Inke Arns on Thu, 3 Jun 1999 10:52:23 +0100 |
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Syndicate: (Fwd) Transnacionala book in Venice |
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 08:50:02 +0200 From: Miran Mohar <miran@kud-fp.si> Subject: Transnacionala book in Venice a project by IRWIN T R A N S N A C I O N A L A edited by Eda Cufer ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are kindly invited to join a presentation of the TRANSNACIONALA book on June 11th at 11 am in the Russian Pavilion in Giardini, Venice. The book and TRANSNACIONALA project will be presented by Eda Cufer and members of IRWIN. On this occasion Michael Benson of Kinetikon Pictures will also present material from his upcoming â??global road movieâ?? MORE PLACES FOREVER, which incorporates footage from the TRANSNACIONALA trip. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- On June 28, 1996, an international group of artists departed from Atlanta on a journey across America in two recreational vehicles which would be their home for the coming four weeks. The unlikely assemblage of travellers consisted of three Russians--Alexander Brener, Vadim Fishkin, Yuri Leiderman; six Slovenians--the five-member IRWIN group and Eda Cufer; and one American--Michael Benson. They engaged in an artistic project that took the form of an actual journey across 6000 km of highway, and a spiritual journey of incalculable distance into deeply personal country. The aim of the predominantly Eastern European crew was no more or less ambitious than what Columbus had set out to do 500 years earlier: quite simply, to discover America. Their intentions lay in gathering impressions of the indigenous culture, to exchange views with the natives, and to make contact with the American system of art, politics, theory, ethics, economics--and with the myth of America itself. And in doing so, they began the discovery of and about themselves as outsiders on a road of indeterminate destination coming from places barely visible in the rear-view mirror of America. While traversing the continent and probing the culture to see what new social and aesthetic models might present themselves for observation, the Transnacionala crew stopped along the way to perform the quotidien rituals that all travelers must obey: eating, washing, sleeping, drinking, eliminating. They also parked to exchange views with each other and engage in the local art community wherever possible, most memorably during scheduled events in Atlanta, Richmond, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. These pre-arranged but unscripted encounters with the public took place in cooperation with friends and hosts Goran Dordevic, Mary Jane Jacob, Katharine Gates, Randy Alexander, Charles Krafft, Robin Held, and Larry Reid. From the journey, short textual and video reports were sent via the internet and transmitted on a TV monitor located in Irwinâ??s vehicle in the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam. This book is a selected memoir of a four-week journey called Transnacionala--part conceptual art project, part search for community, part alien encounter between East and West, part investigation of individual vs. collective identity, part research into networks, protocols, and communication, and part psychological endurance test. This book records the outward journey via the live testimony, public witness, and dialogues taken from road notes, snapshots, and recordings made along the way. What remains unrecorded are the private journeys of the ten individuals for whom Transnacionala remains a trip in progress and who have continued traveling in their own directions since the communal journey ended--inwards. published by KODA i n k e . a r n s __________________________ b e r l i n ___ 49.(0)30.3136678 | inke@berlin.snafu.de | http://www.v2.nl/~arns/ mikro: http://www.mikro.org | Syndicate: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress