Future City

The second project of the “Children Artists” series is called “Future City”. In contrast with the “Finger Puppet Theater“, the focus of this project is social.

We met at 30th of May on Sunday at 2 p m S-Petersburg time and 4 p m Berlin time.

Children from different countries were collaboratively building their own Future Towns from modeling clay. Their creations ranged from a Utopian “Town of the Sun” to a cyberpunk anti-utopia.

Here is the Future City form Berlin’s Group, that took place at Vinogradov Galery

Here is from S-Petersburg’s group, from the Museum of Anna Ahmatova

We connected with different groups by Skype and established direct communication between kids from different places and document the process of their work–that is, the process of communication. Discussion, exchanging opinions, and fostering the experience of communal work are the goals of the project.

Opinions are divided on how to organize work in different groups. Some believe that adults should help children to organize the working space before they start; others, that it is necessary to divide children into groups: some will make figures, others place them.

The Berlin group, in which I work with Benjamin, was following the outline proposed by Dasha Ziborova: each child builds their own house, and together they will all build a common building on the main square. What it is, the children were deciding on the day of the project. Before the day of the show we had several meetings at the preparatory stages of the project.

The first meeting was devoted to the creation of the Plan of an Ideal City.

You can see our reading list including books on architecture, anthropology, urban planning, and more.