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UTILITARIAN
DREAMS
In 2005 Lighthouse invited submissions from an
artist or artist group to create a piece of digital moving image
artwork that either explored existing historical or contemporary
links between Brighton and Havana, or else created a real or imagined
link.
We awarded the commission to a group of artists and architects,
based at the University of Brighton, who worked with the English
artist Tom Phillips, a Cuban curator, and three Cuban moving image
and digital artists based in Havana. The project is entitled ‘Utilitarian
Dreams' and explores the interrelationships and qualities found
within utilitarian urban environments (for example places for dwelling
and for food growing) and how those places suggest and include the
potential for a greater utopian dimension (for example social equality
and the goal of environmental sustainability).
The commissioned pieces “were designed to reveal changing
perceptions about the utilitarian urban landscapes that exist in
both cities. While Havana has experienced an unprecedented integration
of urban agriculture over the past 12 years creating dynamic community
environments within the landscape of the city, Brighton and Hove
is bounded by a preserved constructed “rural” landscape,
with large tracts of allotments to the east of the city. Both these
conditions represent inversions of urban landscape traditions and
potentially challenge the established relationships between rural
and urban models. In doing so they offer a potential glimpse for
how sustainable cities might be developed, planned and experienced
in the future envisioning of cities across the world.”
For images from the commission visit our exhibitions archive.
This commission was funded by Arts
Council England South East, Brighton
& Hove City Council and Lighthouse.
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