ogino:knauss // Re.centering Periphery

In March 2015, for our first exhibition of the year, we have invited the Berlin-based collective ogino:knauss to present a retrospective of their multi-faceted research in the field of urban studies. The accomplishment of 20 years of urban exploration, critical research, filmmaking and analysis on urbanization and metropolises, the "Recentering Periphery" project and exhibition at Urban Spree Galerie will be presenting an anthological collection of photographies, video installations, graphic works and live sets derived from the exploratory activity done in La Habana, Moscow, Kiev, Belgrade, and Berlin.

Tbe exhibition investigates the urbanization as developed by the modernist ideology, the related production of peripheries and the everyday-life practices and strategies of the inhabitants to live and transform their environment.

To complement the exhibition, a photographic book dedicated to Cuba will be published for the occasion, the first of a series documenting explorations in the global peripheries. This event will be the launching pad of a crowdfunding campaign to support the pre-production phase of the new film.

In addition, a series of urban reconnaissance workshops will be held during the first part of the year as part of the Exercises in Urban Reconnaissance, a website and an anthology book to be published this summer gathering past and current explorations in the global urban environment. Applied to Berlin, Reconnoitering Berlin is the application of the methodology in exploring the metropolitan identity of Berlin through a series of workshops. About 1 workshop per month, each dedicated to a different element of the urban complexity, starting from Berlin Liquid City, exploring Berlin by the water.

The first seminar will explore the primal implications of flowing waters in determining the city’s identity and morphology, disentangling the complexity of urban structural processes questioning geomorphological, technical, political, social, psychological implications of water presence, distribution and access.

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