Internationale Stadt Berlin
The Internationale Stadt Berlin [International City of Berlin] was founded on 1 January 1995 by artists and network freaks in Berlin as a virtual community in the vein of Amsterdam's De Digitale Stad.
From 1995 to 1998 the project reconstructed urban and social spaces for encounter on the Web until it had to be discontinued due to lack of funding. In 1996 turned into private company, too. In its peak, the ISB had almost 300 paying customers. The project ended on 1 April 1998.
Initiators included the artist group Handshake (Barbara Aselmeier, Joachim Blank, Armin Haase, Karl Heinz Jeron), Thomax Kaulmann, Frank Kunkel, and Gereon Schmitz.
"Almost parallel to The Digital City in Amsterdam, the Internationale Stadt Berlin was founded. For several years, in contrast to its Dutch counterpart, at least by name, there was no institute behind this network. There was primarily a core group, active in the local Berlin scene, that invited collegues and friends to create a network, like a city with inhibitants. But as with Ljudmila, the network was mostly used by artists and those working in independent organisations. Internationale Stadt Berlin did disappear as a central server, but in the context of the continuous building and construction activity of the city Berlin, the people of Internationale Stadt Berlin have just moved to other areas in town and have reorganised in multiple new artservers and workspaces." (Walter van der Cruijsen)
Articles
- Geert Lovink, "Radical Media Pragmatism", 27 Apr 1998. (English)
- Gottfried Kerscher, "Brave New City. Eine Einleitung und ein Interview mit einem der Mitbegründer der Internationalen Stadt Berlin, Joachim Blank", kritische berichte 1, 1998. (German)
- More texts and additional material
