Totalstadt. Beijing Case. High Speed Urbanisierung in China

High-speed urbanisation. Nowhere else in the world do cities undergo such rapid change than in China. »totalstadt. beijing case« represents the result of a scholarship project initiated by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes in cooperation with the Goethe Institute Beijing which was carried out in Beijing, in the summer of2005. Over a period lasting four months, twelve artists from Germany and China used the city as their laboratory for the artistic examination of the cultural dimensions of high-speed urbanisation in Beijing. The present publication is designed as a handbook. A total of 26 authors followed the programme's concept, the key understanding of which is that scientific-theoretical analysis and artistic perception constitute complimentary forms of knowledge. Whereas part one presents the results of the Beijing Case artists and includes the works of additional Chinese and German artists, parts two and three provide background information on architecture and urbanisation, as well as on various aspects of art and culture in Beijing.