"Spaziergänge in der Stadt / Urban Walks" presents seven artistic projects that use digital support to turn walking in (urban) space into an artistic-aesthetic experience. Present, future and past narratives of places and their people are taken up. Through a digital platform, the local art experiences can be experienced by audiences in other places.
Urban Walks is a regional project of the Goethe-Instituts East Asia. Participating cities and artists are Ran Chen and July (Beijing), Carman Wong, CK. F, RAY LC (Hong Kong), GeoinArtLab (Seoul), _ao_ao_ing (Shanghai), The Double Theatre (Taipei), Studio GROSS + Kitasenjudesign (Tokyo) and Mend-Amar Baigalmaa (Ulaanbaatar).
Parkplatz is the German term for ‘parking lot’, but individually they could be read as ‘Park’ = (public)park + ‘Platz’ = (public)place.
PARK-PLATZ creates temporary public space. By re-appropriating parking lots in a local neighbourhood in Tokyo, the project aims to initiate placemaking. PARK-PLATZ creates opportunities to linger in public space, sit and rest, mingle and chat, exchange and take the time to perceive our urban environment. The program, with artistic interventions, wants to create a one-day festival in the middle of the city.
PARK-PLATZ refers to a series of walking-based research conducted in the seminar “Strollology - Perception and Traffic” in 1992/1993 at the University of Kassel, Germany. This year, thirty years later, we want to bring one of their ideas to Tokyo.
Tokyo has a unique urban morphology where numerous houses belong to individuals. At first glance, a village-like structure with the potential for community. But as public space is limited, neighbours long for opportunities to stay connected with each other. With a common strategy of turning empty private plots into parking lots, the urban fabric loses the chance of placemaking.
Let’s change this for at least one day and join us with our particularly designed PARK-PLATZ vehicle on our journey to the “new public spaces” of Tokyo.
(The final route will be announced on site. Those who have registered in advance will be given a cell phone number to call for the current location, if they wish to join later).)
Artistic Interventions:
1000 A4 washi cosmos squares by Chloe Paré(Participatory, Installation)
Playfull accumulate our spationtemporal awarenesses while strolling in URBAN WALKS Tokyo. The participants are invited to weave totgether a plateau, a system that, during the successive act, cobwebs the entropies of subjectivities. The installation grows with visual, tactile, kenesthetik, spatioal and architectural disvoeries.
The fist intevention will be the collective weaving of a two dimensional surface expanding from the vehicle with paper cuturouts. The seconde intervention will be the transformation of the woven plane into a multidimensional sculpural installation, a playful interference with each other.
"I am here" by Maurizio Cirillo (Performance, Perception)
The intervention "I am here" is based on the numerous walks and bicycle rides that Cirillo made during his residency in Tokyo. Always in search of the edges of the never-ending city. Out of a conscious confrontation between himself, his body and the world that surrounds him, and our of a feeling of restlessness, of bein constantly driven, but also of loneliness and anonymity, he brings up the question to what exptent a sense of belonging is possible in a metropolis.
PA.RK.PLA.TZ. by GROUP (Vehicle, Float)
Four pillar are erected on the float "Dashi". The four pillares separate the sacred from the non-sacred. The pillars of the float are decorated with ornaments, each of which has its own meaning and protects the float, its dependents and the community. Letters also have meaning. We use letters as both decoration and structure to create pillars, thereby restoring the meaning of architectural ornamentation and transforming the shape of the community as the floats move through the alleys.
SUPER-SLIT-SCAN by KitaSenjuDesign (Film, AR)
We observe the enrisonment by altering our lens of perception with the tools of video expression using a technique called slit- scanning. Using this technique, we create a special archival experience that blends time and space.
Strollology - the Science of Walking, developed within the framework of “Socio-economic Principles of Urban Systems”, a subject in the Department of Architecture, Urban and Landscape Planning at the University of Kassel between 1973-1993, led by Annemarie and Lucius Burckhardt—their experimental pedagogy combined backgrounds in socio-economics, political activism, and art. With students, they examined the perception and meaning of landscape. They found that landscape is a constructed image formed by education, such as literature, painting, poetry, folk music etc. Ultimately they applied their findings to the urban landscape. Through interventions, they created new images within the urban environment to change citizens’ perceptions. This walking-based research formed the Science of Walking and became known as Strollology.
PARK-PLATZ is part of URBAN WALKS Goethe-Institut East Asia
Concept and curation design - Studio GROSS
Digital documentation design - KitaSenjuDesign
Vehicle design - GROUP
Intervention Artist - Chloe Paré, Maurizio Cirillo
Graphic Design - Sumire Kobayashi
Reading, translation of Burkhartdt´s text: Masamichi Tamura
