Book, Mapping contemporary creative practice, 2008 ... - Nada Prlja

PEN SPACE
Mapping contemporary creative practice

CONTENT
10 SPACES OF PRODUCTION: OPEN SPACE
Gülsen Bal in Conversation with Costanza Meli
13 CRISIS CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
Georg Schöllhammer / Hedwig Saxenhuber
Translation to English by Alla Welz
15 FINANCIALIZATION OF CAPITAL
AND FINANCIALIZATION OF (CULTURAL)
INSTITUTIONS
21 SELFS-ORGANISED (AUXILIARY)
SHOWROOMS - A WALK AROUND VIENNA’S
“ALTERNATIVE SPACES SCENE”
Christa Benzer
Translation to English by Helen Ferguson
26 TEMPORARY ZONES
Gülsen Bal
32 POST-SCRIPT TO MIGRASOPHIA:
UBIQUITOUS TOPOLOGY
Zeigam Azizov
38 INTERFACE
Juraj Carný
42 INTERFATE (FACE -2- FAITH REMIX 1.0)
Phoenix T. Gabriel
50 ON XENOPHOBIA REDUX
Anne-Britt Rage and David Rych
55 EMPOWERMENT AND CLASH DER
ERLKONIG VERSUS THE SUPERSOLDIER
Süreyyya Evren
58 WORLD-EXPO 08’
64 THE EMPIRE OF SENSES - POLICE AS ART
AND THE CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION
Hito Steyerl
70 FOLDED-IN
Ilias Marmaras, Gülsen Bal and Daphne Dragona
79 MATERIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Franz Thalmair
Translation to English by Stefan Kirmse
84 I MYSELF AM WAR!
Gülsen Bal
98 [I] [myself] [am] [war] [!]
Susanne Lummerding
Translation to English by Wilfried Prantner & Catherine
Kerkhoff-Saxon
102 NETWORKED CULTURES
Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer
114 SPECTRAL DENSITIES IN THE
NETWORKED CITIES
120 STRUCTURES OF RADICALITY
Walter Seidl
126 MARTYRS OF POSTCULTURE UNDER
EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS
Richard Appignanesi
140 CONTRIBUTORS
7

PETER MÖRTENBÖCK AND HELGE MOOSHAMMER,
VISITING STALIN
photograph
TEMPORARY ZONES
CURATED BY: Gülsen Bal
Rethinking of identity, territory, borders = Ø location
happen is if you throw the strata into demented or suicidal collapse, which brings them back down on
us, heavier than ever. This is how it should be done: lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the
1
The exhibition The Temporary Zones offers a space for exploration of current relations of and in
of Europe. In pointing out the space of current relations, the scope of the project The Temporary Zones
temporal construct seemingly erases all its secrets and ambiguities. In a passage of an unstable world, this
at the edge of building cross-border dialogues.
Contact Zones
Today there exists a complex relationship between an enlarging European space and neighbouring countries
forming a sub-region on the south-eastern fringes of Europe. This highlights the material and symbolic uses
of borders.
Despite the certainty of function, the meaning of borders has been uncertain and contradictory; this
situation has been further compounded by the force of globalization and change on territory within the
paradox of both undermining and reinstating a territorial logic of governance. This ambiguity and dynamics
has resulted in ‘border change’ that not only transform existing border but also change the material
functions and symbolic meanings of borders. For that reason, the ‘new’ border are no longer territorial lines,
but instead designates location in mobility, points of arrivals/departures transcending nation-state and its
Still, “pragmatics and micropolitics constitute themselves in nomadology… constituted into geology
of action.” Conversely, the idea of a European cultural space is also about symbolic boundaries between
‘us’ and ‘them’ where representations of Europe become part of the imaginary. In contrast to the present
importance of imaginary reconstruction. This problematises the possibility that what is real is that which
used to exist and its transformative potential in the subject (the loss of the “specular I of the Imaginary”)
and between subjects (the entry into the “social I of the Symbolic”).
This is conceived within representational boundaries in the immediacy: “here and now” that is inhabited.
26 27

This occurs from within disparities and a tension that a node traverses its initial position to its transition
of which has taken place. Still a shift occurs where the critical models are designated at the junction
of temporal relations.
The orientation of this inference reveals itself in “the practices of representation as implicate [...] the position
of enunciation”. 2 structures affected by a transitory characteristic, the “in-between-ness”. An uncertain transition, as it
appears in The Rights, provokes an encounter with a situation to a norm extrinsic to that situation at the edge
of a certain representational matrix while dramatically capturing the moment that mirrors the “other” of
Europe by way of its multitude of particular identities.
This governs a political thinking that is aware of its own strategy and contingency in all its
In their work, Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer
heterogeneity or diversity and it engenders itself through multiple connections by mapping both psychical
contemporary world through exploring the potentials and effects of networked spatial practices.
and the social locations when engaged in multiple networks of production exits within dialogical process
generating contact zones.
knowledge embodied by these new forms of socio-spatial organisation and group action. In doing so, they
Tracing an imaginary line along the emerging borders and across a map of the European space within the
raise questions how the emergence of networked cultures has changed our cultural forms of cohabitation
logic of mobility that supports the current political construction and politicisation of life, each participating
and communication, and how we produce and experience the spaces we live in vis-à-vis a globalised
artist in The Temporary Zones creates works that respond in particular ways, to take a deeper look
at complex relational powers, with a new conjunction of transitions in a designated quasi -accessible space
The text-supported photo story Visiting Stalin assembles the visual signs and symbols of cultural
that resides in space/place making within the creative practice.
hybridisations and economic superimpositions in a global city like Moscow. This follows the myriad stories
is known for his lyrical and unsettling video installations that reconstitute our sense
and histories around the site of the former Stalinets Stadium in Moscow-Izmailovo that today forms the
of space, and pose questions about our understanding of place and identity in a globalised society
empty inner zone of the sprawling Cherkizovsky Market. Three times the size of the Moscow Kremlin, the
marked by mobility.
market supports Russia’s new millionaires as well as thousands of migrants from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,
His recent single channel video Empire (after Andy Warhol) reframes an ordinary building in reference to the
and China and extended Southeast Asia, who has come to seek work as stall-minders, carriers and tea-
representation of an iconicized structure, while shifting from the global to the local. Borrowing his title
sellers. The project explores how markets function as a dynamic force that generates new forms of collective
exchange, and how this process relates to the aesthetics of establishing new social orders.
8 hours and 6 minutes and chronicles the passage from day to night, Although these experimental structures are highly unstable, they leave their mark on the fabric of the city.
of current relations’ associated with notions of temporal and spatial continuity.
They transport images, ideas and values between different worlds. And with their improvised technologies,
Empire (after Andy Warhol) captures the transition from day to night surrounding a residential apartment
infrastructures and spatial policies, they create openings for new urban situations and new links between the
block in a static shot, thus reframing the existing strangeness of a minaret rising through the roof of the
local and the global levels.
and the main part of the mosque with the prayer room for worshipping is situated in the basement of
the apartment. Illuminating light abruptly goes dark, generating a different register through a moment
of interruption where we witness something different, ‘another truth’ in which the concepts of domestic
Notes:
comfort are unsettled through an unrelenting gaze.
1. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. Brian Massumi (Translation). A Thousand Plateaus. London: The
Athlone Press, 1988, p. 161
‘THE RIGHTS, I AM MACEDONIAN’, ‘THE RIGHTS,
2. Hall, S. “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation” in Exiles: Essays on Caribbean Cinema.
I AM ROMANIAN’, ‘THE RIGHTS, I AM TURKISH’,
Edited by Mbye Cham, New Jersey: African World Press, 1992, p.230
‘THE RIGHTS, I AM SERBIAN’, etc.
The Rights is a series of video recordings of children who are reading ‘European Convention for the
January 10th – February 9th, 2008
Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom’ in the manner it presents that there is no
protection of human rights and freedom. In this work, Nada Prlja exposes the complexity of the issues
Please refer to:
of immigration and the EU politics around the boundaries of ‘New Europe’.
http://www.ergincavusoglu.com
Prlja
http://www.seriousinterests.co.uk
The Rights engenders the potentiality in
http://www.networkedcultures.org
the course of absorbing the results of its transformative capacities where the cultural objects are produced
within a paradigm of introducing everyday settings. This inquiry puts across a disjointed temporality which
exposes the ambiguity of the situation. Thus the issue introduced here refers to an experimental dynamic
construction encapsulated in the midst of “who speaks”.
The space of current relations brings us to draw an attention to a generative process of differential
28 29

NADA PRLJA,
THE RIGHTS
video still
right:
NADA PRLJA,
THE RIGHTS
installation view
EMPIRE (AFTER ANDY WARHOL)
video still
30 31