City Crossings
Symposium:
Title:
- City Crossings
Organiser/Presenter(s):
Statement:
Workshop Statement
City Crossings is a week long networked workshop between young people in Belfast and Tokyo, introducing the creative possibilities of simple new media and utilizing this to communicate in a collaborative investigation of their neighbourhoods. This project is designed to facilitate new dialogues, attempting to overcome barriers of language and preconceptions of each others’ context, and raising awareness of different cultures and cultural understanding. In these workshops we will explore how we formulate our notions of place and how these might be subjectively or collectively described, while also considering the impact of media technologies on our conception and reception of our immediate and distant spaces. How do we form views of another place? How do we receive information about a far city? And how do we communicate where we are to elsewhere? These are important questions, which will be raised in these activities. The children will explore their own neighbourhoods, their own personal attachments to their local place, the experiences, histories and cultures which they associate with them and through a mixture of old and new media attempt to pass on this local knowledge. Through this exchange of video, photos, sound recordings, drawings and animation we hope to share the personal experiences and stories which are attached to each city. The result of these investigations will be collated to form a representation of the participants’ own city but also engage in a process of overmapping, linking Belfast and Tokyo in various points of juncture and difference, which will culminate in a public tour of this multilayered space.
