The work of pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Jan Dirk van der Burg shows trails: nar­row and unpaved paths cre­at­ed by being walked or rid­den over again and again. They fol­low the organ­ic move­ments of peo­ple who move through the world on foot or by bicy­cle. In this way, they call into ques­tion the sharply and clear­ly delin­eat­ed spaces cre­at­ed on the draw­ing board by infra­struc­ture and city plan­ners. Here, trails rep­re­sent resis­tance, small ges­tures of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. They protest against this will to order and design, which blan­kets every­thing and yet makes no sense in dai­ly life. They appear wher­ev­er the plan­ners of the still car friend­ly world did not reck­on with peo­ple who have a mind of their own.

Link to Audio guide

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?

Link to Audio guide

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.

Link to Audio guide

The mov­ing images show Bogotá and St. Peters­burg, Rabat and Seoul, Naples and Tokyo, Doha and Shang­hai, Kyoto and Venice. We are immersed in scenes of the every­day. There is fish­ing, clean­ing, danc­ing, and laugh­ing. What we see here is city. But it is not that city that shuf­fles from one mega project to anoth­er to claim its own in inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion. Rather, the spaces in this film speak of use. They show us that cities are, above and beyond, lived spaces that come alive only through us and our activ­i­ties. We do not find the same­ness of glob­al cities here. Instead: plu­ral­i­ty, het­ero­gene­ity, and again and again, site-spe­cif­ic being, mak­ing, and doing.

Link to Audio guide

Both works, Fen­ster (Win­dow) and Tep­pich (Car­pet), by Andreas Koch are frozen. They depict traces in a city’s exis­tence, in the life of one or more peo­ple. Sup­pos­ed­ly famil­iar things, the inter­face between inside and out­side, are strange­ly dis­tort­ed by this enlarge­ment. Even the uncan­ny view of an apart­ment from above, which could not pos­si­bly be pho­tographed in this way, changes the sup­posed famil­iar­i­ty of the inte­ri­ors. It turns the pri­vate into the pub­lic with­out the occu­pants’ knowl­edge. As spec­ta­tors, we take an observ­ing, a dis­tanc­ing posi­tion; strange­ly for­eign, sound­less, pas­sive, and entire­ly with­out par­tic­i­pa­tion. It is not long before this voyeuris­tic view of the lives of oth­ers becomes unpleas­ant. Quick, let’s get out of here and into the city!

Link to Audio guide