TRANSURBAN
Live Building Projection
Festival Opening Performance by Catag
Catag is a collaborative German artist duo formed by AJ Polonia and Uli Sigg. Catag combines innovative graffiti and electronic art to create single-channel videos, live VJ sets, audiovisual performances, and installations.
What began as a pilot project under the title TRANSURBAN in 2015, embarks on a new phase in 2017. Six urban art platforms from various cities in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) have joined forces to form a regional network, presenting an interdisciplinary program of urban art and culture from June to October 2017. The inaugural event takes place on June 9th in Dortmund with the opening of the new Urban Art Archive.
The goals of the TRANSURBAN cooperation project include consolidating the full spectrum of urban art in NRW, making it more accessible, supporting artists, raising awareness for this art form within society, and stimulating discourse on urban life. As part of the program, regional and international players will carry out artistic interventions in the public spaces of Dortmund, Essen, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Hagen, and Bochum. The artistic positions will be accompanied by a framework program that actively involves citizens. At the heart of the program is a series of symposia on urban art in NRW, discussing the origins, content, objectives, and further development of this emerging art form. The program kicks off at Dortmund’s 44309Street//Art Gallery. In addition to two new murals being created in the summer, the TRANSURBAN city talk „Urban Artist between Street and Art Business“ will take place on June 16th.
Furthermore, TRANSURBAN is establishing an NRW-wide Urban Art Archive to document these often-temporary artworks and make them systematically accessible. The archive will appear both digitally and physically – in the form of a container that travels through the six project cities and is gradually filled with content. The Archive Container will house positions from Performing, Visual, and Applied Arts, as well as institutions and publications.