Alternative city tours in Stuttgart
Artists: Sylvia Winkler & Stephan Köperl, Menja Stevenson, Hartmut Landauer, Julia Wenz, Natascha Moschini, Oliver Jungwirth, qujOchÖ, Doris Prlic, Susanne Kudielka & Kaspar Wimberley
In 2011 and 2012 we invited a group of local and international artists to create a series of city tours, offering both visitors and local residents in Stuttgart alternative ways of exploring and interacting with the city.
While some of the artists chose to base their tour on their own subjective perceptions, others offered visitors the opportunity to explore the city for themselves. The traditional expectations held towards a ‘city tour’ were expanded, redefined or subverted.
The result is eight interdisciplinary site-specific tours, each of which offers a unique form of interaction with Stuttgart and/or those that live there. Our own contributions include ‘i-punkt plus’, an unofficial tourism information office, and the tour ‘we will kehr for you’.
A website detailing the first season of tours can be found at www.stuttg-arttours.de (German)
Arttours will be developed further in 2012, employing new approaches and responding more specifically to the representation of Stuttgart as a spectacle and the monopolisation of the city experience. A new publication will accompany the continuation of the project, exploring different artistic strategies in more detail and asking ‘What is the role of the tourist?’ and ‘What is the potential of the tourist?
Arttours is funded by the city of Stuttgart and developed in collaboration with the Interventionsraum, Kunstvermittlung Stuttgart, Utopia Parkway and Spillmann.
