Cultural Hijack is an international survey exhibition of interventionist art and artivism, that reframes these artistic practices in relation to the social and spatial concerns of architecture and urbanism. It brings together leading artists from around the world with a new generation of Czech artists to present new perspectives on how our cities shape our thoughts and actions, and the steps we might take to shape our own environments. These interventions, public art works, installations and performance provoke exciting, inventive and critical ways of engaging artists in the processes of urbanization, as well as exploring how art responds to recent social and political events.
At the nexus of art, urbanism and social activism is a rethinking of cities from the bottom-up, part of a do-it-yourself approach linking interventionist artists with user-generated transformations of everyday life. Cultural Hijack explores the work of artists who intervene to reclaim the right to the city as a site for free expression and critical engagement; understanding social space in political terms. These experimental practices open up spaces for the formation of new political subjectivities, social interactions and experiments in democracy that transform our understanding of how we might re-imagine the cities of the future by challenging neoliberal cities of the present – as those shaped by the logic of the market.
Cultural Hijack was first held at the famous Architectural Association in London, 2013; this new iteration of the project is once again hosted in an international school of architecture, ARCHIP, located in the future zone of ArtDistrict Praha 7, Letná. By situating the social, aesthetic and spatial concerns of art intervention within the field of architecture, we seek to move current debates beyond that of contemporary art, to the creation of possible urban futures.
The innovative 3-part curatorial model comprises an international exhibition of recent interventions at ARCHIP’s gallery space; a live programme where selected artists create new interventions and public art works in the streets and public spaces around Prague; supported by a programme of participatory workshops, artist talks, seminars and film screenings. The project runs from 19th June – 15th September 2017.
More info: www.culturalhijack.org
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