6 pm, please register for the hybrid Zoom event: mappingalong@metrozones.info
Event in English
(→ deutsche Version) Are Amazon’s ventures changing the geography of cities and entire countries? Has the ongoing expansion of platform economies led to a new kind of architecture, with endless rows of delivery centres in the urban peripheries and headquarters in the centre? What is the connection between this topographical transformation and the reorganisation of labour relations? And are there still possibilities for putting digital means of production at the service of the common good in this next phase of urbanisation? metroZones wants to address these questions in this last saloon as part of the supplementary program to the exhibition Mapping along at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin.
The event will be a sequence of conversations with guests from Berlin and beyond, starting with members of the Berlin vs Amazon campaign. This will be followed by talks on the logistics landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe, on how the appropriation of space by internet corporations and start-up milieus are shaping London’s and Warsaw’s inner city, and on progressive approaches of technopolitics. The saloon will conclude with a discussion on ways of dealing with the phenomena of a “smartified” urban life at the local Berlin level.
Since 2018, metroZones is exploring the genesis of a new urbanism that increasingly interweaves the materiality of cities with the virtual reality of the web. With the clip „Stadt als Byte“ and the mapping installation „We have nothing to lose but our supply chain“ (a related video is running at the present Architecture Biennale in Venice), two results of this exploration can be seen in the current exhibition Mapping along. The latest outcome is the digital storytelling project „Stadt als Byte“ that is based on a transnational exchange with activists and researchers. metroZones will present a beta version of „Stadt als Byte“ during the event.
With Bartek Goldmann & John Malamatinas (researchers/activists, Berlin vs. Amazon/Make Amazon Pay), Tadeáš Říha (co-editor of Steel Cities. The Architecture of Logistics in Central and Eastern Europe, London/Prague), Scott Rodgers (researcher, Birkbeck, University of London), Kuba Depczyński (curator, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw), Ulf Treger (city/data/explosion, Hamburg) and Elizabeth Calderón Lüning (researcher, Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin).
The research project ‘Stadt als Byte’ is supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
More information about the exhibition Mapping Along
More information about the supplementary programme
Click here for the PDF version of the magazine on the exhibition Mapping Along attached to the taz.die tageszeitung print edition of 16 April 2021.
The project is supported by funds from the Senate Administration for Culture and Europe: the Capital City Cultural Fund, the Fund for Municipal Galleries and the Fund for Exhibition remuneration for visual artists.
