KREISE ZIEHEN [going out of circles] 2

The visual arts and artistically informed urban research are increasingly converging in the field of ‘urban cultures’. Art and culture as well as urbanity and built space need to be explored, experienced and narrated.

One field of engagement in recent years has been large housing estates built in the heroic phase between 1960 and 1990. They possess dimensions that are alone comparable to a small town – yet crucial urban functions such as the arts and cultural life are foremost projected onto the city centre. For this reason, large housing estates remain oddly foreign to many people in the city.

New narratives and images are needed to break open the seeming homogeneity of housing estates and to fathom their fascinating contradictoriness.
Housing estates are comparable to one another – even across continents. They are often organized in concentric circles around the core city. But even within one city, contact between housing estates is rare.