Gusztáv Hámos and Katja Pratschke

Introduction: Fee Altmann, art historian, curator, chairwoman, and deputy director of !KF - Institute for Artistic Research.

The exhibition Cities (Territories & Occupation) thematises "the city" divided into precincts, sectors, neighbourhoods, zones, territories and domains, marked by inner-city borderlines. "We investigate how cities emerge and change through inclusion and exclusion, flight, decay, destruction, demolition, resettlement, displacement, dispossession. We ask how urban territories are formed and why they change? Who controls the city or how do the inhabitants create free spaces? Who owns the city? What urban visions and changes prevail or are prevented?"

The source material of the video and photographic works shown in the exhibition are photo sequences that describe essential situations of urban experiences; they show condensations of human and inhuman actions. "We do not describe real cities, versions of Berlin, Hamburg, Venice, Istanbul or Delhi, but urban phenomena, quintessence of urban life.
We can nevertheless recognize places familiar to us and past events in really existing cities in the photographs. The future can be glimpsed through how we currently deal with these urban designs. Through the present walk-through, through the "encounter in the making", the city can always be rethought."

Gusztáv Hámos and Katja Pratschke
As media artists and artistic researchers, Gusztáv Hámos and Katja Pratschke have been working together on the theory and practice of intermedial arts for 20 years. Thus, their artistic practice encompasses video, film, photography, interactive and site-specific installations, walk-in 360° cinema spaces as well as the curation of exhibitions, symposia, film series, workshops and publications. With their installations and photographic films, they investigate how human perception is changed by cinematography and what consequences the recording of image phases has for our perception of time, space and movement. They are founding members of the Concrete Narrative Society e.V. and since 2021 artistic experts of the SPUR.lab (Site Specific Augmented Storytell-ing lab).