[artimage05] LAUNCH OF THE BIENNIAL-LAYERS

[Claudia Westermann]

PRESS RELEASE 006

5th graz biennial on media and architecture

november 07 - 11 2001

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

we are pleased to announce the launch of Biennial-Layers, the virtual start 
of the 5th graz biennial on media and architecture. We would like to invite 
you to take advantage of this permanent Biennial platform in the run-up to 
the festival in Graz to join us in exploring current trends in architecture 
and urban culture.

“The inception of the Biennial-Layers is our response to current challenges 
posed to a festival by the changed forms of production and presentation of 
contemporary art and culture production” says Charlotte Pöchhacker, 
director of graz biennial on media and architecture. "With this virtual 
layer of the Biennial, we have established a contemporary dispositif for 
collaborative, process-based, cultural production and mediation on the 
Internet. In co-operation with architects, artists and theorists from a 
range of disciplines, we develop in this virtual lab the focal issues of 
graz biennial on media and architecture." The design and programming of the 
demanding concept of the biennial website was ideally implemented by 
Alexander Kada + digital_context .

A particulary interesting example of this changed working situation is 
marked by the concept of a “conference as process” developed in the context 
of the Biennial-Layers. The conference Cityscapes: Imagineering the Urban 
Condition is designed as a 3-month process of discussion between the 
invited speakers. This permanent media-based exchange creates a discursive 
space hosted by international culture and architecture theorists. The 
themes of discussion focuse on the relation of images of the urban sphere 
and of the production of urban space (host: Kai Vöckler; speakers: Edward 
W. Soja, John Fiske, Walter Prigge, and others), the changes and new modes 
of existence that result from imagineering as a contemporary paradigm of 
architecture (host: Andreas Ruby; speakers: John Urry, Klaus Ronneberger, 
Patrick Schuhmacher, and others) and the current self-perception of urban 
planning in view of the global exchange of urban wishful images and images 
of fear (host: Christian Kühn; speakers: Christopher Charles Benninger, 
Jorge Mario Jáuregui, Wolf D. Prix, and others).

In order to implement this process of discussion on the Net, the Belgian 
architect team Lab[au] specially developed a tool for the Biennial-Layers, 
the Cityscapes Interface, that links the media-based exchange of 
information with the conference in Graz, mapping the exchange of 
information throughout the entire duration. This discussion held in the 
Biennial Layers Net space culminates during the 5th biennial on media and 
architecture in Graz in 9 panel discussions and 4 roundtables featuring 
more than 30 internationally renowned speakers in a dialogue with the public.

The conferences Cityscapes–Imagineering the Urban Condition and 
Infoscapes–Processing Information/Communicating Architecture constitute the 
two core themes of the 5th graz biennial on media and architecture. The 
theoretical approaches presented and discussed at these events will 
constitute the range of topics that pose a specific challenge in terms of 
the reception of current media works for the International Competition 
Programme at the Biennial.

The link between theoretical and artistic positions, then, sets out a 
dynamic field of observation covering complex perspectives on architectural 
spaces and social conditions in the urban context and makes the five days 
of the festival a dynamic platform for exciting debates and intensive 
exchange.

For further information please contact
Thomas Moser, Roland Gruber
Public Relations
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5th biennial on media and architecture November, 7-11, 2001
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Layers
Hallerschlossstrasse 21, A - 8010 Graz, Austria
fon: +43 316 356155 fax: +43 316 356156
http://www.artimage.at