With its physical distancing measures, the COVID-19 pandemic is destroying public space as we know it.
The current crisis creates the necessity – and emergency – to rethink cultural space.
Research, Lectures & Workshops @ Cultural Institutions, Germany, 2020-2021
Keynote Hybrid Space @ Culture @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, Halle an der Saale, Germany, 16.00 – 17.00, 22 September 2021
Hybrid Workshop The Future is not Digital. Hybrid is the Future! @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, 13.30–18.00, 14 October 2021
Workshop Hybrid Platforms @ Next Level Festival for Games, Kokskohlenbunker, Zeche Zollverein, Essen, Germany, 14.00–16.30, 14 November 2020
Keynote Hybrid Space @ Culture @ Kulturstiftung des Bundes, HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, Halle an der Saale, Germany, 22 September 2021
One of the most apparent consequences of the current pandemic is the undeniable acceleration of digital pervasiveness and the related far-reaching transformations of all fields of cultural social activity. With restricted and highly regulated access to museums and exhibitions, virtual and hybrid tours are acquiring and enjoying an increasingly established status in the reception and consumption of what cultural institutions can offer. With theatres, cinemas and performance spaces not fully open to the public, it is imperative and increasingly expected that streaming and remote viewing are integrated with in-person experiences and attendance. As several venues experiment with physically-distanced, in-person attendance modes such as sail-ins, drive-ins, hybrid combinations of safety and visions can be more daring as we explore the potential and chance that this moment represents. In-person meetings are moving to virtual formats, pop-up meetings and workshops must lend themselves to mixed modes of attendance, ensuring comparable levels of engagement and participation through webinars. Schools, academies and universities are integrating online teaching and e-learning.
Cultural institutions and practitioners can and should be daring, thinking beyond merely making physical spaces safe to navigate, offering a faded and withering caricature of the bustling cultural spaces that are ingrained in our societies. With the increasingly experimental hybridity between the digital and the physical, new scenarios can unfold, as well as new ways of experiencing and participating in cultural and social life.
As the with-COVID-19 cultural landscape is continuously expanded and enriched, there is an unprecedented chance to influence and shape the development of cultural production and reception. By relying on hybrid practices and strategies, cultural initiatives can activate public space. As they tap into the potential of public digital space to enrich and expand how we experience culture in urban spaces, such initiatives can craft new realms of engagement, effectively embedding them into the fabric of the cityscape.
Since a long time, cultural practices have become hybrid. For instance, cultural programs taking place in physical locations have already been heavily relying on virtual, nonlocal, distributed audiences in front of screens. The physical social distancing measures during the pandemic enhance the already established trend of cultural practices in physical spaces radically transforming due to the ubiquity of the digital.
Digital technology is reinforcing the merging of creative fields, an ongoing trend since the late 1960s, with the combination of painting and sculpture with performance, video, film and sound and the fusion and mutual enrichment between various media within a single artistic project. Digitalization influences and reshapes artists’ creative practice, as the latter integrates virtual space, digital networks and coding, enhancing the coming together of visual and narrative arts.
Digital acceleration is supporting the transformation of cultural-artistic production in its interaction with the public. Akin to the co-creative processes characterising other fields, digital networks help artists and creative professionals to actively involve and interact with their public. An example of digital communication technologies enabling the public’s participation, interaction and engagement, is the coming together of film and gaming, with storytelling transforming into ‘story-finding’ as users discover and create their own stories.
Although a most challenging time, the current crisis can be an occasion to pause and rethink, as we grapple with the disruption of our everyday personal lives and professional practices. As digitalization radically redefines how people around the world communicate and connect, the exploration of what the future of cultural spaces holds, requires considering physical spaces together with digital media networks, focusing on the hybrid qualities of spaces in the interaction and fusion of the physical and the digital.
In this critical situation we have the chance to develop a spatial-conceptual approach to support cultural collaborative interactions in order to actively shape these future hybrid (combined digital and physical) explorative spaces. Examining the relationship of physical spaces with digital and media networks, enables us to explore the potential of hybrid space for artistic research and to develop new cultural formats.
Such an investigation of the future of cultural spaces considers them in their socio-political, economic, environmental, and climate-related context and focuses on sustainable solutions that contrast and reach beyond recent models of mass (tourism) cultural consumerism, targeting record ticket sales and visitor numbers. The pandemic-induced hiatus could work as a break, enabling the reconsidering of choices and priorities and for exploring new models and for developing sustainable perspectives.
Hybrid Staging addresses the challenges posed by these developments and investigates the future of cultural spaces. The program focusses on showcasing practical possibilities and experimental formats, speculating on economic models, making visionary ideas tangible and tackling a broad range of topical questions.
Hybrid Staging is a professional exchange and co-creation program involving a broad range of professionals from the cultural fields, such as museums and exhibitions, stages, events and festivals. The program develops trans-disciplinary perspectives, tapping into the possibility of mutual enrichment and bringing together artists and creatives with expertise in media, digital technologies, game, and the audio-visual sector as well as in production-staging and communication alongside cultural and heritage institutions. The Hybrid Staging program draws on the continuity of Hybrid Space Lab’s long-term commitment to the exploration of the future of cultural spaces, for example:
Future Narratives and Immersive Experiences Symposium at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF (22\05\2019)
INbetweenSTITUTE new concepts for cultural spaces for Beijing’s 798 Art District (2014)
Deep Space, a long-term investigative program dealing with controversial heritage sites in the Digital Age and with as a case study the re-signification of the Francoist monument “Valle de los Caídos” close to Madrid (2018-2021)
With Hybrid Space Lab’s engagement in the rethinking and strengthening of public space and culture in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hybrid Staging is launched by Hybrid Space Lab as part of a threefold of projects: The project Hybrid Staging explores the artistic, social, and sustainable potential of hybrid (combined onsite and online) cultural staging in general while the project (Re)Venue tackles the re-envisioning museums’ venues and revenue models and the project Reboot Culture addresses the need for a modular mobile infrastructure to support hybrid public cultural events.
* How to co-create cultural experiences at the time of the Digital?
* How does the pandemic force us to radicaly rethink cultural formats and spaces?
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