Opening: Who’s your City

Aside from concert halls, theaters and museums, there have always been efforts to leave these established spaces and open up new spaces for the arts. Alternative uses of space in the post-industrial context, such as clubs, galleries, studios or temporary community spaces, continually bring forth new questions and perspectives of creativity, encounters and participation, but also of opportunities for retreat and repression. Under the title “Who’s Your City”, the second weekend of the festival takes a look at different initiatives, projects and actors in the context of such spatial shifts and presents various strategies of both the use and development of analog, digital and hybrid spaces with performances, exhibitions, open studios, showings and partys.

The sociologist Martina Löw will introduce the second festival weekend of the HYBRID Biennale with a keynote speech. Under the title “Re/figur/ing. An invitation to new spatial thinking.,” Löw will address the spatial shifts suggested and contextualize them from a sociological perspective:

People’s relationship to their spaces has changed fundamentally in the last few decades. The spatial images that provide orientation have multiplied due to both political and technical developments. This leads to a significantly increased complexity of everyday life and to a fundamental change in urban culture. In her lecture, Martina Löw will develop the thesis that there has been a pluralization of spatial figures in recent decades. Since each spatial figure is tied to its own logic of action, this not only leads to contradictory demands for action, but also to new spatial forms of expression. Using the topic of spaces, Martina Löw examines current fields of power in societies around the world.

Duration: ca. 1 h, Keynote speech followed by a discussion round
Language: German with english translation

Funded by Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony