- Database
- Hamburg
- 26.08.2009
- NETWORKED CULTURES
From August 26 through September 6, 2009 the contemporary art festival subvision. kunst. festival. off. takes place in HafenCity Hamburg.
subvision focuses on initiatives experimenting with new exhibition and communication formats going beyond traditional forms of the art business with its fairs and biennales. For the first time, artists’ initiatives from all over the world, whose working methods as well as art presentation and distribution strategies manoeuvre outside established institutions and commercial structures, will come together. They include independent exhibition spaces – so-called “off spaces” or “artist-run spaces”, nomadic projects, special archives, self published magazines, and alternative communication networks or research projects.
The Architektur Werkstatt Hamburg, together with HafenCity Hamburg GmbH, has designed a temporary exhibition architecture consisting of ship containers and scaffoldings along the lines of urbanistic models. Hence, a “city inside the city” will be created on the Strandkai that with its block structure is reminiscent of both the city map of Manhattan and a playing field. Each individual field consists of one to three containers coloured red (Hamburg Süd), blue (NYK) or green (Capital Intermodal), and is “occupied” by one artists’ group. Places of joint use as well as an event hall and a café further the participatory moment. All constructional elements and materials will be used again after the end of the festival.
HafenCity Hamburg, currently the largest intra-urban construction site in Europe, is an ideal venue for subvision, as it forms both the context and the contrasting backdrop to the artistic contents and issues. This productive field of tension is desired. subvision utilizes an area of 10,000 square metres on the Strandkai in the western part of HafenCity – a “prime cut” directly on the Elbe and in the immediate vicinity of the Elbphilharmonie – for a powerful artistic positing, the supra-regional radiation of which will benefit the City of Hamburg on many levels.
