation of group shows, very often artists don’t know what their neighbour is doing – and this seems strange to me.

BRIDGING
The role of the curator is to create free space, not occupy existing space. It’s reminiscent of an idea that Felix Feneon developed in the early 20th century: of the curator being a pedestrian bridge. In my practice, the curator has to bridge gaps and build bridges between artists, publics, institutions, and other types of communities. The crux of this work is building temporary communities, by connecting different people and practices, and creating the conditions for triggering sparks between them. To put it simply, curating is being involved in the creation, production, realization and promotion of ephemeral situations. While exhibitions may seem futile in this sense, they are an extremely interesting activity because they allow both artists and architects to test reality. Take the example of architecture – within the architectural
exhibition architects have induced the most interesting display features: from Mies van der Rohe to Peter and Alison Smithson, Zaha Hadid to Shigeru Ban, generations of architects have often begun to develop their language through exhibition designs.

CONTACT ZONES
First I was inviting artists and architects to art museums. Then I was increasingly asked to curate in the architecture or science world and things started to go back and forth. In the writer Edouard Glissant's words, “The idea of a non-linear time [... or the] coexistence of several time zones would of course allow for a great variety of different contact zones...” This is to say that perhaps the exhibition could become a reciprocal contact zone between the museum and the city.

Another interesting thing is this whole idea of “local” and the “global”. At the moment we are experiencing a mushroom-like explosion of biennales all over the world. There are hundreds of new ones coming up. There are positive and negative aspects of this. The positive aspect is obviously that it allows laboratories of new ideas to have more opportunities, which I think is development. It also shows that the world is multi-centred: we no longer have one or two centres, we have a prolificness of many centres. We can only understand the global if we are at the same time looking very carefully and in a focussed way at local conditions.

PRODUCE REALITY
La Cohée du Lamentin, by Edouard Glissant, was published in 2005, and considers the nature pf producing reality today. It links very much with an interest I have in unrealised public projects. While public art entails a negotiation with reality that produces innovative, exciting work, it also implicates multiple parties, running the constant risk of censure. Bertrand Lavier once said, his only unrealised projects went unrealised because everyone agreed upon them! Unrealised endeavours in the visual arts (public commissions that were postponed or censored; competition
runner-ups; partially-realised plans; missed opportunities; or
”desk-drawer” projects) generally remain unnoticed. Since 1990, I have been gathering these projects into a “reservoir of ideas”. Throughout my 500 or more interviews with artists, architects, scientists and others, my only persistent question has been about unrealised projects. The penultimate step of this project is the foundation of an Agency for Unrealised Projects, architectural and artistic, at the Serpentine Gallery, London, which will be co-directed by Julia Peyton Jones and myself. Rather than discussing unrealised projects for utopia or archive’s sake, we want to produce reality. We firmly believe that the past is an important toolkit and many of these projects could easily happen in a different social framework. (This project will also be in collaboration with E-Flux).

SOMEONE SAID PARTICIPATE?

PARTICIPATION has been used a lot lately. What does this word mean today
after it has been turned into a cliché so often? How can people participate? Also how can the architect or curator participate? Who has the initiative?

At the beginning, participation was very “authentic” (according to Yona Friedman, and Giancarlo de Carlo). Then it became politically instrumentalized and often degraded. When Rem Koolhaas and I asked de Carlo about this issue he said: “I agree with you. If you consider the era of the 60s, there were at the same time two things which were very important. One was the rebellion of the students, and the other one was a new consciousness in the trade-unions. During that time, I had made two projects: one was for a housing complex in Terni, and the other one was the urban plan for the new center of Rimini, both based on the idea of participation. Then after that moment a more bureaucratic period began, when participation became
something very formalistic and stupid. The problem to me had changed: the question was how to make an architecture which can intrinsically be participated, and this becomes a question of language. How can the language be such that it favours and
pushes participation? I think that this question still has to be explored, in many different fields: So I believe that the crucial issue is to use language that people can understand, penetrate and eventually use. So the process in my opinion takes a lot longer. Participation is something that you should start – and this is
something that you should not forget– it lasts forever.”

THE FUTURE WILL BE A HURRICANE
TIME/ SPACE SPACE/ TIME.
There is only a now and there is only a here. If we lost memory there is no time, there is only now. If we cannot move there is no space: it becomes virtual. As Yona Friedman once told me: “The only real thing is the here and now. The future is an intellectual construction.”

I recently asked artists and architects for their definition of the future. The incomplete list follows here:

the future will be chrome
Rirkrit Tiravanija

the future will be curved
Olafur Eliasson

the future will be "in the name of the future"
Anri Sala

the future will be so subjective
Tino Sehgal

the future will be bouclette
Douglas Gordon

the future will be curious
Nico Dockx

the future will be obsolete
Tacita Dean

the future will be asymmetric
Pedro Reyes

the future will be a slap in the face.
Cao Fei

the future will be delayed
Loris Greaud

the future does not exist but in snapshots
Philippe Parreno

the future will be tropical
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

future? ...you must be mistaken
Trisha Donnelly

the future will be overgrown and decayed
Simryn Gill

the future will be tense
John Baldessari

Zukunft ist lecker
Hans-Peter Feldmann

Zukunft ist wichtiger als Freizeit
Helmut Kohl (proposed by Carsten Höller)

a future fuelled by human waste
Matthew Barney

the future is going nowhere without us
Paul Chan

the future is now – the future is it
Doug Aitken

the future is one night, just look up
Tomas Saraceno

the future will be a remake...
Didier Fiuza Faustino

the future is what we construct from what we remember of the past – the
present is the time of instantaneous revelation
Lawrence Weiner

the future is this place at a different time.
Bruce Sterling

the future will be widely reproduced and distributed
Cory Doctorow

the future will be whatever we make it
Jacque Fresco

the future will involve splendour and poverty
Arto Lindsay

the future is uncertain because it will be what we make it
Immanuel Wallerstein

the future is waiting – the future will be self-organized
Raqs Media Collective

Dum Spero/While I breathe, I hope
Nancy Spero

this is not the future
Jordan Wolfson

the future is a dog/l'avenir c'est la femme
Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron

on its way; it was here yesterday
Hreinn Fridfinnsson

the future will be an armchair strategist, the future will be like no snow
on the broken bridge
Yang Fudong

the future always flies in under the radar
Martha Rosler

suture that future
Peter Doig

'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow' (Shakespeare)
Richard Hamilton

the future is overrated
Cerith Wyn Evans

futuro = $B!g(B
Hector Zamorra

the future is a large pharmacy with a memory deficit
David Askevold

the future will be bamboo
Tay Kheng Soon

the future will be ousss
Koo Jeong-A

the future will be...grains, particles & bits.
the future will be...ripples, waves & flow.
the future will be...mix, swarms, multitudes.
the future will be...the future we deserve but with some surprises, if
only some of us take notice.
Vito Acconci

In the future...the earth as a weapon...
Allora&Calzadilla

the future is our excuse
Joseph Grigely and Amy Vogel

the future will be repeated
Marlene Dumas

ok, ok i'll tell you about the future; but i am very busy right now;
give me a couple of days more to finish some things and i'll get back to
you.
Jimmie Durham

future is instant
Yung Ho Chang

”The future is not”
Zaha Hadid

the future is private
Anton Vidokle

the future will be layered and inconsistent
Liam Gillick

the future is a piano wire in a pussy powering something important
Matthew Ronay

in the future perhaps there will be no past
Daniel Birnbaum

the future is menace
Carolee Schneemann

the future is a forget-me-not
Molly Nesbit

the future is an knowing exchange of glances
Sarah Morris

The future: Scratching on things I could disavow
Walid Raad

the future is our own wishful thinking.
Liu Ding

le futur est un étoilement
Edouard Glissant

the future is now
Maurizio Cattelan

the future has a silver lining
Thomas Demand

the future is now and here
Yona Friedman

Roemer III

2007-03-26T10:55:00.000Z

The exhibition evening Roemer III at the project space of Akademie Schloss Solitude had the topic photography of an urban practice and can be seen as a preview for the upcoming »Searching for an Ideal Urbanity« project. (Lange Nacht der Museen, Stuttgart, March, 17th)

Luciano Basauri & Dafne Berc

Sanford Biggers

Seung Pyo Hong

Ligia Nobre

Damaso Reyes

Henrietta Rose-Innes

Alexander Schellow

Ulrike Syha

Popok Tri Wahyudi

Mapping the city

2007-03-22T16:34:00.000Z

A quite mainstream exhibition in Amsterdam, at the Stedelijk. Neverthelles there are some relevant pieces. The title sounds as a joke. "Mapping", come on, move over!

Beach tourism

2007-03-21T23:25:00.000Z

This symposium in Spain, Tourism XXL, the European Megalopolis , touches issues similar to those explored by Basauri and Berc on Croatia...

Ideal city Invisible cities

2007-03-20T15:58:00.000Z

Colin Hardley, Folly for a forgotten future, 2006.

In 2006 the exhibition Ideal city/Invisible cities touched the issue of the ideal city, through the realization of site specific works, in Zamość, Poland and Potsdam, Germany, both cities that were the results of ideal city planning. The text below is the concept of that exhibition. The artists involved were:
Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Francis Alÿs, Carl Andre, Archigram, Colin Ardley, Tim Ayres, Mirosław Bałka, Daniela Brahm, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Rui Calçada Bastos, Brian O’Connell, Constant, Jonas Dahlberg, Tacita Dean, Jarosław Fliciński, Carlos Garaicoa, Dan Graham, George Hadjimichalis, Rula Halawani, Franka Hörnschemeyer, Craigie Horsfield, Katarzyna Józefowicz, Jakob Kolding, Ola Kolehmainen, Lucas Lenglet, Sol LeWitt, Teresa Murak, David Maljković, Gerold Miller, Matthias Müller, Daniel Roth, Albrecht Schäfer, Kai Schiemenz, Les Schliesser, Melanie Smith, Monika Sosnowska, David Tremlett, Anton Vidokle, Lawrence Weiner, Krzysztof Zieliński, Tilman Wendland.

Since early modernity, visual artists have been intensely interested in the idea of the ideal city. Utopian-architectural designs and free artistic works have thereby often entered into indissoluble alliance. This is as true of the architectural fantasies of Bruno Taut and the German group ‘Die Gläserne Kette’ as it is of the designs of the Russian Constructivists such as Tatlin, Malevich, and El Lissitzky and continues as far to Constant’s “New Babylon” project and the works of the Archigram Group in the 1960s. In the last 25 years, however, this idea has no longer played a noteworthy role in artistic discourse, although many artists deal with the thematic field of space/house/city in their works. The general absence of utopian thinking in the political and societal realm is manifested in the arts also in this respect. Whereas the city as utopian design, as “housing” for a free and humane society, occupied artists well into the 1970s, today it is the house, the individual shell of existence, that serves as starting point and material for many installations and sculptures. The list of artists who have addressed this theme is meanwhile unsurveyable. It extends from Gordon Matta-Clark and Dan Graham through Mario Merz, Rachel Whiteread, Pedro Cabrita Reis, and Andrea Zittel to younger artists like Monika Sosnowska. Conspicuous thereby is that current works hardly ever submit architecture to a fundamental criticism with artistic means, which was still the case with Matta-Clark and Dan Graham’s early works. Rather, artists create “archi-sculptures”, housings, cells, caves – symbolic or real sites of retreat. The idea of the Ideal City was always tied to the question of how the world should best be set up. So thinking about the form of the ideal city often developed in parallel with political-societal utopias. The conspicuous lack of interest in the theme of the “Ideal City” is surely also based in the suspicion of totalitarianism under which utopias in general meanwhile seem to stand. This fundamental mistrust is quite justified in relation to the planning of ideal cities. A totalitarian or at least clearly authoritarian aspect inheres in the great majority of plannings. Following geometrical regularities, usually planned in the form of orthogonal grids, ideal cities were regarded as a sign and expression of human rationality. The use of the grid for city layouts often found its continuation in the individual buildings, whose façades and forms of construction vary similar basic modules. The actual inhabitants of the cities were supposed to and required to submit to the given grid. The one-dimensionality of the plannings extended into everyday human life. Often the inventors of the new worlds also determined a generally mandatory new dress code, a new language, or a new calendar. Standardization, strict hierarchies, and social control often characterize the ideas of ideal cities. Only a few ideal cities were ever partially or completely built. In particular, the ideal city plannings that were closely tied to societal utopias usually remained unrealized – they may be called the invisible cities. Italo Calvino’s collection of city portraits, published in 1972 under the title “Le città invisibili”, adds poetic ideal cities from the spirit of imagination to the historical ones. But in Europe, as well as in North and South America, there are a number of visible cities whose shape is owed to the concept of the ideal city. Among them are, above all, princely foundations like the Renaissance cities Sabbioneta and Pienza in Italy, Zamość in Poland, and Baroque city constructions like Potsdam and Vila Real de Santo Antonio in Portugal. While in these cities the clear gridding of the city’s layout and the uniformity of construction have in part survived to this day, the social potential of the ideal city is more palpable in the settlements that arose from the spirit of Utopian Socialism in the 19th century, for example Godin’s “Familistère” in Guise in northern France and in workers’ settlements like Karlsruhe- Dammerstock and Berlin’s Hufeisensiedlung, which developed as late heirs of the idea in the 1920s, especially in Germany. Today, the fascination exerted by the idea of the ideal city is primarily aesthetic. But the strict grid and clear structuring are not exhausted in the charm of the surface; the utopian spirit beneath it is palpable – including in its ominousness. Especially today, when the discourse about form and development of urban space is governed by actual political themes like ‘Shrinking Cities’, it seems necessary to review/give the concept of the Ideal City a fresh glance.

Some logistics for the opening

2007-03-16T15:18:00.000Z

Searching for an ideal urbanity, opening days from 29th March to 1st of April 2007.

Guests:

Jurors:

- Fabrizio Gallanti from 27.3. to 31.3

- Ivan Vladislavic from 29.3 to 2.4. (then Munich?)

- Fiona Raby from 31.3. to 4.4.

- Kevin Volans from 29.3., will stay longer until the end of May!

- Biljana Srbljanovic will join, no date mentionned

- Rirkrit Tiravanija will join, no date mentionned

Other guests:

- Stefano Mirti, designer, Milano, from 29.3 to 1.4.

- Xavier Juillot, artist, France, from 30.3 to 1.4.

- Achim Bertenburg, artist, Bremen (cooperates with Korpys/Löffler)

Former fellows participating in the exhibition and joining:

- Susanne Bürner, videoartist, Berlin

- Margarita Dorovska, culture manager, Sofia /

- Korpys & Loeffler, artists, Berlin/Bremen

- Marzena Nowak, artist, Warsaw

- SMAQ (Sabine Müller, Andreas Quednau), architects, Berlin

- Stephen Waddell, artist, Berlin

- Vlad Nancã, artist, Bucharest

- Annett Zinsmeister, architect, Berlin

- Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, architect, Basel

- Zoran Pantelic artist, Novi Sad

- Andrea Melloni, sound artist, Berlin

- Patricia Reed, videoartist, Berlin

- Karin Damrau, architect, Berlin

- Sarnath Banerjee, graphic novelist, New Dehli

- Krassimir Terziev, videoartist, Sofia

Current fellows:

Sanford Biggers, Luciano Basauri & Dafne Berc, Seung Pyo Hong, Dagmar Keller &

Martin Wittwer, Q Takeki Maeda & Jay Chung, Ligia Nobre, Henrietta Rose-Innes,

Alexander Schellow, Ulrike Syha, Cobi van Tonder, Popok Tri Wahyudi

Schedule

Thursday, 29th of March, Opening with

- Speech by JBJ

- Screening of „Ponderings in Solitude“ by Sarnath Banerjee and Andrea Melloni

- Videoscreening performance by Patricia Reed

- Staged reading, text by Ulrike Syha

Friday, 30th,

morning

individual studiovisits of jurors (or long sleep if the night was too short)

afternoon

Fabrizio's lecture about Henry Lefebvre’s concept of Urbanity, Guibal Saal

Stefano Mirti's lecture about „urbanity as a politic and poetic stake“, Guibal Saal

Xavier Juillot, presentation of his work

Collective tour through the exhibition, discussions

End of the discussions around 7.30 pm

evening

monthly dinner with all the participants

Saturday 31st

morning

visit at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart of Alexander Schellow's exhibition

afternoon to be precised:

The jurors speak about their own work (to be confirmed)

Possible presentations by the fellows,

continuation of the discussion about the exhibition

individual studio visits

End about 19.30

evening

improvised dinner

Sunday, 1st of April

open day, invididual studiovisits of the jurors, departure of the guests

Brussels - A Manifesto

2007-03-15T19:50:00.000Z

Pier Vittorio Aureli, who will participate to our symposium in May, was involved, together with the Berlage Institute, where he teaches, to this project for Brussels.

Europe is an utopia, and Brussels might be its capital.

Another ideality

2007-03-15T11:37:00.000Z

The French photographer and editor Frédéric Chaubin, has been documenting the architecture of the former USSR. It was certainly another kind of "ideal urbanity".
His pictures will be on show at the Storefront Gallery in New York from the 24th of April.

Susanne Bürner 2

2007-03-09T15:30:00.000Z

Some more snapshots.

Susanne Bürner 1

2007-03-09T15:21:00.000Z

Some snapshots.
Fountains in Stuttgart

Xavier Juillot

2007-03-05T21:38:00.000Z

Another participant to the project is the French artist Xavier Jullot, very active since the '60s. Here is his DNA spiral in the Zurich station (2000).

Searching for an ideal urbanity, today in Stuttgart

2007-03-05T21:28:00.000Z

Jean-Baptiste Joly, 4-3-2007

Moving in a Smarter City

2007-03-01T15:18:00.000Z

Symposium: Moving in a Smarter City

March 1, 2007 to March 2, 2007

Akademie Schloss Solitude

The importance of cities as human habitats is steadily increasing. More than half of the world’s human population presently lives in cities – they are the motor of economic and societal development. At the advent of the 21st century, cities are transforming themselves through new possibilities for mobility: the individual combination of various modes of transportation and communication makes a new urban life possible for city-dwellers and continually blurs the boundaries between public and private spaces.

The symposium »Moving in a Smarter City« is dedicated to the question of which societal shifts cities are subject to and which challenges need to be posed upon the mobility of tomorrow. Even beyond industrialized nations, the postindustrial age’s foundation lies upon multimediality, flexibility, technological and individual information. But how do tomorrow’s »smart cities« (William J. Mitchell, MIT) look? These are the issues that will be addressed by the symposium from the 1st to the 2nd March 2007, organized jointly by the Akademie Schloss Solitude, the ICN Business School, Nancy and Villes 2.0, Paris.

The symposium will take place at Akademie Schloss Solitude.
Conference language will be English.

Registration with Catharina Märklin,cm@akademie-solitude.de, T. 0711-99619-134.

The art, science & business program is made possible through the financial support of the Baden-Württemberg Landesstiftung Foundation, the City of Stuttgart as well as the LBBW Arts and Culture Foundation.

Program

Thursday, March 1, 2007

8:00 pm
Welcome and Introduction by Jean-Baptiste Joly, Director of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart and Stéphane Boiteux, General Director of ICN Business School, Nancy

following presentations
»Stuttgart and the Challenge of Mobility«, Wolfgang Schuster, Lord Mayor of Stuttgart.

»The Smart City: The Three Hubs and Their Interaction«, Bruno Marzloff, Groupe Chronos, Paris
Hubs: In the 1990s, »hubs« referred to the optimization of air-transport systems and the modification of flow within physical networks. Today, this »distributed« mobility is changing scale: with the diversification of transportation systems, hubs operate throughout the urban network and modify the very concept of urban mobility.

Friday, March 2, 2007

I. Section »Between Smart and Smarter«, 9:00 am – 1:30 pm, Lectures
Moderation by Jean-Baptiste Joly
with Georges Amar, Director of Innovation in Services, RATP, Paris; Klaus Georg Bürger, Director of Coordination Technology Projects, Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart; Volkmar Döricht, Corporate Technology, Siemens AG, Munich and Federico Casalegno, Visiting Research Scientist at the Research Group »Smart Cities«, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge/MA.
André Rossinot, the Mayor of Nancy, will join the section with a video conference in French, simultaneously translated into English.

II. Section »Hubs and Networks in the Pervasive City. The Permanent Accessibility to Places and Resources«, Panel Discussion, 3:00 – 4:30 pm
Introduction and Moderation by Daniel Kaplan, Délégué général of FING, Paris
with Albert Asseraf, Strategy, Marketing and Research Director of JCDecaux Airport and JCDecaux Artvertising for France, Neuilly-sur-Seine; Stefano Mirti, Coordinator Design Department, NABA, Milan; Ligia Nobre, Architect, Sao Paulo; Patrick Jourdan, Director of Sales and Marketing of VINCIPark, Nanterre.

III. Section »Hubs, Networks and Individual Needs in a Smart City. A New Organization of the City Around the Individuals«, Panel Discussion, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
Introduction and Moderation by Georges Amar
with Chantal de Gournay, Laboratoire UCE, France Télécom Research & Development, Issy-les-Moulineaux; Tilo F. Schweers, Manager Homologation, Special Vehicles and Technical Communication, DaimlerChrysler AG, Böblingen and others.

Final Conclusion of the symposium by Bruno Marzloff and Jean-Baptiste Joly

Römerstraße, lange Nacht der Museen, die Römer 3, 17th of March 2007.

2007-03-01T13:54:00.000Z

Römerstraße, Lange Nacht der Museen, die Römer 3, 17th of March 2007.

During the event that will join all cultural institutions of Stuttgart, the gallery space at Römerstraße, will present several works of artists from Stuttgart and fellows at Solitude. Several works are related and/or preview of the "ideal urbanity" show.

The artists will be:
- Philipp Metz, 2 photographs, before and after urbanity, 120 x 100 cm, large front wall in the central room.

- Oliver Hartung, 1 photograph approx. 150 x 100 cm or different smaller photographs (urban situations in the USA), approx. 50 x 70 cm in room 1 (right side).

- Oliver Zwink, 10 photographs (urban landscapes in London) size postcards in room 1 (left side).

- Christine Erhard, 5 photographs 70 x 90 cm, architecture as a model, in room 3, right wall next to the window.

- Popok Tri Wahyudi, coloured image in the windows in the central room on the left side next to the entrance door.

- Seung Pyo Hong, one photograph and drawings of the x citizen mask, in room 3, wall on the right side of the door.

- Daphne Berc and Luciano Basauri, slide show with dutch artificial landscape and Tokio landscape (Kodak Carrousel) central room, space between the windows.

- Alexander Schellow, drawings on the two columns, central room.

- Keller & Wittwer, photographs of urban situations (documenting the work between their two last projects) big wall on the left side in room 3 (like for Römer 2).

- Henrietta Rose Innes, text on paper or spoken (with headphones) with some reference digital photographs of the urban and suburban situation in Cape Town; wall in the central room between room 2 and room 3.

- Ligia Nobre and Paola Salerno, micro phenomenology of urban situation, as a prefiguration of the urbanity project in Solitude on the wall in the central room between room 2 and room 3 (shared with Henrietta).

- Sanford Biggers, polaroid camera to be used by the visitors, the results are immediatly pinned on the wall in the triangle space next to the bar in the central room.

- Damaso Reyes, urban and semi urban situation in Europe, videoprojection in the room 2.

Project web space

2007-02-20T11:13:00.000Z

I just wanted to share with any of you interested / that means completely open for comments and critiques! a web site made for the project I'm doing for the exhibition. It was meant simply as a tool to communicate remotely with the group for actors who are to perform and collaborate on the piece.

http://aestheticmanagement.com/EP/estrangedproximities.html

Ulrike Syha 2

2007-02-08T14:53:00.001Z

Dear all,

I'm very sorry to tell you that for personal reasons I have to change my plans concerning the urbanity project.

I already had a talk with Mr. Joly and we agreed that instead of the recordings I'll do a kind of life-lecture during the opening night. This lecture will be performed by the same actors that would have done the recordings (as long as they can manage to be free on this evening; if not, I'll find others) and probably by me. The content / the story will stay the same. The lecture will last half an hour. I guess I will only need good microphones - but I'll think about it and send Mrs. Roth an update as soon as possible.

From my point of view, it would be nice to do the lecture IN THE MIDDLE of the exhibition, in front of or besides (or inside?) a work of one of you, and not in another room which is empty and no real part of the exhibition. But I won't do this if the artist whose work it may concern won't agree - that's understood. I'll talk to some of you and see what's possible.

I hope to finally do the recordings in late spring - so maybee an updated version of the project (no more life) could be shown during a later period of the urbanity project, for example at the beginning of May. But one step after another.

Thanks for your attention,
best regards,
Ulrike

Microurbanism

2007-02-07T10:55:00.000Z

Microurbanism collects research and essays from the architect Chi Ti-Nan. It seems interesting to observe the phenomena of transformation and alteration of the contemporary city at a micro-scale.

Did Someone Say Participate?

2007-02-04T11:48:00.000Z

Did Someone Say Participate? is a book about contemporary spatial practices.
Some of the authors coincide with some of the participants to our projects. Its literary and research strategy might be inspiring for our future catalogue/publication.

Stephen Waddell

2007-02-02T17:36:00.000Z

Goods on a carpet

Ligia Nobre / Paola Salerno

2007-02-02T15:00:00.000Z

I decided to do something simpler for solitude/urbanity - i will work with Paola Salerno on Sao Paulo with her pictures and video and a a text of mine, the project started already 2 years ago, and it will be a good opportunity to concentrate on it and define a format. My fellowship is until the end of March and i will try to stay for 1 more week at least (and maybe one more month) before going to Sao Paulo.

Paola Salerno
O lugar fala por ele
DVD, 21' 20'', 2006
courtesy PLAY_gallery for still and motion pictures

Roundtable

2007-01-25T22:32:00.000Z

Roundtable is the working space of the Ph.D. students at Goldsmiths. Some of the invited guests of our project, as Eyal Weizman are involved with it. Some others, as Pier Vittorio Aureli will go there for some panel discussions.

Talking Cities

2007-01-25T12:18:00.000Z

Talking Cities
This recent project, curated by Francesca Ferguson, is tackling issues and problems, which are complementary to our project at Solitude. With interesting overlapping: Sdrjan is in it, for instance.

Centre for Research Architecture

2007-01-25T12:08:00.000Z

The Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College in London is currently an extremely interesting condition, where the reflection on architecture, urbanity and politics is being developed.

From their website:

This new and innovative research centre brings together architects, urbanists, filmmakers, curators and other cultural practitioners from around the world to work on expanded notions of architecture that engage with questions of culture, politics, conflict and human rights.

In keeping with Goldsmiths’ commitment to multidisciplinary research and learning, the centre also offers an alternative to traditional postgraduate architectural education by inaugurating a unique, robust studio-based combination of critical architectural research and practice at both MA and MPhil/PhD levels.

The aim of the centre is to give rigorous tools for urban research and practice to a variety of practitioners from various backgrounds. The work of the centre is based upon the idea of “practice led theory”. Students will pursue individual projects and undertake research and writing that incorporate contemporary Critical Theory, Philosophy and Cultural Studies.

Rather than merely supporting the productive process of architectural constructs, this process involves itself in radical critique of its nature.

Karin Damrau

2007-01-22T00:44:00.000Z

Dear Mr. Joly, dear Mr. Gallanti, dear all,

First of all I'am very sorry that I'am answering late. To introduce myself to everybody: I'am a german architect, a fellow from march to august 2006. I'am already well-informed about the urbanity project by Mr. Joly and I'am pretty much interested in it. I would like to participate with great pleasure.

My proposal: during the time at Solitude I developed a series of projects under the title "city games". The projects are all approaching the issue of urban and social phenomenons. By introducing a kind of game into the urban context, a sensibilisation for these phenomena is taking place. The "city games" offer the opportunity to influence the urban context by taking part in the game.

I picked out five sites where temporary installations might be conceived.
Site one: Gute Nacht Stuttgart - Good Night Stuttgart. Neues Schloss Stuttgart.
Site two: Stadtwaage - city-balance. Stuttgart - Straßbourg
Site three: Himmel und Hölle - heavan and hell. Schloß Solitude Stuttgart.
Site four: Jukebox. Wallraff-Platz Köln.
Site five: Gute Nacht Köln - Good Night Cologne. Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln.

The games are described in the form of images and functional diagrams, as well as texts (all computer graphics). Therefore I would suggest to present them with one are two video projectors.

Looking forward to hear from you and meet you.

Greetings, Karin

Marzena Nowak

2007-01-15T17:15:00.000Z

Dear JB Joly, I would like to wish you all the best in this new year.

I am in Poland now but I am happy to coming back to Schloss in about week because of presentation. I manage to make small wood installation which I will take with me, I also spoke with Johanna and it will be no problem to show video with her playing (although it was difficult to convince her).

It is also very interesting for me to take part in the Urbanity project, because of it I came back to utopian ideas of Koolhas, Cedric Price ( "architectire is not to solve problems"), and polish T. Slawek, I found the most interesting early texts of Bernard Tschumi - Manhattan Transcripts ("Architecture is not simply about space and form, but also about event, action and what happens in space") I was interested mostly in relations city/architecture - people/human body. I am still in the process... From my side I would like to propose drawings (I am sending examples) they are drawings of cutouts used for sewing - very close to body, put on together, they create forms of architecture, city maps. This I would like to support with fotos and the paperfold architectural object based on cutouts. I would like to bring more materials with me and if it will be possible show them to you when I will be in Schloss.

If you accept this idea within the ideal urbanity project I will be happy to send it further to Fabrizio and urbanity mailing list.

All the best from Warsaw

Masked Citizen X / Seung Pyo Hong

2007-01-14T01:05:00.000Z

Dear all,

I am Seung Pyo Hong, a new fellow whose discipline is Industrial Design. When I had the first meeting with Mr. Joly a week ago, I had a chance to be told that there is an exhibition about Urbanity by Solitude fellows. I am pretty much interested in the project, and I would like to join it with great pleasure if my late participation does not cause any interruption.

If I am able to join, I would like to present "Masked Citizen X," one of my recent projects shown at my solo show in Seoul last year. Under the contemporary urban condition imbued with technological hyper-connectivity, besides, communication is no more communal activity but involuntary or even compulsory response to the given environment. It is not so easy for any individual to resist against the imperatives of communication. At this point, Masked Citizen X provides a refuge for people who are tired of imposed social communication. Its artificial and banal expressions are not intended to express users' real emotion more effectively, rather to screen users' facial expression of their uneasiness therefore to help them pass the situation away: if someone steps up to mask wearer, the mask automatically closes the doors, makes artificial facial expressions and speaks meaningless words on behalf of the user.

Please feel free to ask me if there is any inquiry.

Many Thanks,

Seung Pyo Hong (studio 36)

Berlin (or better, post-Berlin).

2007-01-12T12:08:00.000Z

Dear friends, please find enclosed the summary of the studio visits we made with Fabrizio in Berlin last week-end.
Fruitful and great conversations, beautiful proposals to be realized or presented. In addition to this we all received precise descriptions of the contributions by K&W and Patricia. Now it's time to show up! Please give us all a brief description of your proposal in the next days. This concerns the opening, the exhibition, the two workshops and the filmprogramme (s.u).

Kindest regards JBJ

Searching for an ideal urbanity, Studio-visits in Berlin by Fabrizio Gallanti and JB Joly, 6th to 8th of January.

1) Events planned After several studio-visits FG and JBJ agree about following activities:

29th /30th of March

- Opening with performances on the 29th of March (Patricia Reed, Laura Erber's reading? + others to be precised)
- collective exhibition from the 30th of March to the 6th of May
- internal workshop about Henri Lefebvre on the 30th of March (among the participants, Solitude-fellows, Fabrizio, Philip Ursprung + others to be discussed: Christian Schmid, Jean-François Chevrier, ideas are welcome).

3d to 5th of May
- 3d of May: Public talk by Matthias Sauerbruch about „the misuse of the term urbanity in German architecture of the last 20 years“ (tba) on the 3d of May. Language not cleared (German with English hand out? English?)
- 4th of May internal or public workshop about „building urbanity“ (guests list open, Fabrizio mentionned Pier Vittorio Aureli)
- 5th of May filmprogramme

2) Studiovisits
Susanne Bürner, videoartist.
Videos to be taken under consideration:
- Ohne Titel, 4 short sequences, 2004, 6’ 10“
- Corean restaurants on the sea side, 2007, 2’30“
- Hohe Kiefer 4, 2005, 5’37“
- Surfer Montauk, 2004, 6’30“, loop
- Finistère, 2005, 5’40“, loop
- Limbo, 2005, 47“, loop
- 50.000.000 can’t be wrong, 2006, 6’24“
- Trees, videoinstallation with three videoprojectors, 1999, 32’
- Dissolve, videoinstallation, 2001
The videoinstallation „Trees“ can be presented in the exhibition; the other videos are shown in the filmprogramme.

SMAQ, architects
- 3 meters of images about a street in Kinshasa with an infinity of cell-phone shops (to be shown in the Unterer Hirschgang?) with archive and text.
- Participation in the workshop about „building urbanity“ with a critical presentation of the masterplan they develop for Dubai.

Stephen Waddell
- 500 copies of one of Stephen Waddell’s urban images (normal quality print) size about A1, laying on an europalette to be taken by the visitors as a hand out. Image to be selected.

A. Zinsmeister „Urban Shelter“ a documentation about Sarajevo in 1996-97 made of:
- super 8 mm film on DVD (including mecanic sound of a projector)
- documentation on DVD (from slides) on survival strategies - 2 or 3 urban panoramas of ruins as slide projection. To be presented in the under Hirschgang (basement) but the presentation has to be reduced because of the number of participants. To be discussed with A.Z.

Korpys & Löffler together with Achim Birtenburg
- „Canoo“, videofilm and installation, 2003, 130’, two dvds, two projectors, sound, a painted plastic wrap. Best would be a presentation in the Kabinett.
- „Digging deep“, videofilm 1999 and „Super Sam“, videofilm 2002, are presented in the filmprogramme on the 5th of May.

Andrea Melloni

2007-01-12T11:52:00.000Z

Fist of all I'm glad to join the discussion, apologising for the late beginning of my contributions, that will hopefully balanced the next weeks.

I'm a soundart fellow, dealing mostly with installations, my research is focusing on the
relationship between how the social space is used and how sound (human or artificial, depending on the purpose) can alterate/underline/monitor the use of shared/public spaces. Most of the techniques involved in my installations have been picken up or deal with sound harrassment appliances, previously meant for military/strategic use. A project initially submitted for my fellowship was involving the tramline in Stuttgart, in order to transform it into a huge theremin antenna, to monitor the changments occurred into the line itself (directly connected to hurban growth of the city, and to how different parts are linked together, since size and form of the antenna influence the kind of soundsignal obtained), and the use of the tramline from the population ( human body proximity is another variable). The sound is then processed and can be transmitted/ spread realtime or stored.
The project started researching on the concept of stigmergy applied to human communities. The project can be scaled, and theremin-like antennas can be used to monitor activity of smaller communities, like a village, a castle..

This to introduce part of my solo research. Among others, in Solitude I had the chance to start various thrilling collaborations, for soundtracks and performances, one of those with an indian writer ( Mr. Sarnath Banerjee), for soundtracks and installations dealing with indian urbanity and culture, from a much more narrative perspective. It's a very interesting overview of new indian middle-class, from an inner point of view. A short series of videos has been produced, as well as soundtracks and possible sound installations.

I would be pleased to know Your opinion, and start developing a common idea on the possible
contributions.

This email is maybe getting 'bit too long... I'm glad having joined the discussion, and look forward to deepen the discussion

Best regards,

Andrea Melloni

Keller & Witwer 2

2007-01-09T13:17:00.000Z

or
our latest work, for which we still search a title. (The working title is "Tor Tre Teste, 2006)
Here we send a picture. (It`s a montage still.)

It is a video, which we recorded in Rome in the quarter "Tor Tre Teste" in combination with a drawing directly onto the wall.
The video is a short observation of a scene where a mother and a child collect garbage in front of the church Dio Padre Misericordioso (built by Richard Meier).

best
Dagmar and Martin

Keller & Witwer 1

2007-01-09T13:06:00.000Z

Dear all,
meantime we would like to propose "what you want to see" (the video installation, we showed in the Römerstrasse) .

Kuda.org / NAO

2007-01-09T12:36:00.000Z

Novi Sad, 2007-01-07

Searching for Ideal Urbanity.

Hello to all, greetings from Novi Sad. We spent sometime time talking about the concept and about posted proposals. We find really interesting to turn back to Fabrizio's initial text about the project. Also revealing are later e-mail notes that we are after a collective, collaborative process.

The main questions for us are how many different idealities there are to be searched for? How different an ideal condition can be from an ideal process? How what we search for gets reflected in the process of searching?

Furthermore, a process of "collaborative communication", especially between artistic and technical disciplines, makes moments of everyday reality appear ideal. Like flashes, these ideal moments, appear connected to each other.
The network of ideal moments becomes more meaningful than ideal conditions or states.

All of those moments, like clusters, are dots on a map. This map exists; just haven't made it yet. As a result we would like to produce such a map based on our collaborative process. By doing this we would like to contribute to this event at Solitude and to the emerging community.

Zoran Pantelic, kuda.org

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, NAO

Cut for purpose

2007-01-09T12:02:00.000Z

Stealth group, a collective working at the edge of architecture and research has designed for the Boijmans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam an exhibition space that is phisically altered by the artists and curators. It is a beautiful three-dimensional visualization of a collective dialogue.
The project was called Cut for purpose.

Temporary Library

2007-01-03T19:47:00.000Z

The proposal of Vlad remembered me of the Temporary Library that gruppo A12 designed some years ago, recuperating an old container. It was temporary, but not that free, as there alway was some concern about the possible disappearence of the books....
In these pictures you can see its second instalment within the Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, while it was first designed for an exhibition, curated by Luca Cerizza at the Fondazione Teseco in Pisa (2001). At the Fondazione Teseco, the Italian curator Marco Scotini, just organized an exhibition/event, called Cities From Below, which might have some points in common with our project.
These were the persons participating to that project: atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa) (France), a.titolo (Italy), Matei Bejenaru (Romania), Beth Bird (USA), Calin Dan (Romania), Paola Di Bello/Armin Linke (Italy), Marcelo Expósito (Spain), Huit Facettes (Senegal), Francesco Jodice (Italy), Raphael Lyon & Andres Ingoglia (USA), Marjetica Potrc (Slovenia), Oliver Ressler/Dario Azzellini (Austria), Mariette Schiltz (Luxemburg), Stalker /Osservatorio Nomade (Italy), Hito Steyerl (Germany)

By the way I was a member of gruppo A12 until 2004.

Free library / Vlad Nancã

2007-01-03T19:13:00.000Z

I also hope more ideas for the project would come up as the time is shorter and shorter. One idea which I would like to suggest and I also think would make sense in an Ideal Urbanity is to set up a free library... I know that this isnt very original but anyway here is what i think:

One of things which I think would make the Academy a better place would be if everyone (all the fellows) would share (parts of) the music and video libraries on their computers. One of my biggest frustrations during my time at Solitude was that people wouldnt even share the music on their itunes player or if I wanted to see a film someone had then that involved cd burning or copying on memory stick. So sharing between the fellows computers would of course be very easy to do but the ideal situation would be to have a common Hub which during the exhibition the visitors could access. Stefan Tiron (former fellow of Solitude) has organized this type of project in various locations and people could come to the exhibition and copy files onto their memory sticks. That of course brings about some legal issues but I think working in a legally grey area is also an Ideal Urban situation.

What I would also suggest is to have a traditional library which could perhaps work in connection to the Hub. People could maybe bring books or video in hard formats as an exchange to the files the take from the Hub. That would maybe make sense considering the situation of the Solitude library where some books have been stolen. So there could be some building up.

So I would suggest that this traditional library could be built with contributions from all of us as well as the visitors. As far as I am concerned I could contribute with a book which is being edited at the moment and I would even propose this book in itself to be part of the Ideal Urbanities exhibition (whether a library will be made or not). It is the printed version of the blog about Bucharest which some friends and myself have been doing for over a year. Bukresh Blog. If you want to have a look there is a pdf with the pages from december 2005 which you can download here .

The Bukresh Blog is a toold for us to make public our personal discoveries of buchaerst which is a difficult process as there are no institutions (museums, image libraries etc) that speak about the recent history of the town (which was extremely tumuluous etc). We alike to speak about the real Bucharest not the idealized "little Paris" that most intelectuals think that Bucharest is or could be.

This project of a printed version of the blog also brings up an issue which i think is worth discussing - Online vs offline in an ideal urbanity.

I hope you'd find this interesting and that we can develop it further with your ideas.

Vlad

Storyboard / Alexander Schellow

2007-01-03T18:41:00.000Z

Here is Alexander Schellow proposal

storyboard [reconstructions (-XI/-12) - (XI/12)]

About 600 (or more) reconstructions of urban perception-surfaces/“situations“ (different mostly european cities, part of a bigger block of sketches, collected since 2001, each about 8x15cm felt-tip pen on tracing paper, drawn from memory as part of the daily practice) are put into small white boxes of 9x9x16cm. These boxes build a modular system to be set as a wall-tableaux in a nonlinear labyrinthic order on a 16:9 dimensioned surface, on which a raster of 9x16cm-fields is drawn by pencil. Each field has a small nail, so that a box could be possibly put into it. The fields are numbered kind of like citymaps on their edges, but with roman and arabic numbers from a negative to a positive spectrum (in that way like a matrix, instead of the usual letters and numbers) to sign the structure clearly as a cut-out of an (undefined) bigger one.

A startsetting including occupied as well as free fields is builded up. The order is associative, following possible storylines and combinations out of the defined material-block. Maybe unused boxes will be left on the floor or a table closed to the wall-installation.

The situation is set obviously as usable by the visitor, the combinations are changeable, the storiess not fixed. That doesn`t necessarily mean, that the setting has to be changed by viewers to function, it is just an offer as a formal decision to create a noe-fixed „editing“ of possible „stories“.

Radio Theater /Ulrike Syha

2007-01-03T18:38:00.000Z

Here goes Ulrike Syha proposal for the exhibition.

first I have to admit that I'm very sorry that I couldn't join the first meeting for the urbanity project. To introduce myself to everybody who might not know me: I'm a German playwright and I'm a fellow of Solitude since October 2006.
As for my proposal for the project: I'm just starting to work on a new topic at the moment. My project doesn't have a title yet, but I'm sure I can come up with one soon enough. It's a bigger project of which my "presentation" for the urbanity exhibition could be part of. I'm planning to do a radio drama which is based on fake interviews done by a fake interviewer in a non-existing future town. This town can be described as a "mega-city", as a big mixture of cultures, religions and forms of living. I have done another work connected to this non-existing future-city several years ago. It is a theatre play called "Nomaden". The radio drama will not be connected to this other play's story - but to the background, to the city. This city itself is a kind of organism (living, breathing, existing) - a friend and on the same time an enemy. Highly industrialized on the one hand - but a kind of uncontrollable mixture on the other hand, too. Depending on where you go. I will start with "giving" my fake interviewer an old-fashioned cassette recorder with which he is able to "move around" in his city, talk to the fake persons I make up for him. He can just interview them, he can show us the environments, he can get trouble with some people who don't want to be interviewed, he can get robbed or doing something "illegal" himself. There are a lot of possiblities. It's not going to be a well-made play story - it's more a collection of impressions, of several smaller stories, of spontanous forms of communication.
For the exhibition, I plan to do recordings (with acotrs) of what I've written so far. I don't know exactly whether we have the special technical stuff at Solitude to do that kind of radio recordings - but if not, I'll find another place to do it. I would like to have those recordings presented on several headphones in a special place where the people can sit down and listen; a kind of little lounging area. There shouldn't be just ONE big recording which has to be listened to by everyone in an exact succession --- I want this to be a more personal experience, I want the audience to create a trip of their own through the area of my future town by listening to the recordings on the headphones in an order they choose themselves.
That's my proposal so far - I hope I could make myself understood and I also hope that my proposal will be of interest to you and fit to the scheme of the whole project as well.

Thanks for your long attention,
Ulrike Syha

Choreography of the quotidian / Patricia Reed

2007-01-03T10:36:00.000Z

A performance of "estranged proximities" (very working title, will no doubt change!)

Throughout the last year I have been observing and documenting through texts, images and video solitary individuals in public/social spaces [Ubahn, Public outdoor areas, shopping streets (rest areas), etc] waiting, pausing or hanging out. I was studying their gestural vocabulary, or choreography while seated and in proximity, or at least interaction with strangers. As such I have a sort of archive or gestural database from which to draw upon to create a performance with 3 actors from the stuttgart area. 3 actors will be hired (various ages) to develop alongside my initial database an improvised performance of such daily, though rather charged moments of estranged interactions - they will be explained the project and shown the collected footage, but will become collaborators of sorts, since they will also be called upon to make their own observations and weave those into the improvised choreography. They will play out the moments (each switching personalities throughout the duration) within a highly sterilised white set with white public bench under strong flourescent lights, to make a kind of laboratory feel, wearing street clothes. For the opening I hope to have a real live performance, though throughout the rehearsal period the movements will be recorded on video, and can be set up as a video installation for the duration of the show, a single channel projection to be housed within the set in which the movements took place.

parole

2007-01-03T10:15:00.000Z

parole
This is a quite old project, launched in 2000, during the Venice Architecture Biennale. It was before wikipedia and before blogs, an online dictionary on the contemporary city, fed by volunteet work and data-mining. Some categories might be helpful to look at things around and to describe urban conditions.
The authors are gruppo A12, Udo Noll (who has been juror for new media at the Akademie) and Peter Scupelli.

Mediterranean Readymade / Basauri & Berc

2006-12-26T12:48:00.000Z

PROPOSAL

Tourism is a phenomenon with the potential to affect our living environments and their physical appearance. Once we had a talk with J.B.J and F.G. about the possibility to show the urbanizing force of tourism in Croatia since we’re already dealing with the subject. The Croatian coastal belt is around 2000 x 200 km ribbon and it’s transforming into a diffuse urbanized area. Prosperity is not the only outcome tourism has to offer (as well as unintended negative side effects). There’s an interesting artificial landscape rising from it, where coastal, inland, urban, rural, semi-urban, semi-rural and historical areas blend with recognizable urban features, and not necessarily disregarding natural preservation.

The idea is to show this ribbon which follows the Magistrala (the winding coastal road that connects the north to the south). This belt is, of course, constituted by points of density and in-between areas.

Here are some pictures illustrating Magistrala…a starting point.

…regarding tourist phenomena, here are some pictures complementing the topics described further on (for those interested).

MEDITERRANEAN READYMADE, towards an urbanized tourism

TENDENCIES

Leisure
Tourism is not just about short-term displacement; in Europe it’s blending more and more with quotidian life. Global growth, productivity and higher incomes are leading to longer and stressful working hours. The quality of free time has become one of the ways to compensate such demands. Conversely, more spare time is becoming available to those who, by choice, decide to cut their regimes of work in favor of a more qualitative life- a practice generally bound to ‘more developed’ countries. Nevertheless, spare time and qualitative time focus mainly on leisure. Leisure converted itself from a status symbol in the fifties into a regular activity during the nineties- and as such, coming closer to tourism during this decade, for an increased and cheaper mobility is making out of traveling an accessible commodity.

Commodity of ‘the familiar’
Tourism has always been a temporal (or seasonal) phenomenon and always had its purpose on rest, leisure and traveling- a quest for knowledge through the broadening of one’s living experiences. Today the later is somehow becoming less relevant.
In a tourist industry where leisure is the prime product, the tendency of consuming unvisited places is becoming characterized and conditioned by ‘a commodity of the familiar’. Although destinations in general, even remote and exotic, represent an ideal desire, often it’s unconsciously expected from them to operate within familiar codes and procedures– the paradox of escaping away from routine in order to find ‘home’, where home is a sign of safety and comfort opposed to the apparent ‘risk’ and ‘difficulty’ of performing the seemingly unknown procedures and activities implied in world travel. These conscious or unconscious expectations are also due to an increasing blend between travel and daily life, in which excitement frequently subordinates to a ‘comfortable sense of temporal belonging’.

Expected imagery
Often there’s a contradiction between the consumers’ iconographic expectations and the tourist products, landscape and building facilities that comply these expectations; an ideal and generic Mediterranean imagery cannot constitute part in the realm of the original typological and idiosyncratic environment that produces such imagery. Most of the time, the shortcomings of tourist products happen because they’re isolated semi-multifunctional complexes, unable to replicate the whole repertory and atmosphere a consolidated town has to offer (narrow streets, dramatic light and shade contrasts, outdoor life, etc). In addition, the feasibility aspects of such a profit oriented sector, which ‘can’t afford’ over investments, make it difficult to achieve expensive effects. In short, it’s difficult for new accommodation facilities to look like real vernacular villages. Nevertheless, it’s clear that a large amount of users and travelers are becoming progressively acquainted with the implanted iconographies on offer and consequentially shifting expectations.

A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE

Temporal urbanity
Much has been said about the definition of ‘urbanity’ or urban life. The measure can be put in manifolds such as heterogeneity of the social landscape, civil culture, multiplicity of subcultures, density and diversity of program, duration of activities, flux between permanent and temporary urban dwellers, movement of capital and building activity, constant re-invention of the urban fabric from behalf of its users, etc, etc. For example, urban life can be somehow found in the temporary conversion of the homogeneous and domestic environment of the northern Croatian coast into a dense ‘internationally-urbanized landscape’ during tourist seasons. The surroundings of the coastal towns of Umag and Porec are a clear manifestation of the yearly-tree-month-implanted-transformation; a phenomena that could be characterized as follows.

1- Social landscape; international and demographic raise.
2- Programmatic diversification, where activities are both, offered to the ‘transitory citizens’ and at the same time originated by them.
3- Diversity in all different sorts of gadgets and iconography brought from outside the country, such as sun umbrellas, laying mats, toys, tools, cars, motorcycles, bikes, towels, floating devices, etc.
4- The multilingual soundscape.
5- The ad hoc or improvised multiple services such as food providers, cocktail huts, kiosks, retail stands, rental stands that oscillate from laying chairs, scooters, boats to diving equipment, etc.

This condition, although semi generic, always finds specific resonance in the particular areas, changing them in different ways. In this case, the population not only triplicates, but the environment becomes more urban, affecting locals mostly in positive terms. The underlying argument of tourism being a potential ‘urbanizing’ agent is a subject rather difficult to portrait, but the effects of the elements it uses for appropriating territory aren’t. These gadgets and ad hoc small infrastructures are micro-mobile devices able to perform programmatic use and represent individual identities, which in additive terms are able to transform dramatically the environment.

Space of tolerance
One of the aspects in the cases above, and hosting environments of mass tourism in general, is the level of tolerance and efficiency involved among the people sharing and negotiating their m2 (the sea shore, restaurants, public terraces, parking areas, apartment paths and terraces, sun decks, etc). A practice one can also find in the city (bars, restaurants, commercial strips, pick hours, etc). Often happens that the levels of civility these situations call for are the closest manifestations of the civil culture and citizenship once forethought for our urban environments, for good manners are being replaced regularly with just- nor more nor less- tolerance (tolerance understood as one of the main qualities of civility, aside from formal protocols of courteousness).

Urban inserts
It is clear that the Mediterranean coastline is becoming more populated. In Croatia, the implementation of low dense models of territorial colonization, partly behind such growth, is changing in favor of an organizational disposition than differs from the traditional practice. Many of these scattered objects are not being executed in coastal or semi rural styles, function and form (type). Instead, they are build progressively borrowing urban like typologies such as small 4 storey apartment blocks, row housing, suburban self-standing villas and urban villas (with 4 to 6 flat inside). These developments are probably the most feasible since they offer the least complication with permit procedures, fast and cheap executions and maximum exploitability of the parcel. And as mentioned before, this transformation is fueled by the increasing acceptance of urban types, of course, with a small glance of Mediterranean iconography. In this sense, parts of the Croatian coastal belt is starting to become a repertory of small architectural objects that remind you of city fragments, but with a specific natural background and points of dense activity.

first image

2006-12-23T11:33:00.000Z

The first jpg opened at random after finally reading the invite to Ideal Urbanity.

Modernist birdcage by Cristian Pogacean

2006-12-21T01:04:00.000Z

Inspired by the trip we did today (Weissenhof among other places) I remebered a great piece by Cristian Pogacean - Modernist birdcage.

Read some more about the exhibition where he showed it and check out some pictures of modern architecture in Bucharest.

Iosif Kiraly's Reconstructions

2006-12-18T11:23:00.000Z

Iosif Kiraly is a former fellow of Solitude. In his Reconstructions series he takes photos in a David Hockney manner and arranges them as a puzzle. Unlinke Hockney, he relates this process to the process of memory where different memories mix together and overlapse, thus, in his montages he is adding pictures from completely different contexts, or, in some cases, he returnes to the place of the photograph after a period of time, takes more pictures which he is adding to the old montage.

Stan Allen

2006-12-10T09:41:00.000Z

Several of the fellows who have been selected in the architecture field were chosen by Stan Allen, currently dean of the Architecture School at Princeton. His research and infuential texts enter in resonance with some of the interests of this current project. Points and lines, published in 1999, gather several of his contributions. In particular the concept of field, as an interpretative tool for the city and therefore for the subsequent actions and projects aimed at its transformation has a particular depth.

SMAQ

2006-12-08T19:53:00.000Z

At Solitude SMAQ, among other things, have designed and built wonderful baths. Outside Solitude they have researched the African city, Brazzaville and Kinshasa in particular.

Zoran Pantelic

2006-12-08T17:15:00.000Z

Zoran is one of the very active members of Kuda, an interdisciplinary collective based in Novi Sad. Kuda and NAO collaborated for the project of a new stadium there. Of course it is not just about football...

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss

2006-12-08T13:20:00.000Z

NAO.

Annett Zinsmeister

2006-12-08T13:03:00.000Z

Her.
and some other projects she is involved with, within a platform named ethicdesign.

Cobi van Tonder

2006-12-08T12:58:00.000Z

Otoplasma.

Vlad Nanca

2006-12-08T11:47:00.000Z

Vlad Nanca
Vlog
and a blog on Bucarest, called Bukresh.

Ligia Nobre

2006-12-08T11:44:00.000Z

Some links about the participants.

Ligia Nobre.
exo.org

Exo.org activities have been presented at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, within the project On differences #2.

Initial text

2006-12-08T11:41:00.000Z

“Searching for an ideal urbanity”.

Already in 1970 the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre identified the surge of a new social, economic, political and therefore spatial environment, which he coined “urban condition”. By this term Lefebvre suggested the progressive expansion of structures and systems of life, deriving from the city and its culture, but assuming a far larger territory as their site of deployment. While criticising urbanism as an authoritarian and instantly obsolete practice of control of the processes of transformation of the city, Lefebvre suggested the possibility to even consider the “urban condition” as disconnected and autonomous from the real presence of a recognizable city, transcending the physicality of its presence to be described just as a complex system of relationships, still in the process of transforming its corresponding environment.

If we consider the urban condition described by Lefebvre as a convincing metaphor for today’s world, an incessantly instable equilibrium between multiple and asymmetrical subjectivities, means of production, reproduction and renovation of sovereignty, “general intellect” and powerful market forces, the rules of cohabitation between its dwellers assume a crucial role in the definition of its temporal stability.

It is not a coincidence that the term urban, in many languages, means polite, as it implicates the necessity of a mutual adjustment and respect so as to guarantee some collective survival.

What would be then the contemporary forms of urbanity? How is the urban condition declined locally, reflecting its connection to specific traditions and trajectories? Which elements and adjustments migrate from place to place contributing to the hybridization and diffusion of its culture? Is space the ultimate depository where to decipher the traces of transformation?

Besides a descriptive and analytical approach that might provide a base of knowledge upon which to imagine potential tactics of improvement and transformation, much is needed to be said and proposed in terms of an ideal urbanity towards which to aspire.

The “ideal city” of the Renaissance would have been a city planned following a scientific and rational method, the place where to imagine the flourishing of a municipal democracy, under the guidance of an enlightened government. It set a model, with which were measured and evaluated coeval conditions and processes. It was the underlying impulse of change and modernization of the city during centuries.

Now that the city as we knew is finally melting, reasoning and proposing a possible ideal, urbanity might provide a conceptual and operative instrument to tune and develop political, cultural and aesthetical practices that might become inclusive and beneficial to the inhabitants of the new urban condition.

The proposed exhibition at Akademie Schloss Solitude, in March 2007, and the eventual collateral activities which might be delineated by the Solitude fellows, can be considered as an initial experiment, where to delineate a platform of dialogue and interchange on that matter: different experiences, documents, materials, methodological approaches and angles, representations, narratives, case studies, designs and proposals can be juxtaposed and articulated, suggesting some coordinates of an implicit and necessary debate.

What is ideal?

2006-12-08T11:04:00.000Z

Ideal city vs Ideal ubanity?

Searching for an ideal urbanity

2006-12-08T10:48:00.000Z

This is a blog about an ongoing project at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart.
It involves several fellows. Some of them are actually at the Akademie, some others were there in the past years.
It is a collective activity, which central issue is "urbanity".
This term has been selected as it refers to the urban condition but also to the rules and behaviors that allow the gathering and co-existence of citizens.
So we will talk about an "ideal urbanity", or at least of its quest.

The project will be up by the end of March 2007 and last 6 weeks at least.