Silodam 365, 1013 AW Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Netherlands
- Arts
- Heritage
- International/Cultural relations
Urban Cosmopolitans has made a concept for the development of a transnational and multidisciplinary platform for the arts, the main goal of which is to stimulate artistic excellence through long-term structural exchange for the occasion of 2010 (Istanbul Cultural Capital of Europe) extending into and beyond 2012 (for the 400 years of trade relations between Turkey and the Netherlands).
Urban Cosmopolitans is the culture of artists who are rooted in the European city, where they have grown up together as migrant children from elsewhere and contributed to the city's diversity. But they are also connected to places and cultures further away. For them, moving to and forth between their two cultures is often also a movement between Europe and non-Europe or rather Europe as a wider, globalized continent. Our current focus is on Istanbul, Amsterdam and Antwerp and is meant to explore two of such connections between urban cosmopolitans in Europe and a particular city of origin: the link between Amsterdam and Antwerp on the one hand an istanbul on the other; and also the link between Amsterdam and Antwerp as two major European cities of migration.
Our main project is called 'Exchange for a Cosmopolitan Future', which aims to initiate and develop a structural and long term transnational and multidisciplinary artistic platform. Our point of departure is a widely shared need to both document and record, visualize and theorize the diverse cultures of the contemporary European city that have come about as a result of major flows og migration since the 1960s. In major cities of Europe such as in Amsterdam and Antwerp, Berlin and hamburg, Brussels and rotterdam, Paris and Lyon, postcolonial migration together with migration of workers have generated a new transnational culture that distinguishes itself by its multiple identities.
This project is divided into three sub-projects: Arts and Locality; Arts and Memory and an Underground Cafe for Theory. These three projects together envisage an interdisciplinary exhibition, events in the performing and visual arts and fashion, literary residencies, as well as an Underground Cafe for Cultural Theory and Urbanism. These will be developed through intensive collaboration between artists and professionals from the cities of Istanbul, Antwerp and Amsterdam.
The exhibition, performances, art and the Underground Cafe generated first in Istanbul in 2010 will travel back to Antwerp and Amsterdam with a deepened understanding and expression of urban cosmopolitan identity. As in Istanbul this return to Europe entails a cross-fertilization of artists and their audiences from both centre and periphery: exhibitions and performances in parts of the cities outside the cultural infrastructure, but also on established stages. An explicit aim of the project is not just to explore new forms of artistic expression, but also the reach out to new audiences.