Laris­sa Fassler builds and draws space. Yet noth­ing here is cleaned up or ordered accord­ing to scale. In the large-for­mat draw­ings of cities, she shows us what we expe­ri­ence when we walk over traf­fic islands, through under­pass­es, and pas­sages, or into the entrances of build­ings. The artist over­lays the built space with appro­pri­a­tions. She observes and walks through the space over and over again, col­lect­ing and map­ping what she finds. This is also the case with her work Kot­ti (revis­it­ed). The many frag­ments lay­ered on top of each oth­er tell sto­ries of a com­plex space that proud­ly says: »I am city. I am nei­ther easy to under­stand nor easy to plan. I will defend myself if you seek to ques­tion my exis­tence.« The big col­or­ful pic­ture calls for plan­ning to take care of and work with lived space instead of against it. Because where is this city going to go if it has to leave here?

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Sur­veil­lance cam­eras have become an inte­gral part of cityscapes in many parts of Europe. But cam­eras are not neu­tral com­pan­ions: every­thing goes into these devices and is trans­mit­ted. Some­one, some­where else, watch­es, eval­u­ates, process­es, analy­ses, and doc­u­ments it all. What else? We don’t know exact­ly, because much of it is kept under lock and key. Kyle McDon­ald wants to under­stand how new tech­nolo­gies affect or influ­ence us. He uploads video record­ings of pub­lic spaces onto the inter­net, reveal­ing what is nor­mal­ly only seen by oth­ers. Any­one can com­ment on what they see online: encoun­ters, argu­ments, rain, sun. Peo­ple become objects of enter­tain­ment, some­times amuse­ment. McDon­ald thus makes vis­i­ble how this ubiq­ui­tous media arma­ment is rapid­ly rel­e­gat­ing eth­i­cal questions—why who is allowed to see what and how—to the background.

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Whim is a con­cept designed to com­plete­ly rethink mobil­i­ty for the grow­ing Helsin­ki met­ro­pol­i­tan region. It is a result of broad-based coop­er­a­tion between stake­hold­ers from the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors, as well as uni­ver­si­ties. The idea: an all-round ser­vice for the com­plex mobil­i­ty needs of every­one who uses the city. The plan: the devel­op­ment of a uni­ver­sal app for smart­phones, designed to make the use of many dif­fer­ent, main­ly shared, or more sus­tain­able trans­port offers eas­i­er, more intu­itive, and cheap­er. The imme­di­ate goal: to make choos­ing and using pub­lic trans­port as attrac­tive as pos­si­ble. In the long term, the tar­get is to abol­ish the pri­vate car.

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