SUPERFRONT presents “Lab for Urban Futures: Detroit” Launch
Saturday, October 8, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm, 2011
Lab for Urban Futures: Detroit
SUPERFRONT, a non-profit organization promoting experiments in architecture, offers a critical walk-through tour of Detroit: Disassembled: Photographs by Andrew Moore that situates the aesthetic of ruination within a larger conversation about representations of Detroit and the post-industrial city. Led by SUPERFRONT curators Chloë Bass and Mitch McEwen, this walking tour launches the Lab for Urban Futures: Detroit, a three- event series at the Queens Museum of Art through January 2012.
The tour invites viewers to actively engage with and discuss the seductive power of Andrew Moore’s images. The question of iconography is explored in terms of the art historical references at work in Moore’s photographs, as well as through an investigation of the complex role of iconography in the contemporary urban environment. The discussion continues with a presentation on the traveling SUPERFRONT exhibit DETROIT: A BROOKLYN CASE STUDY. Participants are invited to contribute their comments to an upcoming Lab for Urban Futures publication.
About Lab for Urban Futures: Detroit
The Lab consists of a series of three live events and rapid publications that invite guests from a range of disciplines to consider Detroit as a provocation for new investigations and experiments in urbanism. Co-produced by Chloë Bass and Mitch McEwen, the curators of SUPERFRONT’s traveling exhibit DETROIT: A BROOKLYN CASE STUDY, the series focuses on the future of city development for a post-industrial age. From transformations in land use and waterfront activity to abandoned buildings and shifting residential populations, the post-industrial stage of capitalism has major long-term implications for American cities. Working with urban sociologists, independent media producers, food enthusiasts, agriculture activists, urban designers, architects and other urban strategists, the Lab invites the public to engage these locally-relevant issues through the lens of Detroit.
SAVE THE DATES FOR UPCOMING LAB EVENTS:
December 10, 2011 – Focus on Urban Farming
January 14, 2012 – Interactive Design Charette
