Urban Images | symposium
Urban Images: Re-imagining the City Through Moving Images was an international symposium initiated and organized by Synne Bull and Marit Paasche at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in collaboration with Atelier Nord, September 9-10, 2010. Generous support was granted by The Freedom of Expression Foundation, Public Art Norway (KORO), Oslo Municipality, Embassy of the United States in Oslo, and German Embassy in Oslo.
The symposium brought together an internationally renowned group of artists and scholars for a two-day program in order to discuss the field of artistic film and video related to architecture and urban space. Speakers included Parveen Adams, Giuliana Bruno, Bull.Miletic, Andreas Bunte, Beatriz Colomina, Mark Cousins, Edward Dimendberg, Tom Gunning, Henrik Gustafsson, Marit Paasche and Judy Radul. The purpose of the symposium was to expand theoretical concepts and artistic vocabulary for understanding the inherent qualities of moving images and their relationship to urban culture. The program was loosely organized around four themes: Moving images’ influence on urban architecture, urban architecture’s relationship to avant-garde film, the city as a source for artistic film and video, and reflections on urban architecture in recent film and video art.
The Symposium took place at the Academy’s main theatre in the newly renovated building of Seilduken campus. This provided a unique opportunity to facilitate a highly professional event at the beginning of the Academy of Fine Art’s first year at the new campus. The symposium had gathered large international interest prior to its commencement due to the highly acclaimed speakers, our website www.urbanimages.no and our announcements via international mailing lists such as Art&Education and social media such as Twitter and Facebook. As a result, a considerable number of the audience came from abroad, including countries like Italy, France, Switzerland, UK, Germany and Island. The event was fully booked with participants two weeks prior to the registration deadline. All of this demonstrated that this symposium was an important undertaking and a much-needed forum for debate in Oslo at this time. We also received many reservations from both national and international press. However, the only coverage so far, in addition to a field report on the Nomadicon website, was published by Billedkunst. (Please see attached).
The symposium was organized in collaboration with Atelier Nord, who participated financially by providing accounting services as well as coordinating the administrative tasks. Nina Toft was hired as a principal coordinator, and together with office manager at Atelier Nord, Monika Goodwine, she organized all practicalities such as registration and catering for the event. In addition, the symposium hired five assistants, all current students at the Academy of Fine Art. Video and photo documentation of the symposium was taken care of by two hired professionals, Ayman Alazraq and Arne Langeleite. The photos will possibly be used in the publication, while the video-documentation of the lectures will be available at the library at National Academy of the Arts (Khio).
