‘Rurban Intervention’

Cities fray at the edges and overflow into the countryside; their borders become increasingly fuzzy. Kai Vöckler with Heidi Pretterhofer and Dieter Spath trace this phenomenon of blending and end up in a maize field.

Rural areas have become emancipated in the past years, they have experienced their own development, and have discarded the dress of provincialism. However, they do not stand naked - they present themselves as a power horse for a new order and as a laboratory of errors. What has disappeared in this metamorphosis are the borders between town and countryside. ‘Urban' and ‘rural' have become a new way of settling that also needs a new catch-phrase, a fusion, namely: ‘rurban'. The project leader Kai Vöckler sees his regionale08 project as a ‘rurban intervention' which he is bringing about together with the architectural firm Arquitectos. They cut the structures of a town into a maize field, whereby the harvesters follow GPS signals. The cutting pattern is taken from a ‘rurban' settlement.

Starting from the thesis that modernity is not created in towns but in the countryside, the second part of the project also deals with this new form of settlement, an Audio Guide of Space Exploration through the festival region, which will be produced together with FM 4 ‘Im Sumof' Radio Rurbanismo 2008, Fritz Ostermayer and Thomas Edlinger.