Sabine Bitter / Helmut Weber
22 Mar - 05 May 2007
photo: Bitter/Weber, Belgrade/Vancouver (from the series: Boulevards, Banlieues and Other Samples
of Decorated Histories), 2006, Courtesy: Galerie Grita Insam 2007
of Decorated Histories), 2006, Courtesy: Galerie Grita Insam 2007
SABINE BITTER / HELMUT WEBER
"Recent Geographies"
opening March 22nd, 2007 6-9 PM
Seilerstätte Vienna
introduction by Walter Seidl 7 PM
through to May 5th
Since 1993, Vienna based artists Sabine Bitter (* 1960) and Helmut Weber (*1957) have cooperated on projects addressing urban geographies, architectural representations and related visual politics. Their artistic works focus on emergent sites and overlaps of architecture, urban developments, communications systems and modes of artistic and cultural production as they are mediated through photography, video and new media technologies.
Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber’s new work captures the paradox of emergent or new urban landscapes that are not newly built, but are made new by social, economic, and urban transformation. These „recent geographies“, as Bitter/Weber designate them, are born out of the fact that cities are at the center of global change. Globalization, for all of its opening of the world and its deepening of national and local connections, focuses its transformational powers on cities, and therefore materializes dramatically in the textures and rhythms of daily life and the production of urban space. The shift subtlety caught in Bitter/Weber’s work is that „global cities“ are obviously not just the major financial command posts, but that peripheral cities (on the edge of regions but in the orbit of global capital) such as Belgrade and Vancouver, and the periphery of cities themselves (such as the banlieues of Paris and the state-modernist New Belgrade, across the river from the old city) have become „globalized cities“ in new, fascinating, and conflicting ways.
.....
As with all of the recent work of Bitter/Weber, notions of architecture and agency, and of citizenship and the spaces of agency are central in „Recent Geographies.“ (Text: Jeff Derksen)
"Recent Geographies"
opening March 22nd, 2007 6-9 PM
Seilerstätte Vienna
introduction by Walter Seidl 7 PM
through to May 5th
Since 1993, Vienna based artists Sabine Bitter (* 1960) and Helmut Weber (*1957) have cooperated on projects addressing urban geographies, architectural representations and related visual politics. Their artistic works focus on emergent sites and overlaps of architecture, urban developments, communications systems and modes of artistic and cultural production as they are mediated through photography, video and new media technologies.
Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber’s new work captures the paradox of emergent or new urban landscapes that are not newly built, but are made new by social, economic, and urban transformation. These „recent geographies“, as Bitter/Weber designate them, are born out of the fact that cities are at the center of global change. Globalization, for all of its opening of the world and its deepening of national and local connections, focuses its transformational powers on cities, and therefore materializes dramatically in the textures and rhythms of daily life and the production of urban space. The shift subtlety caught in Bitter/Weber’s work is that „global cities“ are obviously not just the major financial command posts, but that peripheral cities (on the edge of regions but in the orbit of global capital) such as Belgrade and Vancouver, and the periphery of cities themselves (such as the banlieues of Paris and the state-modernist New Belgrade, across the river from the old city) have become „globalized cities“ in new, fascinating, and conflicting ways.
.....
As with all of the recent work of Bitter/Weber, notions of architecture and agency, and of citizenship and the spaces of agency are central in „Recent Geographies.“ (Text: Jeff Derksen)