Practising Utopia: Speculative urban planning

The kex—residents Natalia Matsenko and Yuri Yefanov will be hosting the workshop “Practising Utopia: Speculative Urban Planning” as part of the urbanize! Festival 2025.

This multimedia workshop explores the dynamics of city life through a two-part structure: speculation and simulation. Firstly, participants select and share the most significant challenges they face in city life and their concerns about existing infrastructure. Following this exchange, based on intersecting issues, participants will be grouped to discuss potential solutions and visions for the future, with these solutions already implemented.

The simulation phase brings these speculative visions to life. Leveraging a virtual city built in a gaming engine, participants are invited to design a neighbourhood of the future they have imagined. This group exercise provides a space for collective work and problem-solving in times of crisis, offering a playful way to navigate existing and potential challenges.
 

Natalia Matsenko is an independent curator, art critic, and lecturer. She focuses on the landscape and environment transformations, human and non-human communities and networks, new media, and cultural heritage preservation. Natalia’s practice is connected with relations between ecological and political action and art, and its short and long-term impact on the environmental systems.

Yuri Yefanov is a Ukrainian artist and filmmaker whose work explores the otherworldly digital dimensions through computer-generated imagery. His practice examines the interactions between everyday life and politics by creating his digital systems and mythologies.

Registration will be possible soon on: urbanize! 2025

The workshop will take place at WSB Studio at WUK and will be held in English.