Urban Explorations that Run the Gamut
As a supplement to the regular city tours offered by Tourismusverband Linz, a few Linz09 projects are offering alternative possibilities of encountering this city. For instance, Activistas! puts you aboard a bus to visit historical and current sites of protest, social struggle and feminist demands for equal rights in Linz from the turn of the 20th century to the present (March 7 to September, 2009, Saturdays; Start: Linzer Hauptplatz).In Culture Pilots, 12 immigrant women living in Linz accompany tour group participants through Linz Mitte, the neighborhood surrounding Wiener Straße. Their unconventional city tours enable locals and tourists alike to engage in up-close-and-personal encounters with the people who live there, to confront their own conceptions of culture and identity as well as those of foreigners, and to better understand reasons for migration (April 30 to May 24, 2009; Start: Bulgariplatz and Linzer Hauptplatz).
Very tangible food for thought as part of a critical confrontation with surveillance in public spaces is delivered by Hide. During these eccentric sightseeing excursions through Linz’s inner city in May 2009, participants will learn simple movement patterns that will enable them to evade the many surveillance cameras attempting to capture them.
The title Capital of Culture Neighborhood of the Month will be passed along from neighborhood to neighborhood for nine months. Alte Innenstadt; Kleinmünchen; Dornach-Auhof, Katzbach; Neue Innenstadt/Froschberg; Bindermichl/Spallerhof; Neue Heimat; Urfahr-Zentrum; Franckviertel; Ebelsberg will each have a month to give an account of itself. The creative, clever ideas stem from the locals themselves. These projects are linking up individuals, associations, institutions and groups into a neighborhood network beyond the realm of officially sanctioned initiatives by governmental agencies.
Special ways of seeing life in Linz are afforded by Bellevue, a temporary yellow building erected especially for the Capital of Culture year. It’s located on a freeway overpass in Bindermichl/Spallerhof—traffic flows by on one side; a recently-built park occupies the other. Bellevue functions as a temporary site for artistic production and as a stage. Guest artists, experts and folks living nearby are jointly responsible for the lineup of offerings (June 25 to September 13, 2009).
