{"id":1340,"date":"2010-10-17T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stealth.ultd.net\/stealth\/updates\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2017-04-23T16:09:11","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T14:09:11","slug":"impakt-festival-2010-matrix-city-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stealth.ultd.net\/?p=1340","title":{"rendered":"Impakt Festival 2010: Matrix City"},"content":{"rendered":"

On invitation of Impakt Foundation (active in the fields of culture-media-society), STEALTH, together with Kristian Luki\u0107, curated Matrix City<\/em>, the 2010 edition of Impakt Festival in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Matrix City<\/em> has installed a temporary platform to meet future perspectives of cities. It depicted the growing dependency on the networked artificial superstructure, the tension between bold and on-the-edge-of-realizable desires about our future, modest responses to pressing realities, dilemmas about the urban ‘revolution’ or alternative virtual environments as ‘better worlds’. Matrix City<\/em> departs from celebrating the technological or informational advancements of cities and instead focuses through the exhibition Opportunities of Entanglement<\/em>, seven screening programs, a conference and a number of special events on the growing urban entanglement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[dilemma of urbanization]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Urbanization increasingly seems to act like a self-propelling machine. A staggering urgency to consider the current development is surely found in the massive and centripetal, gravitational power of urban growth. For one, in the mega-cities that have sprung up in recent decades (which differ so much from the ‘classic’ metropolis that our understanding and tools are at odds with them) but equally in the massive urbanization that takes place outside of these megacities.<\/p>\n

In the radical new worlds envisioned in the 1960s and 1970s, for the first time a ‘modern’ engulfing urban matrix was projected (like in the works of Constant Nieuwenhuys, Archigram \u2013 or in a more dystopian version by Superstudio, for example) – at a point when industrialization, space age, computing and the emergence of digital media converged with the perceived possibility of a fundamental and liberating ‘makeover’ of our environment.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, while newly arriving citizens cut their ties with the rural background and become reliant on resources provided third hand, those that are already part of the urban system have little option to step out. However, this expanding machine of urbanization may currently be the only opportunity at hand. For one, because de-urbanization (at the existing levels of worldwide population growth) may be the most inefficient, resource consuming and therefore unsustainable future ahead.<\/p>\n