MATRIX CITY

Cities and Urban Cultures are permanent sources of inspiration for artists and scientists, as well as for utopists and defeatists. The city pre-eminently is an expression of ideals in which ideas about functionality and beauty, equality and happiness are given shape and architecture and (infra)structure meet with imagination, desire and resistance. Developments in society and cultural trends usually originate from a metropolitan environment where people meet, inspire and provoke each other and where the dynamics and technical facilities required to develop these ideas are present and available. New media change the notion of public space. Public space is merging with virtual space where one influences and enhances the other: Augmented Reality, The Internet of Things, Ubiquitous Computing, etc. Urban culture is becoming media culture, more and more: jogging with your mp3 player, videos on mobile phones, digital graffiti, urban screens, video walls and architecture with integrated interactive technology.

‘Matrix City’ maps out the urban landscape as platform and source for inspiration for contemporary artists. The city is viewed as a gathering place of subcultures and communities and for typical urban art-forms like street-art, graffiti and parkours. The presentation sheds some light on the more political issues as the relationship between public space and private space and on the question who is in charge over public space. Also the city is presented as an immersive audiovisual environment, as a modal structure in which virtual and real systems merge.

A variation of artists and phenomena will be discussed ranging from the Situationists and Constant to contemporary artists like Julian Oliver, Sagi Groner, Constant Dullaart, Evan Roth, Julius von Bismarck, GPSter, Gordan Savicic, Christina Kubisch, Claudia Bernett, Michelle Teran and Gabriel Menotti.

A lecture by Arjon Dunnewind, general director of Impakt, festival for critical media culture, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

www.impakt.nl