Pixelache presents, in collaboration with Laituri and Goethe Institut, the Helsinki exhibition of Weltstadt: Who Creates the City?

Weltstadt is a Goethe Institut project that examines the effects of change across a variety of cities worldwide: Bangalore, Belgrade, Curtiba, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lisbon, Madrid, New York, Porto Allegro, Riga, Salvador, Seoul, Toulouse, Turin and Ulaanbaatar. Weltstadt attempts to connect projects in these cities that respond to the pressures of flux with innovative and unconventional approaches to planning, participation, empowerment and organisation.

The exhibition will be shown at Laituri from 25 September through 17 October, with an opening event at 16:00 on Thursday, 24 September (as part of this year's Pixelache Festival). At the opening event, Weltstadt editor Leona Lynen will give a tour of the exhibition's five sections (New Middle Class, Self-Organization and Public Administration, The City as Collective Perforance, Informal/Formal Strategies, and New Civil Society).

This will be followed by a panel discussion with Leona and sevral Helsinki-based thinkers and organisers, moderated by Pixelache Festival directors John W. Fail and Agnieszka Pokrywka:  Otso Kivekäs (Helsinki City Council); Mikko Fritze (Goethe Institut, Helsinki); Hilla Rudanko (architect/Uusi Kaupunki); and Maija Faehnle (University of Helsinki).

For more information on Weltstadt as it's been manifested in other cities, please check out the Goethe Institut's Weltstadt blog. The Helsinki exhibition of Weltstadt: Who Creates the City? is made possible by Laituri and the Goethe Institut of Finland.

Who creates the city? Who shapes its future? City planning as a highly specialized, centrally organized field is being enhanced, infiltrated
or in part superseded by a new and often informal constellation of actors. WELTSTADT aims to provide these activists and initiatives with an international platform to support their mutual exchange. It connects initiatives by the Goethe-Instituts and their local partners worldwide, which all deal with new forms
of local city-making questioning mainstream practices of top-down city planning.

Exhibition Contributions:
Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Salvador, São Paulo – Nós Brasil! We Brazil!
Belgrade – Urban Incubator: Belgrade
Lisbon, Madrid, Toulouse, Turin, Berlin – We-Traders: Swapping crisis for City
Dakar – The Last Village
Johannesburg – Informal Studio: Marlboro South Riga – Empty Spaces
Seoul – Changsumaeul: The village of Long Life Bangalore – NextBangalore
Ulan Bator – Nomad City
New York – Cities and Citizenship
Ulan Bator – Nomad City
New York – Cities and Citizenship
Curators: Matthias Böttger, Angelika Fitz
Project Manager: Andrea Zell (Goethe-Institut), Michael Marten (BMUB)
Editor: Leona Lynen
Graphic Design: Studio Matthias Görlich