The video covers in 14 minutes the nearly 5 hour city exploration of Cotonou/W-Africa which took place on Nov 11th at the Benin Biennale 2012. Cotonou has faced an incredible development and turned from a coastal village quickly into a capital city, prosperous and abounding. The city rapidly exceeded the borders established by the colonial power and the occidental way of understanding a city. Therefore new experimental ways of capturing Cotonou need to be explored to bring different insights into this place of rapid change and transition.
Organized by Benin Connexion and dérive - Society for Urban Research, dérive Connectée tried to connect the cities of Cotonou and Vienna by walking simultaneously on routes that met on certain points like places, bridges or crossings. The walk in Cotonou started and ended at Kora, the festival center of Benin Biennale 2012, a former shopping center in the Ganhi city district of Cotonou. Due to the simultaneous drifts in Benin and Vienna, the artistic discovery did not only connect cities and thoughts through virtual reality but also in real life by connecting the people taking part in both cities.
Using the Ushahidi platform Benin Connection and dérive - Society for Urban Research expanded the ongoing project »laboratoire dérive« into the social web, bringing it first to a test at the Biennale Benin 2012 and thereby proposing a modest way of thinking the city, its discovery and its documentation differently. One of the aims of laboratoire dérive 2.0 was to stimulate exchange and communication and to help feature Benin more prominently.
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