Curating the Urban

This project aims at the spatialization of urban phenomena by bringing together artistic and urbanistic strategies within the method of "urban curating". With the format of the exhibition as a mode of "spatializing" new formats of knowledge- production will be tested, which will connect methods of artistic research with public discourse. The project deals with three interrelated urban phenomena, which will be analyzed in case-study researches in Vienna, Tokyo and Vancouver: Dividual Spaces / Dividual Subjects, Migration of Forms / Forms of Migration, Economy of Architecture / Architecture of Economy. Each of these phenomena involves the potential of spatializing the relationship between the city and the production of social space as a dimension of cognitive capitalism. Therefore a space in Vienna ESPACE will be established as a staged urban laboratory in which three consecutive "Spatializations" (exhibitions) will translate the research debate into a spatial dimension. The originality of the strategy is that the sequence of spatializations is based on a cumulative principle in which agents and arguments, actions and interventions follow upon each other and respond to situational contexts. This curatorial method aims at a participatory form of knowledge-production, which is based on a concatenation of spatialized arguments of 1. the research team 2. agents from the fields of urbanism, art, architecture and 3. on interventions by agents from diverse areas of knowledge. To reformulate the format of the "exhibition" as a crucial contemporary form of research, as an artistic and scientific method and practice, is our claim. The project aims to develop methods of spatialization as a trans-disciplinary form of urban curating, as part of a future social aesthetics of urban thought and action.

In the PEEK project "Curating the Urban. Exhibiting and Spatializing the Urban Condition in Times of Cognitive Capitalism" we established a laboratory-setting in order to generate public debate and knowledge production about urbanistic matters of concern. A temporary project-space in Vienna - halfway - was established as the stage for an urban laboratory in which three consecutive "spatializations" translated a research-based debate into a spatial dimension. The spatializations took the form of public exhibitions, in which actors and arguments, actions and interventions followed upon each other and responded to situational contexts. We worked on three chapters, representing interrelated urban phenomena, which were analyzed in case-study researches in Vienna, Tokyo and Vancouver together with local research partners: Spaces of Dividuality / Dividuality of Subjects, Migration of Forms / Forms of Migration, Economy of Architecture / Architecture of Economy. The project clearly showed the necessity of offering a laboratory-like platform for combining the critical strategies and methods from actors working across the thresholds of disciplines surrounding urbanism. Arts-based research allowed us to develop not only new ways of production and debate, but also to test out new ways of displaying, presentation and representation. One key aspect here was the dual approach to work in a project space which was conceived as a publicly accessible laboratory, producing ongoing spatializations and displays on the research topics and at the same time to build up a parallel space and archive in the website of the project (www.halfway.at). The project was able to show how a prospective form of urban discourse, debate and participation might look like. The project was successful in reaching a very hybrid public, across several disciplines, all connected by a critical interest in urban developments and the politics of contemporary spatial innovations. The methodology of spatialization proved extremely productive in being able to translate complex urban problematics into spatial arrangements and displays. The aim of producing (abstracted) 1:1 models of urban issues as walkthrough situations was at the same time a mode of artistic production (installations), a curatorial strategy (displaying and arranging) and a form of knowledge production (discourse, talks, screenings). The public that gathered at halfway was highly diverse and the website (and also our newsletters) offered another layer of publicness that is difficult to examine in detail. We consider our public accessibility to be an important factor in making arts-based research practices more visible in the wider context of urbanism and architecture.