Through a direct engagement with the city and its citizens, contemporary artists today are making visible some of the mutable structures that otherwise remain unseen. Mediating our every interaction with the contemporary city are endless signs and languages, etiquettes and habits, transactions and regulations. These ephemeral yet pervasive structures of the urban realm are often rendered invisible by our familiarity. Parasitic urban cultures and artworks periodically bring these to our attention in an ongoing game of recognition, documentation, intervention and re-infection. How are artists engaging with civic space, and what are the implications of their interventions?
About the artist/s:
Anna Tweeddale is an architect and artist based in Melbourne. Anna has previously lived, worked and / or studied in Brisbane, London, Berlin, and in Barcelona where she qualified for a Masters degree at the Metropolis Postgraduate Program in Architecture and Urban Culture. As well as creating the project Lost Garden Found as a part of the 2006 Next Wave Festival, Anna has been involved in a number of art and culture projects including the Straight Out of Brisbane Festival where she founded and curated the Urban Culture program in 2003 – 2004. Anna also has experience on architectural and urban design projects in Australia, Europe, China and the Middle East and has recently been teaching in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University.
Keg de Souza is a Sydney based visual artist with a background in architecture. Her practice is more often than not collaborative, participatory and inter-disciplinary. Some of the many mediums she works across include time-based art, sculpture, illustration, bookbinding and printmaking. Keg is a founding member of the activist / artist collective SquatSpace (www.squatspace.com), and the Network of Un-Collectable Artists (NUCA) (www.uncollectables.net), and she co-initiated and organised the If You See Something, Say Something exhibition, workshop and publishing project (www.ifyouseesomethingsaysomething.net). Keg has a long-held interest in the politics of space and is currently co-coordinating an exhibition program around gentrification and post-Situationist urbanism that will take place at Performance Space, Sydney, in 2009. Keg and Christie Petsinis’ collaborative art project Esky will rove multiple venues throughout the 2008 Next Wave Festival: www.whereisesky.com
Michaela Gleave is a Sydney-based visual artist, whose practice concerns the peripheries of sensorial perception, exploring the atmosphere as our primary carrier of sensory information. Born in a remote community in Central Australia and residing in North-West Tasmania as a child, weather, atmospheric phenomena and air movement play a central role in Michaela’s practice. She is particularly interested in the environmental and social consequences of man’s current use and commodification of shared global air space. Michaela is currently a director of Firstdraft Gallery (www.firstdraftgallery.com) and a resident artist at Workshop Showroom (www.workshopshowroom.org). She holds a MFA in Sculpture, Performance and Installation from the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, and a BFA (Honours) from the School of Art, University of Tasmania. Her latest project, the Mobile Democratic Communication Device (MDCD), is located in Federation Square as part of Membrane at the 2008 Next Wave Festival. See “www.michaelagleave.com”http://www.michaelagleave.com
Mirjam Struppek is based in Berlin, but works internationally as urbanist, curator and consultant. She is President of the newly formed International Urban Screens Association (IUSA) and is a member of Public Art Lab, Berlin. With a background in Urban and Environmental Planning she has lectured internationally and published essays with a special focus on the livability of urban space, the public sphere, and its transformation and acquisition through new media. She is currently working on a multimedia program for Urban Screens Melbourne 2008. She is also developing the Media Facades Festival Berlin at the German Architecture Centre, which will explore the myths and potentials of media architecture.
www.urbanscreens.net and www.interactionfield.de