This year’s Cultural Typhoon in Europe (CTE) in Nuremberg, entitled “Beware Utopia! Virtual, Actual and Past Visions of Urban Futures” offers a forum for scholars (especially from the fields of media and cultural studies, urban planning, anthropology or social sciences) as well as social activists and artists with an interest in urban cultures and politics or textual and visual representations of the (future) city.

It is a multi-day event during which media representations and concrete sites of negotiation are to be discussed in terms of their imaginative power and social practice, specifically in terms of their relevance and potential in relation to alternative or utopian urban planning and lifestyles.

With the heizhaus, the cultural laboratory of a urban heterotopia next to the site of the former Quelle mail-order company in Nuremberg, which today is itself a place of debate about its future use, and other post-industrial cultural venues – the Kulturwerkstatt and Halle 18 Auf AEG – we could not have imagined more fitting spaces for the theme and location of this year’s CTE in Nuremberg.

A total of more than 50 artists and scientists were invited, who offered a wide audience more than 25 lectures, several workshops and actions as well as a large exhibition on more than 2,000 square meters in an extensive three-day program between September 22 and 24. More than 1000 visitors came, a great success, especially for the organizers of the team of the Institute for Applied Herterotopia (IFAH) in cooperation with the Chair of Japanese Studies of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg.

The idea of the Cultural Typhoon in Europe 2017 was inspired by the Cultural Typhoon, an international conference that has been held annually in Japan since 2003, bringing together academics, artists and activists in inspiring places. The CTE in Nuremberg successfully continued the enthusiastic spirit of the first Cultural Typhoon in Europe (CTE), which took place in Vienna in 2016.

Documentation / CTE Homepage
Information on the homepage of the University of Erlangen