IN SITU partners with EUNIC Singapore to contribute to the Cultural Smart City of tomorrow, with Thomas Lamers

Culture | Smart City is a multilateral and multi-disciplinary collaborative initiative by EUNIC Singapore. This initiative seeks to establish a network that will bring together people from differing disciplines and practices from across the globe to contribute to the international smart city discourse from a cultural perspective.

IN SITU is now part of Culture | Smart City, an interdisciplinary project by the EUNIC Cluster Singapore and coordinated by the Goethe-Institut Singapore, aiming to contribute to the international smart city discourse from a cultural perspective. With international partners such as Group X (Finland), Waag (The Netherlands) and IN SITU (France), the project is conceived as an international initiative and is expected to evolve in phases over the next years.

This initiative understands the city first and foremost as a cultural system, where the role of culture and the arts is an integral components of the future liveable city. This is based on the premise that neither a city nor an imagined digitised society can be sufficiently described only by its infrastructure, technological systems or city planning policies.

The "smart city" is already with us, but it needs a jointly created vision of its future. As the cultural perspective in the global Smart City discourse is underrepresented, this initiative aims to foster a transdisciplinary network of diverse perspectives, voices and practices to set a new focus that priorise the role of culture within contemporary discourse about technology, digitalisation and the liveable urban society of the future.

The project approach is interdisciplinary, connecting cultural practices with research and science. The long term aim is to create a lasting global network with international partners and experts. Culture | Smart City includes a website serving as a platform to create a network, and to present different perspectives, research, practices, and voices by partners, experts, artists, academic, and cultural practitioners. The website will also serve as a platform featuring digital events, such as presentations, roundtables, and convenings. Culture | Smart City will also entail a conference in 2022 in Singapore, in the framework of the World City Summit.

Fellowship Programme with Thomas Lamers

With the objective to create a long term network and plateform to contemplate and (re)imagine urban cultural transformation, participants are invited to form a network of fellows to share ideas and thoughts, with diverse contributions and participation to roundtable discussions and networking sessions.

IN SITU is collaborating with Thomas Lamers, IN SITU artist and member of The Walden Collective based in The Netherlands to develop content for the digital program. Lamers will contribute to the broader discourse about the centrality of culture in the future "smart city" by developping new ideas to be published on the platform Culture | Smart City.

Other fellows include arts practitioners, urban planners, thought leaders and researchers, who will all contribute to strenghtening strategic thinking around the shifting relations between digital technology and culture.

Members and associate members of the EUNIC Cluster Singapore: Alliance Française Singapore, Austrian Embassy Singapore, Embassy of Finland Singapore, Embassy of France Singapore, Embassy of Italy Singapore, Embassy of Portugal Singapore (in representation of Camões, I.P.), Embassy of Romania Singapore, Embassy of Spain Singapore, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands Singapore, Goethe-Institut Singapore.