Offcity collective

www.offcity.cz   

Offcity works with a theme of a city as a structure and a living organism.

This Pardubice-based project is concerned with art in public space.

It explores different views of the city, it introduces to its citizens various forms of artistic and architectural expression, it teaches them how to perceive art and culture as an integral part of our natural and social environment.

We organize lectures, workshops, art events in public space, etc. Continuously from 2009 we have been also working on creation of the Subjective Map of Pardubice. This map is different to usual maps, it contains layers that cartography can not record (such as memories, audio and video recordings of situations and locations, everyday remarkable moments, etc.).

In 2012, Offcity was selected for an interactive installation Asking Architecture for the Czech and Slovak pavilion at the 13th Biennale of Architecture in Venice. And so that a sound installation called Archicustica was formed for this occasion. This was a conscious listening to the city of Pardubice. The specific acoustic environments had evoked different emotions and memories as an immaterial part of structure of the city, which we have been interested in. We have two eyes to see, we have two ears to hear spatially. So, we used binaural microphones (microphones placed in both ears) to be able to record sound close to what we normally hear.

Offcity are (in alphabetic order): Josef Čevora (graphic designer), Jiří Dobeš (guru), Tereza Dvořáková (art producer), Vladan Hanulík (historian), Vít Hoigr (psychologist), Marta Misíková (art producer), Bohdan Šeda (historian), Ondřej Teplý (architect), F. R. Václavík (visual artist & historian of architecture), Tomáš Votoček (graphic designer), Šárka Zahálková (art producer & visual artist)