BERLIN – BRUSSELS – HELSINKI – LINZ – LIVERPOOL – MADRID – MARSEILLE – MONTREAL – SAO PAULO – ZAGREB

Connecting Cities is a network of worldwide cultural institutions. The aim is to foster the circulation of artistic and cultural contents throughout European and worldwide urban screens and media facades.

With the curatorial theme of Invisible and Visible Cities 2015 Connecting Cities wants to develop an awareness on the changes, which are hardly visible to the eyes and are underlying our nowadays cities. Our today’s modern cities are hybrid structures in which technology is invisibly interweaved in the perception layers of our everyday lives.

Connecting Cities calls for artistic scenarios to visualise invisible, embedded « smart » urban infrastructures and analyse their impact on the technological transformation of our society in a broad and public discourse. Open or hidden data should be provided a visible layer beyond the aesthetics of data visualisation. Different positions frame this discussion of our future cities within the urban challenges i.e. of climate change, energy consumption and transport systems. « In/Visible City » will be approached through these three main questions:

Hybrid cities: How can we read and interact with the urban space and which stories / processes are hidden within?

Digital citizenship: How can citizen shape their digital urban environment and find new strategies for active / critical data collection processes and citizen’s engagement?

Translocal connectivity: How can we act physically in one place but mentally / emotionally appear in a different place through interactive urban scenarios and various interfaces?

The aim is not to represent reality, but to make a transformative/critical proposal with the question: Beside enhancing and optimizing (Smart City), empowering and improving (« open source urbanism »), do we also want to explore other approaches, maybe less « useful » but as meaningful; more poetic, narrative, contemplative or situationist? The call wants to encourage projects that reveal new levels of perception to an invisible layer of our nowadays cities.

Visible City 2015 will take place in Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Linz, Liverpool, Madrid, Marseille, Montreal, São Paulo and Zagreb.

You can find more information about the urban media facades and venues of the Connecting Cities Events at www.connectingcities.net/infrastructure. If you have any further questions, please send an email to contact(at)connectingcities.net

Submission Deadline

Please submit your project proposal until 31. October 2014, CET 23:59h here

Find more information about the call here

www.connectingcities.net