City as a CANVASS, as a STAGE and as a BATTLEFILED

Photo: Sunčan Stone

Discussion with accompanying programme

The theme of the conversation will revolve around a city as a canvass (graphic interventions in space, graffiti, space-invaders, installations, light interventions etc), as a stage/gallery (street theatre, musicians and other performers, flash mobs etc) and as a battlefield (the so called artivism: subvertising in culture jamming, protests through art etc).

The experience of urban space is inextricably connected to multiplicity of the surrounding visual messages. Urban landscapes are being inhabited, interwoven and contaminated by the visual impulses, deriving at least from two separate sides: cities wrap themselves in the PR Cellophane and strive to produce the desired images and good looks due to their flirtatious attitude towards the capital. On the other hand, we see street cultures forming the image of the city and its urban experience at their own initiative. They seek to reclaim and reappropriate space through goal-oriented visual art and this is how they also co-create this space anew. Since there is no such thing as space in its own right, we strive to shake the ambivalence of constructing, condition-forming and perceiving urban space through mundane practices and tactics of collective (identity) groupings.

Guests: dr. Mitja Velikonja, Žiga Aljaž and Miha Artnak (ZEK Crew), dr. Franc Trček, dr. Nenad Jelesijević (KITCH), MA. Sandi Abram, Klemen Ploštajner (activist, collaborator at Danes je nov dan), Jasa Jenull (KUD LJUD), Goro Osojnik (Ana Monro), Brane Solce and Sanja Fidler (Protestival)
Moderator: Toni Cahunek

Organizer: Zavod Kultipraktik in the framework of the project KURA: urbane kulture v Sloveniji
In cooperation with: Bunker, Ljubljana