Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Joseph Grima
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Ideas City was launched in this context in 2011, arguably “Mirror Mirror” tents
along the Bowery,
the moment of deepest despair. Cofounded by Director Ideas City New York,
2013
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New Museum and involving over one hundred nonprofits,
cultural organizations, citizen associations, and artist
groups, Ideas City took over the streets surrounding the
Museum for a full weekend in May 2011. This collective
“occupation” of the area brought organizations together,
giving them a sense of shared purpose and support in
their efforts to keep the local tradition of art and culture
alive. Ideas City also gave participants local and inter
national visibility, and it was a crucial opportunity for the
New Museum—an institution clearly at home within an
elite global network of art organizations—to publicly
affirm its commitment to its own neighborhood and
community. The event was radically open, and it built on
New York’s long tradition of street festivals, using that
familiar structure to make conventional museum-based
formats, such as conferences, more welcoming to a
broad audience.
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action. Sustaining every initiative is the conviction that (bottom) A roundtable
workshop at Ideas
there is more to the process of shaping cities than laying City Istanbul, 2012
out roads and zoning maps, and that there is a need for a (right, top) Fellows
and mentors
292
or accommodate the extraordinary complexity and deli-
cacy of the ingredients that make healthy and livable cities
the fundamental building blocks of a thriving society.
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conference, and to permit participants to not just present
preexisting work, but also generate new strategies and
ideas in response to their observations on-site. During
editions held in Detroit and Athens in 2016 and in Arles in
2017, Ideas City evolved into a residency program, in
which forty Fellows chosen by the New Museum (with one
third from the city, one third from the host country, and
one third from international locations in order to create a
diverse and balanced group) work and live together under
one roof for a period of five days, operating in teams of
five members to produce critical and creative responses
to the conditions they encounter on the ground. In many
ways this model represents a new operational structure
for the design office, one in which highly qualified individ-
uals from diverse disciplinary and cultural backgrounds
join forces to develop unconventional and notably original
strategies for the future city.
294
Theaster Gates (right)
leads a conversation to art and culture, the struggle for social justice, and the
with Fellows at Ideas
City Detroit, 2016 resistance to the commodification and privatization of
public space—can be advanced only through a conver-
gence of cross-disciplinary approaches that involves
bringing mayors, citizens, designers, activists, and
artists to the same table. Ideas City proposes a new way
of making the work of an arts-based institution relevant
to the reality of a rapidly urbanizing world. As a platform
for interdisciplinary action, it counters the perception
that art and culture are superfluous luxuries with the
assertion that bridging the spheres of design, policy, and
administration with the critical practice of art is essential
to civic life.
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stated, “architecture is too important to be left to archi-
tects.” Likewise, in our time, cities are too important to be
left to city planners. In order to realize the potential of
cities to improve the lives of the world’s rapidly growing
population, we need to pioneer new models of civic life in
which culture and art are not extraneous luxuries but
inalienable ingredients.
Joseph Grima has been Director of Ideas City since 2015. Trained as an architect, he is
also the founder of the Genoa-based design research studio Space Caviar and Creative
Director of Eindhoven Design Academy. He was previously Editor in Chief of Domus
magazine and Director of Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York.
296
Ideas City
Multiple artists
transform the New Museum
building in “Flash: Light”
organized by Nuit Blanche
New York, Ideas City New
York, May 2011 346
(top) The interior Art and Architecture, (bottom) Spectators watch
of the Spacebuster, Ideas City New York, a film by Marco Brambilla
an inflatable mobile May 2013 at the Basilica of St.
structure designed by Patrick’s Old Cathedral,
Raumlabor, commissioned Ideas City New York,
by Storefront for May 2011 347