Slought and the Emergent Design Practices Lab at PennDesign are pleased to announce a reading of "City Hall Tower Illumination," 1987, a conceptual project by Krzysztof Wodiczko about civic thresholds that seeks to visualize the health and well-being of Philadelphia, on display February 9 to April 27, 2017.

Wodiczko's "City Hall Tower Illumination" was originally published by the Fairmount Park Art Association of Philadelphia in Light Up Philadelphia: Presentations and Discussion (1988). In our reading of his proposal, Wodiczko projects signals on the facade of City Hall to enable residents to communicate with their fellow inhabitants and support their health and well-being. In so doing, he synchronizes the city's diverse rhythms and communities, and enables public consciousness and engagement, so as to reimagine the socio-political fabric of the city of Philadelphia.

This project seeks to extend "City Hall Tower Illumination" beyond City Hall itself and across different locations in Philadelphia that embody civic imagination. Working from Wodiczko's unfinalized proposal, past recordings of the artist in conversation at Slought, and contemporary developments in Philadelphia, our intention is to raise critical questions about social responsibility and encourage publics to think of art and architecture as thresholds for empathy and compassion. What are the common grounds for belonging to the city of Philadelphia? What sense of care and responsibility do we have towards one another? How can visual culture enable a sense of togetherness and bring together divided urban communities?

We seek a critical engagement with these questions, beginning with discursive activities featuring faculty and students from the University of Pennsylvania. These conversations will be inspired by Wodiczko's original proposal.