Alum Yto Barrada PJ'94 speaks in the Ideas City Conference. 

This year’s IDEAS CITY Festival will take place May 28–30 and centers on the theme of The Invisible City. Dozens of artists, one hundred organizations, and tens of thousands of visitors will come together to explore questions of transparency and surveillance, citizenship and representation, expression and suppression, participation and dissent, and the enduring quest for visibility in the city. 

The Festival will kick off with a series of talks, panels, discussions, and short films at the Great Hall at Cooper Union. Speakers will include some of the world’s most forward-thinking visionaries, who will discuss key civic issues and formulate action for the city of tomorrow. Panelists will address the following pressing questions, among many others:

• The designers shaping the cities of the future must engage with an increasingly challenging set of hypothetical conditions—scenarios that often remain invisible to their inhabitants. How do urbanists, architects, and activists create habitats that anticipate drastic future change such as overcrowding and climate change?

• A vast proportion of our lives exists as an invisible online record of our identities, interests, and affiliations. What role do data and privacy play in the perpetuation of democracy in the twenty-first century?

• We are increasingly dependent on global-network infrastructures that are as invisible as they are vast. How can networks and processes be made more transparent, accessible, and empowering? How can they guarantee accountability? Can art be the connective membrane in this process?

• Within the city, an increasing number of people—such as the homeless, the elderly, and undocumented immigrants—are disappearing from sight. Is there a cartography to identify those who have wandered or been driven from the center?

11 AM–12:15 PM
Jonathas de Andrade, Rosanne Haggerty, Yto Barrada, Micah White, and Jonathan Bowles (moderator) 

PANEL DISCUSSION: Hope and Unrest in The Invisible City

The age of network culture offers new, powerful tools for individual and collective expression, and in response, the act of protest is rapidly evolving; individuals, groups, and entire communities once conveniently invisible to decision-makers are self-organizing to make their voices heard. From Cairo to Istanbul and from Barcelona to São Paulo, the sight of public squares inundated by a sea of protesters has become one of the key images of our time. At the same time, an increasing number of people—the poor, the homeless, the elderly, the mentally ill, and undocumented immigrants, to name just a few groups—are disappearing from sight. How do the disenfranchised find representation in the city today? Is there a cartography to guide those who have wandered or been driven from the center? This panel will analyze the social and political crises triggered by new technologies, the shifts in the balance of power within society they are bringing about, and the role of art in defining a new paradigm of social justice.

 

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