IMAGINARY CITY

“Imaginary City” is a visual essay which embraces the history of Norway's Nuart Festival. A chance to explore street art's ability to change the ways in which we see "the city". Nuart est 2001, is the world's first and oldest "Street Art" festival and forms part of the founders art practice. Inspired by artist Jeremy Dellers statement "I dont make "things", I make things happen", the event has become a world renowned annual exploration into unsanctioned art making in public space.

This visual essay aims to discover what makes some cities more vivid than others. At the end it assumes that street art changes the people on the street (it can inspire, encourage, teach or challenge) and those people are changing the city by themselves in a way nobody else could. Therefore, situation “when someone in social housing goes out and writes quite conceptual text on electricity boxes” (as said by Martyn Reed in the documentary) it transforms into the well-known right to the city act as a “right to change ourselves by changing the city” (David Harvey).
“Imaginary City” intentionally avoids everything that one can expect from the usual mainstream street art film. It doesn’t have much in the way of action, the art talks rather than the creators, and the slow pace of the film lures us into a Tarkovsky'esque zone where time disappears. This documentary was not produced to impress sponsors, partners and city councils, but rather to give an insight into the philosophy embraced by one of the most enduring street art festivals in the world.

Featuring Martyn Reed, Evan Pricco, Javier Abarca and Carlo McCormick.

Filmed in Stavanger (Norway) 2015 - 2018.

Shot and edited by MZM PROJECTS
MZM is an independent group focused on research and documentation of street art, graffiti, post-graffiti and other contemporary artistic practices. It was formed by Kristina Borhes and Nazar Tymoshchuk in Ukraine in 2015.