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In 2007, for the first time in history, more people live in cities than in the countryside, indicates a study conducted by the United Nations. This demonstrates the increasing importance of anthropospheres within urban structures. On a daily basis our planet's 6.9 billion city habitants experience transiently-obliging, momentary encounters with individual people, places and things.
The photography & sound art series "X Capitals" takes up these global dynamics and reflects upon them by discussing the values of education, democracy, freedom, religion, family, and money.
"X Capitals" is an expedition in search of a new continent that challenges the common conception of awareness. At the same time it is a global sociological field study in the urban habitats of the last still living population of the sapient.
Underlying the "X Capitals" exhibitions there is basic concept, which does not change and constitutes a recurring theme that all projects of this series are in line with. The title of the project is biparietal.
This is where "X Capitals" develops a recurring theme. 22 motifs are portrait on the same lines in each cities, a specific technique of black and white photography, a Japanese scroll-picture technique, which was specifically designed for this project, and the primary three-part philosophy.
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The second part of the project's name hints at the cities portraits that belong to an arbitrarily chosen network, e.g. the European Union. In a way "X Capitals Europe," to pick one example, is a survey on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Europe in 2009. It reflects on the interpersonal experiences in ten European capitals after the fall of the "Iron Curtain."
So far two projects developed out of this conceptual art series that 14 cities participated in world wide.
1. Project "X Capitals Berlin" (Berlin partner cities): Beijing, Berlin, Jakarta, Paris, and Tokyo.
2. Project "X Capitals Europe" (EU members): Berlin, Budapest, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Nicosia, Riga, Tallinn, Valletta, Warsaw, and Vienna. "X Capitals Europe" was fulminantly exhibited in March of 2008 in the Atrium of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin.
3. Project: "X Capitals Mediterranean", in preparation
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Henry Landers/2010
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