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DETROIT: IMAGINARY CITIES
Lynn Crawford, Ed.
Gina Reichert and Danielle Aubert, Guest Editors
Spring 2007
soft cover, limp-bound
192 pages, 9 x 6"
Price: $14.00*

This issue of Detroit: Imaginary Cities is, in part, a response to the exhibition Shrinking Cities on view at MOCAD from February 2 - April 1, 2007. It includes contributions from a wide range of writers, artists, urban planners, architects, elementary and high school students based in Detroit, New Orleans and Berlin, among other places. Design by Danielle Aubert; cover design by Nina Bianchi; photography by Corine Smith.

Excerpt from Lynn Crawford's introduction: "We trace our title to a few sources. One: the fantastic Italo Calvino book, Invisible Cities, an imagined travelogue, written mostly as dialogues between Marco Polo and the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, that details cities, terrains, ideas, histories and empires. Two, the international cultural/ art exhibition, Shrinking Cities, which began in Berlin and now appears in the Detroit-metro region at two venues: MOCAD, and Cranbrook Art Museum. The project invites artists, architects, filmmakers, journalists, and sociologists from different cities - Detroit (USA), Manchester and Liverpool (Britain), Ivanova (Russia), and Halle and Leipzig (Germany) - to examine what kinds of things happen in once thriving urban centers with current diminishing populations. The show's rich material demonstrates - among other things - that out of verifiable decline can emerge multiple, and surprising, reconstructions, even forms of rebirth. A third source for our title is the notion of a city as a location, where separate things co exist; where people, cars, squares, businesses, buses, parks, bikes, lots, playgrounds, fountains, pets, trains, function apart and together..."

Following is a partial list of contributors: Indran Amirthanayagam, Nina Bianchi, Heiko Blankenstein, John Burgess, Vince Carducci, Mitch Cope, Paul Elliman, Brian Evenson, Jim Feast, Natalie Haddad, Tim Hailey, Barbara Henning, Brian Hurttienne, Francine Judd, Syau-Jyun Liang, Ann Liu, Ari Marcopoulos, Peter Markus, Shar McLeod, Philill Oswalt, Johannah Rodgers, Raphael Rubinstein, Liisa Salonen, Jeremy Sigler, Corine Smith, Zeb Smith, Michael Stone-Richards, Joshua Tuck, Chris Tysh, Jacob Van Dyke, Miguel Viteri, David & Jennifer West, Andrew Zago.

* Online prices include extra $4 for shipping and handling.