HEIDELBERG.-With the international exhibition project “Islands & Ghettos” planned for 2008, the Heidelberger Kunstverein would like to draw attention to the worldwide phenomenon of territorial isolation and social seclusion. The project aims at gathering contributions from artists, architects and urbanists that discuss the urban effects of such tendencies, which are to be found more and more frequently throughout the world. These will show the ways in which the final social utopia of the 20th century – the dream of the globalized borderless world – has been replaced by the reality of new private and economic lines of demarcation.

One of two prototypical case studies of territorial segregation which the project would like to discuss is the artificial archipelagos currently being built in the Persian Gulf off the shore of Dubai. These archipelagos in the shape of palm trees or even a world map exemplify the aesthetics of today’s physical and social demarcation within society. The South American megacity Caracas, in which impoverished “barrios” exist in close proximity to the gated communities of the upper and middle classes, will serve as a second case study. An essential feature of many megacities in the Third World is the lack of public space as a common meeting ground for different classes of society. With the extreme examples of Caracas and Dubai as a starting point, the project “Islands & Ghettos” wishes to examine the phenomena of territorial segregation in a global context.

The project was born out of the conviction that constellations of social polarisation and spatial fragmentation can also be detected in European cities, and that these will increase drastically in the 21st century. The urban matrix of a mega city represents a sort of culmination of the urban situation, which will sooner or later reshape smaller and middle-sized cities in Europe as well. The project proposal therefore aims at provoking an inevitable debate on the phenomena of territorial demarcation and its consequences.