Art Center College of Design / Media Design Practices
Curators: Tim Durfee and Mimi Zeiger

2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture: Re-Living The City
Former Dacheng Flour Factory & 8# Warehouse, Shenzhen

Winner of UABB Bronze Dragon award.

Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City unpacks the practices, rituals, and epistemologies that traditionally delimit the understanding of the city in terms of geographic, material, and economic parameters. Now, more than ever, urban and digital realms are inextricably linked. This exhibition presents a selection of screen-based works, objects, and texts that develop, explore, and visualize a city that is not tied to any physical locality. Now, There, however, understands this resulting networked city a place in its own right, albeit one shaped by experiences contingent on media and devices, flows of data, and the demands of global technology. As such, it too is open to a retroactive assessment of what is now and where is there.

In looking at what we call Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, our perspective is neither dystopian nor boosterish. We are not interested in sci-fi moralizing or video game nihilism. Rather, we take an optimistic view of this emergent urban condition and material culture—understanding that the effects of so much intimidating change can nevertheless be explored and appreciated—perhaps co-opted—with curiosity and humor in a way that designers and architects and filmmakers have been occasionally adept at in the past.

Now, There includes works by Besler & Sons, Walton Chu, Tim Durfee and Ben Hooker (with Jenny Rodenhouse), John Szot Studio, m-a-u-s-e-r, and Metahaven, as well as texts by Joanne McNeil, Enrique Ramirez, and Therese Tierney.