Using digital photography and new media, Signs of the City – Metropolis Speaking is a 15-month project that explores the sign systems of the European city by drawing up a visual inventory of four selected metropolises. Young people in Berlin, London, Sofia and Barcelona work with professional artists to generate an inventive online image database: a contemporary archive providing free access, interaction and use.

As a way of artistically exploring contemporary urban landscapes, Signs of the City playfully engages with and interlinks the sign systems of the "other" European city, neighbourhood, social group). In an online database, each image is named, tagged and located on online maps via GPS, creating a social community site as well as a hitherto un(fore)seen image of the European city.

The project aims for a multi-level engagement with the visual “surface” of European cities beyond the familiar tourist clichés. Lived and perceived everyday environments will be registered photographically – including safe and anxiety-inducing places, transport and movement, memorials and social sites. As signs and symbols, they suggest the presence of imperceptible stories and values, and might be decoded as traces of European cultures.

To work on these codes in a jointly initiated and realised European project will contribute to the documentation, perception and even validation of the different cultural conditions. This perspective of the visual side of the contemporary city may also show the impact of today’s globally produced images and what kind of room for manoeuvre remains at the disposal of the individual.

The city as a “place of the foreign and the foreigner” offers perspectives of and on foreign and yet already familiar cultures, but also symbols of cultural or ethnic exclusion and connection. The project wants not only to represent and put into focus instances of intercultural encounter, but it wants to tease out their implications on the basis of artistic production.

This border-crossing perspective on one’s own immediate surroundings makes a reflection on historical and contemporary similarities and differences possible. This dialogue is contemporary in the sense that it uses innovative networking and communication technologies, while promoting place-based relationships through personal encounters in the city of the "other".

The project, which runs from October 2007 to December 2008, initiates a comparative study of the sign systems of the "other" (European city, neighbourhood, social groups), and instigates a multi-level dialogue about these. This dialogue takes place virtually and physically: via images, through an Internet database, and as an exchange between young people, artists, youth art organisations, and cultural institutions.

The outcomes are then presented in exhibitions, both in public spaces and in gallery spaces in the participating cities. The project is complemented by a specifically commissioned academic research project, a multilingual publication and an international conference.

These elements of Signs of the City generate a border-crossing interplay, linking and engaging renowned contemporary arts institutions, media training centres, youth art and leisure organisations, public transport companies, and one of the world’s leading academic institutes for social research.

With the innovative possibilities of data processing, the four cities will be visually and virtually interwoven. This networking occurs by way of an artistic exploration of the pictorial and symbolic codes of contemporary urban landscapes, creating a hitherto un(fore)seen image of the European city.

Project includes:

1. Arts and Education Workshops

In an initial Arts and Educational Lab, 21 professional artists from the four cities met in Berlin in October 2007 to workshop methodologies with the artistic coordinators of Signs of the City and establish the collaborative framework. This prepared the artists to guide and accompany around 300 young people in approx. 30 workshops in all four cities. Exploring neighbourhoods, travelling across the city or bringing communities into contact, these workshops serve to capture, discuss and interpret the sign systems of each city via the medium of digital photography. Each workshop develops an independent subject focus, developed by the artist leading the workshop, and reflecting the interest of the organisation. In this manner, a variety of methodological and thematic approaches are tested and employed, providing great diversity to the images fed into the online web archive.

2. The Webplatform http://www.citipix.net

Web 2.0. has made out of the web a communications instrument, rather than an information platform. Millions of members of social networking sites enter into contact with each other on a daily basis, amateur photographers share interactive image platforms, and video fans show their latest creations. Drawing on the effortless and often playful access of young people to this new form of communication, Signs of the City uses it as a starting point for a deeper engagement with identity, belonging and communication.

Digital cameras are used to generate images of signs and symbols, which are then uploaded onto an online database via a computer-based editing system. Each image is named, categorised, and tagged with keywords by the young photographer. Some of the workshop results will also contain information on its geographical position via GPS-data; the participants can locate the pictures on online maps provided by Google Maps.

3. Public Exhibitions

Several exhibitions, both in public spaces and in cultural institutions, are curated for the project in September/October 2008, based on the visual material of the research phase.

4. Exchange Programme LAB 2 “Show me your City”

Some young people from the workshops will participate in further work focusing on themes of exchange and encounter. The travel groups will consist of two young people and one artist (or youth worker) each. They will meet their peers for one week in another city, to coincide with the exhibition taking place there. These meetings will be coordinated by artists and educators.

5. International Conference “Signs of the European City”

A conference on the topic of Signs of the European City and intercultural dialogue will be discussed from the perspective of project participants, artists, policy-makers and academic speakers from a variety of disciplines in late autumn 2008.

6. Evaluation

The project will be formally evaluated in all participating cities.

Co-organisers in three of the cities – carrying main responsibilities towards the main funder, the EU Culture 2007 programme – oversee the activities, produce and in some cases house the exhibitions, coordinate the project management, devise the final conference, and carry out accompanying research. These are:

• Barcelona Hangar.org
• Berlin Urban dialogues (project leader)
• The House of World Cultures, through Next - Interkulturelle Projekte
• London Watermans
• Goldsmiths College, University of London (carrying out the evaluation)

Further collaborators during the project development and for the final exhibitions are: Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB), Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG), House of Cinema Sofia, The Goethe Institutes in Sofia, Barcelona and London.

Signs of the City is supported by the Culture 2007 programme of the European Union, the Capital Cultural Fund Berlin, the Institute of Culture of the City of Barcelona, the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport Company (TMB), the British Council, the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, and SONY. It works in collaboration with the Goethe Institutes in Sofia, Barcelona and London.