Marjetica Potrč

Fragmented City

Artists' Research Laboratory (XII CSAV)
3–22 July 2006

"We live in fragmented cities. What sort of fragments, hybrids, pixels, borders and territories make up the contemporary city? During these intensive three-week course, we will examine the dynamics of fragmentation: shrinking, fast growing and moving cities, which separate territories within cities into islands that coexist in parallel different speeds. We will explore the ways in which people construct a better life for themselves in a non-utopian age, stripped of such ideological illusion as the social state of multiculturalism; one example is the pursuit of the self-sustainability. How small can a fragment be? Are you, perhaps, the smallest fragment?"
(Marjetica Potrč)

Director
Annie Ratti
Curators
Anna Daneri
Cesare Pietroiusti
Roberto Pinto
Coordinator
Caterina Riva

Invited artist

Marjetica Potrč (b. 1953, Ljubljana, Slovenia) lives and works in Ljubljana. She is an artist and architect dealing with issues of social space and contemporary architectural practices, sustainability, and new solutions for communities. Her practice is strongly informed by her interdisciplinary collaborations in research-based, on-site projects, such as Théâtre Evolutif (Bordeaux, 2011), The Cook, the Farmer, His Wife and Their Neighbour (Stedelijk Goes West, Amsterdam, 2009), and Dry Toilet (Caracas, 2003). She translates these investigations into text-based drawings and large-scale architectural installations (“case studies”). Her projects focus on the city and its expansion, researching not only from an architectural or urbanistic point of view, but rather exploring aspects such as energy resources, watering systems and urban agricolture as social and cultural elements of the city development.

Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the Americas, including major exhibitions such as the Venice Biennial (1993, 2003, 2009) and the São Paulo Biennial (1996, 2006). She has shown her work at the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2001), the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2004), the Curve at the Barbican Art Galleries, London (2007), the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2013, 2018), the PAMM Perez Art Museum Miami (2015) and the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (2019). Potrč has received numerous grants and awards, including the Hugo Boss Prize (2000) and the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics Fellowship at The New School in New York (2007). Since 2011, she has been a professor at the University of Fine Arts/HFBK in Hamburg.

Participant artists

AiPotu
Giorgio Andreotta Calò
Dafne BoggeriVesna Bukovec
Alice Cattaneo
Ulrika Ferm
Gunndis Yr Finnbogadottir
Michael Fliri
Emma Houlihan
Candice Jee
Tara Kennedy
Inmi Lee
Emanuel Licha
Jonathan Manno
Alison Miller
Jennie Moran
Timea Oravecz
Gaston Ramirez Feltrin
Matteo Rubbi
Eugenio Tibaldi
Nicola Toffolini

Exhibitions