CONNECTING CITIES NETWORK

Connecting Cities is a European and globally expanding network. Its vision is to establish an interconnected infrastructure of media facades, urban screens and projection sites for the circulation of artistic and socially relevant content.
Challenging the predominantly commercial use of digital screens in public space, Connecting Cities explores their potential as platforms for artistic expression, citizen participation and intercultural exchange – both within cities and across geographical borders.
The network brings together cultural institutions, artists, curators, researchers, universities and urban media infrastructures to develop new forms of interaction between people, places and technologies.
Between 2012 and 2016, Connecting Cities developed an international artistic research programme combining commissions, residencies, workshops, conferences and public events. Interactive artworks were presented and circulated across the participating cities, often connecting audiences in real time during the Connecting Cities Events.
Connecting Cities is co-funded by the European Union / Culture Programme 2007-13.

Video: Editing by Xar Lee

Nertworked City | Participatory City | In/Visible City – these three curatorial strands – established Connecting Cities as an international platform for artistic research into digital placemaking, participatory urban culture and networked public space.

Connecting Cities builds on the pioneering Media Facades Festivals Berlin in 2008 and Europe in 2010, initiated by Public Art Lab and co-curated by Susa Pop and Mirjam Struppek.
These festivals explored the artistic and social potential of media facades and urban screens, demonstrating how digital infrastructures could become spaces for public interaction rather than exclusively commercial communication. The experiences and international collaborations developed through the festivals laid the foundation for Connecting Cities, extending the idea of interactive urban media art into a translocal network of cities.

Connecting Cities was co-funded by the European Union under the Culture Programme 2007–2013.
The European cooperation project brought together ten international partner organisations under the project lead of Public Art Lab:
Ars Electronica Futurelab (Linz), BIS – Body Process Arts Association (Istanbul), FACT (Liverpool), iMAL (Brussels), m-cult (Helsinki), Medialab-Prado (Madrid), Media Architecture Institute (Vienna), Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb), Riga 2014 and Videospread (Marseille).

Over the following years, the Connecting Cities Network expanded beyond Europe, establishing collaborations with cultural institutions, universities, festivals and urban screen operators worldwide.
Further partners included Aarhus University, Marseille-Provence 2013, MUTEK Montréal, Quartier des spectacles Montréal, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Verve Cultural São Paulo, Federation Square Melbourne, Sapporo Media Arts Lab, xm Saarbrücken, The Concourse Sydney, ETOPIA Zaragoza, 403 International Art Center Wuhan, Screens in the Wild London, Streaming Museum New York PPS / Project for Public Spaces and Illuminating York among others.

Since 2012, Connecting Cities has collaborated with the Media Architecture Biennale (MAB) and the Media Architecture Institute.
MAB served as the network’s international conference platform, complementing Connecting Cities’ curatorial activities with research and critical discourse on media architecture and digital public space.
This growing international network enabled artistic projects to circulate between cities, reach diverse public audiences and experiment with new forms of translocal collaboration.

Rather than functioning solely as exhibition venues, the participating urban media infrastructures became connected public interfaces for artistic experimentation, dialogue and collective experiences.

What Urban Media Art Can Do – Why, When, Where and How? (2016)

Edited by Susa Pop, Tanya Toft, Nerea Calvillo and Mark Wright, and published by av edition, this international anthology represents one of the major outcomes of Connecting Cities.
The publication brings together artists, curators, researchers, architects and theorists to investigate the aesthetic, social, technological and political potential of urban media art.
Drawing on the artistic research and international collaborations of Connecting Cities, the book presents approximately 50 artistic projects and explores emerging practices including digital placemaking, urban activism, telepresence, participatory technologies, sensing and urban ecology.
It provides a critical reflection on the transformation of public space in the digital age and positions urban media art as a field connecting contemporary art, architecture, urban development and civic participation.
The publication was launched in the context of ISEA2016 in Hong Kong.

2017–2019 | Connecting Knowledge, Cities and Artistic Practices
The Urban Media Art Academy was initiated by Tanya Toft and Susa Pop as a platform for artistic research, knowledge exchange and capacity building.
Supported by the Goethe-Institut and collaborating institutions, the Academy brought together artists, curators, researchers, students and urban practitioners to investigate the role of digital technologies and artistic interventions in contemporary cities.
Its format combined labs +lectures, field trips and public discussions, often organised as intensive three-day programmes.
Each Academy responded to the specific urban, cultural and social context of its host city, addressing questions of digital placemaking, public participation, urban transformation and the relationship between physical and digital environments.

INTERNATIONAL UMAA PROGRAMME

Bangkok, 2017 – City of Emotional Transitions
The first Academy was launched in Bangkok, co-initiated with the Goethe-Institut Bangkok to establish an international platform for exchanging artistic practices and critical perspectives on urban media culture.
Emotional Transitions addresses how Bangkok’s evolving urban screens, media architecture and lighting influence the city’s atmosphere, emotional experiences and perceptions of ourselves and others in public space.

São Paulo, 2017 – City of Contradictory Utopias
The Academy considered how urban media art can intervene in São Paulo’s rapidly changing urban landscape, marked by cultural vitality, economic power, social inequality and conflicting visions of the future.

Beijing, 2018 – City of Shifting Energies
The Academy traced the interplay of ancient philosophies of energy (Qi), economic forces and technological development in Beijing, and their influence on the city’s atmosphere and future urban life.

Durban, 2018 – City of Intersecting Rituals
The Academy examined how Durban’s diverse cultural, social and spiritual rituals intersect in public space, and how urban art can challenge established practices and open up new perspectives on urban life.

Singapore, 2019 –  City Of Quantified Visions
The Academy  investigated how Singapore’s smart city technologies, surveillance infrastructures and urban media aesthetics shape public space, questioning their potential to foster citizen participation and bottom-up engagement.

The programme addressed the relationships between memory, identity, technology and collective experience, bringing artistic perspectives on cultural and technological change into public space.

2022–Ongoing | International Competition, Festival and Global Screen Network

Since 2022, Public Art Lab and the Connecting Cities Network have contributed their longstanding curatorial expertise and international digital infrastructures to City Digital Skin Art (CDSA), an international media art competition and festival initiated by Prof. Jeng Zing and Yuelai Ruan, Director of the Department of Public Space Art at the School of Sculpture and Public Art, China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.

Through collaborations with universities worldwide, CDSA invites students and emerging artists to develop one-minute video artworks addressing contemporary social, cultural and environmental issues. Selected works are presented alongside contributions from established artists across an expanding global network of urban screens and media facades, reaching diverse audiences beyond traditional art institutions.

The international curatorial team, led by Yuelai Ruan together with Susa Pop (Public Art Lab / Connecting Cities), Prof. Ina Conradi-Chavez (Nanyang Technological University / School of Art, Design and Media), Dominique Moulon and Maria Grazia Mattei (MEET Digital Culture Center), develops thematic programmes addressing some of the most pressing questions of our time.

CURATORIAL PROGRAMMES

2024 – Beyond the Screens
The programme questioned the boundaries of digital screens and their potential to engage with public space, urban culture and contemporary social issues.

2025 – Memory Coexistence
The programme addressed the relationships between memory, identity, technology and collective experience, bringing artistic perspectives on cultural and technological change into public space.

2026 – Liquid Commons
The fifth edition of CDSA focuses on oceans and deep-sea ecologies as shared planetary environments, highlighting the interdependencies between human and non-human life, climate systems, technologies and urban cultures.