Countless Utopias in the Sky - Massive Imaginations on the Ground

"Kite urbanism" is a hypothesis as well as a proposal for a study of the kite festivals in Asia. The focus is on exploring festivals as a resource for urbanism. How do festivals and mass culture events interact and reconfigure the urban layout of planned and unplanned cities? Which spaces are designated to rituals, assembly, processions; which spaces can be adopted or seized for such use?

Rituals have remained over long spans of time and throughout political changes. Mass culture is sometimes presented as a contemporary phenomenon, yet – in different forms – it is inscribed in cities since ancient times. Festivals offer the opportunity to observe the interface of cities and mass culture at foreseeable times. One example for a festival that exists in many Asian cities is the kite festival, when countless squares of coloured paper cover the sky.

(Further details of this proposal are available upon request.)

Project credits: Diaphanarch, Sabine von Fischer, 2005