On May 1, 2004 the European Union will
expand beyond its current "core Europe" constellation to include, for the
first time, nations of the former Eastern and Non-Aligned Blocks. For these
ten nations the 'day of accession' is the opportunity to rejoin a European
sphere which, for many, was felt to have been robbed through the militarily
enforced alliances of the Cold War.
By recalling the pan-European Picnic of 1989 along the Austrian-Hungarian
border, which induced the events leading to the collapse of the Berlin Wall,
the Trans-European Picnic will mark the resultant shift in Europe's geopolitical
structure. For many however, the 'opening' brought about by the events of
1989 are now to be met by 'managed closure', restricted mobility, the revival
of 'visa regimes' delineating new barriers and borders as well as the imposition
of new top-down regulations, bureaucracies and standards.
Through a two-day electronic media arts and culture gathering at the city
of Novi Sad, Serbia, a few kilometres beyond the European Union's new transnational
edge, the Picnic will bring together artists, theoreticians and media practitioners
from across Europe to explore the changing cultural and artistic landscape
within and beyond this new conglomerate of competing cultures, economies and
identities. The Trans-European Picnic will provide a lively platform of debate
and exchange into the evolving sense of identity and new forms of collaboration
active in countering the growing gap separating the Europe of the "Out-side"
from the Europe of the "In-side".
Guy Van Belle (Amsterdam/Brussels) has been prominently involved in the use and development of multimedia for artistic purposes since 1990. As an independent art worker he cooperates with Waag Society Amsterdam on the development of collaborative creative tools for installations and performances. For that purpose he set up \An`a*tom"ic\ "Related to the structure of an organism", a weekly open studio for young and unconventional artists, linked to international partners by fiber optic wire: New York, Brussels, Reykjavik, Tokyo, Athens, Sofia, Prague, Bratislava, ... Since 2000 he has been working under the name of the collective digital band mxHz.org (machine cent'red humanz), creating collaborative performances, concerts, workshops, exhibitions and unexpected experimental/abstract/robotic art projects. With Akihiro Kubota he founded the 'Society of Algoritm' in 2001. Recently he started to work at an hommage to Arseny Avraamov, in Baku on 7 November 2022. In a press clipping he was referred to as: "Experimental- und Medienmusiker, A/V-Jockey und Netzkuenstler; Arbeit in internationalen Experimentalstudios und unabhaengigen Audioaktivitaeten im Netz
Wato is an artist, curator and the creative administrator of in Tbilisi (GE). After studying film in Georgia he graduated as MA at the Department of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (Belgium). Since he returned to Tbilisi he started to work on cultural meteorology in the Caucasus. The modest result of this activity is the biannual project APPENDIX. This international exhibition project is intended to be a small, but intense event oriented towards integrating young Caucasian contemporary art within a broader context. Currently Wato works on different mixed exhibition projects.
Is a Hungarian art historian and art critic. She is a senior research fellow at the Research Institute for Art History of Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. From 1990-1992 and from 1997-2003 she was the New York correspondent for Hungarian Art magazines, like Új Muvészet (Art Today) and Muérto (Hungarian Art Journal). Her volume of collected essays on contemporary American art in the nineties was published in Budapest, in 2001 entitled Rope-dancing. Her other main focus is contemporary art in the ex-Eastern Block, especially in Hungary regarding questions of transition. She is also interested in gender issues and art theory. Edit participated in several conferences. Amongst them: "Surviving Freedom: Visual Arts in Hungary since 1989" at Rutgers University (US), "After the Wall. Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe" at the Moderna Museet Stockholm (SE), "Money/Nation" conference, Shedhalle Zurich (CH), "co-operation. International Forum for Feminist Art and Theory" in Dubrovnik (HR), and "The Legacy of Modernism and the
imperative of Modernity" at the annual conference of AICA, entitled "Strategies of Power." Zagreb (HR). She publishes in several Hungarian art magazines. Her essays in English have been published in the catalogues of the Hungarian Pavilion of the Venice Biennial (1997, 1999), the catalogue of the exhibition "After the Wall", Stockholm (1999), n.paradoxa on-line , artmargins online, and "MoneyNations. Constructing the border - constructing East-West", Vienna, 2003.
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Born in Prague 1955, he graduated in Art History and Aesthetic at Charles University,1980. Since the early 80's he is involved in independent music, visual art, action art, and curatorial work. He is the initiator, researcher, co-producer and co-author of the interactive educational project "Orbis Pictus Revised" commisioned for ZKM Karlsruhe. Milos is founder of "The Metamedia Center Project" at the Plasy Monastery, initiator of The Hermit Foundation, and curator at TheCollection of The Modern and Contemporary Art National Gallery Prague. He lectures in media art, contemporary art and communication studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts, at the Technical University Brno. In addition he works for The Artmedialab which is related to the Center for Contempoary Art in Prague. Since 2000 he runs the broadcasting project www.radiojeleni.cz
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Retired net.artist and ascii artist. Born in 1966 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Currently lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Best known as internet art pioneer and author of numerous net.art projects. Lecturer, writer and curator, exhibited, published and curated internationally. Co founder of Nettime, Syndicate, 7-11 and Ljubljana Digital Media Lab.
Most notable venues include: Venice Bienial; Walker Center, Minneapolis; Postmasters, NYC; Kunsthalle, Vienna; Stedelijk, Amsterdam; LAMoCA, LA; ICA, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Beaubourg, Paris;
Some media: Suck, HotWired, ORF, Spiegel, Britannica, Newsweek, Artforum, NYTimes, El Pais...
A room was bathed in a deep blue neon light. A number of sofas were laid out to face the sun. The three of them were sitting with the music on, relaxing and basking the sunshine. The whole picture had the transparency of overexposure, or lucidity that puts you at ease and makes it hard to concentrate on something. Art is forcing them to explore things beyond their realm of imagination and makes them question reality.
Jorjika (George Jorjoliani) is a musician. All that started back in the early 90's when he went to Germany, then traveled to Russia where he had his first studio, started socializing, meeting creative people, thinking collectively and making his first steps in music. Upon arrival in Georgia he started DJing in clubs. He played at club "Lift", where the three of them Gio, Levaniko and Jorjika all met. Jorjika's music is electronic, though he does not define is as such, rather his music is a reflection of the environment he communicates in, and the genre is determined by the people he interacts with. More than anything else, his music is associated with the energy, information and emotions that he accumulates during the day. Being a "slow net" he says slowly "I live in music and I realize myself through music". Though being involved social activities, he cannot do without his devotion. Whichever process happens internally, music is always the outcome. For him, music is a sound; and the cognition of this pushed him to start experimenting with sounds: from cognition to electronic music. As his friends Gio and Levaniko, he remains in close relation with visual culture as well by experimenting with a variety of visual media. As a
musician and professional DJ he spends his time traveling, observing the transformation of human beasts from artificial Soviet structure into free and creative human beings.
Here's where Gio (George Sumbadze) comes in wondering where to begin. He is a painter. "Semi- mechanic painter" as he says but "i forgot about being one". What he does is art. For him everything is art, regardless of the media, be it sound, light, installation, photography or video. However, despite his emphasis on ideas, he is more a conceptual artist because his work depends on elements over which he has little control. For example, he observes how people manage their identity in relation to social contextual information; how audio codes (such as commercials, politics etc) influence the energy flow in society. His current interests consider human-machine relationships, consciousness exploration through external technological means. Some of his recent ideas are to use sensors to sense a crowd's energy and, have audio respond to that; and design a robotic creature with behavioral and interactive qualities and observe how people relate to an organic but not anthropomorphic entity. Gio usually leaves music on a loop and listens to it all night and day, so that his dream world and daily activities coincide. "Any raw energy can be cultivated in you. It is an art to cultivate this energy and produce it", he says. Today, he just follows the flow while creating something and looks at the result tomorrow, so he can know for sure where he was yesterday.
Levaniko (Levan Nutsubidze) rushed into the Georgian Pop TV channel with his innovative ideas to make it all meaningful and watch-worthy. Currently he is having a show called "Short cut", where he makes every effort to deliver good audio and video to the consumer market. He uses various forms of artistic expression: a combination of image, space body with electronic media, that can be defined as inter-media art. He examines the relationship between visual art and popular culture: how do artists respond to social, political and cultural events, how is art influenced by social norms, mass media, industrial technology and popular culture? Currently Levaniko is filming videos, photographing and making accessories by recycling different objects. He deconstructs factory-made consumer goods, cannibalizes and recycles them in either art objects or accessories. He intuitively chooses both his initial material and resultant object.
performance
Artist. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1957. National Academy for Fine Arts, Sofia in 1980.
Current projects: "The Post-Communist condition", Kunstwerke, Berlin; Red Riviera Revisited, ICA, Sofia; Nuit Blanche, City of Paris all in 2004.
Recent one-artist shows: "Hot City Visual", ICA, Sofia in 2003; Knoll Gallery, Vienna in 2001; "E-FACE 2000" in Art/Media/Center TV Gallery, Moscow, 2000.
Recent presentations and lectures: "Identity Overkill". Intermedia Dept., Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest; Seminar: "The Construction of Consumer Identity in Public Space. The Visual Interface of the Post-socialist City". Center for Arts and Culture, Central European University, Budapest.
Recent publications: "Sofia as a Sight. Luchezar Boyadjiev; Mila Mineva". Visual Seminar, Resident Fellows Program, ICA / CAS, Sofia; Archis Magazine, # 6, 2003, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Recent group shows: "In the Gorges of the Balkans", Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, "Blood & Honey", The Essl Collection, Klosterneuburg/Vienna in 2003; "In Search of Balkania", Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria; Manifesta 4, Frankfurt; "Reconstruction", 4th Biennial Cetinje, Montenegro; "The Collective Unconsciousness", MIGROS Museum, Zurich in 2002; "Konverzacija", MCA, Belgrade; "Escape", 1st Biennial, Tirana in 2001; "Négociations", CRAC, Séte, France; "L'Autre moitie de l'Europe", Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; "Worthless (Invaluable)", Moderna Galerja, Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2000.
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Meeting and workshops of Free Media Initiatives on framing diverse strategies for sustainable cultural cooperation and exchange.
Prague (CZ) 10-11th June, and Freistadt (A) 12-13th June
The FM@dia Forum 04 in Prague and Freistadt will encourage a wide range of free media and community projects to discuss potential common strategies and shared interests (eg. Media policy), to improve mutual awareness, sharing know-how and content exchange.
The rapid social, political, economical and technological shift of terms of the expanded "United Europe" pose a challenge to discuss, reframe and compare such topics as "free speech", "public access", "independence - media ownership", "creative commons", "digital gap" or "content exchange". All this and more requires a cross- referencing for establishing a common base and functioning platform for better collaboration among media activists, artists, free radios , 'zine publishers, internet publishers etc.
While the region is characterised by a relatively high potential of growth of media and civic activities, the inter-connectivity reaching beyond the borders remains by comparison rare. Easier access to new digital technologies open new chances as well as threats for civic and community media as opposed to mass media and corporate structures. Activating and intensifying mutual communication and collaboration between different regions, languages and cultures is the aim of the "FM@dia" forum.
FM@dia FORUM 04: Connecting Free Media is organised by Radio Jeleni,
Econnect (Cz), European Civic Forum, VFRÖ
- Federation of Austrian Free Radios, Radio FRO (At), Radio
Z (Germany) and others.
The Lost Expedition is an experimental
project whose aim is to explore and mediate crucial cultural, technological
and environmental issues, by means of a rotating group of people from diverse
fields such as science, art, technology, social activism etc. The vehicle
of this effort is primarily a mobile workspace, which provides technical equipment
and living quarters for the participants. This roving laboratory employs advanced
communications technologies for gathering and transmitting data from innovative
and unusual research. The project is especially concerned with mediating seemingly
ambiguous, marginal or superfluous ideas/facts/events/knowledge/patterns.
The Lost Expedition's goal is to detect, collect, archive, link, contextualize, emit and channel these patterns into the existing discourse as well as to initiate new discourse. L.E. presumes a broad interpretation of the term "networking", and serves as a transient model for civic dialogue, addressing questions of liberty, human rights, mobility, ecology, communication, and of humanistic approaches to technology and science. In this respect L.E. is a symbol of a mental seed-data bank, a motorized Ark. L.E. is interested distinctly in creating a multi-layered communication field, bringing the personal and public, banal and anomalous into the same framework. It can also facilitate the creation of new contacts between a variety of geographical and cultural niches, particularly those who are affected by the standardizing and homogenizing effects of globalization. It will trace the evolving mental and physical landscape principally within the geographical area of Eastern and Western Europe in the period from 2004, via the itinerant mobile lab, the MLOK Vehicle (The Multifunctional Loco-motivated Oblivion Kit Vehicle).
The project is organized by The Lost Expedition Brother/Sisterhood, an open transnational, non-profit body consisting of artists, social activists, journalists, scientists, and other researchers, and a group of individuals who are responsible for constructing, maintaining and operating the content and the technology.
Partners: Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, Academy
of Sciences of The Czech Republic, Technical Faculty of Charles University
Prague, Technical University Brno, Institut of Postvirtual Reality, Harrachstal.
(The project was designed as the result of activities of The Center
for Metamedia, Cafe9.net, The Pantograph
Project and others).
Draft: Prague February 2004
Some weeks after the EU-enlargement in mid 2004, B04--BORDER 04 will shift the focus to the folds and fringes, the margins and new borders of the official Europe.
B04 is the common framework for a wide range of local and
remote, mobile and stationary activities taking place in summer 2004. It is
a modular, temporary, and tactical association of various new media and network
initiatives from East and West Europe, from outside as well as within the
new Europe. In order to explore the constitutive power of an emerging political
culture of networking, an international and interdisciplinary coalition of
fine art and performance artists, human rights and new media activists, filmmakers,
video- and fotografers, researchers, scientists and investigators will set
a series of events in motion that surround, circumvent and perforate the borders
of Europe.
B04 is a two month, virtual travel along both sides of the new, outer borders of an enlarged European Union, starting in Riga and moving around Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia to Zagreb.
The project seeks to review and research practices of networking that are already redefining the political geography of Europe. In the ongoing diversification of the social, processes of integration can no longer be clearly separated from mechanisms of exclusion. The working out of these tensions at a political and economic level is producing new levels of complexity as well as new opportunities for creative and experimental projects that challenge orthodoxy and convention. B04 will connect and shortcircuit debates around migration with debates about the expansion of the borders of the EU, around mobility, mobile technologies and freedom of movement, about the already within Europe and those previously outside it.
Tracing the routes of migration
The many faces of migration are producing dramatic changes, that are not only affecting local and remote economies. People in transit, commuters between East and West, seasonal and domestic workers form new concepts of Europe, that are based on mobility, no matter if unsolicited or unvoluntarily.
Mapping the spaces in between
Theoretically it's only a small drift from what lies beyond the limitations of national imagination to the imaginations of those outside of it. But in practice, the spaces between Europe and non-Europe are being dispersed, extracted and contracted by numerous movements of very different actors on an unknown and ever-changing field.
Crossing the borders from the real to a virtual europe
Leaving traditional political and geographical notions of Europe behind the information and communication technologies as well as the flows of migration do shape a virtual europe, that is defined by it's openness rather than it's borders. There is an unrepresentable multitude of europes to be discovered and explored.
Working on these three fields of interest B04 will consist of four modules that will be developed by independent organizing teams, that are networking among each others:
RESEARCH
In order to investigate the subjectivities of a new generation of europeans and the constitutive power of young people networking across borders, research units will work on frequently asked questions: How does a re-designed european border regime change the daily life of the people in the areas of the new border regions? Which stories, experiences and what desires do people have, that live on this and that side of the new border of the official, but in the midst of a virtual Europe? What does living conditions of people that are on the move look like? On the move into illegality or into precarious labour or into detention centers? How do workers of the worldmarket factories struggle and organise -- in- and outside of the new external european border?
WORKSHOPS
B04 will involve leading international artists and local community organisers in workshops and training programs in both an adhoc and a sustainable fashion adressing the needs of local activists and civil society. It will focus on skill-sharing to enable and empower young people with the practical use of new media technologies by providing connectivity, introducing open source software and offering unfettered access to communication tools. There will be a special focus on the potential of digital media to facilitate dialogue and communication across national borders, and on the power of filmmaking, photography and storytelling in the negotiation of emerging, hyphenated identities.
PERFORMANCES
In order to present the images and narratives of an emerging european culture that is currently created around the issues of information society and transnational mobility, B04 will present exhibitions, screenings and performances in public spaces and in close collaboration with local and international artists and art institutions.
DOCUMENTATION
In order to document the experiences, acquaintances, results and achievements of the project publically, in real-time or near on real-time internet connectivity is one of the key issues. B04 will be accompanied by a specially equipped van that provides a high-bandwith internet connection via satellite. Using all available media from print to radio to video in different output-formats the real-time documentation of a project at such an extend aims to facilitate dialogue and interactive communication between Europe's diverse peoples, new and old. The ultimate goal is to build a new vision of Europe that moves on against exclusion, resentment, localism, narrow-mindednesss, racism and xenophobia.
Currently the B04 developer team is in touch and discussing the concept with a multitude of institutions, fundations, media centers and local initiatives from all over Europe:
KUDA.ORG (Novi Sad), MaMa (Zagreb), Ljudmila
(Ljubljana), Radio B92 (Belgrad), K@2 Culture & Information
Center (Karosta, Latvia), RIXC Riga New Media Center
(Riga, Latvia), Open Society Institute (Budapest), Center
for Political Education (Germany), D-A-S-H networking
against exclusion (Europe wide internet platform, supported by the YOUTH program
of the EU-Comission) and many more.
maf_media art farm (former name: Caucasian
Center for Cultural Development, CCCD) was established in April 2000 as an
independent Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) that supports the development
of contemporary visual culture in the Caucasus. maf intends to develop and
promote a multi-cultural dialogue in the Caucasus and to focus on acute social
and political questions by undertaking visual research. maf provides links
to four spheres: education, information, network and innovation.
In September 2001 maf launched the Caucasian Institute of Photography and New Media (the maf_Institute) in order to promote the education in the field of contemporary arts in the Caucasus. At the moment 22 students are enrolled in the faculty of photography, a four-year educational programme licensed by the Ministry of Education of Georgia. At present the maf_Library containing more than 3500 volumes represents the first large collection of publications on contemporary art, photography, new media, architecture and design in the region of the Caucasus. The maf_Library is open to all interested persons who want to become library member.
By organising interdisciplinary projects as well as by providing adequate infrastructure maf is establishing a platform for contemporary culture in the Caucasus. The platform creates an environment where artists can meet and present their work within an international network. At the same time it hosts outstanding Caucasian and foreign artists and their exhibitions. In October 2001 maf started the project called "appendix", which takes place in Tbilisi every second year, and researches the position of the South-Caucasian countries in nowaday's world through the eyes of artists from both inside and outside of the Caucasus.
maf aims to promote contemporary art and new media forms as a possible way of communication, reflection and cooperation. The maf_Box, a new media lab, was established to provide conceptual and technical facilities to students, artists as well as NGO's dealing with current social, political and cultural issues.
Born in 1967 in Novi Sad. Applied linguist and educator.
As a member of association APSOLUTNO (Novi Sad), participated in numerous
arts & new media symposia, festivals and exhibitions. Presented at applied
linguistics conferences and published in linguistics journals (System, Novelty,
Writing Center Journal). Teaches academic writing at Central European University
in Budapest. Currently working on her doctoral dissertation on citation and
intertextuality in academic writing (Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest).
State of Sabotage in Novi Sad on state visit
1. SoS IMMIGRATION OFFICE and CONSULATE in NOVI SAD
The SoS state will install a temporary SoS Immigration office and consulate during the TRANSEUROPEAN PICNIC in Novi Sad. At the Forum opening, the consulate will be presented by 3 representatives and SoS passports will be issued. The SoS Immigratio Office remains open through the duration of the Festival via printed material, applications, videos, and an SoS shop. The consulate consists of a long table, chairs, video projection equipment, a shop, and a flash photography station for passport photos. Also its planned to present the SoS consulate in the streets of Novi Sad via Megaphones and performance.
Representives for SoS Immigration office and consulate:
ROBERT JELINEK (A/SoS)
MICHAEL CRANACH (A/SoS)
THILGES (A/SoS) Live Act
2. SoS STATE ART
The SoS will present art works of the following artists:
HEIMO ZOBERNIG (Passports), Vienna/A
FRANZ GRAF (Flag), Vienna/A
HR GIGER (Video), Zurich/CH
THILGES (Music), Vienna/A
3. SOUP OF SABOTAGE
On the opening evening, guests will be served the transnational dish SOUP
OF SABOTAGE free of charge. The "Soup of Sabotage" is a contribution by
the French artist ANABELLE HULAUT. In the creation of the
soup, the word "sabotage" is used as an acronym, formed out of culinary
ingredients. The soup is made from the Serbia; hence the respective national
language is taken to choose the ingredients. The soup will be offered to
the guests during the events. The "Sabotage Soup" is a tradition in the
SoS state and will always be offered at every SoS event worldwide.
4. SoS PICKNIC
During the Transeuropean Forum the SoS State will install also two Tibetian Tents. The tents will be used as an neutral space for communication, debates with between representives and guests. Videos, Screenings aswell music line up from Viennese producers will be presented.
First initiated as a project by artist Robert Jelinek in 1992, in operation as an international music/art label, collective and organization since 1994, Sabotage has now, in 2003, drawn its own artistic conclusions and declared itself a state - a state in time, with constantly expanding citizens' territories, but without the demarcation of national own an SoS passport and enjoy the status of an SoS citizen. SoS is a physically vital collective body, installed in real everyday social and political space. It is a growing organism whose dynamics, spirit and diversity are shaped by the citizens themselves.
The project [Sensor Diet] consists of two parts: an audio part, which is compiled of two components (analog/digital output), and a visual part. The analog audio part offers a performance with turntables, spinning records from the Soviet times. The latter are: Georgian and Russian fairy-tales, narrated by different voices and articulations, and various language courses for the Georgian population, containing all the conventional language-session elements.
The digital audio part will be executed from different electronic devices: MD player; laptop, etc. alongside with the analog performance, and presents Georgian telecom operator network speeches mixed with the shifting frequency noises.
The visual part elaborates on the aforementioned audio output, by overlapping two systematic and periodical frameworks in terms of motion and gestures. The video is a double edit of the news program vijaysfrom Soviet period television, and current television in Georgia. The image thus presents two layers simultanously.
Anabala will base their Novi Sad performance 'Transistan' on their experiences acquired through living in Istanbul. Founder members Murat Ertel and Ceren Oykut live at the Asian part (Anatolian side) of Istanbul and travel through European side almost everyday. They travel 70 km. per day at least breaking the symbolic, geographical, and sociological borders of these two controvert ional continents.
Ertel, mostly a musician and Oykut,mostly a painter transfer their artistic concentration onto each others. They create multi-disciplinary pieces by taking the aspects of humour, parody and surprise as the basic elements of their performances.
Anababala also performed for the exhibition "Walking Istanbul, Notes from the Quarantine" in The Digital Lab, Holon, Tel-Aviv. (2003-2004)
Hubert Czerepok (PL) in collaboration with M. Bakke, 2002, 14'47''
The video is a sort of documentary, wherein all interviewed people are asked whether they know anything about Polish art. In addition they are also questioned whether they have any knowledge about particular incidents related to censoring art in Poland within the past years. After a while one realises that the people answering the questions are not really familiar with the subject, and just repeat clichés. At the end of the video it is almost certain that the viewer ends up knowing much less about Polish art than before.
Hubert Czerepok (PL)
Was born in Slubice in Poland, a small town near the Polish - Germany border. He holds a BA in woodcarving and received his MFA in sculpture and drawing from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan (PL). He spent half a year in Norway, in the research program of the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, trying to become a Scandinavian artist. From 2002-2003 he was a researcher at the Fine Arts Department of the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, yet another small town, this time near the Dutch, Belgian and German border. Currently he is based in Antwerp (B),where he attends the HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts). Hubert has shown work a.o. in Poland, The Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia and Germany.
Joost Conijn (NL), 2002, 31'
In the summer of 2001 Joost Conijn built a car. The car is made out of wood, and runs on wood as well, using wood as fuel instead of petrol. With this wood car Conijn undertakes a journey through several countries in Eastern Europe: Romania, Ukraine, Albania. Independent from petrol, he leaves conventional roads behind him. There is no preset destination. The artist travels towards the unknown, the camera covers it all. The main plan is to make a film about the unexpected the wood car will engender. In order to keep the motor running, Conijn travels through woods. Across little villages, people guide him to local saw-mills and offer him some food and spare wood. The car serves as an artless intermediary.
Starting point for the work of Joost Conijn is the artist's fascination for other worlds, alternative ways of life just outside the accommodated environment. Travelling is to him like an uncontainable urge, just like his need for adventure. Every journey unravels an accumulation of unforeseen events and ingenuous exchange. "Wood car" stems from Conijn's desire to move and transport himself independently and open-mindedly, questioning cultural presumptions connected to dominant frameworks in western society. His former films "Car on roof "(1996), "C'est une hek" (1997) and "Airplane" (2000) mainly focus on the vehicle: the mechanics and the notion of moving. Currently, his point of view is gradually shifting towards people and cultures close to life's basic conditions.
Similar to his working process, the film's imagery is simple, natural, poetic, anachronistic yet attentive. His drive is unbeatable: living intensely, giving it all.
kuda.org - new media
center
Brace Mogin 2
PO Box 22, Detelinara
21113 Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro
Anabala is multidisciplinary project concentrating on Istanbul's sounds and cult. The project consist of two artists: Murat Ertel, mostly a musician and Ceren Oykut, mostly a painter transfer their artistic concentration onto each others. They create multi-disciplinary pieces by taking the aspects of humour, parody and surprise as the basic elements of their performances.
Anabala took its name from a passage at central Istanbul where two founder members rented an empty shop for 30 dollars for a month. They tried to form a fake shop only using the material which were leftovers (or ruins) from the previous shop, which was a tattoo shop. During this one month period they recorded the voices they heard and have made at the shop during the day and mixed them by night. At the end all those mixes formed the first album. One song out of it made it to the sound art compilation album called "ctrl-alt-del" as an outcome of an joint project on sound art developed both in Istanbul and Maastricht. (2003) Anababala also performed for the exhibition "Walking Istanbul, Notes from the Quarantine" in The Digital Lab, Holon, Tel-Aviv. (2003-2004).
Anabala has stared collaboration with musicians, sound-artists and visual artists from Köln, Germany and formed another group called K34 -Köln-Istanbul Cultural Exchange Project.
Based on a novel by Slobodan Tisma (SCG), directed by
Andras Urban (SCG)
Slobodan Ti¹ma (SCG)
Born May 14, 1946. Studied literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi
Sad. In the late sixties he began working with the Novi Sad Youth Platform
and was involved in the Index student newspaper of which he soon became editor.
At this time he was engaged in conceptual art and poetry. In 1977 his poetic
'masterpiece', A Garden Like That (Vrt kao To), appeared
in Letopis Matice srpske (the magazine of the Central Serbian Cultural
and Publishing Society), and with this he suspended his involvement in literature
and art. At the end of the seventies, with his interest in rock 'n roll reawakened,
he formed the group La strada. In the early eighties he was the singer
for Luna, and with the reformation of La strada in 1986,
an album of the same name was released. In the late eighties he withdrew from
public life and began writing a poetic diary, which was eventually to be published
as Blues Diary in 2001. During the nineties he published two collections
of poetry: Marina-isms (Marinizmi, 1995) and A Garden
Like That (1997), which gathered poems he had written and published in
magazines during the seventies. In the latter half of the nineties he also
began writing short stories. Selected stories were published in the Kikinda-based
Severni bunker (Northern Bunker) and in the Novi Sad-based
Polja (Fields), were translated into both Macedonian and
Italian, and were also published in anthologies of short stories by new authors
writing in the Serbian language. His stories have no formal completion or
wholeness, they begin from nowhere and finish abruptly. They present textual
segments in which the non-existent author (subject) questions his own position.
He lives and works in Novi Sad.
Andra¹ Urban (SCG)
Born 04.10.1970, in Senta (Vojvodina, Serbia and Montenegro). After completing
secondary school for legal studies, in 1989 he enrolled at the Academy of
Arts in Novi Sad, majoring in theatre production under Prof. Vlatka Gilic.
This study was interrupted between 1993-97, and was then continued under Prof.
Bora Dra¹kovic until graduation in 2000. In 1988, with a group of his peers
he founded the well-known theatre group AIOWA. He is a member of the Nyari
Mozi-Letnji Bioskop (Summer Cinema) Theatre Ensemble, and for years has
been active as both an organizer and participant in the Body Weather Laboratory.
He is employed as a director and artistic secretary with the Deszso Kosztolanyi
Theatre in Subotica. Alongside both informal and formal performances and happenings
with AIOWA and Nyari Mozi, significant works he has brought to the stage include:
Lizards (Gu¹teri) - Andras Urban - 1988, Senta - KCM
Dew (Rosa) - Andras Urban - 1989, Senta - KCM - AIOWA Wozzeck - Georg Buchner - 1992, Subotica National Theatre Hamlet - William Shakespeare - 1992, Belgrade National Theatre,
KPGT, BITEF (Belgrade International Theatre Festival)
1993 - began directing I. Loyola's, The Tenets of the Jesuit and Calderon's,
Life is a Dream Fuck Whoever Started It All (Mamu mu...ko je poceo prvi)
- Dejan Dukovski, Deszso Kosztolanyi Theatre Picnic on the Front (Pinik na frontu) - Fernando Arrabal
- 2001 - Deszso Kosztolanyi Theatre
2002 - work with young people in Topola on a work by Molière
2002 - host of a workshop on experimental theatre at Minimum Party in Romania:
Falling Free - work demonstration
2002 - participant in the Balkan Stage workshop and seminar dedicated to Balkan
dramaturgy, work in Bulgaria on performance of Lazarica by Jordan
Radichkov: Winter Stage Children (Deca) - Janos Pilinsky, William Shakespeare, Henry
Miller - 2003, Senta Curve of Death (Okuka smrti) - Otto Tolnai - 2003, an MASZK
and Andras Urban troupe production, Szeged, Hungary January - Jordan Radichkov - 2003, Stoyan Bucvarov Dramatic Theatre,
Varna, Bulgaria
by NOMAD (TR) 30'
NOMAD (TR) is an independent formation founded in 2002. It
targets to produce and experiment new patterns in the digital art sphere by
using various lenses of other disciplines. The core of the formation consists
of designers, engineers, architects, curators and writers. Therefore, the
infrastructure is based on technical and theoretical levels to provide collaborations
with affiliations of artists.
Hatice Güleryüz' films orbit around the mental states of suppressing social situations. She associates and reflects on these mental states with hard-hitting physical conditions. She describes Four Images as "A film about a suggestion of a memory-image, or the representation of fragmentary moments of recollection that happen in the mind".
Hatice Güleryüz studied fine arts in Turkey, attended artist-in-residence
programmes in Berlin, Munich, and London. She obtained her MFA from the Hogeschool
voor de Kunsten Arnhem (NL), and from the Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam
(NL). From 2002-2003 Hatice ws a reseracher at the Fine Arts Department of
the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (NL).
"No (or bad signal)", Ali Demirel, 1998- 2004 (2')
No (or bad signal) shows a state of mobility fused into the transmitting confusion of broadcasting technology, and operation logic.
Ali Demirel studied Architecture and Audio-Visual Media at
Middle-East Technical University. He is an independent video artist with a
serious experimental edge. Instead of using video images to create a narrative,
he uses loop-based found or shot images, to reach a sensory stimulation which
is minimal and hypnotic. He makes videos since 1993, focusing on minimal,
repetitive, detached, hypnotic images. He also collaborated with musicians
like Richie Hawtin (a.k.a. Plastikman), Can Oral (a.k.a. Khan, Captain Comatose),
and Anthony Rother. His works have been exhibited at EMAF (European Media
Arts Festival), Osnabruck (DE); Transmediale, Berlin (DE); The Resonant Wave
Festival, Berlin (DE); International ShortFilm Festival, Hamburg (DE); The
Wandering Eye Film Festival, New York (US); Witness Film Festival, New York
(US); turbulence.org (with Xurban collective).
Blatta(nt) Orientalis(t) is a computer generated animation
with 3D oversized cockroaches trying to find an exit, running around hasty,
gathering in corners and behaving like a herd with no organization. The video
track is paired with a soundtrack directly referring to the realm of computer
arcade games, where the player is kept always on the run to proceed throughout
the game. The name of the work involves black humour, which is incorporated
throughout the work.
Erhan Muratoglu is an interactive designer and digital artist.
He studied Industrial Design and Graphic Design (MFA in Graphic Design at
Bilkent University), and worked and exhibited in Turkey, United Kingdom and
United States with his computer graphic generated projects. He was awarded
by Kodak, 11th. International Ankara Film Festival, Ifsak, and 11th. International
Istanbul Short-film Days for his experimental films. He is one of the members
of NOMAD. Erhan works as a lecturer in the Department of Visual Communication
Design of Bahcesehir University, Istanbul.
"Fox Dance", Babazula, 2003 (1')
Fox Dance is a video clip created as a stop-motion animation. The piece is based on our relationship with life through objects and ideas in motion.
BabaZula is a music group, founded in 1996 by Levent Akman
(percussion, rhythm machines, toys), Murat Ertel (saz and other strings,vocal)
and Emre Onel (darbuka, sampler, vocal) in Istanbul. In 2003 they were joined
by Oya Erkaya (bass guitar,vocal). BabaZula's music is basically an amalgamation
of recorded natural sounds with both traditional and modern acoustic and electronic
musical instruments: a culmination of disparate electronic effects. Starting
out with improvisations, later fixed into musical elements which make up their
music such as theme, tune, style and sound, reached through recordings and
rehearsals, the group has carried their method of "defined improvisation"
into concerts, movies, and theatrical plays. The use of video, slides and
films in their live performances, is prepared by additional members, who have
joined forces with the core group. BabaZula's debut album, " Tabutta Rovasata
(Somersault in the Coffin)", including the original soundtrack for Dervis
Zaim's first movie, was released in 1996. Their album, " 3 Oyundan 17 Müzik"
was released in 1999. BabaZula made the soundtrack of the film " Renkli Türkçe
(Colored and in Turkish)". They performed in Efes Pilsen Festival and Mediteranneen
Film Festival, and also had big scale concerts such as "Printemps de Bourges".
Their latest album "Psychobelly Dance Professor) was released in May 2003,
mastered by Mad Professor.
"Diagonal Escape", Ergün Yildiz 2001' (1')
Diagonal Escape captures a decisive moment of being mobile in order to survive in the city.
Ergün Yildiz graduated from the Department of Painting at
Marmara University in 2001. In 2000 he contributed to 2nd Student Triennial
at Marmara University, and Toprakbank Art Gallery in 2000, Istanbul. In 2001
he exhibited at "The 20th Contemporary Artists Exhibition" of The Association
of Painting and Sculpture Museums The Association of Painting and Sculpture
Museums; "Yeni Öneriler, Yeni Önermeler" in Borusan Art Gallery; "Su,Us,Yolculuklar"
at Marmara University; "7 Gün Sergisi" in Mürteza Fidan Atölyesi, Istanbul.
In 2002, he contributed to the "Imaja Güveniyoruz-2" exhibition in Diyarbakir
Art Center , and most recently he exhibited at the "Holes in the Mirror" exhibition
for the Siemens Art Gallery, Istanbul.
"Vertigo", Tugçe Ulugün Tuna, 2002 (3')
Vertigo is an extract from a dance performance. The performance is based on the relationship between motion and space. Performers examine the limits, appropriation, and transformation of body motion for and against gravity and space.
Tugçe Ulugün Tuna is a choreographer and dancer. She graduated
from M.S.U. State Conservatory, at the Modern Dance Department. She obtained
her MA in 1998 from Mimar Sinan University, at the Social Sciences Faculty,
with the dissertation "Usage of Exterior Space in Dance" and the choreography
"AR'a" (Site specific) Ist.Academy Cinema April 1998. She holds a Ph.D. M.S.U
in Performing Arts from the Social Sciences Faculty. She works as a lecturer
in the modern dance dept. of MSU, Istanbul since 1996. Her teaching responsibilities
involve; Contemporary dance technique, Anatomy, Improvisation, Dance Composition
and Repertory. Tugçe Ulugün Tuna has been involved in numerous dance projects
and choreographies in Turkey and abroad, a small selection include: Cinema,
1998, "System" Istanbul Beyoglu Cinema', 1998, Int. Symposium' Ankara, 2002
--Taksim Stage;"Solitude" 7th.International Solo-Tanz Theatre Festival 20-March-2003
Stuttgart. Her choreographies include a.o.: "Dance of Flowers" (Ist.)'02 -
"Step"(IDT.Taksim Stage, Ist)'01 - "Passageway" (IDTTS,Ist)'01 "Complementary"(
IDTTS,Ist)'01 - "Don't forget me"(IDTTS, Ist.) '01 "Depth"(IDTTS,Ist.)'00,
and many more.
Reasonably priced flights to Serbia are usually available via JAT (Yugoslav Air Transport). http://www.jat.com/
The nearest airport is in Belgrade. There are 3 options for getting from Belgrade to Novi Sad:
Taxi: 5.000 dinars/70 EUR per car (there more passengers
- the cheaper)
Bus: there is no direct line from the airport to Novi Sad. In front of the main entrance to the airport, you can take a bus to the Central Bus Station in Belgrade. From there you have frequent connections to Novi Sad (see below)
Train: next to the Central Bus Station in Belgrade is the Central Railway Station with services to Novi Sad (see below)
Another option is to fly to Budapest (HU), and take a direct train from Budapest's Keleti station to Novi Sad (see below).
Budapest - Novi Sad (405 km)
Trains twice daily: 13:30 and 22:48 from Budapest, starting from Keleti Railway Station.
We suggest coming by bus to Novi Sad, as the service Belgrade-Novi Sad is frequent and fast (every 15' - 20'). Price difference with trains: approx 250 din (3 EUR)
Travel duration Belgrade - Novi Sad: 1h15min
Bus services commences at 04:30 am, last bus at23:30 (with a night bus at 02:00 am)
Is a curator, writer and designer based in Istanbul. She
studied both Literature and Graphic Design (MFA in Graphic Design and Ph.D.
in Art, Design and Architecture at Bilkent University). She attended the 7th
Curatorial Training Programme of Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam, has been writing
on art, technology and mass media since 1995, and initiating projects and
curating exhibitions both in Turkey and Europe since 1996. She was the editor
of art-ist 6. Basak is one of the founding members of NOMAD. In 2003, through
NOMAD, she developed "ctrl-alt-del" (a joint project with NL) as the first
sound art project held in Turkey; she worked for the Istanbul Biennial; curated
"Contemporary Plastic" with ROR, Marres, Maastricht; and developed Istanbul
projects through exhibitions, performances and film programmes: "Istanbul,
Daydreaming in Quarantine" , Graz and "Walking Istanbul, Notes from
the Quarantine", The Israeli Center of Digital Art, Holon (with Erden Kosova,
Erhan Muratoglu, Ozlem Ozkal and Emre Erkal). She also developed projects
for The Apartment Project, Istanbul. In 2004, she develops another NOMAD project
"Loosing Control" (by collaborating with The Israeli Center of Digital Art)
in Istanbul, and will coordinate the NOMAD section for ZKM (Karlsruhe, DE)
"Call Me Istanbul" exhibition. She currently works as vice chair and lecturer
at the Department of Art Management of T.C. Yeditepe University, Istanbul.
Galia Dimitrova is the curator and art program coordinator at InterSpace Media Art Centre, where she works since 1999. She graduated Art History and Theory at the National Fine Arts Academy, Sofia in 1999. She has published a number of articles on contemporary Bulgarian art. Her professional interest is in new media art, net-based projects and interactive installations. Among her curatorial projects are: "Urban Cycles", "Macrovideo" (public space video installations), "Schizoid Architecture" (net-art), etc. She was the curator of the official Bulgarian participation at 9th Cairo Biennial' 2004. She is the main coordinator of Net User International Internet Conference that takes place bi-annually in Sofia.
project
, InterSpace Media Art Center, Sofia
at Trans-European Picnic, Novi Sad
The presentation will give introduction to exStream project (www.ex-stream.net)
- a two-year collaborative project supported by Culture 2000 Programme of
European Union, in which five media art organisations: Hull Time Based
Arts (Hull, UK); V2_ (Rotterdam, NL); Bootlab
(Berlin, DE); interSpace Media Art Center (Sofia, BG); t0
/ Institute for New Culture Technologies - Public Netbase (Vienna,
AT), are working together through the exchange of organisational, artistic
and technological resources to create a common platform for the creation and
distribution of new media art projects.
ExStream network and activities will be presented from the
perspective of the only South East European partner in the project - InterSpace
MAC. Therefore I will highlightInterSpace output to the project and the local
feedback and will present StreamStudio and Radio Cult, which are the first
multimedia open source software tools produced in Bulgaria by InterSpace in
the framework of exStream project..
StreamStudio is a complex solution for broadcasting of audio
and video in Internet as well as for other distribution environments like:
local networks (LAN), cable televisions, wireless networks, etc. http://streamstudio.sf.net
Radio.cultis open source based platform for audio broadcasting via Internet.
Radio.Cult is designed as a 24 hour on-line radio that popularize
young Bulgarian musicians, DJ's, artists, also as a forum for ideas exchange
and presentation of the cultural life in Bulgaria. http://radio.cult.bg
In the presentation I will announce the forthcoming final event of exStream
project - the Free Bitflows conference and exhibition in Vienna, June 2-5
(http://freebitflows.t0.or.at/).
Finally I will say shortly about the recent InterSpace activities around open
source initiatives, like the Open Source Software Solutions for Bulgarian
NGOs training programme (http://opensource.netuser.cc)
etc.
Pavel Braila (MD), 2002, film shot on DV transferred to DVD (26')
"Shoes for Europe" probes a politically enforced East-West-differentiation
- against the backdrop of historical transition - as inscribed into the everyday
experience of traveling and commuting. In the small frontier train station
of Ungheni at the Moldavian-Romanian border, every train stops for three hours
and is lifted two meters in the air to change wheels from Russian Gauge used
in Moldova to Standard Gauge used in Romania and Western Europe. The trains'
laborious passage between East and West (which is illegally recorded by the
artist since no shooting is officially allowed in the Moldavian border area)
hosts a double fantasy structure of an ever growing desire to gain access
to Western Europe, with the prevailing notion demanding the homogenization
of communicative and technological tools to neutralize distance and place.
Shot in digital video, two images are projected mirroring the ever-present
subject of how to locate and mediate subjectivity in times of fragmentation,
dislocation and a new myth of transnational identity.
Pavel Braila (MD)
Was born in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, and divides his time between
Tourcoing (FR) and Chisinau. He obtained his diploma of engineer-mechanic
from the Technical University of Moldova, Chisinau in 1994, and the Diploma
of Translator-Reviewer from the State University of Moldova, Chisinau.
From 2000 - 2001 he was a researcher at the Fine Arts Department at the
Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (NL). Currently he is at Le Fresnoy, Studio
National des Arts Contemporains, in Tourcoing (FR).
Working in video and performances, Pavel Braila has developed a subjective
vocabulary in which the traversal of space has taken on a broad range of
culturally and economically coded significances.Pavel has performed and
exhibited widely internationally. A selection include: "Performance white
or Pale Unfinished Thoughts" and "Gedankenaufnahme" at the Kunstbuero, Vienna
(AT), "New Video, New Europe" - The Renaissance Society in Chicago (US),
'PLUG IN' - CCA Futura, Prague (CZ), DELAY - Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam (NL), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia - "Cine y Casi
Cine", Madrid (ES), Biennale of Moving Images in Geneva (CH), BLOOD AND
HONEY Future's In Balkans - The Essl Collection, Vienna (AT), Documenta11,
Kassel (DE), Video-Zone- media-video bienale Tel-Aviv (IL), Art Biennale
WRO, Wroclaw (PL), VIPER,International Festival for Film Video and New Media,
Basel (CH), EMAF - European Media Art Festival,Osnabruck (D), Transit,Group
Exhibition of Moldavian Contemporary Art; Cluj Napoca (RO), AFTER THE WALL"-Exhibition
of Art in Post Communist Europe, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (SE), Body and
the East, International PerformanceFestival, Ljubliana (SI), Ostranenie:
International Electronic Media Forum, Dessau (DE), and many many more.
: The Art and Media of Accession is an initiative by New Media Center kuda.org, Novi Sad (SCG) and V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam (NL).
, Novi Sad (SCG)
kuda.org is a non-profit organization of artists, theorists and media activists propagating a critical attitude towards Internet culture through research, presentations and cultural production in the field of Information and Communication Technologies. www.kuda.org
, Rotterdam (NL)
V2_ is a center for electronic art and media technology actively engaged in creating and supporting the relationships and interactions between differentforms of electronic based media in artistic, cultural and scientific disciplines. www.v2.nl
: Branka Curcic, Jelena Klasnja, Stephen Kovats, Kristian Lukic, Nat Muller,
Zoran Pantelic, Orfeas Skutelis
: Branka Curcic, Jelena Klasnja, Stephen Kovats, Kristian Lukic, Nat Muller,
Zoran Pantelic, Orfeas Skutelis
: Branka Curcic, Stephen Kovats, Kristian Lukic, Nat Muller, Zoran Pantelic
: Stephen Kovats, Kristian Lukic, Nat Muller, Zoran Pantelic
: Jelena Klasnja
: Orfeas Skutelis
: Cultural Center Novi Sad, EXIT
: Rajko Bozic, Kristian Lukic, Richard de Boer
: Slavica Danic, Miroslava Milutinov
: Slavica Danic, Predrag Nikolic
: Bojana Petric, Orfeas Skutelis, David Williams
: Jovan Milinov, Kino Klub
:
:
Sarita Matijevic
Alex Adriaansens
Marinela Skutelis
Vanjus
Stipan Petres
Veljko Damjanovic
Regina Rusz
Geza Daniel
Aleksandar Paroski
Phototoma
And to all Picnics' participants
Florian Schneider is a writer, filmmaker and net activist.
He concentrates on how new communication and migration regimes are being attacked
and undermined by critics of borders and networks. Schneider is one of the
initiators of the No One is Illegal campaign and one of the founders of the
noborder network and the Europe-wide internet platform, D-A-S-H. In 2001 he
designed and directed the make world festival in Munich, and organised metabolics,
a series of lectures on net art and net culture. He has also worked on several
documentaries for the German-French television station, Arte, including What's
to be done? which looks at contemporary activism. He also writes for major
German newspapers, magazines, journals and handbooks.
project
Born in Belgrade. She left Yugoslavia and went to Belgium in 1992. Dramaturge. She has not been writing fiction since 1991. In 1992, she began working in the collective "Eimigrative Art" (Concentration culture camp), where the only artistic work was the forbidden meeting between the people of the ex-Federation (Louvain-La Neuve, Antwerp, Luxembourg). As of 1998, the collective works with the Movement of the People Without Papers of Belgium and the Cultural Committee for the defense of the 13 accused workers of Belgium's Clabec iron works, and the Renault factory in Vilvorde. The latest project of the Eimigrative Art is the publishing of the book "Farewell To Parties - People Think, People Speak".
The name Belgradeyard Sound System refers to the 2-hour weekly radio show broadcasted at Radio B 92 (Wednesdays, 00-02 AM), the authors being Goran Simonoski and Relja Bobic. After three years of their active presence on the local music and cultural scene, the first idea of presenting non-commercial, contemporary production of all music genres is clearly seen in all events bearing this mark. Original musical productions under the same name are being released by the British label Cosmic.Sounds, as well as the German Klangkrieg and the Slovenian rx:tx. Until the end of 2004, a full-length debut by this project will also see the light of day. In order to promote this material in a live context, the band of the same name has been formed, with the founding memebrs on programming and additon of the double-bass player Ivan Antic. The band has already performed in London, Budapest, Berlin, Graz, Ljubljana... The most important project is the festival of electronic music Dis-patch held in Belgrade, which will countinue to present the current names of the global electronic scene to Yugolslav audience each October.
group of authors: Milica Lapcevic, Vladimir Sojat, Vam¹i, Nebojsa Milenkovic,
(SCG), 2004, 4'
Sophia Basic born 1949 in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, was educated as
therapist in abnormal psychology and developmental disabilities, at the University
of Belgrade. She didn't work in her professional field, except for some years
at a school. She worked in a restaurant in Mostar, named after Aleksa Shantic'
poem "Christmas Eve". This restaurant was destroyed, and burned, whereupon
she moved to Belgrade, and started a trade in kiosk on Bulevar kralja Aleksandra
street. Her kiosk is of the type 9-standard, and she has been working in it
for seven years. In October 2003 the municipal authorities issues a "contest"
for the placement of a new type of kiosk at various locations in the city.
Not only did Sophia lose her kiosk location, but her bid to buy a new kiosk
was turned down in favor of other contestants. On November 27th 2003, she
locked herself - in protest - inside the kiosk. Her action runs 24/7, and
she hasn't left to this day. She loves poetry and singing; she is the mother
of two sons and daughter, and her 80-years old father still lives in Bosnia.
We have chosen this example to draw attention to how an individual subject's
agency can establish frames of standardization, which can surpass those established
on a local, as well as on a universal level.
The question arises which sort of agency manifests itself in this particular
case. We can identify 6 different types of agency, working on 6 different
levels:
tradition (private family business)
property (existing type of kiosk)
surrounding city structure (attempt to maintain a
location)
civil disobedience
resistance to local standardization
resistance to standardization in general
Sophia Basic's story points to various aspects of inhumane
treatment: the communal service staff is offensive towards her; during winter
many expected her to give up her struggle, and succumb to cold, hunger, dirt,
or simply the obvious pointlessness of her action. Authorities surveyed, and
are actually still surveying her from afar. They check whether she remains
inside the kiosk during the night, or whether she leaves in order to get some
warmth and sleep, away from the cardboard and plastic floor of the kiosk.
The mass media are not very interested in her case, or in her origins, which
are an amalgam of deplorable circumstances, namely the destiny of refugee
from Mostar, Bosnia. The fact that nowadays there are a multitude of donations
and funds - promising even to repair Mostar bridge - will not alter her experience
of war, escape and destruction, that so many others share with her. We seem
to digress, but this second chapter of difficulties in her life is very similar
to the first: she finds herself yet again under fatal social pressure.
Sophia Basic is only an example which clearly illustrates that even a mere
change in the system by the implementation of a different set of standards,
can abolish tendencies which at first sight seem in accord with that very
system, such as maintaining a small private business.
The abandonment of Sophia's economic model favors local standardization -
not necessarily conform to EU models - above individual subsistence.
However, the form of her resistance and rebellion remind us that we should
approach matters of standardization in local communities with an open mind.
Issues such as human rights, humanity and empathy towards special cases, are
to be taken into account. The current situation in Serbia leaves governmental
authorities in a standardization quagmire, while trying to navigate between
the old communist structures, new structures, and policies coming from the
EU. No wonder that this state of confusion leads to a loss in value systems,
and a disregard for those victimized by the latter.
The kiosk appears to be a transitional form of trade activity, and hence signifies
much more than just the turnover of goods in the streets. It is an improvised
business space, set aside from architectonically developed and codified edifices.
The potential of this strategy seems like a good solution in a region described
as the "Balkans elephant path", i.e. difficult, atavistic, dark, and enigmatic.
Nevertheless, in the backdrop of migrations, refugee problems, minimal incomes,
and gray economies, evacuated and displaced people try to live their "constant-temporary"
lives in proximity of standardization.
Zelimir Zilnik (SCG), 2003, 74'
In 2002, complying with an European Union ruling, Yugoslavian families (among them many Roma) who had fled their land to escape the war, were deported to Serbia and Montenegro after a stay of ten years in Western Europe. However, the newold homeland has meanwhile become strange to them. There is no money, work, living accommodation, and social contact. How is it possible to survive under these conditions? Zilniks critical documentary film accompanies the taxi driver Kenedi, who, day and night, brings these uprooted people from the airport to the illegal settlements on the outskirts of Belgrade.
Zelimir Zilnik (SCG)
Zelimir Zilnik was born in Serbia, Yugoslavia, in 1942. His first film,
Rani Radovi (Early Works), was awarded the 'Golden Bear' at the Berlinale
international film festival of 1969. In Serbia, the works of this director
of the New Yugoslavian Cinema were officially banned. In 1973, he immigrated
to the Federal Republic of Germany, where his short films critically commented
on the situation of foreign workers, and on terrorism. He was therefore
expelled from the country in 1976, and returned to Yugoslavia. Since then,
Zilnik has worked as an independent documentary film-maker.
interview with Brian Holmes
Q: For the second time we are witnessing the phenomenon of enlargement and unification of the European Union. From one point of view, many people tend to equate the term 'empire' with the USA and its recent aggressive foreign policy strategies. Yet, European integration is conditioned by a strong enforcement of laws and legitimate rules, which have big influences on EU members or future member countries. According to the landscape this strategy is creating, would you say that the European Union presents a new form of 'soft' empire?
BH: Actually, when Negri and Hardt theorized Empire, I think what they were really talking about was the European Union! They thought that the cultural legitimacy, formal law, and constitutional guarantees that seemed so prominent during the Clinton years were going to continue to develop uninterruptedly as a model for kind of global constitutionalism. What happened instead was that America's old nationalist-imperialist right connected to the oil companies, to the major industries and above all to the army, came back and reasserted a classically imperialist paradigm. The European Union can't do that. In fact, what you read about constitutional dynamics in the book "Empire" describes a lot better the way the EU is operating, even if they just failed miserably with the first attempt at a constitution. Still the overall notion of empire has a meaning, which is not just reducible to imperialism. Globalization is articulated around three major regions. The first is the United States, which has firmly established NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), and is trying to extend that over the entire western hemisphere in the form of the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), which they probably won't succeed in finishing. Realistically, they are aiming to push all the way down through Central America to Colombia and Venezuela, which will result in an articulated production bloc, over which they would like to have a more or less unified kind of control. The European Union has succeeded in responding to this quite rapidly, promoting its own continental unification with a more social-democratic kind of management. Here the question of legitimacy is much more important than for the Americans, who just need to take control, turn on the TV stations and start enforcing the rules. There is a third area in the world, South East Asia, where there is a beginning of institutional construction called the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations). It's very unclear what's going to happen there because of the role of Japan, which is the major center of capital accumulation in that part of the world. It appears impossible for the Japanese to assert any kind of central organizing control, because of what they did in World War II, the naked force, the atrocities. So you have this very uncertain situation, where Japan supplies the capital, the Chinese and the rest of the ASEAN countries do the labor, and no one really knows what the future will be. Empire is the controlled disagreement and rivalry between these three very shaky ways of getting people to work together. There is a global market, and the Americans obviously have a global military, but there isn't one global production schema. There are rather three evolving forms of continental integration, each with its own periphery. This is the key thing-each with its own periphery! And that's where we can finally start talking about the constitutionalism of the European Union.
The EU constantly presents itself as an entirely legitimate sort of democratic, integrative thing, based on rights, cultures, languages, exchanges. It wants to present itself as a kind of utopia; but it too has its periphery. In fact, I would say there are two peripheries: an internal periphery, underneath the umbrella of the single currency, and this sort of gigantic free-trade bloc around it. The internal periphery is mainly the former East, where many of the countries are now becoming members of the EU. I'm sure we're going to see a transfer of low-waged jobs to the internal periphery of the EU, and the emergence of an increasing number of mechanisms to maintain the distinction between people living on the periphery and the people living on the center, i.e. Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, Italy and Spain. Of course, England is a kind of pivot for all this, it's the force that tries to draw the whole European construction over into the American bloc, while Germany and France constantly resist England's strategy, as everybody saw so clearly during the last Iraq war. For me, that's the big picture. We have to talk about all that, before we begin to talk about anything specific. Then we get to the question: "What's life like on these two European peripheries?"
Q: Life on the peripheries has already changed. Ten former socialist countries from Central and Eastern Europe are joining the EU on May 1st. The question arises how this periphery, these Eastern countries, are going to fit in? Taking the obvious cultural differences into account: how can they accommodate Western standards? This paradigm shift led by the heritage of socialism-is it going to happen, or is it going to just stay like it is?
BH: I think this is a huge historical process. It's going to
continue, potentially over generations. The initial construction of the EU
involved a lot of attempts to harmonize territorially what was happening in
the member states. There are what they call structural funds, which were given
to Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland. Those countries were really the big winners
in the first enlargement of the EU, during the '70s and the '80s particularly.
Of course, this raised a lot of hopes for all the new entrants into the EU,
but what you see now is a bit different. There are nowhere near as much structural
funds available to achieve this kind of equalization and implementation of
a common standard of production and consumption that allowed the Spanish and
the Portuguese to reach the same level as their immediate neighbors, the French.
I don't think they're going to be able to achieve that with the new members,
because the EU has shifted from being a political project to become a free
trade bloc. The inner periphery is not joining the EU that it dreamt of in
the '70s and '80s. It's not a Vaclav Havel, literary sort of thing where they
build theaters and give everyone a fair trial. It's a production machine where
you're ultimately competing with the United States and some combination of
Japan and China. Now, if you go to the outer periphery, it becomes worse.
What is the interest of this space outside the border? From the capitalistic
point of view, the interest is that you can take advantage of weak labor laws,
you can take advantage of all kinds of zones where there are no rights, not
even the relatively meager rights which you're going to have inside the EU.
On the inner periphery, those rights will have to be more or less respected.
But outside, you can really have predatory capitalism. And what is there to
stop it? A historical project for an alternative to capitalism generated cultural
forms which are now rejected, because of, what did they call it? - "democratic
centralism." Basically, the Soviet-style bureaucracy was unbearable, insufferable,
and all those cultural and organizational forms have been rejected. Now the
countries on the outer periphery are going to be exposed to a very savage
form of predatory capitalism. So when you think about what you're going to
do over the next few years, just keep in mind that everywhere there's a need
for the reinvention of cultures of resistance. This need for cultures of resistance
is interesting for all of us, and at the same time very daunting for all of
us, very formidable as a challenge. Because everyone is faced with a similar
mix of situations. You can see the same thing on the edges of the American
bloc. When you live in Latin America, you can use some of the tools that are
coming from the center, but the conditions under which you live are much more
dramatic and savage. People are facing the danger of having no income, of
having no more functioning state to develop any kind of social welfare programs;
and in cultural terms, there is the danger of having no places sheltered from
the market. But this also means that people are forced to take risks, to invent
new structures, to develop new solidarities. The question then becomes: can
people trying to resist the capitalist process in the central areas find ways
to cooperate with people living on the peripheries, while recognizing the
differences and not just confidently exporting the beginnings of whatever
solution or ideology they are finding to areas where the conditions are not
at all the same? I think this would be a question to ask, the question of
solidarity.
Q: We mentioned the first EU enlargement, which invested much more instructional reanimation in institutions, in terms of accommodating certain Western standards. Right now, it seems that the strategy of EU enlargement has changed. Everything seems to be based on power, not on financial investments and structural funds. This approximates what actually exists in Western countries. Could this mean that we are experiencing a process of structuring an open-trade market and locating new labor resources?
BH: At this point, globalization is everywhere a capitalist project, developing simultaneously on the regional and world scales. But this project is always expressed through local systems of governance and culture. In the situation on the external periphery of Europe, as in Serbia, what you are likely to see is a strong manipulation by people who want to create a local system of power, which will develop in parallel to a predatory capture of markets. Markets are very important to the central countries, much more so than labor which can increasingly be done by robots. If you want to get somewhere in the world, invent a consuming robot! In the case of Serbia, there will be a much smaller capture of some kind of labor force. That has happened on a larger scale in other peripheral countries, such as Hungary or the Czech Republic, where they're using what's considered a sophisticated and yet very cheap labor force, somewhat like what the Irish labor force was considered to be in the '70s and '80s. Poland is a third case, which is going to become increasingly important. The question for them is, are they going to be able to develop their education systems as Ireland did? Are they going to emerge from the position of being a cut-rate, unregulated cheap-labor zone? I'm afraid that's not even the question in countries like Serbia. Rather, it's about buying up certain kinds of resources, for instance tourist infrastructure, which is massively owned by Western interests now; so it's about invasively taking over markets. But there's not going to be any particular investment in the political and cultural system of the outer peripheries. The EU wants those countries to remain relatively stable, without too many civil wars-but they will accept anything that works. What we are likely to see, in the absence of any deep institution-building, is the attempt by the local political classes to create some kind of national identity, a folkloric identity, where cultural differences are maintained. And these differences are also maintained to give people a way to explain the tremendous difference between their situation and the situation of people living just on the other side of the border, like the capacity for mobility, for having a job and an education, which is dramatically different. So, if they explain to you that your identity is dramatically different, then this could be quite useful for a political class who wants to find the way to try to set up an enduring structure of governance. Unfortunately, all the things I've just described are also the perfect recipe for inter-ethnic wars, and if you look around, you'll see that those wars are becoming the way that imperial geopolitical management "works"...
So what about people who want to do experiments in media? And what if these are not only experiments in creativity and expressivity, but also in connectivity, in organization, in processes of what I would call micro-representation, where you find a way to network among small groups? All this is a very contemporary experiment in democracy. It's also a self-managed educational process. It also trains a sophisticated labor force. And it even opens up markets for consumer electronics, for media products, for lifestyles and all those things. So the small, independent initiatives are at the center of all the contradictions! For these good reasons you will get a lot of interest from the European civil societies and from the EU cultural funders, plus a much more ambivalent treatment from the local political class, for which you are at once a kind of promise and a kind of threat, simultaneously. The easy solution, of course, is to be the poster boys and girls for a cultural modernization that only happens in a few bureaucrats' dreams. Or to be the gadflies of a hometown techno-class that interfaces between the local power-brokers and the EU businesses. But neither of those solutions are really enough when you have to live under the constant shadows of fascism, civil war, international intervention, and the whole disaster show that goes along with capitalist globalization. So I guess the question of what used to be called "institution-building" gets somehow real again, but in a different way.
Q: Those small, independent initiatives that you have mentioned don't necessarily need to stay small, with limited influence. When we talk about media and new communication technologies, there is always the question of infrastructure. The latter is a very interesting thing, especially in the Eastern part of Europe. Yet, an underdeveloped infrastructure is also a great opportunity for building up mainstream media monopolies. What is the future or are the possibilities for independent media initiatives in Europe and beyond?
BH: There is always the question of the relationship between
alternative media and major media, which we don't talk about enough. If you
want to extend the kinds of experimental practices that you're interested
in, eventually you come to a point where it's a question of enlarging. That
means both enlarging the number of people who are collaborating with you,
and also your infrastructure-your space, equipment base, and the possibility
for people to work on full-time projects. And then you have to confront your
real situation in society. Lot of people became aware of this when Soros pulled
out of places like the former Yugoslavia. There had been a possibility to
develop in a kind of social vacuum, because people came from the US or Northern
Europe with all these ideals of legitimacy and the need for direct democratic
expression and access to media and so on, and they gave a sort of a "jump
start" to lots of initiatives. It wasn't really so different in the central
countries. We saw tremendous growth in these "democratic experiments," experiments
in representation and communication, which initially surfed on the stock-market
boom. They developed along paths of rhizomatic singularization, in a way that
was predicted surprisingly well by Guattari in late '80s and early '90s. But
how far can they go before they come up against the wall of capitalistic culture,
which is basically defined by the major media? How can we stave off the integration
of these new expressive and communicational possibilities into a system of
flexible production, consumption and management that's still beneath the boot
of those who control the major media? I think it's an unresolved question
all over the world. There hasn't been much penetration of the media, because
people don't want to. And they're right! But we do need infrastructure and
a lot more small institutions, which could manage things like festivals, but
with enough autonomy to actually produce access to more than just tools, access
to a whole kind of a culture of self-organization and co-operativity. So far,
what we have is a kind of a floating situation with temporary sorts of gatherings
and great amount of a volunteer work, which is very good. But maybe we need
to find how to expand the volunteer aspect, while creating certain kinds of
infrastructure or institutions that don't bureaucratize or commercialize,
and don't halt the kind of innovation that creates the desire on which everything
is founded. This would be a real development of constituent power, in its
divergence from all the constituted powers. I think that's the interesting
perspective. What Geert Lovink said at the Neuro festival was right: "Things
begin with an event." The event, in the mid and late '90s, was "networked
media becoming accessible." Then came political events: the anti-globalization
movement. And also institutional events: the invention of all these little
media centers. We are now living off those events, and the question is: "How
can we start to invent something that transforms a big surprise into sort
of possibility for many, many smaller ones-without taking away the possibility
of another big surprise?"
Q: Now we come to this question of solidarity, which is present in every kind of process of cooperation, networking and working together. Could you elaborate on the parallel you draw between the movement of non-aligned countries that existed during '60s, and the present situation, where witness a growth of independent social and media movements world-wide.
BH: I think it's something we could all really look out for.
In a text called "Imaginary Maps, Global Solidarities," I wrote about the
non-aligned movement, which was built up in the '60s, particularly around
India, Cuba, and the former Yugoslavia, and which was also an important reference
point for the political resistance movements and counter-cultures of the developed
countries. By evoking that, I just wanted to give a kind of historical analogy
to an unfulfilled possibility of today. I think there is nothing like that
right now, but I also think that something similar will be or already is a
necessity. In the emergence of a stronger cooperation between India, South
Africa and Brazil, there is a kind of direct echo of the non-aligned movement.
But I'm not sure it's enough. I don't think that we've yet seen an invention
in those terms. And I'm not sure that we've really seen an invention with
the "social forum movement" either, because there's a lot of nostalgia for
the non-aligned movement, and for modernist central planning. The ones who
have that nostalgia tend to be the better-organized ones, because they're
still inhabiting the organizations that came out of that period. But the problem
is that they don't face the failures of the modernizing projects. That is
a certain limit on the amount of people who can be integrated into those projects,
leaving behind the massive reality of those who are excluded. You can see
it very clearly in countries like Argentina. It was a modernizing society,
an industrial system with European-style social guarantees, including health
care, public education, retirement benefits and so on. What happened is that
the capitalist project we were talking about before just destroyed that modernizing
attempt, in a process that goes from the dictatorship in Argentina in 1976-83
all the way to the Menem period in the '90s, when public services were massively
sold off, according to the plan of the IMF but to the direct profit of the
local political class. That political class became tremendously rich, along
with the local business class. At the same time, literally half the population
of the country lost the possibility to make a living. So, the question is
what kind of political invention is going to arise to take account of this
disaster that's unfolding in the world? It's really a disaster, and therefore
different kinds of political constructions are arising, you can see them on
the horizon. It's clearest in Latin America. But, the traditional leftist
way, the one that's represented with a great deal of hope by Lula in Brazil,
is probably too closely attached to the stagnant institutions of the industrial
age, and to the power system that put them into place, then partially destroyed
them. What needs to be discovered now are political and organizational forms
that give people the space and resources to take care of themselves, without
forgetting or denying their dependency on everyone else. So what I'm talking
about is not to immediately leap on a bandwagon of the social forums, or of
the Brazil-South Africa-India triangle, although these things are worthy of
our interest. I don't want to deny the tremendous amount of effort that's
going into constructing then, but there will need to be a further step, which
can only happen if you ask the question of who's really included. From this
viewpoint, if you've got your hands on a computer and a video camera, you
are included, you're part of the modern economy. But we are talking about
millions, even billions of people who increasingly don't have enough to eat.
There's the ultimate urgency, and my feeling is that a leftism for our time
will only come together when some network of social groups invents ways of
responding to it on the continental and global scales. In that perspective
the creation of transnational networks is very important, and the question
of solidarity is what kind of active role can people like ourselves have,
people who are included, but in a marginal way. A lot of people living in
the Western European countries are included in a marginal way, we're included
in what is called a "precarious" way, or an "unguaranteed" way. And it's interesting
that a lot of people have actually chosen this position. It's as if they said:
"I don't want to be included in the mainstream project of this predatory capitalism,
I prefer to be on the edges, in a marginal position." From that position,
on the edges of that insane kind of rivalry between the production blocs that
we were talking about before, it may be possible to look and listen enough
to find out what kind of political invention is actually going to happen.
I've begun to travel around the world for that reason, and you can see something
starting. You can participate in it. But as far as I can tell, nobody can
yet say exactly what it is.
(February 2004, Paris; for IFA-Stuttgart journal)
The Westward expansion in the cultural sector started in the early 1990ies.
Poor misguided western curators started flocking to our shores right after
the Berlin Wall fell down. With their eyes wide open and minds full of pre-conceived
and book-based notions about the Socialist World, these darlings wanted to
find out something... At first we all thought they wanted to find out what
had actually happened to all of us after WW II and after 1989. As it turned
out, all they wanted was to find out what had actually happened to them, to
their utopian dreams after the reality, which they never knew first hand,
collapsed. The problem was and still is that this need has rarely, if ever,
been admitted in public. You see, in their view we had betrayed them by refusing
to function as "by proxy" evidence to the fact that a better and more just
society/world is possible at the current stage of human progress. Those darlings
never admitted in public that the collapse of real socialism and the socialist
utopia as we (not them) knew it during the better part of the 20th c. affected
them as much as it affected us. In private people like Frederic Jameson would
admit (during a course on Postmodern Philosophy in Dubrovnik, October 1990)
that "We, western leftist intellectuals, must face up to and develop the ethics
of failure"... In public, people like Catherine David would hint that (in
the Editorial Text of "Politics/Poetics. documenta X - the book", 1997) the
existence and the activities of the Eastern European dissident movements before
1989 was the reason for the destruction of the French Left movement in the
1970-1980ies. You see some French leftist intellectuals sided with the Party
Line in the Socialist countries while others - with the dissidents. That caused
a split in the movement and the Right walked in "on a white horse"... It makes
me wonder - whose life were/are we living anyway?
What happened afterwards was that the evidential material for the failure
of real socialism was brought to the exhibition halls and the residency ci
