The Activist Drawing

Catalog for the exhibition Another city for another life: Constant's New Babylon from November 2nd to December 30th 1999 at the Drawing center New York. On October 29th the exhibition was opened with the symposium The Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationist Architectures from Constant's New Babylon to Beyond.
Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys (b. 1920) developed his visionary architectural project New Babylon between 1956 and 1974. Emerging out of the remarkable activist group the Situationist International, the project was concerned with issues of "unitary urbanism" and the future of art in a technocratic society. It has had a major impact on subsequent generations of artists, architects, and urbanists. Exploring the intersection of drawing, utopianism, and activism in a multimedia era, The Activist Drawing not only traces this historical moment but reveals surprisingly contemporary issues about the relationship between a fully automated environment and human creativity.