Open. Cahier on Art in the Public Domain, no. 18
’2030: War Zone Amsterdam. Imagining the Unimaginable’
For information, ordering and subscriptions see:
www.opencahier.nl
Announcing the publication of Open. Cahier on Art in the Public Domain, no. 18: ’2030: War Zone Amsterdam. Imagining the Unimaginable’.
Open 18 throws a radically different light on Amsterdam’s contemporary social reality through the fictitious device of a war in Amsterdam in 2030. Seeing as the debates currently being held in the Netherlands on some social ‘issues’ show very little creative development, Open addresses the questions and problems facing the contemporary western city in general: fear & safety privacy & biopolitics, control & militarization, globalization & virtualization, commercialization & neoliberalism, using Amsterdam is a test case. Open 18 functions as a reader for the art event ’2030: War Zone Amsterdam’, which Brigitte van der Sande, independent curator and guest editor of this number, developed and which starts at the end of 2009.
Sociologist Willem Schinkel (NL) discusses the implications for Amsterdam of an urban policy that employs war rhetoric and marketing strategies. Author/philosopher Dirk van Weelden (NL) imagines what it is like to live and move about in an Amsterdam at war. Social geographer Stephen Graham (GB) is interviewed by Bryan Finoki (USA) on his research into the relationship between urban locales, mobility, infrastructure and technology, on the one hand, and war, surveillance and geopolitics on the other. Philosopher Frank Furedi (GB) analyzes the politicization and dramatization of fear. Philosopher and urbanist Paul Virilio (FR) is interviewed by John Armitage (GB) on the contemporary conditions of the city in relation to the concept of ‘war zone’. Other contributions are from Matteo Pasquinelli (IT), Wietske Maas (NL), Eyal Weizman (GB/ISR) and Tom McCarthy (GB). The artist contributions were made by Gert Jan Kocken (NL) and Adi Kaplan & Shahar Carmel (ISR).
Open 18 investigates the contemporary conditions of public space and changing notions of publicness in a structural manner. This implies an experimental and interdisciplinary exposition of the reality, possibilities and limitations of the current urban public space, in particular from sociological, philosophical, political and artistic perspectives. Within the framework of this ‘project in progress’, themes such as safety, memory, visibility, cultural freedom, tolerance hybrid space, the rise of informal media, art as a public affair, manipulative and precarity have been examined.
Open is edited by Jorinde Seijdel (editor in chief) and Liesbeth Melis (final editing) and appears twice a year in a Dutch-language and an English-language edition. The graphic design is by Thomas Buxò. Open is an initiative of SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space, Amsterdam) and is published by NAi Publishers. For information, ordering and subscriptions see: www.opencahier.nl and www.naipublishers.nl/open , or contact SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space) at: +31.20.672 2525, info@skor.nl
