Sample Cities / Imaginary Spaces
Book Launch and Exhibition – the upcoming artist in residency from Berlin in Istanbul will have a book launch and exhibition in Berlin, February 19th 2015, 7 pm at Revolver Publishing Immanuelkirchstraße 12, Berlin. Katja Pratschke together with her husband, the filmmaker and artist Gusztáv Hámos will be in Istanbul starting in March 2015:
The exhibition Sample Cities / Imaginary Spaces deals with the theme of personal urban perceptions, which we call »the city«. The city, as a living organism, reflects social processes and interactions, economic relations, political conditions and private matters. In the city, human memories, desires and tragedies find expression in the form of designations and marks engraved in house walls and paving slabs. The Sample Cities/ imaginary spaces project researches what is contained or concealed in the city under this layer of signs.
The source material for the installation consists of photo works by Gusztáv Hámos, produced between 1973 and 2012, each of which sequences depicts essential situations of urban experiences containing concentrations of human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in this exhibition include Berlin, Budapest and New York. Places with a traumatised past: (cold) war, dictatorships and terrorist catastrophes.
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For the exhibition, 9 photo sequences have been assembled into tableaux or series of images and a three dimensional photo object. Every individual photo work already contains within it an idea, an arrangement, a programme, a concept – as scores and notations. Sample CitIES/ imaginary spaces is inspired by Italo Calvino’s book »La città invisibili«, (»Invisible Cities«). Each video outlines an imaginary city that summarises an historic, social, economic, political or private aspect in a poetic narrative.
Video Credits: Narrator – Ulrich Matthes | Music – Chopin | Drums – Thomas Wydler | Vocals – Karolina Ferencz
Learn more about Hidden Cities and Sample Cities at potentialspace by Gusztáv Hámos and Katja Pratschke.
Katja Pratschke is the artist in residence in Istanbul by the Berlin Senat starting March 2015 – .