Urban Nature (working title)

Experts predict that by 2050 two thirds of the world’s population will live in cities. In their new production “Urban Nature”, the artists of Rimini Protokoll examine the transformation of urban spaces from a social, economic and environmental perspective. Who does the city belong to? How do residents engage in contact with one another? What qualities should public spaces possess and how can private spaces be regulated? How might we imagine coexistence in solidarity, and what approaches have already been developed?

Based on these questions, Rimini Protokoll is now developing a museum installation which transforms the exhibition space into a stage and presents experts in a video obstacle course. The audience is invited to “put themselves in another’s shoes”, frequently switch sides, and so doing, experience various points of view and biographies. The visitors are introduced to diverse perspectives, e.g. that of an Argentinean economist who established an alternative local currency in the 1990s, a homeless person, a property developer, and a security agent in a gated community. The walk-through installation features strategies of survival and utopias from widely differing cities. Visitors will be able to sensually perceive simultaneously existing urban models of life, work, usage and protest, and how they are mutually dependent on one another.

Artistic and stage direction: Rimini Protokoll (Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel)

Scenography: Dominic Huber