[pro-player image=’http://www.blendbureaux.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Picture-5.png’]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0OdRw2ZaRA[/pro-player]

The Great Babylon Circus, curated by the Berlin based critic and curator Lukas Feireiss in collaboration with MU, brings together cutting-edge creatives from the field of art, architecture, and design to engage in the continuation of the never-ending design of the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel is one of the primordial metaphors of architecture, art and construction, as well as of the multiplication and confrontation of diverse languages and styles. The tower also symbolizes the ultimate hubris of human creation — the ambition to build something larger than life itself.

With the round tower as a central element in mind, The Great Babylon Circus choreographs ambitious experimental artistic positions from around the globe with a joyful sense of the spectacular. MU becomes the arena in which visions of the world collide and melt together. In a collaborative effort, spatial installations and visuals from micro to macro-scale are presented, reaching out as a source of inspiration and an invitation to build on and on for creatives across all disciplines.

The list of participating artists includes Brazilian social and cultural collective Project Morrinho, Belgium-German art collective Speedism, Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi, and London-based think tank Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today. The collaboration of these four global creative practices in the arena of MU will unite around the mythic Tower of Babel theme, presenting us with new angles from which to view this legendary subject, and arguing for its social, political, and cultural relevance in today’s world.

Project Morrinho—called “a small revolution,” is a socio-cultural project based out of the Pereira da Silva favela in Rio de Janeiro. The project’s aim is to bring positive social change by altering public image of the favela. Through the act of building incredibly detailed and beautiful scale-models of the favela, residents create simulacra of their daily lives within these tower-like neighborhoods.

Speedism’s—graphic architecture, subtitled “the dead angle of architecture,” is conceived in pixel form and translated to paper. Their projects emerge out of a mysterious software design process, converging at a space where architecture and its popular representations meet. The duo’s representations of imagined spaces are always wilder and more ambitious than the realities from which they come.

Mounir Fatmi—is well-known for constructing visual spaces and linguistic games that aim to free the viewer from preconceptions. He is particularly invested in exploration of the religious object, and his multi-media work never shies away from the political. One of his often used materials is VHS tape that he uses as bricks to built but also comment on our mediated surroundings.

Tomorrow’s Thoughts—Today investigate the consequences of fantastic, perverse and underrated urbanisms. The group’s mode of collective research allows them to come up with remarkable representations of the built environment, often considering the utopian and the dystopian elements of our past, present, and future lives.

The collaboration of these four creative practices in the arena of MU will unite around the mythic Tower of Babel theme, presenting us with new angles from which to view this legendary subject, and arguing for its social, political, and cultural relevance in today’s world.

Lukas Feireiss runs the interdisciplinary creative practice Studio Lukas Feireiss, focusing on the discussion and mediation of architecture, art and visual culture in the urban realm. In his artistic, curatorial, editorial and consultive work he aims at the critical yet playful re-evaluation of modes of spatial production beyond disciplinary boundaries. Feireiss teaches at various universities worldwide and holds a professorship for space and design strategies at the University of Arts Linz, Austria.

MU zooms in on the hybrid visual culture of now and later. MU is an adventurous guide to all art lovers with a keen interest in the energetic mix of art, design, popculture and new media that contemporary culture has to offer. MU is an open minded and dynamic space that breathes the 21st century practice of multidisciplinary creative co-operation.

info:
September 8, from 8 pm
Lecture Liam Young / Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today
September 22, from 8 pm
Lecture Pieterjan Ginckels / Speedism

to visit the website:
The Great Babylon Circus @ MU