Hacking the City
"Hacking the City" is part of the "Mapping the Region" project. Its goal is to break up the cartography of city-specific structures and rules by looking at them not from a bird’s but from a frog’s perspective.
The term urban hacking first came into use in the 1990s. This artistic strategy is driven by political, social and creative goals, principally the idea of turning the city back into a space that people can use individually.
"Hacking the City" is not about the destruction of existing systems but about re-appropriating city spaces for something other than consumption and work in a creative, humorous and diverse way. Its goal is to reach as many people as possible and to motivate them to participate.
The instrument of cartography only becomes meaningful when people see themselves as individuals who view the world surrounding them as a projection - one whose appearance changes depending on how you look at it - rather than as something that is objective and unchangeable.
Urban hacking sees the city as an artistic medium. Locations for events will include not just Essen and other communities in the Ruhr metropolis chosen by artists but also the region's virtual online spaces and public areas of the Internet.
Kuratorin: Dr. Sabine Maria Schmidt
July 16 - September 26, 2010
Museum Folkwang, Essen
The exhibition is part of the Ruhr art museums' "Mapping the Region" project.