Welcome to Instant Urbanism

Description: This PhD course takes point of departure in the fact, that temporal art and architecture play a significant role in city planning and urban development, where artists and architects are enrolled in a economic rationale, which essentially is about creating good investment possibilities in an insecure time for urban development projects. This development is somehow contradictory to the historic roots of Instant Urbanism. More than 40 years of critical artistic and curatorial practice have found their way into urban space and used it to start critical dialogue and reflection in the intersection between relational art and performative architecture. Relational art and architectural projects have provided projects where artistic interventions or works have been introduced into a site in order to promote social interactions, create autonomous meeting places and add greater diversity in terms of spaces and experiences into the urban landscape.

This double bound agenda on temporal urban art and architecture rice the question on how we as artists, architects and scientists can work in this new field? This course argue, that Instant Urbanism research needs both to be ‘critical’ in relation to identifying ‘problems’ as well as to be ‘innovative’  in developing a ‘critical curatorial and architectural design praxis’.
This course is planned as a continuation of a t day international conference with keynote speakers and academic paper presentations on the following themes:
- Temporal projects as critical spatial praxis
- Temporal projects as strategic tools in urban development and urban transformation
- Event culture and urban branding
- Curetting and artistic tools in urban design and planning.

The PhD course will investigate different methodological and theoretical approaches in order to understand and frame the concept “Critical Spatial Praxis” in a broader artistic and academic context. All types of technology applied to public art and urban installations are of interest to us. We want to investigate projects and installations taking place in specific spatial contexts, and investigate the role of technology in these types of works.
The participants will have the option of taking a 5 ECTS version where a written essay must be handed in after the course. The course appeals to a cross-disciplinary audience from Art, Curatorial Praxis, Architecture, Urban Design over Planning to Sociology, Geography and Anthropology.

Organizer: Professor Hans Kiib and PhD Fellow Signe Brink Pedersen

Lecturers: Hans Kiib and Signe Brink Pedersen

ECTS: 3 (5 ECTS for article or essay)

Time: 6-8 May, 2014

Place: Aalborg University, Utzon Center, Obel Auditorium

Zip code: 9000

City: Aalborg

Number of seats: 15

Deadline: 15 April, 2014