Tesserae Dialogues #5 - MetroZones

Talking Hands. Re-reading maps as aesthetic practices in urban research

Tuesday March 12 for the fifth episode of the Tesserae Dialogues we will meet the Berlin based collective MetroZones whose activities and approaches we often crossed during the years.

Over the past years, recording processes have become increasingly important for metroZones‘ research and artistic practice. While they are embedded in the specific dynamics of the respective exploration, they also yield separate spatial images which are processed into different formats: an installation, a wallpaper, a textile or a video. In re-reading mappings metroZones invented a research method and an aesthetic practice: “Talking hands”, indicating details and narrating maps in a video transmission as a collective and collaborative act. This format contributed to the (self-)understanding of the many participants and at the same time enabled a specific image production.

metroZones – Center for Urban Affairs was founded in Berlin in 2007 as an independent association. The goals bring together different approaches in research, knowledge production, cultural practices and political intervention at the interface of art, academia and politics, and to provide a forum for their public discussion. In this, we rely on international, interdisciplinary and inter-interinstitutional collaboration. A recent metroZones project was “Mapping Along. Recording Margins of Conflict” an exhibition at Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, Berlin (April – June 2021).

In conversation with Laura and Lorenzo for metroZones :

Christian Hanussek, artist, curator and writer

Kathrin Wildner, urban anthropologist, curator