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Urban Re/creation Citylab
series of presentations, lectures and workshops about the phenomenon of the city
Short characteristics
URBAN RE/CREATION CITYLAB, project of ATRAKT ART - Association for Contemporary Art and Culture, consists of
a series of multimedia cross-disciplinary educative and creative evenings in diverse forms.
The project tries to motivate people to engage in a more sensitive and creative perception of their living environment and architectural spaces. We organize presentations, lectures, film projections and discussions that all have a common theme: the city. Project Urban Re/Creation Citylab started in October 2004.
The goal of the project is to push the senses of people stuck in their daily routines into the position of a tourist seeking adventure and something different. In Urban Re/Creation we don’t leave the well-known environment to explore the exotic and bizarre, but bring the feeling of unknown to an otherwise common milieu. Through different means and specialists (architects, visual artists, theorists, internet artists,...) the project tries to explore new worlds in the interactive relationship between the environment and the public.
Goals, meaning of the project
The idea of Urban Re/Creation Citylab is influenced by current context of postmodern concepts of human behavior as one of the most significant philosophers and sociologists, Zygmunt Bauman, sees it. In his “Reflections on Postmodern Times” Bauman has drawn attention to a general prototype of the modern human – the tourist. “The tourist leaves his home, to seek impressions. (...) He seeks new experiences and new experiences bring only something new, something he hasn’t seen that is different from his everyday life.“ This hunger for the exotic also brings a certain hardening in the perception of familiar environments, a phenomenon to which our project reacts.
The main goal of the project is to enhance the sensitivity of citizens and artists to their own urban environments. Our goal is to put the person into the position of a “tourist” in their own homes. To prepare him to be able to find noticeable moments and innovative experiences, create new mental maps of “old, well-known” places and to experience the feeling of recreation in his own home. We continue in the tradition of past events we have organized since 2004 that aim to increase the interests of the public in current architecture. In presentations and discussions we would like to seek connections and analogies to local problems and on this basis we also invite foreign lecturers.
The means of this recreation is creation. The spaces of European cities has become and will become the object of innovative and interdisciplinary projects of artists from various countries. The goal of the evenings is to present different projects from the field of public art, design, typography, psychogeography and mental cartography among others. We would like to present an intensive and up-to-date overview about the forms of such urban re/creation already realized abroad and here at home.
The project is also interactive – participants have the chance to discuss and create their own urban re/creation in workshops and refresh their relationship to the city. Part of the project “Children and the City” is oriented to youth and their perception of the world around them. Children in several Slovak towns (Bratislava, Trenčín, Žilina, Banská Bystrica) had and will have access to digital cameras to record the places they find interesting and fascinating – places they go after school. Then they will present and compare their visual records and also invite adults to see their world.
Realization team
Mgr. Zuzana Duchová, PhD. (art theorist, project coordinator)
Studied art history at Comenius Universtity in Bratislava, obtained PhD. at Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (Spatial Planning). Happy member of Atrakt Art collective, active in A4 - Zero Space (Bratislava). With other 40 co-authors succesfully published BA! u-fu-tourist guide to Bratislava http://www.atrakt.sk/ufoba/ Now: works fulltime for Cultural Contact Point Slovakia, trying to promote Slovak culture and help organisations with grant bureaucracy. Parallel life: Designer of hardvér bižu - www.sashe.sk/bozena
zuzana[at]34.sk
Mgr. Alexandra Gojdičová (cultural organizer)
Graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University Bratislava. Served as president of a student organization where she funded the exhibition space Gallery on the Stairs. During her studies she worked in the audiovisual studio Brachtl, where she participated in many commercial, artistic and film projects as executive producer and director’s assistant. Besides film projects she participated in the preparation of workshops at the Month of Photography 2002 festival. Cooperated with the Truc sphérique NGO as production member of the Strečno 2003film festival. Worked as manager of the Three Days of Document 2003 Bratislava festival of documentary films. Works in A4 - Zero Space as office manager and film club manager.
sasa[at]34.sk
Mgr. Barbora Šedivá, PhD. (culture manager)
Studied culture management at Comenius University Bratislava. Worked in Trenčín where she led an art therapy workshop for children. In cooperation with the Truc sphérique NGO she organized the Strečno 2003 film festival. Editor of 3/4, a magazine covering contemporary culture. Works as PR manager for A4 - Zero Space in Bratislava.
babuta[at]34.sk
Ing. arch. Ľubomír Nosko, PhD. (architect)
Architect designer, organizer. Currently working on his diploma thesis at the Slovak Technical University, Institute of Spatial Planning. In 2002 spent a study stay in Essen-Duisburg, Germany at the Institute of City Planning. In 2002 - 2003 worked as photographer for the European House of City Culture in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Since the beginning of A4 - Zero Space he has participated in program preparation.
lubo[at]buryzone.info
Support
Bratislavská Investičná, a.s.
VE-TEX, spol. s r. o.
Young4BA
Eurotel
Ministry of Culture of Slovak Republic
and others
Mastering: B&B Studio, Bratislava
CD/web: veri veri
Translation: Zuzana Černáková, Eric Smillie
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