Shrinking Cities

December 8, 2006 - February 17, 2007

at Pratt Manhattan Gallery
144 West 14th Street, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10011
212.647.7778
Tues-Sat, 11am—6pm

While international urban discourse focuses exclusively on the growing megalopolises, zones of shrinkage have been forming and are generally ignored. "Shrinking Cities," a four year initiative project of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, has investigated the worldwide phenomenon of urban shrinkage by focusing on four urban regions: Detroit (USA), Halle/Leipzig (Germany), Manchester/Liverpool (Britain), and Ivanovo (Russia).

The initiative included two phases, during which a network of more than 200 artists, architects, academics and local initiatives approached the question, "What do we do with cities that are in decline?" The results have been presented in two exhibitions, several books, digital publications, and numerous public events. Now, the Shrinking Cities exhibition will be shown in New York and Detroit as the start of an international tour.

With a combined exhibition space of 4000 square feet, Pratt Manhattan Gallery and Van Alen Institute will simultaneously host the Shrinking Cities exhibition in New York. The New York exhibition includes 32 contributions by artists, architects, filmmakers, journalists, and researchers including AMO, Nikolaus Brade, Sergei Bratkov, Mitch Cope, John Davies, Jeremy Deller, interboro/CUP, Cedric Price, Bas Princen, Isa Rosenberger, Christoph Schäfer, O.M. Ungers, and Ingo Vetter.

Van Alen Institute will host part one of the exhibition, "Shrinking Cities—International Research," which examines the phenomenon of urban decline. The four focus cities are explored and represented in the form of documentation by artists, architects, filmmakers, journalists and researchers. Themes of decay, impact of deindustrialization, suburbanization and the development of innovative subcultures are investigated.

Pratt Manhattan Gallery will host part two of the exhibition, "Shrinking Cities—Interventions," which presents strategies for action. The focus is on Eastern Germany and is divided into five areas: Negotiating Inequality, Self-Governance, Creating Images, Organizing Retreat, and Occupying Space. Commissioned projects range from artists' interventions to self-empowerment strategies through architectural, landscape and media interventions in the form of video, performances and documentation of strategies.

A joint-reception on December 7 will kick off the exhibition. The public is invited to attend both openings that are within walking distance of one another. Van Alen Institute will be open from 5—7 p.m. and Pratt Manhattan Gallery will be open from 6—8 p.m.

Shrinking Cities is a project (2002-2005) of the Federal Cultural Foundation, under the direction of Philipp Oswalt (Berlin) in cooperation with the Leipzig Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the magazine archplus.

Following the New York exhibition, Shrinking Cities will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in conjunction with the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, afterwhich it will continue its internation tour with shows in Tokyo, Japan; Liverpool, U.K.; Saarbrucken, Frankfurt and Dortmund, Germany; St. Petersburg, Russia; Eiserners, Austria; and Rousse, Bulgaria.