Boris Sieverts studied arts at Düsseldorf. After working as a shepherd in France, he worked with several architectural agencies in Germany before founding Büro für Städtereisen in 1997 in Cologne, where he lives. Buro für Städtereisen is a city travel agency where Boris Sieverts operates like a hikers’ guide, organizing walks in city outskirts. Through reports he writes up on city suburbs, and Cologne’s in particular, situated as they are on the right bank of the Rhine, Boris Sieverts notes every situation and encounter in great detail. He analyses the sensations brought about by these and tries to formulate the project underlying his excursions in this type of extremely complex territory: the project of “poetic densification” (Verdichten) of these territories by transforming the usual perception of them. Boris Sieverts focuses and concentrates on these “areas of wasteland” and “empty lots”, areas which are intrinsically strong, as is the whole landscape of the suburbs, in the expression of the absence of preconceived form and appropriation. A new way of looking at things arises by way of a selective itinerary through these “areas of wasteland”, where spaces follow on from spaces, and where the wild aspect, in the sense of a phenomenon without projects, which nobody has appropriated, is invariably juxtaposed with the preconceived and the appropriated. In 2002, Boris Sieverts became an expert member of the technical committee for e2 contest, an international competition on the urban condition, subsequently exhibited at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris. His writings on sensitive walks have been published in particular in the magazine Site in Germany, and translated in the French magazine Le Visiteur.
"Urban journey with Boris Sieverts" > Archilab 2004
In his urban travel agency, Büro fur Städtereisen in Cologne, Boris Sieverts has been operating for the past five years as a walkers' guide for hikes which he organizes on the edges of cities. According to him, "the wild outskirts of large cities are one of the last adventures." For ArchiLab 2004, Boris Sieverts is introducing a programme of outings in the Argonne neighbourhood.
Archilab 2004 : The Naked City
Das Büro für Städtereisen
Boris Sieverts
Claude Willey is an L.A. artist/researcher whose activities focus on mildly sophisticated system design, construction, and analysis for both urban and rural environments. After a move from Chicago to SoCal in 1999, Willey abandoned working in sound-based mediums and began with experiments in water storage and retention. After a series of water-themed events: a symposium, a series of exhibitions, a radio piece (Hydro-Radio), and a year-long investigation of a watershed in Orange County, Willey turned his sights on the Mojave Desert to begin work with the MOISTURE collective. Becoming Willey’s main project since the beginning of 2002, the MOISTURE project has integrated itself into Harper Dry Lake Basin, working on functional land art built to interact with the region’s hydrologic cycle. In the past, Willey has been represented by the sound art labels Staalplaat (Holland), Katyn (Germany), and VUZ (Germany), but his current projects find him partnering with the Santa Rosa company DriWater and Greenmuseum.org, along with the funding agents: The Beall Center for Art and Technology and the LEF Foundation. He is currently an adjunct faculty in the Urban Studies and Planning Department at California State University Northridge and at Pasadena City College in the Visual Art and Media Division. Willey has also instructed at UC Irvine and USC. Willey lives in Los Angeles and does not own or regularly use an automobile. He commutes long distance via bicycle for work and has been documenting and writing about understanding movement and perceptions of time within a car-dominated transport system.
http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=105
http://moisture.greenmuseum.org/
http://www.quietamerican.org/related_qp.html
http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/1/pragmaticMultitudism/