Anatomy of Cities

Anatomy of Cities

Anatomy of the city, R²

Anatomy of Cities explores the city as a living organism. Through listening, color, memory, and movement, each project acts as a sensory instrument, tuning attention and inviting participants to notice what usually goes unseen.

The city becomes a field of subtle discoveries, where perception itself is the medium and every encounter opens a new layer of urban life.

Shoot for Color
PanGorMonium

If PanGorMonium tunes attention through inner listening, Shoot for Color tunes the eye and body through color, texture, and light. Together, these approaches explore different ways of experiencing the city.

Shoot for Color

Anatomy of the city

Shoot for Color is a participatory practice that explores the city through color, attention, and careful looking.

2018 Keszthely
2008 Yekaterinburg
2004 Yekaterinburg

The project consists of actions, photo marathons, and individual walks. It treats color not as decoration but as a way to pay attention to the city and inhabit it more fully.

It is a shared activity without competition. Participants create a personal experience of the city where perception itself becomes the medium.

Within Anatomy of Cities, Shoot for Color works as a visual and color-based instrument.

PanGorMonium

2008, Anatomy of the city

PanGorMonium is a virtual and contemplative instrument for listening to the city.

Study for the Unprecedented Instrument PanGorMonium
Yekaterinburg, 2008
Photography, toned paper, collage. 1682 × 1188 cm

Presented as part of the international collective project Enstruments, September 12, 2008. Gallery ParaRam, Yekaterinburg, Russia. Within the Finnish–Russian festival Together: Ecology of Space

“Conceived in 2008 in Yekaterinburg, PanGorMonium marks the beginning of my long-term research into cities as resonant, living organisms, systems composed not only of architecture and infrastructure, but also of memory, absence, inner sound, and attention”.

Origin and Name

The name PanGorMonium draws on multiple linguistic and conceptual layers.

It echoes Pan-harmonion (Greek, “harmonizing with all”), a symbol of Pythagorean aesthetics and the idea of the music of the spheres — a universal harmony that exists continuously but often remains unnoticed because it never ceases to sound.

The name PanGorMonium is a deliberately constructed term that resists literal translation. Its internal structure reflects the assembled, layered nature of the city itself and combines several semantic strata:

  • Pan (Greek) — “all”, totality
  • Hormao (Greek) — “to set in motion, to activate”
  • Harmony — consonance, proportion, attunement
  • Monos (Greek) — “one”, singular

Together, these elements form an artist-made concept that holds both collective resonance and individual perception.

Concept

PanGorMonium is not a physical instrument and does not produce sound in a conventional sense. It operates as a virtual, speculative, and contemplative instrument, activated through perception, memory, and inner listening.

The work proposes the city as a symphonic body, a resonant field where architectural landmarks, industrial remnants, cultural symbols, everyday details, and vanished structures become instruments that tune attention.

The instrument is composed of multiple urban layers, ranging from collective to deeply personal: architectural landmarks and cultural sites, industrial and infrastructural forms, unfinished buildings and temporary structures, wall graffiti, courtyards, passageways, demolished but remembered houses, old trees and young saplings.

These elements are not fixed. Each participant mentally assembles their own version of the instrument, based on lived experience, memory, and emotional resonance.

In PanGorMonium, the viewer becomes both performer and listener.

There is no external audience. The act of listening unfolds internally, within a personal acoustic field. At times, this inner listening may enter into resonance — consonant or dissonant — with the listening of others, forming a fragile and temporary eco-orchestra.

The work continuously shifts between registers: personal and collective, cultural and industrial, material presence and absence.

PanGorMonium functions as a foundational work within the broader artistic framework Anatomy of Cities.

Within this long-term project, cities are approached as living organisms with their own rhythms, memories, and internal acoustics. Listening becomes a method of research, and artistic practice becomes a form of attunement.

PanGorMonium introduced a mode of working that continues across later projects: the creation of virtual and contemplative instruments that invite attentive presence rather than spectacle.