August 2010: Living Walls Conference in Atlanta

The internet is a fabulous tool, but sometimes facetime speaks louder than pixels. In order to really collaborate and share ideas, people have to interact in the real world. Thank goodness for Living Walls, a conference scheduled for August 13-25 in Atlanta, Georgia. The lineup includes speakers, presentations, walls full of art, and three days of really good times. Here are the goods:

"We are piecing together a conference on street art and urbanism entitled: Living Walls, The City Speaks. The
idea is to put the work of a very small subset of the population (street artists, graffiti writers, etc), people who actually interact with space, under the same roof with people who spend their time in a discourse about public space. Our intentions are simply to broadcast to the attendees a wide spectrum of ideas about public space. We hope
that everyone leaves the event looking at the city, its walls, and how we interact with space differently."
"The conference will be split into a few components: a gallery show, a poster show, and a lecture series. For both the gallery and poster show we plan to bring in the works of an international selection of artists. These artists typically make use of the street as an outlet to showcase their work. For the gallery show each artist will be asked to submit some form of documentation of their other works and individual process, along with their submission of artwork. We ask for this type of documentation in order to illustrate via pictures, video, sketches, written form, etc the scale and context in which the artist typically works in public space. The lecture series will not be composed solely of academics. We are seeking out anyone who makes use of space in an interesting way. The last component is documentation of the entire event. The entire show will be heavily documented in the hopes of one day publishing the work."
"We have been seeking artists that re-appropriate the public realm, attempting to take charge of their media space. Thus far, we will be featuring artists such as Miso, know-hope, and Gaia. It will also features lectures by Jordan Seiler (public ad campaign), Jeff Ferrell, as well as several other local critics of public space."
"The event will take place the weekend of August 13 at the Eyedrum in Atlanta. Ironically, this event takes place in the same city, and is scheduled shortly after the largest annual conference on urbanism to happen nationally, the CNU18. We only point this out because such a conference is a testament to the values of development of space, and not the common use of space. Unlike CNU, whose audience is primarily composed of developers and academics who can afford the $200/day entry, Living Walls is addressed to the public, is completely free of charge, is open to participation, and is much more thought provoking. In the truest sense, Living Walls is a grassroots colloquium."

Amazing, guys! For more information, visit livingwallsconference.com.