At this very moment we are having a workshop on the production of urban interface which started on Thursday 21 and ends on Monday 25 June. During this workshop we work on the development of artworks and define needs and processes for production. Also artists look for suitable sites for their works during their stay.

The artists articipating in this UIO workshop are: Michelle Teran from Canada, but based in Berlin. She is currently ‘scanning’ the city of Oslo for wireless transmitting surveilance cameras and has found aleady a couple of sites/surveillance camera images which she will use for her UIO project.

Vibeke Jensen from Norway, but based in New York. Besides discussing the production of her comparably laborious project, she found a very central site for her piece. Let’s keep fingers crossed that we will get the permission to use it.

John Hawke from New York and Sancho Silva from Portugal, but based in Kairo came to Oslo for a first site visit and in order to develop a piece within their Orange Works series for UIO. While we have still no clue if they have found a site and developed a concept for it (but we are all guessing that this is the case), we could already observe small interventions into public space across from the workshop venue.

Hans Christian Gilje is focussing now on 1-3 Soundpockets for UIO and found a number of sites where the sound interventions could be situated. Building the hardware seems to be the main challenge at this point.

HC Gilje, Susanne Jaschko, Atle Barcley

Siri Austeen, Sancho Silva, John Hawke, Vibeke Jensen

Michelle Teran

Manchester Conference: 11 + 12 October 2007

Public arts + events programme: 11 – 14 October 2007

Urban Screen Manchester 07 is a two day international conference taking place at Manchester’s Cornerhouse, Manchester‘s international centre for contemporary visual arts and film.

With a wide ranging focus, Urban Screens Manchester 07 explores the conditions for urban screens from a multitude of perspectives, making it highly relevant to media specialists, designers, artists, architects, urban planners, broadcasters and theorists. The Manchester conference is a follow-up to the first groundbreaking conference in this area, Urban Screens 2005 in Amsterdam.

The backdrop of urban screens which Ridley Scott envisioned in ‘Blade Runner’ (1981) has become a reality in some parts of the world today. The omnipresence of public displays such as LED, LCD, plasma screens, large scale projections and media facades demands a critical reflection on their impact on the city and on our perception. At the same time, they offer new possibilities for artistic and non-commercial use, for community development and play.

As broadband rates get ever faster, public screens will increasingly display more streamed content and other net based media formats making their programmes more interactive and less mono-directional. Urban Screens Manchester 07 explores the creation of content, commissioning / funding, curatorship and the architectural possibilities of urban screens in the 21st century.

The conference will feature more than 40 inspirational international experts including:

Mark Bennett senior manager, Target Corporate Media Center

Lucy Bullivant, architectural curator, critic and author

Jean-Claude Bustros, artist and associate professor, Concordia University

Uta Caspari, art historian and researcher, Humboldt University

Micz Flor, media producer, content developer and theorist

Mathias Fuchs, media artist and course leader, Salford University

Mike Gibbons, Director, BBC Live Events

Kristin Gray, director, Victory Media Network

Glenn Harding, multimedia manager, Fed Square Pty Ltd

Erkki Huhtamo, media archaeologist, UCLA

Adam Hyde, artist and tactical media planner

Michelle Kasprzak, programmes director, New Media Scotland

Sylvia Kouvalis, curator, Yama screen

David Lakin, chartered engineer and principal consultant, Arup

Jason Lewis, digital artist and technology researcher, Concordia University

Joachim Sauter, media artist/designer and artistic director, ART+COM

Guenther Selichar, artist

Jen Southern, media artist and lecturer, University of Huddersfield

Mike Stubbs, director, FACT

Alexander Stublic, artist, Mader Stublic Wiermann

Maria Stukoff, artist and researcher, MMU

Els Vermang, artist, LAb(au)

The conference is accompanied by a dynamic programme of public events that show creative content in action in city centre Manchester. The city centre will come alive to an exciting range of international art works on public screens ranging from mobile projection, VJ sets, live streaming, video and animation programmes and audiovisual performances.

Register your interest here.

Delegate rates: £100 for both days / £80 for 1 day Concessionary rates (student / unwaged): £80 for both days / £60 for 1 day Group bookings available for 10+ student delegates

Urban Screens Manchester has been curated by Dr Susanne Jaschko (Germany) whose curatorial credits to date include transmediale (Germany), urban interface (Berlin / Oslo) and SCAPE Biennial of Art in Public Space (New Zealand)

Wir beobachten momentan eine anonyme Aktion in Berlin: “Wiehernde Stuten erobern den Stadtraum und hinterlassen ihre Spuren. No Hoof – No Groove!” so die Erklärung…... Urban Interface meint dazu: Sehr gut, weiter so, Ihr Stuten!

Turning the Place Over is artist Richard Wilson’s most radical intervention into architecture to date, turning a building in Liverpool’s city centre literally inside out. One of Wilson’s very rare temporary works, Turning the Place Over colonises Cross Keys House, Moorfields, and will be launched in June 2007 and will run through until end of 2008.

Co-commissioned by the Liverpool Culture Company and Liverpool Biennial, co-funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency and The Northern Way, and facilitated by Liverpool Vision, the project is a stunning trailblazer for Liverpool’s Year as European Capital of Culture 2008, and the jewel in the crown of the Culture Company’s public art programme.

Richard Wilson is one of Britain’s most renowned sculptors. He is internationally celebrated for his interventions in architectural space that draw heavily for their inspiration from the worlds of engineering and construction.

Turning the Place Over consists of an 8 metres diameter ovoid cut from the façade of a building in Liverpool city centre and made to oscillate in three dimensions. The revolving façade rests on a specially designed giant rotator, usually used in the shipping and nuclear industries, and acts as a huge opening and closing ‘window’, offering recurrent glimpses of the interior during its constant cycle during daylight hours.

The construction programme started in February 2007 and involves the careful deconstruction of the façade across three floors of the building, which is then reconstructed and fixed to the enormous pivot installed at the heart of the building. This astonishing feat of engineering will stun audiences on many levels. Disturbing and disorientating from a distance, from close-up passers-by have a thrilling experience as the building rotates above them.

See it rotating

Here is a really interesting essay by Brian Massumi about intervenionist art practises, in particular focussing on the HUMO project/workshop which he did together with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The essay provides a lot of good references to the project and related art strategies, and digs deep into history and theory. Read this!

Trotz Kunsttaumel, Hitze und visuellem Overkill hatten sich am 9. Juni im Deutschen Studienzentrum in Venedig doch einige Besucher eingefunden, die an der Präsentation und Diskussion Art Interventions as Urban Development Strategies interessiert waren.

Begonnen wurde mit einigen Projekten, die im Rahmen der IBA Stadtumbaus gerade realisiert wurden. Die erste Präsentation stellte die Drive Thru Gallery vor, die erste Galerie Deutschlands, die man künftig „en passant“ – also im Vorbeifahren erleben kann. Die Drive Thru Gallery bietet dazu unter anderem in leer stehenden Gebäuden des stark befahrenen Innenstadtrings Ascherslebens Werke verschiedener Art. Als erster Künstler hat der britische Maler Christopher Winter fünf großformatige Bilder, die derzeit im Original in New York zu sehen sind, ausstellen.

Ein weiteres IBA Projekt kultiviert die Leere auf einem öffentlichen, aber derzeit unbebauten Platz in Halberstadt.

Mehr zum Studiengang Kunst im öffentlichen Raum und neue künstlerische Strategien an der Bauhaus-Uni Weimar hier.

Für die österreichische Fachzeitschrift Medianet berichtet Christine Lauber unter anderem über Jussi Angeslevas und Richard Thes Arbeit Exposure im Rahmen von urban interface berlin.

Hier gehts zum Artikel.

Janet Leyton-Grant writes about Refugia on Mediamatic.

For urban interface oslo John Hawke (US) and Sancho Silva (PO) will conceive a new work in their collaborative series of Orange Works.

Orange Works is an ongoing collaboration project, started in 2004, to build unauthorized temporary urban constructions camouflaged as in-process construction sites in order to probe existing spatial pressures, and reorganize public spaces to allow for new social uses.

The emphasis of the project is more on the uses and reactions the different types of constructions trigger, within a specific social and spatial setting, than on the formal architectural features of the constructions themselves. In this sense, the constructions are never seen as the end result of the individual interventions, but rather as the triggering event of an indeterminately extended process that includes:

1. The documentation of the reactions of the local population to the constructions (use, appropriation, alteration, resistance, destruction);

2. The establishment of relationships between the artists and the local population as mediated by the constructions (explanations, interviews, discussions, disputations, collaborations);

3. Maintenance and/or alterations of the constructions as a reaction to points 1. and 2., aiming at the establishment of a feed-back loop between the artists and other agents that claim the site;

4. Research on the site’s situation within the surrounding urban context (i.e. historical background, zoning, actual and planned uses and constructions, economic value and speculation, exclusivity, social stratification, etc.)

Orange Works, Bus Stop, 2004

The interventions have lasted periods from two days to 10 weeks, depending upon the interaction between the structure’s degree of architectural integration into the environment, and the degree of spatial resistance enacted by authority actors (property owners, police etc.) with an interest in spatial control.

The intention is to make constructions too formally idiosyncratic to be easily digested into the strident visual noise of traffic and construction signage yet too ubiquitous in materials to allow immediate certainty as to the nature of the architectonic device. In this way, the temporary urban development construction provokes questioning as to the power dynamics of public space and the future of the built environment. The aim is that the public will question the constructions themselves, their intended function and who made them, triggering more participatory practices.

The interventions have made material connections between public and private spaces, created permeable private spaces within public spaces, or offered alternative forms of existing public functions, creating uncanny situations between recognition and confusion, and provoking diverse, long-term reactions from the public, varying from active questioning to consternation, wariness to laughter.

See the Orange Works blog.

The title of Julita Wójcik’s action for the camera is a slogan taken from the Safety and Security Ad Campaign that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York has been running for several years. Announcements, printed on posters and broadcast via loudspeakers, recommend vigilance and suspicion.

BE SUSPICIOUS OF ANYTHING UNATTENDED?BE SUSPICIOUS OF ANYTHING UNATTENDED. Tell a cop, an MTA employee, or call 1-888-NYC-SAFE.? Every object, every incident of different behavior, constitutes a potential threat. If you see a suspicious package or activity on the platform or train, don?t keep it to yourself. Even the most common thing in the world, a lost black briefcase, that, like a black Volga (a Soviet car used to scare children in Poland) may be a source of fear and devastation.

DID ANYONE FIND A BLACK BRIEFCASE (Please don’t forget to take your stuff with you.) Tell a cop, an MTA employee, or call 1-888-NYC-SAFE. No matter where you are in the region. The call is free. Everything around us seems to be whispering that the only thing that can save us is our own strenuous vigilance. And in the fight against danger, every sense is of service.

USE YOUR EYES. HE?LL USE HIS NOSE. We’re counting on everyone. Tell a cop, an MTA employee, or call 1-888-NYC-SAFE.

Julita Wójcik doesn’t restrict herself to following orders passively; accepting the role assigned by the announcement, she attempts to take responsibility into her own hands. She actively strives to pass it on. Alone, with a megaphone over her head, she tramps the nearer and farther environs. She calls for attention to the instructions: Listen for announcements. On hearing the orders, she endeavors as best she can to repeat them: PLEASE TAKE YOUR THINGS. OR WE WILL.

BE SUSPICIOUS OF ANYTHING UNATTENDED. But what’s to be done when a person suddenly ends up in Norway, at the very center of virgin nature, amongst jagged fjords, turquoise waters, snowcapped crags, and roaring waterfalls, where of one’s own free will, one would like to surrender to the beauty of nature? ?If you see suspicious things or activities on a fjord or in the mountains, don?t keep it to yourself.? Against whom can one be vigilant, when all around there?s not a living soul? To what does one pay heed? What does one do at the peak of a mountain attended by no one? What is odd at the very center of this unreal, fairytale, one might even say suspiciously unusual landscape?

IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.