international history exchange project

urban units ihep

original based on an urban development approach, the project „ ihep – international history exchange project “ evolved from the work with social networks in cities and metropolises, the inherent anonymization and the near complete loss of identity and history. it became a project about local historiography and development of a collective identity. social networks are based always on give and take, to provide something and to get something. social networks are based not mainly on material thoughts, but the activity of the people and a resulting creation of sense. Through social networks in microsocietys (neighborhoods, quarters, districts) networks of humanity are created, a sense for the others and respect for eachother.

with more and more people being uprooted and permanent changes in the quarters, the streets, the blocks and the houses, makes it impossible to overview the change of the whole location. living in one place for a period of time and than move further to a distant location. the „natives“ of a quarter become extinct slowly and take the history and particularly their stories with them. at this point our project starts. it shall become an artistic process of the respective locale history and the collective memory. the project want to collect stories and to tell stories, it should be a contribution to the local historiography. for the realization we use a technical device which is conceived by malte steiner for this project (see separate sheet).

the choice of places we will do on location, depending on talks with protagonists of town planning office. the work can be combined with works conceived on location or protagonists of similar projects. the project comprehends the choice of the location first, meetings with protagonists, setting up the recording stations, several workshops and tutorials on the usage of the devices on location, promotion and daily backup of the recorded data. further activities will be triage and evaluation of the material, perhaps discussions with the protagonists, processing of the material for a radiofeature or – play and a documentation of the project, which could be released to the public via the web. when the project is closed, the whole material will be donated to the townarchive.

technical informations as pdf