Urban Media Art Academy: City of Intersecting Rituals
Symposium:
Title:
- Urban Media Art Academy: City of Intersecting Rituals
Organiser/Presenter(s):
Statement:
Since ancient times and through many different cultural and spiritual traditions, rituals have been part of everyday life as gestures of tradition, repetition and performance – from eating, celebrating and praying, to codes of human interaction. Rituals are codes of co-existence but also mechanisms of governance, fixity and maintenance of diversion. In public space, rituals of different times, cultures and realities intersect. In Durban, public space is a complex reality of social, economic, political, cultural, religious, and geographical interpretations and origins. In this program we will discuss the intersecting rituals of Durban, their origins and meaning for Durban’s urban development, and explore how urban art and creativity can interrupt, adjust or affect urban situations in which rituals intersect. We will dive into questions relating to urgent needs and conditions of fixity and transformation of Durban, especially how local creativity can address those needs and empower citizens through bottom-up art and innovation initiatives. The program examines art in the urban domain in terms of what it does rather than what it is, as a processual impulse implicated with urban change; and which acknowledges how ‘actors’ in the urban field (artists, designers, architects, curators, creative city makers, and others) engage knowledge systems of different sectors and cultural contexts in creative engagement with urban change.
The Urban Media Art Academy is a networked, global educational initiative that investigates and intermediates urban media art as an interdisciplinary domain of practice, theory and knowledge sharing. It is realised through a worldwide partner network of artists, art curators, urban activists, scholars and creative thinkers and develops in between universities, arts and culture organisations, NGO’s, cultural centres, city labs and media architectural initiatives, drawing upon knowledge, experience and methodologies in an interdisciplinary environment. The Academy is founded and directed by Dr. Tanya Toft Ag and Susa Pop in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut. urbanmediaart.academy
