This brochure documents a project initiated and carried out over the course of one year by Dieter Spath and Bernd Vlay (Bernd Knaller-Vlay). Working at a 1:1 scale—the method of direct action within urban space upon which their project is based—proposes a revision of the professional image of the architect and makes modes of planning, representation, and thinking visible. The immediacy, the 1:1 nature of a true “dérive,” is captured here. city-joker was part of the steirischer herbst 1995 and remains a seminal work in the Austrian urbanism discourse of the 1990s.
For 72 hours, participants follow a geographical line projected precisely onto the urban space. This line is followed uncompromisingly, meaning that objects such as buildings or walls are climbed or traversed. Absurdities, social rites, and the intangible are fearlessly encountered in real-time. In the process, the city is described and experienced beyond established forms of perception.
“city-joker rebels against the authoritarian claim and the formulaic nature of urban planning procedures. It is interested precisely in those absurdities and differences, social rites, unpredictabilities, and ruses that undermine the interpretations of strategists and their tidy analyses at a 1:x scale.” Quote by Bernd Vlay and Dieter Spath, 1995