This month’s Freitagsfrühstück presenters are the fabulous people of Public Art Lab, our neighbours at Brunnenstraße! They will introduce you to their Connecting Cities Network 2012 – 2016 project.

 About the Freitagsfrühstück: These monthly social gatherings include a short presentation from inspiring members of our creative community, and a tasty breakfast buffet, all while the sun (hopefully) shines through the SUPERMARKT windows. Calling our community, neighbours, and friends to join us for the fourth edition of this insightful and creative Friday morning series.

Buffet Cost*: €5 per person on arrival at the bar for the buffet, including waffles, musli, joghurt, fruits, croissants and different kinds of dips.

RSVP: If you would like to attend, please send a short email to rsvp[a]supermarkt-berlin.net so we know how much breakfast buffet to prepare.

* Buffet is optional! You are more than welcome to just join the presentation

 Information about the presentation:

Public Art Lab is based in Berlin and directed by curator Susa Pop. PAL realises urban art projects that encourage audiences to participate in the creative process and experience their daily environment from different perspectives. These projects aim at fostering community development, identity building and communication among the city inhabitants.

In 2012, Public Art Lab has initiated the Connecting Cities Network which is funded by the European Commission’s Culture programme. Together with 14 international partners, Public Art Lab will produce a certain number of new media art works to circulate on media facades and large format digital screens in the public space of the participating cities.

New forms of transnational and translocal exchange

The CCN’s aim is to create a networked infrastructure of urban media facades to circulate artistic and socio-cultural content throughout the whole of Europe. Media facades and digital big screens provide new opportunities for communication in the public space: thanks to modern Information and communication technologies they act as membranes between the digital worlds and the urban space. All over the world we can evidence an increase of urban screens, media facades and media technologies like mobile phones: 5,9 of 7 billion people have meanwhile access to the internet. What is the potential of urban media besides the commercial usage for advertisement? How can they catalyse communication and awareness of our environments and contribute to a lively society? How can we create an exchange between local scenes and neighbourhoods thus giving a voice to the public audience? Which impact will they have for our global communities?

Connecting Cities will investigate these questions and issues within a 4-years artistic research programme in which we pursue the vision of setting up an urban media network to contribute in a sustainable way to the digital future urban media development in our European cities. We approach this vision of the Connecting Cities Network through three scenarios:

NETWORKED CITY 2013

– open-up real-time windows between the cities

– connect the local scenes and neighbourhoods

PARTICIPATORY CITY 2014

– include the public audience in artistic processes

– use the urban media facades as digital stages

VISIBLE CITY 2015

– data visualisation of sensor networks

– real-time open data processing

The Connecting Cities Network is initiated by Public Art Lab in cooperation with Ars Electronica GmbH Linz, BIS Body Process Arts Association Istanbul, FACT Liverpool, iMAL Brussels, m-cult Helsinki, Medialab Prado Madrid, Media Architecture Institute Wien, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Riga 2014, Videospread Marseille, the University of Aarhus, Marseille-Provence 2013, MUTEK Montréal and the Quartier des spectacles Montréal.

Streaming partner: Streampark TV

Media partner: ARTE Creative

Biografie: Susa Pop

Susa Pop is director of Public Art Lab which she founded in 2003. As curator and cultural operator she initiates projects which focus on community building through networking art projects that catalyse communicative processes and public awareness in temporarily possessed urban settings – while utilising the possibilities of digital urban media tools and their virtual public sphere. (Projects: Mobile Museums, Mobile Studios, Mobicases etc.)

Since 2008 Susa Pop reflects on the increasing presence of commercially used digital screens in public spaces while investigating their communicative function and networked possibilities in the urban environment. In this context she initiated the Media Facades Festivals 2008 and 2010, the Innovation Forum 2011 and the Connecting Cities Network 2012-16 and gives lectures at FH Potsdam, European Media Science and Computer Science at HTW in Berlin.

The publication ‘Urban Media Cultures’ which she co-edited (publisher: avedition, 2012) provides numerous examples from the areas of urban media development, technology and marketing.

Photo Credit: Kyung-Min Ko