URBAN VISUAL CULTURE

RESOURCES OF THE RADICAL CITY

In contemporary cultural history, radical social changes have long been associated with the creative milieu of cities, from the sequencing of the cultural metropoles of modernity (Paris, Berlin, New York) to charting the rise of new global cities. What is often neglected is how these developments are not merely a matter of city centres, but have far reaching effects well beyond the urban arena.

This term, the course investigates the ways through which the intense urbanisation of the last decades has brought to the fore not only new constellations of cityness (speculative architectures, special zones, slums, etc.) but how the flows of urban resource demands have transformed the world’s ecologies. This ranges from land grab in Africa to tar sand extraction in Alaska and from the theatre of speculative developments to urban villages in China. To tease out future scenarios from these surveys, we will explore how new forms of resource politics can be derived precisely from radical changes in urban life.

Individually or in group projects, four different topics – Conflict Matter, Demiurgic Worlds, Ecological Capital, Resource Cities – will be addressed through textual and visual analyses. Selected works will be included in the international exhibition series World of Matter and will be shown at Hardware Dortmund, Tensta Konsthall Stockholm, CUNY New York and Phi Gallery Montreal.

The course focuses on the interaction of architecture’s societal effects and changing cultural meanings. Specific topics range from the urban legacy of the global financial crisis and subcultural spaces of empowerment to the way in which the city acts as a funnel for various fllows of migration and power. In doing so, the course draws on a variety of material ranging from artistic projects and academic case studies to more general theories of globalisation and independent project work.

Urban Visual Culture
Sen.Sc. Arch. DI Dr. Helge Mooshammer

Start: 08 October 2013, 18:00-20:00
Location: Seminarraum 2, Karlsgasse 11

For further details please see link below