IDEAS CITY Festival About the Urban Future
New York City, May 1–4, 2013
Festival’s International Programs Launch with
IDEAS CITY: Istanbul
October 11–14, 2012
“Untapped Capital” is the 2013 Theme
The New Museum is pleased to announce that the 2013 iteration of IDEAS CITY, the biennial festival created to explore the future city and to effect change, will take place in downtown New York from May 1 to 4, 2013. Formerly known as the Festival of Ideas for the New City, IDEAS CITY was founded by the New Museum as a major collaboration between dozens of downtown arts, education, and community organizations to harness the power of the creative community and imagine our collective future. This ambitious initiative is built upon the core belief that arts and culture constitute a driving force behind the vitality of urban centers worldwide. The overwhelmingly positive response led to the festival’s establishment as a unique biennial event in New York City with international satellite programs organized in intervening years.
IDEAS CITY: Istanbul October 11, 12, 14, and 19, 2012
Beginning October 11, IDEAS CITY: Istanbul will be a three-day conference featuring a series of workshops organized by the New Museum in conjunction with the first Istanbul Design Biennial. The conference will be a resource for identifying key issues around this year’s overarching festival theme of Untapped Capital, while further developing an active network of international colleagues.
IDEAS CITY: Istanbul will kick off the three-day conference with a keynote by Amanda M. Burden, New York City Planning Commissioner and Chair of the New York City Planning Commission.
On October 12, the first discussion, “Structures and Networks”, will include panelists Burak Arıkan (Artist), Aslı Aydıntaşbas (Columnist, Milliyet), Adam Greenfield (Founder and Managing Director, Urbanscale), Yancey Strickler (Cofounder, Kickstarter), and Anthony Townsend (Research Director, Institute for the Future). The panel will be moderated by Marc Kushner (Architect; Cofounder, Architizer). The second discussion, “Collaboration and Exchange”, will include panelists Yaşar A. Adanalı (Urban blogger: Mutlukent (Happy City) and Reclaim Istanbul), Rupali Gupte (Founding Member, Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Selva Gürdoğan (Architect; Cofounder, Superpool), and Suketu Mehta (Author, Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University). Artist Pedro Reyes will moderate.
On October 14, the workshop session IDEAS CITY: Istanbul World Café, organized in collaboration with SALT, an Istanbul-based organization that explores critical and timely issues in visual and material culture, will explore the themes discussed at the panels with regional students and practitioners. Participants will include architects Ömer Kanıpak (Professor, Istanbul Technical University), Yelta Köm (Cofounder of IPWT—In Public/Projects/Publicity/Party etc. We Trust); and artists Ahmet Öğüt, Metehan Özcan, and İz Öztat, in addition to Merve Arkunlar (Editor, TimeOut Istanbul), among others.
History of the Festival
The Festival of Ideas for the New City 2011 was conceived and directed by the New Museum as a major collaborative initiative between downtown New York organizations and served as a platform for artists, writers, architects, engineers, designers, urban farmers, planners, and thought leaders to exchange ideas, propose solutions, and invite the public to participate. A natural outgrowth of the New Museum’s ongoing commitment to public education and civic outreach, the concept quickly attracted a core group of downtown organizing partners who continue to meet regularly. Besides the New Museum (founder), the organizing partners for IDEAS CITY 2013 are Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, Bowery Poetry Club, New York University Wagner School, and the Drawing Center.
For the inaugural festival in 2011, Rem Koolhaas opened the three-day conference with a provocative keynote on preservation and David Byrne concluded it by introducing a mayors’ panel including Sergio Fajardo, former mayor of Medellín, Colombia; Greg Nickels, former mayor of Seattle, and Michael Nutter, mayor of Philadelphia. On Saturday, a street fest hosted 115 vendors, composed of local artists, nonprofits, and designers promoting ideas rather than wares. Hundreds of cultural spaces in the downtown neighborhood stayed open late into the evening to present exhibitions, events, and site-specific installations of light, sound, performance, and projection related to the festival themes.
IDEAS CITY was founded by Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, and Karen Wong, Deputy Director and Director of External Affairs, New Museum.
IDEAS CITY: Istanbul panels and workshops are organized by Richard Flood, Director of Special Projects and Curator at Large, New Museum, in collaboration with Vasif Kortun, Director of Research and Programs, SALT.
Funding
Lead Sponsor: Audi Urban Future Initiative
Founding Supporter: IDEAS CITY is made possible by a generous grant from Goldman Sachs Gives at the recommendation of Hermine & David B. Heller.
Producing Sponsors: Brookfield and Lonti Ebers are gratefully acknowledged.
Support for IDEAS CITY: Istanbul is made possible, in part, by Virginia Lebermann and John Wotowicz.
About the New Museum
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.
