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UrbanFestival began in 2000 and the start of the program was in 2001. In its five editions so far, it deals with the questions of public space and the public in the narrow sense through its thematic focuses, selection, but also specific organizational forms and experimental variations thereof. In the social climate of increasing privatization of public space, social atomization and a very intimate and individual consummation, it seems very important to keep opening and maintaining spaces of collective consummation, with the active participation of the wide audience and public. From the starting point of the transformative potential of art and culture as mechanisms of progress, we proceeded to the regular realization of the program in places accessible to the widest public (squares, parks, traffic infrastructure, shopping malls...), outside the protective walls of galleries and theaters. The basic tendence is the infiltration of artistic activity into urban life, intensifying the communication between the urban population and the city and its infrastructure. The works presented aim the problems and specifics of urban life, provoke the townspeople to think about their everyday life and include them in the realization - the spectators are by no means passive consumers of a cultural program, but active participants, coauthors of the projects.
In an atmosphere of representative culture and an increasing number of festivals, UrbanFestival is thought primarily as a platform, a place of experiment, a structure ready to react to local needs and intervene in the immediate context. Joining forces with Platforma 9,81 on the project Invisible Zagreb, which experiments with innovative ways of cultural programming and the spatial implications of such a culture, UrbanFestival 2005 will be presented within the framework of Operation:City, in abandoned industrial complexes Badel and Gorica, and the works selected aim the immediate industrial environment, the history of space, socio-political context, or open possible strategies of resistance to dominant social practices.
The understanding of the city as a space that exists independently of built-in objects and practices, as a place that regulates our everyday practices, city as an expression and means of state power or the cruel interests of capital, this understanding we have decided to replace with the political understanding of the city - city as a place that is always and anew produced by the practices of its inhabitants.
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uf 2005