GLOBOCITY

GLOBOCITY is an art project by Swiss artist Michael Spahr.
GLOBOCITY is a utopian city, which consists of bits and pieces of Beirut, Barcelona, Beijing, Bümpliz and many more metropolitan areas around the world. The art project GLOBOCITY consists of videos, images, objects and object installations, sounds and texts as well as an audio-visual performance. GLOBOCITY was first shown as a solo exhibition at the Galerie Atelier Worb in August 2009 (awarded with the art prize „Kunstschub“). In September 2009 the video „GLOBOCITY – Rise & Fall“ was part of a group exhibition at the political art festival „Prognose voor de toekomst“ in Deventer, The Netherlands.
The project GLOBOCITY emerged in response to observations that Michael Spahr made during his travels to the cities of the world. A phenomenon particularly caught his eye: When you leave the sightseeing areas and go to the surrounding neighborhoods and when you look at the facades instead of the people on the street, cities often seem to become interchangeable. Globalization has changed the face of the city: suburban settlements, sky scraping business centers, shopping streets, dilapidated slums or fancy residential neighborhoods look like they could be anywhere in the world. In numerous photographs Michael Spahr has captured this phenomenon. He cut out elements, such as buildings, billboards or street signs, and reassembled them in a single global collage: GLOBOCITY.
However, there are elements of a city that seem to locate them, such as statues of local heroes and idols, and sightseeing sites. But even here there is a lot of ambiguity. Michael Spahr has found a replica of the Cheops pyramid in the middle of China or the Eiffel Tower is in Las Vegas and the Statue of Liberty in Paris. Michael Spahr has integrated seemingly typical local objects in GLOBOCITY. GLOBOCITY becomes a utopia, in which competing statues (Jesus and Mao, Christopher Columbus and Genghis Khan, Mickey Mouse and Buddha) start to dance together. But there is not only peace and joy. The skyscrapers of global capitalism are rising together in a superficial harmony, but in fact they are getting so high that their foundations are crumbling.
Michael Spahr has consciously worked with 2-D animation technology. If you start to deal personally with the people living in the global cities, it becomes clear how often globalization is only a facade. GLOBOCITY is not the reality, but rather a surreal view of reality, sort of a dream or a nightmare of globalization. Michael Spahr has not integrated human beings into GLOBOCITY, instead, houses, street signs and idols become living creatures.
Video collages are the basis of the artwork GLOBOCITY. From the images Michael Spahr also created single pictures, which were printed on different media (canvas, textiles, postcards, etc.). In addition to the various visual collages sound collages have been created. Michael Spahr also used noises he had collected on his travels. The globalized city also acoustically becomes less and less clear. Only audible voices allow conclusions on the location, but even these are often very ambiguous.
GLOBOCITY continues to be developed. More information and contact details of Michael Spahr are available on RHAPS.COM.