Urban Programming 101 @ Skopje, Macedonia. Report
Taeyoon Choi (Artist / Organizer)
Urban Programming 101 Workshop is designed as 3 days course. The workshop is intended as an open platform for participants to create new work and experiment in public space and public sphere. The central theme is implying idea of computing and open source to the physical reality of urban space. By appropriating the learning from the history of public art, site specific art, happening and performance, locative and mobile media, UP 101 workshop introduce various methods of artistic intervention in public space. The participants are responsible of their idea and execution. The organizer’s role is in creating constructive collaboration environment and guiding with appropriate critique. The organizer only has basic information about the specific city and its urban spaces, thus the participant's role is to educate the organizer and themselves through conversation and exploration. Most of the information are impressions based on personal experience of the participants. Therefore, the workshop constructs an oral history of the urban space as seen by the local inhabitants, and documented by a tourist, the organizer. The Urban Programming 101 workshop consist of organizer's lecture in the topic, exploration of city by collective walking, discussions, and realization of participant's own project.
The following material is a mixture of knowledge collected during the workshop and the organizer’s observations. Some document contains some facts yet to be checked, and ideas that are open for different interpretation. Although the material is brief, this publication can serve anyone interested in visiting or learning about Skopje. It can also be a guide for artists and researchers of Skopje to learn from foreign perspective. Hopefully, it will begin more in depth conversation about the very special city.
*The workshop was first realized in Skopje, the Capital city of Macedonia. The invitation came from the 3rd meeting of the Upgrade! International network, entitled “Chain reaction”, held in Skopje from 11- 14 September 2008 on 6 different locations. The project in large was organized by Line Initiative and Movement (Upgrade! Skopje). One of the project partners was the European University of RM, whose students took part in the workshop.
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