Hacking the City is an innov­at­ive pro­ject which reacts to chan­ging struc­tures of pub­lic space, mobil­ity, and com­mu­nic­a­tion in the city. The pro­ject is mainly focused on Essen, European Capital of Culture 2010. Participants are artists, web design­ers, prac­ti­tion­ers of guer­rilla com­mu­nic­a­tion, street artists, per­formers, and musicians.

Among these are: Boran Burchhardt, Peter Bux, Brad Downey, San Keller, Knowbotic Research, Christin Lahr, M+M, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Richard Reynolds, Jörg Steinmann, Michelle Teran, Stefanie Trojan, Annette Wehrmann, V2A.net, Georg Winter. Further pro­jects will be presen­ted at the “Base Station” in the museum and on the web­site: www.hackingthecity.org.

How are pub­lic life, demo­cratic cul­ture, and mod­ern res­ist­ance artic­u­lated in art? Which forms are used, which can be revived, which mod­els can artists and act­iv­ists fol­low? The prac­tice of Cultural Hacking is increas­ingly adop­ted by artists (in the broad­est sense) who act far away from the art mar­ket and exhibitions.

But who hacks, and who is hacked? While numer­ous suc­cess­ful hack­ing attacks in the 90s dis­closed the vul­ner­ab­il­ity of the eco­nomic and polit­ical struc­tures of the Net, there is today a grow­ing dis­course about strategies of invis­ib­il­ity and retreat strategies such as “turn-off”-movements.

Hacking the City is hence also about the his­tory of fail­ure at, and in the pub­lic space.

Curator: Sabine Maria Schmidt

16 July — 26 September 2010

A reader will be pub­lished by Steidl Verlag, Göttingen (December 2010).

via About … | Hacking the City.