urban interface
urban interface | berlin is both exhibition and artistic/curatorial research project exploring the interspaces between public and private urban space. In 2007 urban interface takes place in two European cities, Berlin and Oslo.
The project deals with the changing notion of private and public space that occurs due to, particularly, the everyday use of communication technologies. The artworks in the context of urban interface convey the idea of public space as an accessible and contributive sphere and call attention to a more sensitive engagement with the private, physical and digital spheres.
The works are developed for individual spaces by participating artists and if possible realised in cooperation with hosts. Hosts can be private individuals as well as companies, which then communicate the artworks out of their private spaces into the public. Private becomes public, public becomes private. Art space intermixes with urban space.
In responding to selected public and semi-public sites and their inherent qualities, the artworks will become focal points of the shifting conceptions of private and public space. Being often immaterial and digital and located at the difficult-to-define boundaries of private and public space, the artworks challenge all users – perceivers, organisers and the local authorities to formulate and discuss their individual understanding of those spaces. At the same time, the dispersed and temporary nature of the artworks challenges the formula of exhibitions in public space.
This website is conceived as an archive and contributive forum which ideally could serve as a knowledge platform for other art projects dealing with or happening in public space. To that end, relevant processes between the involved parties such as artists, sponsors, organisers and the city administration will be published on this website. Hence this website can be understood as another interface between private and public, theory and practice.
The thematic discourse is extended to presentations and panels accompanying the exhibitions in Berlin and Oslo.
urban interface is a project by Susanne Jaschko.
urban interface | berlin
Between April 15 and May 6, 2007 urban interface | berlin presents eight new artworks in a defined area within the Berlin districts Mitte, Wedding and Gesundbrunnen.
The city of Berlin is an interface, a space for social interaction and cultural diversity. Here the feeling of metropolitan life goes hand in hand with the cosiness and privacy of the individual neighbourhoods. This particular urban quality is often noticed by New-Berliners who describe the city as accessible and open. Apparently, Berlin still offers interspaces that can be found and inhabited – be it social spaces, which gained diversity after the reunification and nomination as capital, or be it physical spaces whose voids and transitory nature still offer room for artistic experiment.
Yet the localisation of mono-cultural groups can be problematic. Mitte for instance has rapidly changed to a rather tidy art and shopping district where flag ship stores of renowned fashion labels are as common as major galleries. Examples of bad architecture rose as quickly as rents and real estate prices went up. In the neighbouring districts of Wedding and Gesundbrunnen, which have comparably high unemployment rates and are home to various communities of immigrants, there are social and cultural tensions in some places.
These parallel spaces and immediate neighbourhoods are at the same time linked and separated by the former Berlin Wall. Their borders should not close even further but become more permeable in the future.
urban interface berlin deliberately connects the ‘art space’ Mitte with two seemingly less fancy, northern districts. It places artworks in the ordinary habitat of the residents and calls for their participation. The exhibition unfolds in non-places and transitory spaces between the private and public. These sites, formerly voids on the cultural map of Berlin are filled with art temporarily. Hence they call the unprepared passers-by’s attention to the changing notion of the private and public sphere.
urban interface | berlin is a project in cooperation with art+com projekt für rechnergestütztes gestalten und darstellen e.v. and supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds among others.
www.urban-interface.net
urban interface | oslo
In September 07 the project series is continued in Oslo, Norway with at least six new works.
In addition, a conference is planned which will deepen the thematic discourse. urban interface | oslo is produced by Atelier Nord.
www.anart.no
