METASITU WELCOME TO
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We are one. This is our city. We are all locals.
ECUMENOPOLIS The whole world is urban. A jungle, a desert oasis, a village in the north or resort by the sea... we all live in the same city. Not cities that resemble one another, but the same. It is in this ‘same city’ where one finds familiar toothpaste brands and fashion retailers; where one is able to navigate metro systems and find Wifi signals. The same city that is prey to the territorial techniques of latecapitalism. The same gentrification steps. The same city that is drawn in GIS, AutoCad and seen through the eyes of Google Street View. The same city that you just instagramed A walled city whose last frontier is the stratosphere. The whole world is one total city.
The urban fabric in our world has transcended the concrete and the mere inhabitation of the territory. Beyond the built environment, the urban space is continued through intricate networks of stock exchanges, flight routes, data servers, internet cables, facebook friends and international financial remittances.In this planet-wide city, new strategic situations emerge, a series of spatial strategies that require a new lexicon. New tactics of inhabitation that, like franchised fast-food chains, can be exported to different areas of this planetary city.
The urban and the rural have ceased to exist as opposite binaries to be dissolved into one, the total city. We propose a new redefinition of the urban realm. A theoretical framework that suggests that the whole world is urban. A city of planetary dimensions, walled by the stratosphere. Metropolis, Acropolis, Necropolis, Technopolis and all other -polis in fact have become Ecumenopolis, a term coined in 1967 by the Greek planner Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis. Whether we are commuting to work inside a megalopolis or exploring the depths of a jungle whose existence is challenged by deforestation, our existence takes place within a conundrum of networks and effects that dictate our relationship to the territory and to one another. An increase in sales of iPhones in Lima, changes the mining landscapes around Lubumbashi, triggering new form of inhabitation in Shenzhen and acid rain in the Okavango Delta. A divorce between concrete and urbanisation. The hyperconnectivity that globalisation has brought with it implies that human inhabitation has transcended the built environment. The same languages that are used to decode an environment, can increasingly be transplanted elsewhere: understanding a global urban language, a lexicon spread everywhere due to the inhabitation of humans. In the era of the Antropocene there are no cities, there is just a cosmopolis. An all-embracing Ecumenopolis
METASITU
http://www.metasitu.com Exhibition WELCOME TO ECUMENOPOLIS is co-curated by urban research and art collective METASITU and metamatic:taf
METASITU METASITU is a strategic art collective and urban consultancy founded by Eduardo Cassina (Spain) and Liva Dudareva (Latvia). Our expertise is contemporary and future urban challenges, which we address through our research-based practice. The urban fabric is our point of interest: the different fibres that weave it, the social and communal layers, the built matrix and the infinite networks that traverse it. From this departure point, our intention is to dissect the inhabited territory and bring architectural and urban sociological research to a wider audience through art in order to bridge the gap that currently exists separating urbanites from a global understanding of their immediate surroundings.
Our practice is highly mobile, relying on the transnational networks, virtual and physical, where we draw our inspiration and fascination from, but also where we unfold our nomadic existence.
metamatic:taf http://www.metamatictaf.gr/
Exhibition WELCOME TO ECUMENOPOLIS is co-curated by urban research and art collective METASITU and metamatic:taf
metamatic:taf TAF/the Art Foundation began operating in May 2009 with a dual role of an independent space organizing and hosting cultural events related to all forms of artistic production and a point of social gathering for people bearing a new Athenian identity. Throughout following three-year course, TAF has showcased a number of activities and cultural values that were based upon creativity, community, diversity and the need for reflection on daily issues; during this period TAF/the Art Foundation has been welcoming an average of 200,000 visitors per year, offering them free access for almost all of its events.
In June 2012, TAF was renamed to metamatic:taf simultaneously expanding its natural space to the internetworked environment. Today, metamatic:taf attempts to create the right conditions in order to set up a vibrant online platform that will act as meeting point for contemporary ideas and practices, a place where thought isn’t separated from action and culture is conceived as an everyday activity. At the same time, it offers the opportunity to realize creative ideas and present them to a broad audience, establishing an all-inclusive artistic, educational and entertaining experience.