Curatorial Statement Connecting Cities

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// Find the full curatorial statement HERE

Mark Wright (FACT Liverpool) composed a curatorial statement for CCN in cooperation with the Connecting Cities curators: Yannick Antoine (iMAL Brussels), Ana Botella (FACT Liverpool), Nerea Calvillo (Medialab Prado Madrid), Diana Civle (Riga2014), Darko Fritz (MSU Zagreb), Jasmin Grimm (Public Art Lab Berlin), Céline Jouenne (Videospread Marseille), Katharina Meissner (MUTEK Montréal), Susa Pop (Public Art Lab Berlin), Mike Stubbs (FACT Liverpool), Minna Tarkka (m-cult Helsinki), Gernot Tscherteu (Media-Architecture Institute Vienna).

The Connecting Cities' project period (2012-2016) was complemented by the Connecting Cities publication 'What Urban Media Art Can Do - Why When Where & How'. The book engages leading thinkers, artists, curators, architects and designers in an exploration of the aesthetic, theoretical, technological and practical conditions of what urban media art can do. The publication considers artistic responses to current urban threats and discourses in a time characterised by specific technological literacies and constructions of meaning, contextualised within theoretical perspectives.
In this framework, the Connecting Cities curators co-edited the curatorial statement:

The key framing insight is that the issue of co-curation has become central. This is not just because Connecting Cities is an international network, but also because co-curation is inherent to the translocality of urban media artworks. Co-curation emerges as a practice because artworks relocate to diferent cultural contexts or connect such social spaces together in real-time through the integration of the physical and the digital. Here we explore this issue of co-curation and translocality by addressing the following aspects:

  • Diversity - From media labs to media institutions to cultural enterprises, the partners vary greatly in their size, agendas, programmes, processes, funding models and available infrastructure (permanent or temporary). Communities and publics are diferent, both culturally and environmentally. Artists vary in their experience, skills, expectations and practices.
  • Curatorial Model - Co-curation of translocal urban media artworks requires a rethink of curatorial processes and the traditional role of the curator. The model for commissioning and co-curation developed for the Connecting Cities Network is based on the idea of the mobility of artists and the circulation of the artists’ projects.
  • Engagement - Insights and lessons of co-curating artworks in diverse environments and local production conditions, in a translocal framework, are shared with a speciic focus on engagement and context.

Read the full curatorial statement here and order the book with av edition or Amazon.

 

Image: © Public Art Lab