"The theme of media art fits perfectly with the Karlsruhe showcase: the UNESCO City of Media Arts is one of the city's core brand themes and, like the showcase, is celebrating its 5th anniversary this year," says KTG Managing Director Pascal Rastetter. "Especially in the run-up to Christmas, many guests come to us for advice at the tourist information center. We want to show them that the Karlsruhe showcase also stands for digital and future-oriented topics. In order to present UNESCO City Karlsruhe and the topic of media art to people far beyond the region, we are all the more pleased that we can also show "Greetings from Karlsruhe" at the CMT in Stuttgart, the world's largest public trade fair for tourism and leisure."
At the center of the multimedia work are historical photographs from the Karlsruhe Municipal Archive. They tell of moving moments in time and the architectural history of the city. Innovative image-to-video AI tools bring the images to life. The AI shows how the photographed scene could have continued according to its interpretation. The whole thing is accompanied by a specially composed soundscape that connects past and present.
"Greetings from Karlsruhe" is the second part of the ECHOS AND ARCHIVES series. The first part, "Grüße aus'm SchwarzwAId" (Greetings from the Black Forest), was already very successful and could be seen at Karlsruhe Palace in 2023 and at art KARLSRUHE and the regional council in 2024.
The artist collective Francis Karat was founded in Karlsruhe in September 2023 and consists of mostly graduated media artists who wish to remain anonymous. They see themselves as visionaries and free thinkers who want to overcome the conventional field of art production and shape a new artistic era. Their aim is to playfully and intuitively create a popular postmodern media world between high culture and subculture.
Unique UNESCO City of Media Arts Karlsruhe
In Karlsruhe, media art in its various forms is part of life, be it at the SCHLOSSLICHTSPIELEN and Media art is here, at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media or at the universities with their numerous media courses.
In 2019, Karlsruhe was therefore the first and so far only German city to be awarded the title of UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts. The fan-shaped city was thus included in the global network of Creative Cities, which also includes cities such as Austin (USA), Tel Aviv and Changsha (China). The aim of the network is to enable cities that focus their urban development on culture and media art to exchange ideas with each other.
"Greetings from Karlsruhe" can be seen until mid-January 2025 at the Tourist Information in the Karlsruhe Showcase and from January 18 to 26, 2025 at the CMT in Stuttgart (Hall 6, Stand B 65).
More information at:
https://www.cityofmediaarts.de/de/kuenstler/francis-karat/
