Following the ‘Art for Radical Ecologies Manifesto’^[1], art and artistic practices can not only spell out collective imaginaries that may shape collective futures but can also directly impact our forms of coexistence. In open-ended, enacted environments, artistic perspectives can radically re-imagine human and other-than-human lifeworlds to shape trans-species ecologies towards sustainable and non-extractivist ways of living. Urban spaces have traditionally served as foci of political, economic, and cultural activities, spawning collective visions of human coexistence that influence communities worldwide through continuous processes of ‘planetary urbanization’^[2]. Oftentimes, they are places where collective futures are negotiated, imagined, and translated into physical environments. Re-imagining lived urbanity, we use drawing as an artistic strategy to sketch out urban utopias that counteract current crises, experimenting with collective visions of urban ecologies that enable trans-species cohabitation, the disintegration of barriers of class, race, gender, and religion, and the collective enactment of sustainable urban environments for all city dwellers. ‘Making kin’^[3] with other lifeforms, we radically re-invent the spaces we inhabit and re-construct urban centers as places of encounter, radical imagination, and collective (counter-)action. Dissolving the boundaries between subject and object, we transform the world collaboratively through graphic intra-action.^[4]

We, therefore, use collaborative drawing as an artistic strategy to re-imagine urban lifeworlds by drawing over photographs of two cities in Austria – Linz and Vienna – which are not only our places of residence, but also incorporate different forms of lived urbanity. Vienna with its rich history and densely built historical center incorporates the charm of old Europe but provides ample ground for radical re-imagination. Linz is a smaller town, marked by industrial production, radical urban transformation, and the integration of the urban center with surrounding suburban and rural spaces. During the project, we take turns transforming photographs of city views in drawing, sending the altered photos back and forth, accompanied by comments and annotations that expand on the ongoing drawing process. This way, the drawings trace conceptual approaches, imaginaries, thoughts, and inspirations expressed in graphic language, which contextualize newfound urban utopias. Multiple layers of sensing and sensemaking can be added to the drawings that are later used for examining results. Our collective drawing approach can be understood as a tentacular thinking process, linking multiple perspectives in a sympoietic vision of collective futures. The re-imagination of urban futures becomes a collective act of communication in graphic form that can potentially be opened to other artists/scholars. In this sense, collaborative drawing, understood as a visual dialogue, is used to express and to visualize radical urban ecologies that can inspire political action, social change, and cultural revolution.

^[1] https://instituteofradicalimagination.org/2023/11/02/art-for-radical-ecologies-manifesto/

^[2] Brenner, Neil and Schmid, Christian (2013) Planetary Urbanization. In: Brenner, Neil (Ed.) Implosions/Explosions. Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin/Boston: JOVIS, pp 160-163.

^[3] Haraway, Donna (2016) Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.

^[4] Barad, Karen (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. Durham: Duke University Press.

The works in this exhibition, therefore, are an attempt to access these infinite and interrelated structures of meaning from an artistic perspective, to highlight unique viewpoints, parallels to and opinions of potential realities mirrored in our positioning towards contemporary urbanity. They present excerpts of potential access points to understand or frame urban realities as reflected in individual consciousness. Therefore, we witness the traces of what urbanity could entail, which language it can be expressed in, and how we can react to emotional renderings of what life in the city means. Works by Xian Zheng, Andreas Duscha und Philipp Schnell 2023.

The here-shown short Comic strips form part of a series of works that address the transformation of city centres through intensified tourism. They appropriate elements of the symbolic arsenal of European cities, here Paris, Vienna and Venice, to comment on the reconfiguration of city centres as places of relentless consumerism and entertainment. In placing Michel Foucault on the Eiffel tower, e.g., the rich symbolism of the city of light is exalted even more, entering the realm of surrealism, while commenting on salient everyday issues. Comics have the power to move people, potentially change their minds or alter personal opinions and perspectives. Here, humour is used as a weapon to point to directions for social change and reflection.

The drawings shown here take their inspiration from ancient cave drawings, but access the topic of modern life in the city from the imaginary perspective of the cave painter. Uncertain, multifaceted imagery implies a multiplicity of meanings, which demands to be deciphered in order to make sense. Sense is literally being made, manufactured and inferred from the symbolisation of potential references. Multiple levels of reference can be established at each and every moment, in each context and situation. Thus, the drawings at the same time allude to our idea of the unconscious as an arsenal of signs and symbols which constantly needs to be translated, interpreted and interconnected to the world we live in, in order to author meaningful environments. We ultimately are the authors of our own worlds, if only through the meanings we ascribe to people, things, thoughts and feelings. The vocabulary we use is always uncertain, unfinished, elusive, allowing us at the same time to progress, to change, and to evolve. The here-shown drawings ultimately suggest a hidden language that can rather be drawn than understood, unless we are ready to adapt and enter the cycle of imaginary evolution.

What really helps us make sense of its meaning are the shades that are applied in the next picture. These help us discern a sort of order, a relation that is instigated by the function of light (or an imagined source of light influencing graphic description) that allows for distinguishing some parts from the others, seeing which are on top, which on bottom and how the overall structure refers to the elements of its whole. The relationality in the depiction is brought upon by the graphic production of light as a means of structuring a picture, function of its natural dispersion on surfaces that is applied to the drawing, first as a graphic structure, but then as a matrix of sensemaking that affords the differentiation and integration of objects in their mutual relation to each other. Thus, the application of the lighting matrix opens up our gaze for the production of knowledge. The two are clearly related to each other, as the one refers to the other and incites, yet enables a comparison to real-world objects that lets us judge its potential use, its position in the real world and practices that are bound to it.

The third picture, finally, introduces a darker tone, a somber saturation of shadows that renders the object more life-like, more graphic and one could say ‘real’. Also, some liquid, one might say water, drips from the lower seams of the object agglomeration, which can now be discerned as tiles that form a roof – a roof that nevertheless does not follow the traditional patterns of ‘form-making’, but is bundled in one circular assemblage, with the characteristic top seam of tiles on top – the one we know from Comics and Mangas, to Disney movies and Anime series. Not only has the nature, and un-nature, of the object now been clarified by the existence and application of the luminous matrix, discerning and relating objects to each other, also we have another element elucidating our vision: water. But nor entirely, as it is unclear where it comes from, and where is goes. Its only role appears to be to encompass the object and, in its relation to the amassed tiles, fulfil its relational role: To virtually run down the tiles and drip down at the lower end, giving direction, orientation and use to the formally only formalized representation of a pile of tiles. The water is the second sense-making matrix, it makes the logic matrix of tiles accessible to sense-making, via two depicted graphic devices.

What does this finally implicate? There is a relationality of graphically reproduced objects that opens up our field of vision towards the possibilities of knowledge production. Only in mutual relation of the objects to each other can we fully grasp their role, their potential context and their entire meaning. Only in relation to multiple matrices of sense-making can we produce and extrapolate potential structures of sense-making that transcend the pictured details. Where might this pile of tiles exist? Where does it rest? Is it ‘possible’? Who might own or need such a thing? And what can be ‘done’ with it? It is a geography of possibilities and impossibilities that is bound to the object itself and to a possible multiplicity of other objects in potential relation to it – one of it being rain running down the tiles. Another being people assembling, using, destroying it. These geographies of possibilities are not only tied to matrices of sense-making (light reflecting, order of objects, rain running down), but also to our experience and the inference of knowledge ultimately derived from the real world. It is in comparison to the real world we might access the pictures’ meaning, via the depicted forms, elements and relations, and conclude on its possible meanings.

This is a very simple example of sense-making related to drawing and graphic description, but one that, referring to Nelson Goodman or Paul Feyerabend, holds great potential for its use in scientific, but also in everyday contexts. Also, it shows the revolutionary potential of graphic forms of knowledge production – one, whose real potential we experience mostly unwittingly, and therefore lends itself for thorough analysis and discussion.

In 2018 Werkstatt Wien, Madame Architects and Stadtforum Wien initiated a collaborative concept for participatory urban development – the ARCH.SLAM. It was designed to bring together participants from different fields, such as architecture, urban development, management, entrepreneurship, journalism and social studies, to co-create solutions for a designated urban development area: the waterfront near Vienna’s Handelskai, which shows endless promise, while still counting as one of the remaining Non-Places alongside the Danube. In three workshops participants generated three distinct solutions in an 1:1000 model of the area in question, after intense discussion about the pros and cons of different constellations of buildings, transport options, businesses, or public spaces. The three solutions were developed with modelling foam that allowed everyone to engage directly with the model, to create and move elements in an instant and change their relative positions to each other.

After the model development process, a big event was held in cooperation with ÖVP Wien, where the different solutions were discussed and the audience could vote for their preferred outcome. In the presence of culture minster Gernot Blümel the heads of Madame Architects transformed the model live into the form most desired, resulting in a performative, open ended and participatory medium for urban development virtually open to all. By transforming city models directly and broadening the scope of materials in use, these models can be seen as a tool of multidisciplinary communication accessible to all parties in the urban development process. ARCH.SLAM, therefore, was an experiment to open new alleys for thinking and talking about cities. The development of public urban spaces should be a democratic process. By providing people with means and media to partake in the discussion about the outcomes of urban planning, we have created a platform for interdisciplinary exchange and social integration around a much-contested topic.