 | Michael Zinganel (A)
The city speaks! A fictitious dialogue
| |
The city speaks! A fictitious dialogue
Discursive city tour as part of the exhibition guide
Offset print, 52 pages
Available from the Pavilion, the festival centre, all festival Venues and in bookstores in Graz
“The city is a state of mind,” asserted Robert Ezra Park, the founder of modern urban sociology, in 1914. According to him, the city presents itself to its inhabitants and users above all as a mental blueprint, constituted not only by their own experiences, but rather by their subconscious, by a wide range of visual memories and knowledge archives, each activated according to specific occasions. Sigmund Freud’s analogy of the historical layers of the city and the layers of the subconscious was not only enthusiastically embraced by Robert Ezra Park, but by the Surrealists,Walter Benjamin and the Situationist International as well.
This exhibition guide is thus also conceived as a multilayered narrative: it consists of a fictitious dialogue between a local urban historian, thus familiar with the city, and a theorist well-versed in international discourses of the city and art, whose statements are compiled mostly from text modules from published writings and conversations. Although they are both walking around the city, stopping off at the various sites of the contributions to the “Utopia and Monument” exhibition for public spaces, they develop their dialogues independently, at locations and monuments that voice their particular knowledge. The set pieces from recognised edifices of theory erected in other cities and cultures clash with local peculiarities and the contradictory experiences of people who know the area well.
The complexity of the discourses on the city is also transferred to its representation in the plans: the foldout general plan and detailed plans not only include the sites of the works for “Utopia and Monument”, but also objects associated with the dialogues and narratives of urban history. A historical plan presenting examples of exclusion puts the romantic image of the ‘fair’ middle-class city into perspective. Moreover, a current plan demonstrates the contemporary creation of temporary public spheres by means of a practically incessant programming of squares and roads as venues and routes for a variety of events. The result is not an exhaustive or historically correct map, but rather an overlay of the author’s memories, experiences and types of knowledge.
Commissioned by steirischer herbst
Project sponsor Think!
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25/09 - 18/10
Utopia and Monument I
Fri 25/09, 6 pm
Vernissage at the exhibition pavilion, Platz der Freiwilligen Schützen / Bad zur Sonne
public space
Michael Zinganel
Born in Bad Radkersburg (A) in 1960; lives in Graz and Vienna (A).
25/09 - 18/10
Utopia and Monument I
Fri 25/09, 6 pm
Vernissage at the exhibition pavilion, Platz der Freiwilligen Schützen / Bad zur Sonne
public space
Michael Zinganel
Born in Bad Radkersburg (A) in 1960; lives in Graz and Vienna (A).
