Citizens with diverse backgrounds are challenged to have a conversation: questions will be posed in one city, answered in the other and back.
The outcome is an atmospheric portrayal of the city: the outreach generates a patchwork of subjective topoi.
A three-dimensional city reveals itself and different media light up in a number of locations. Mental maps, heard images, interviews, data, photos and videos give you an overall sense of the mood in the city. “At the End of the Street” makes it possible to visit different places without being physically present. As a 2.0 tourist you can conduct comprehensive, multidiemensional city research via a game engine. The cities of Tirana and Skopje, both given scant attention, yet very much alive, are presented using participative methods and media chosen by the cities’ inhabitants. These portraits encourage self-reflection and strengthen the sense of “Citizenship.”
The project is a set up of cross-cultural and cross-city conversations through virtual communication, based on personal accounts from Tirana and Skopje in exchange with Amsterdam and Vienna. Citizens with diverse backgrounds are challenged to have a conversation: questions will be posed in one city, answered in the other and back. Due to that an interactive map of Tirana and Skopje enables insights into the diverse layers of the city: collected stories will be uploaded on the web 2.0 platform and attached to the specific coordinates of a three-dimensional city landscape. The outcome is an atmospheric portrayal of the city: the outreach generates a patchwork of subjective topoi.
The project should be seen in the light of the 21st centuries demand and necessity for fair and genuine participation, empowerment and citizenship. Not only citizenship in general is addressed, but a European sense of citizenship in particular is strived for. Which cultures do enrich Europe and in which way can a perception of European cohesion be established?
The project seeks to increase the self-awareness and cross-cultural awareness of the participants and helps representing cities and social groups that have fewer opportunities and are long neglected in a European context. Skopje and Tirana are therefore relevant hosting venues, also in the context of the changed cultural settings by last decades’ political transformation.
Finally, technological innovations such as web 2.0, virtual communication and custom made services are not to ignore and form the meaningful frame of the project. This contemporary interactive presentation of cities can be seen as a bottom-up city marketing strategy. It is an appealing low-threshold platform, on which large concepts such as citizenship & tolerance but as well cross-cultural communication can be visualised.
By means of non-conventional participation the project strives to increase a sense of self- and cultural awareness of citizens within a city and in exchange with other European cities through the possibility of presentation.
