the art .com-pass eleonora+stassi
Seminar work CAS Curating ICS ZHDK 2013/14
0 Preface A new path to the waterfall ...................................................4 1 New (public) spaces.........................................................................6 *1.1 The rise of “the space” as investigable historical subject in the contemporary public art.…............................................................................7 *1.2 About archiving methods and digital migrations.......................................8 *1.3 The digital Heterotopia................................................................9
2 .com-pass studies.........................................................................11 *2.1 Map a public art installation or a mural................................................12 2.1.1 case study: outsider artist Giovanni Bosco, the “museo a cielo aperto” of Castellammare del Golfo (TP), Italy.…..............................................................13 *2.2 Map an art institution..................................................................17 2.2.1 case study: the Gasthaus zum Bären (ZH), Switzerland......................18 *2.3 Map an art project or an archive...........................................................22 2.3.1 case study: Lexicon on Community, Archive of Shared Interests 2013/2014 (OnCurating.org).............................................................................23 *2.4 Map an art talk or an art event................................................................26 2.4.1 case study: Being with / the other.......................27
3 Free .com-pass....................................................................32 *3.1 Public art screens and screens of public: perspectives.............................33 *3.2 Stay independent: the act of mapping.................................................33
ConclusionsWhere I’m calling from .............................................34 Bibliography.............................................35 2
All places are misplaces, and all misplaces are misreadings. The prerequisite for the setting of boundaries on maps is possession of the power to create fiction. Dung Kai Cheung1
1 Dung Kai Cheung, Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, trans. New York, Columbia University Press, 2012. 3
0 Preface *A new path to the waterfall*2 The art .com-pass is the basic idea for a digital program. It is thought as a tool that, throughout the expedient of the map, carries art knowledges, that are now missing in the traditional media. It is going to be an open source mapping platform, art oriented, where the user can upload informations, starting from a geographical point, about an institution (museum, foundation, school), a public artwork (or a map of more artworks), a talk or an art project. It would be a useful instrument for public (or not) art festivals, didactics (suitable for online webinars, that, for example, would be developed on a map of geographical historical transformations or biographical movements of an artist), artists and students. “.com”3 is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System of Internet, that was used at first to indicate a website domain registered by “commercial” organizations. It lose this meaning with the opening to the unrestricted registration of commercial and non-commercial websites and became just the standard name for a TLD. In the art .com-pass project, “.com” has to be understood as abbreviation for “community” and the “pass” as an allusion to a cultural passport to this shared virtual community. Together these two elements create an instrument, like a real compass, to orient the user throughout the huge digital reality related to the art. The development of the online .com-pass platform will follow next year. This work should be intended as a preliminary study, a theoretical overture, to understand why this device would be important and why, in general, a reevaluation of the relationships between the contemporary public space and the digital third dimension is indispensable. In the first chapter is briefly investigated the new concept of space in theory and how it is integrated in the contemporary curatorial approaches,that I mostly experienced during this year of public lectures and workshops of the Postgraduate program in Curating of the University for the arts of Zurich. The analysis points then to four prime examples of the employment of the map to different aims - related to artworks, institutions, art projects and talks – and their results, with a particular attention to the public reactions. The works ends with an overview of the future digital perspectives of the art .com-pass and of the already existing platforms. It is important to bear in mind that the map is a “non-liquid” entity 4, but an established one, that belongs to the past. During the childhood the map has an enlargement function: children use to look at the map to feel the vastness of the word. Adults, in this times of displacement and liquidity, need to come back to a map for a reduction need: the digital space is perceived as infinite and its real coordinates as unclear. The act of mapping has not anymore to do with the conquest of new worlds, but with the rediscovery of the real one, step by step. 2 3 4
R. Carver, A New Path to the Waterfall, The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1989 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2000.
4
But this rediscovery starts as a reflection on identity and goes beyond the material geography to incorporate personal maps of interests, memories and affinities, adding a new level of meaning. In A new path to the waterfall5, the last poems book of Raymond Carver, the writer draws in verses a map of his poetical references, linking together the deep province of the States with Poland and Russia and in the last book of Fabio Stassi, Come un respiro interrotto6, the protagonist Soledad put post-it where the furniture was, also where her brother had glued little labels of football or motorcycle players, to re-establish a lost order and to remember.
5 6
Carver, op. cit. F. Stassi, Come un respiro interrotto, Sellerio editore, Palermo, 2014
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1 New (public) spaces The concept of public space has changed its meaning in the last decades due to important historical transformation and technological revolutions. The public space as “social artefact” has lost its late capitalism's characterization in a financial crisis that has left “only a ruin of individual catastrophes”7. In this new outlook the overlap of social and geographical structures is flanked to the innovative systems of communication. Advertisement, virtual representations and fashion gave to “the public” a branded connotation of “metatext which structures our forms of articulation and communicative behaviour”8. The city is the new subject of cultural investigation, where everything is public, present and something is always happening. Therefore also the curatorial approach turned urban. As Elke Krasny described in occasion of the lecture Who cares? Urban Curators at Work at the University of the Arts of Zurich, “Urban curators leave the traditional confines of museums, galleries, and art spaces behind. They make themselves part of the ambivalences, conflicts and contradictions inherently at work in the conditions of contemporary processes of urbanization.”9 But the new space includes also rediscovered territories, as the Asian continent, China especially. The rise of this areas generated a process of reorganisation of knowledges that took the shape of re-elaborated archiving methods. Mapping become an essential strategy to work on civilisation stereotypes, but it involves inevitably the production of critical issues. In the last publication of the Asia Art Archive, this practice is defined as imitation of reality, useful to “visualise nations and spatial limitations” and “to create illusions of finitude”, as an instrument “that is fundamentally flawed, in that it is inevitably skewed by the agenda of the map-maker and excludes everything that falls outside its borders. What forms of objective knowledge are ruptured when new islands suddenly make themselves apparent in the world?”10. All these transformations arise in parallel to the development of the digital space, that it is more and more combined with them, to be sometimes extremely close to replace their materiality. The new “public” involves also this third dimension and encourage to a second reading of the Foucault's concept of “Heterotopia”11.
7 J. Fegerl, G. Friesinger (eds.), Urban Hacking, Katalog zum Festival für digitale Kunst und Kulturen, paraflows 09, Edition mono/monochrom, Wien, 2009, p. 20. 8 J. Fegerl, G. Friesinger (eds.), op. cit., p. 21. 9 Elke Krasny, Lecture: Who cares? Urban Curators at Work, University of the Arts of Zurich, 13th December 2013. http://www.elkekrasny.at/archives/1838 10 C. Hsu, C. Wong (eds.), Mapping Asia, Asia Art Archive's e-journal, FIELD NOTES, Issue 03, digital publication, 2014, pp. 9 -10. http://www.aaa.org.hk/FieldNotes/Issue?Issue_num=3&lang=eng&current=True 11 M. Foucault (1984). Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias. Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, 5, pp. 46-49.
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*1.1 The rise of “the space” as investigable historical subject in the contemporary public art History is the uninvited guest of every space. It is an element whose importance is related to spatial theory that has grown in the contemporaneity thanks to the development of environmental psychology and the urban orientation of curating and art production. After the World War II, the East of Europe in particular has seen its coordinates changing: new toponymy, new borders, new identities. The renewed interest in the space transformations carried in the last years researchers, as the polish historian Maria Lewicka, but also national institutions 12 to investigate collective memory. To plan the future of nationalities and to restore the forgotten history of the last fifty years, the research moves on three different levels: “place identity, place attachment and place memory”13. The main concepts of this investigation, that are useful also in the setting of curatorial projects oriented to socially engaged practice, are the assumptions that “the awareness of the place history intensif ies place attachment”, that the concept of identity is characterized by the belonging both to the category of continuity and the one of uniqueness and that “human memories are basically social memories”, personal experiences incorporated in social structures14. “Other Places, Vienna Lerchenfelder Street”15 is a publication and a curatorial project realized by Angela Heide and Elke Krasny, that follows this research orientation. To study the last tendencies of urban planning and the alteration of local identities in relation to globalization, the two curators collected the memories of the inhabitants of an old shopping street in Vienna and made a confrontation with other project all around Europe. The outcome of a project like the one of Lerchenfelder Street is the revalue of the “new potentiality of identities: other places, other experiences, other knowledge, pluality”16. Place history was also critically analysed in the form of board game by Pia Lanziger. The german curator elaborated in 2003 a sort of Monopoly, called “WorldWideWob”17, set in the city of Wolfsburg, that, through the engagement of the inhabitants, reversed in the game the public roles of power and simultaneously incited the debate about a real possibility for the citizens to participate actively to the future planning of the city. 12 Cultural Planning in The City of L’viv: Cultural Mapping, Centre for Cultural Management, Lviv, Ukraine, 2008. 13 M. Lewicka (2008). Place attachment, place identity and place memory: Restoring the forgotten city past. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28, p. 209. 14 M. Lewicka, op. cit., pp. 211-212. 15 A. Heide, E. Krasny (eds.), Aufbruch in die Nähe, Wien Lerchenfelder Strasse, Mikrogeschichten zwischen Lokalidentitäten und Globalisierung mit 12 Essays zu sozialen Kunstpraxen, kritischer Stadtplanung und Strassenprojekten in Amsterdam, Bremen, Hamburg, Köln, Wien und Zagreb / Other places, Vienna Lerchenfelder street, micro-histories between local identities and globalization with 12 essays on socially engaged art practices, critical urban planning and street projects in Amsterdam, Bremen, Hamburg, Cologne, Vienna and Zagreb, Turia + Kant, Vienna, 2010. 16 A. Heide, E. Krasny (eds.), op. cit., p. 15. 17 Pia Lanziger, WorldWideWob. The Game about the Future of a City, 2003/2004. http://www.pialanzinger.de/download/PL_WorldWideWob.pdf
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*1.2 About archiving methods and digital migrations The new multicultural panorama of the city allows to migrate all over the world just walking through the streets or the everyday life environments. This layer of meaning is the stage of a multitude of social engaged curatorial studies. For example, Pia Lanziger, in her project Global Village 4560, A Walk-on Map18, investigated the life of the inhabitants of the little town of Kirchdorf on the Krems, explicating with the installation of banners, shields and flags the relationships in their biography, for travel or belonging, with faraway countries as Tanzania, India or Canada. In 2001 she had already realized a “residential walking tour”19 in Riem, one of the biggest city planning projects in Europe, collecting the impressions of residents' different life styles connected to the promotion of their identity in the town. This migration possibility in a similar context of plurality is given also by internet. The digital nomadism, reached thanks to the possibility to be at the same time “online” (in the sense of active) in many parts of the globe, has generated with its simultaneous lack of reference points and overburden of informations the need of a reorganization and, therefore, a revival of archival tools. Every material place is reduced in the virtual dimension to a non-place, in a process of rationalization similar to the establishment of categories in the building of an archive, but for sure less clear and aware. Contemporaneity needs archives to reorganize its changing multilayered surface and to preserve knowledges over every transformation. Some initiatives in the last decades show this tendency. Following the common archiving method of the 1960s, was founded in 1998 the Curating Degree Zero Archive20 an online and discussion platform to collect the works of more then hundred international curators, expressed and articulated in different materials, from catalogues to CDs, from videos to websites. The archive exists both physically (library of the University of the Arts in Zurich) and virtually (www.curatingdegreezero.org). The dimension of the website enlarges through the internet connection the potentiality of accessibility and fruition, that is felt as basic aim of every storage. As the curators that started the project, Barnaby Drabble and Dorothee Richter, clarify about this open feature, “the website serves as a navigational structure available to the users of the archive as a basis for scholarly and practical research both for the participating curators and for other members of the “operating system” of the art world”21. With the same necessity of documentation, but also to protect the enormous amount of
18 Pia Lanziger, Global Village 4560, A Walk-on Map, 2007. http://www.pialanzinger.de/download/PL_GlobalVillage4560.pdf 19 Pia Lanziger, So wohnen wir / This is the way we live, 2001. http://www.pialanzinger.de/download/PL_WayWeLive.pdf 20 http://www.curatingdegreezero.org/ 21 http://www.curatingdegreezero.org/archive.html
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knowledges of the Asian continent, was initiated in 2000 the Asia Art Archive 22. The AAA's collection holds now over 50'000 records and it is in continuous expansion. The archive preserves a dynamic character in its development thanks to a related study and public program and remains active and in transformation for its fundamental trait of open-mindedness in the reflection, collaboration and confrontation within the international context about contemporary art in Asia. This coexistence of an artistic and academic orientations allows to “re-imagine the role of the archive”23 and unfold striking results. In the last issue of FIELD NOTES24, the AAA's e-journal, under the title of Mapping Asia are gathered together considerations about the map as an archive, that takes the form of atlas in an encyclopedic perspective. An atlas that can be also imaginary and perceived as the Atlas of Asia Art Archive25, elaborated in prose by the multidisciplinary platform MAP Office, as archipelago of suggestions26.
*1.3 The digital Heterotopia In the article Of other spaces, Heterotopias27, Michel Foucault developed in 1967 (but published first in 1984) the notion of heterotopia. This concept can be expanded and applied to the new public space in relation to its main feature of intersection of real and digital elements. Heterotopias, as websites or social networks, are “places outside of all places”, realized utopias where “the real sites are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted” 28. The example of the mirror, that Foucault defined “virtual space”29, get closer to the idea of the online avatar. Identity and materiality are replaced by a new sort of representation and in the mirror, as in the most common programs of internet communication, like Skype, FaceTime or Facebook, is generated a status of duality, where a person is present both inside and behind the surface. The question of the presence, intended also as participation, arises and points on a reevaluation of the human potentiality, expanded in the contemporaneity thanks to the technological progress: the 22 http://www.aaa.org.hk/ 23 http://www.aaa.org.hk/About/Overview 24 C. Hsu, C. Wong, (eds.), Mapping Asia, Asia Art Archive's e-journal, FIELD NOTES, Issue 03, digital publication, 2014. http://www.aaa.org.hk/FieldNotes/Issue?Issue_num=3&lang=eng&current=True 25 MAP Office (2014), Atlas of Asia Art Archive in FIELD NOTES, Issue 03, digital publication, pp. 13-20. http://www.aaa.org.hk/FieldNotes/Issue?Issue_num=3&lang=eng&current=True 26 “Our naked body is our first territory. A personal atlas of the world includes one’s individual interpretation and experience. New organisations and new horizons of a personal universe are consigned to miniature representation. Finalised to the last pixel, the image idealises a territory close to perfection. Bringing attention to the smallest hidden details, it distorts a simple documentary into a complex fiction. A personal empire starts from the strength of one’s imagination and materialises in a symbolic dimension. Tools are transformed into toys and routine into ritual. The transposition requires movement from one dimension to another and is the subject of many interpretations and fantasies of the cartographer/ sculptor. How to collect? What to collect? Blind people are also travelling. Photography, found objects, encounters, and collections of any kind are the materialisation of a voyage. Adding one element after another, documentation and interpretation are achieved through the construction of a visual and performative atlas of a society in its complex sociologic, political, and psychological definitions.” From: MAP Office (2014), op. cit., p. 14. 27 M. Foucault (1984). Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias. Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, 5, pp. 46-49. 28 M. Foucault (1984), op. cit., p. 47. 29 Ibid.
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heterotopia involves a process of transfiguration in the “absolutely unreal” and then a process of return toward the reality, “to reconstitute” ourself there where we are, in the “absolutely real” 30. Those processes underline the inevitable connection and function of this notion existing only in relation to “all the space that remains” (sixth principle of heterotopias 31). But this relationship can be unfolded in two different and opposite variations: of illusion and of compensation 32. Both supply to a lack, but in the illusion a new reality is created apart, in the compensation the reality is entirely substituted with another reality. The art .com-pass should absorb both possibilities and be similar to what Foucault defines “heterotopia par excellence”: “the ship”, that has been in the time an instrument of civilization and economic development, but also “the greatest reserve of the imagination”33.
30 31 32 33
Ibid. M. Foucault (1984), op. cit., p. 49. Ibid. Ibid.
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2 .com-pass studies The curator Susanna Perin presented in occasion of the lecture at the Gasthaus zum Bären the 26th of May 2014 her project S.M.U.R.34, Self Made Urbanism in Rome. An essential element of the exhibition installation was the plan of the italian capital city. On the question of why she decided to use a map as visual instrument in the exhibitive realisation, she underlined the power of the map as symbol and as interdisciplinary item, that everybody understands clearly, because it is an already-given working system. The starting point of the in-depth analysis of the mapping action, that unfolds in the next pages is a reconsideration about the aims and the informative content that this system needs to be operative. This chapter provides four examples/studies about what mapping could mean. Two of them, to map an artwork or an institution, if submitted by extern users, even if registered in the users' database, should be supervised and edited by an expert team. The others, to map an art project or an art talk, are distinguished by an independent character, are going to be uploaded by registered members and respond to specif ic prerogatives. In the first two cases the informations implemented, about artworks, festivals or institutions, represent added layers to a single unif ied map, that is going to integrate a general atlas of art meaningful places. In the third and the fourth cases, as in the Foucault's heterotopias of compensation35, an entire new world is rethought, independently, in coherence with the project parameters. The perspective following this last potentiality is to implement imaginary geographies.
34 http://www.smur.eu/ 35 Cf. p. 10.
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*2.1 Map a public art installation or a mural Profile for the mapping of a public artwork: Address: Main informations Title / Subject Who / Signature
Title: if given by the artist; subject: given by the map maker Author,-s / Tag (graffiti signature) or stage name
When How
Date of production Technique and materials
Why
Story, description and contents of the piece; indications about the belonging to an urban festival or an art project; noncommissioned or commissioned piece.
Other works / origin
Addresses
Links Mapping Aims
Meaningful websites
Didactic use / Art education (geographical limitation and fruition problems solved); enlargement of accessibility at international level; increase in cultural value. Mapping Results Coherence to the aims and practical development of them. Mapping Reception/Reaction Analysis and report of Municipality's, residents' and .com-pass users' feedbacks.
Notes: –
this profile can be adapted to a set of works (if parts of an art project or by the belonging to a festival)36 or just to one art piece in particular37;
–
the section “Other works / origin” is fundamentally related to the nomadic character of the graffiti production.
36 See: Case study 2.1.1., example n. 1, p. 13. 37 See: Case study 2.1.1., example n. 2, pp. 13-14.
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2.1.1 case study: outsider artist Giovanni Bosco, the “museo a cielo aperto” of Castellammare del Golfo (TP), Italy 1. Set of murals: Address: Castellammare del Golfo (TP), Italy Main informations Title Author
“Museo a cielo aperto” Giovanni Bosco / “dottore di tutto”
Date Description and contents
2007/2009 Noncommissioned murals; Outsider Art; imaginary subjects; biography; textual component (dialect and representation of cultural elements).
Addresses of the murals in Castellammare del Golfo (TP), Italy
Via Generale Michele De Gaetano, Via Roma, Villa Margherita, Via Don Giovanni Minzoni, Via della
Links
Libertà, Via Cristoforo Colombo, Via 20 Settembre, Via Interlandi, Via Alonzo, Via Mamiani, Corso Garibaldi, Tunnel Corso Garibaldi, Via Segesta http://www.artegiovannibosco.com/ http://www.costruttoridibabele.net/bosco.html
Mapping Aims Didactic use (geographical limitation solved); enlargement of accessibility at international level; increase in cultural value; realisation of a virtual tour. Mapping Results Consideration in the international and public context; increase of value for inhabitants and social institutions; implementation as research item (MAS in Curating, University of the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland, 2014); studies for a virtual tour in progress. Mapping Reception/Reaction Launch of a tutelage procedure by the municipality; establishment of an association 2. Singular artwork: Address: Via Roma, Castellammare del Golfo (TP), Italy Main informations Title / Subject Author / Signature
Five Hearts Giovanni Bosco / unsigned
Date Technique
2008/2009 Varnish on plaster
Description and contents
Noncommissioned piece; imaginary characters and transfiguration of illness (the dark spots in the first and in the last hearts represents the cancer of the
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Other works Links
artist); absence of the textual component “Museo a cielo aperto�, Castellammare del Golfo (TP), Italy http://www.artegiovannibosco.com/ http://www.costruttoridibabele.net/bosco.html http://animulavagula.hautetfort.com/album/giovannibosco-muraliste-brut/
Mapping Aims Didactic use (geographical problem of fruition solved); enlargement of accessibility at international level; increase in cultural value. Mapping Results Consideration in the international context; implementation as research item (MAS in Curating, University of the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland, 2014).
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Map of the murals of Giovanni Bosco in Castellammare del Golfo (TP), Italy, realized by ZEP
15
Studies for a virtual tour of the murals of Giovanni Bosco in Google Maps
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*2.2 Map an art institution Profile for the mapping of an art institution: Address: Main informations Name Description
Denomination of the institution Character of the institution (indication of one or more categories): Foundation, School, Museum, Interdisciplinary platform, etc.
Opening hours Services
Week days, times + calendar Food point, bar, shop, free wireless connection
Current
Related to the nature of the institution: - exhibition's details: title, artists, curators, duration; - Public program description;
Upcoming program Events
Links
- on-going projects. Related to current - Definition of the event: Talks, guided tours, seminars, concerts, etc. - Time and place coordinates. Meaningful websites
Mapping Aims Practical support (e.g. tourist tool); didactic use; increase of visibility also for little or independent realities; integration of knowledges missing in the digital media of today. Mapping Results Coherence to the aims and practical development of them. Mapping Reception/Reaction Analysis and report of institution's members', tourists' and .com-pass users' feedbacks.
Notes: –
this profile can be adapted to every kind of art institution38;
–
in the art .com-pass are not reported indications about the sponsors of the institution, but just the most meaningful informations;
–
every institution, as active member of the art .com-pass, is responsible for its program updates.
38 See: Case study 2.2.1, p. 18.
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**2.2.1 case study: the Gasthaus zum Bären (ZH), Switzerland Address: Bärengasse 20 – 22, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland Main informations Name Description
Gasthaus zum Bären Interdisciplinary platform (art, politics, economy, science), museum, laboratory
Opening hours
Wed / Thurs: 2 – 6 p.m. Fri: 7 – 9 p.m. Sat: 2 – 5 p.m. Sun: 12 – 3 p.m. Bookshop; wireless connection; bar only during the events
Services Current
•
Exhibition: Huber.Huber: Land of Plenty Artists: Markus & Reto Huber Curator: Agnes Josuran 09 – 21 May 2014
•
Upcoming
Walk in Cinema
Film programme: Overwhelminingly ordinary Artists: Christina Bredahl Duelund, Henrik Capetillo, Katja Bjørn, Niels Pugholm, Natascha Thiara Rydvald, Søren Thilo Funder Curators: Mette Skov, Nkule Mabaso 09 – 21 May 2014 Exhibition:
•
Master of Advanced Studies in Curating Exhibition: Annemarie Brand, Anne Koskiluoma & Tanja Trampe, Nkule Mabaso, Ashraf Osman, Anna Trzaska, Gili Zaidman, Dina Yakerson, John Canciani, Gulru Vardar, Daniela Fuentes Opening: 30th May 2014, 7 p.m.
Events
Links
Talks: •
Artistic Practice: Georg Winter, 09th May 2014, 6 p.m.
•
Artistic Practice: Meir Tati, 16th May, 2014, 7 p.m.
http://www.gasthauszumbaeren.ch http://curating.org/ http://on-curating.org/ http://www.thewire.ch
Mapping Aims Practical support (visitor informations); didactic use: realisation and advertisement of artistic practices, students' participation; increase of visibility; integration of knowledges missing in Google Maps.
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Mapping Results Missing knowledges of Google Maps integrated; visitor informations added; students' participation and interest promoted; implementation as research item (MAS in Curating, University of the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland, 2014); visibility in new contexts. Mapping Reception/Reaction Positive interest of institution's members, discussions between the students about mapping issues, interest of other institutions and artistic realities about the art .com-pass project.
19
Current representation of the “Gasthaus zum Bären” in Google Maps
20
Study for data integration in Google Maps, April 2014
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*2.3 Map an art project or an archive Profile for the mapping of an art project or an archive: Map Key Points: indication of all the places related to the project (when more then one) Main informations Title Project Type
Denomination of the project Character of the project: archive, exhibition, publication, workshop, etc.
Extension of time
Duration; temporary or permanent nature; project on-going or over. Project's initiators / Founders
Authors Participants Project description
Artists, curators, students, institutions, etc. Brief definition of the project's structure, thematics and phases
Links Mapping Aims
Meaningful websites
Didactic use (the map can be used as instrument for presentations or lectures); streamlined perception through the data visualisation on the map; integration of knowledges, meaningful to the project and generally missing in the digital media. Mapping Results Coherence to the aims and practical achievement of them. Mapping Reception/Reaction Analysis and report of project's participants', .com-pass users' and, if the project involves an exhibition phase, also visitors' feedbacks.
Notes: –
this profile can be adapted to every kind of art project 39, in which the geographical element is essential;
–
in the art .com-pass are not reported indications about the project's sponsors, but only the most meaningful informations.
39 See: Case study 2.3.1, p. 23.
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**2.3.1 case study: Lexicon on Community, Archive of Shared Interests 2013/2014 (OnCurating.org)
Map Key Points: France, Poland, Germany/Austria, Italy, Switzerland (Archive of Shared Interests) Main informations Title Project Type
Lexicon on Community Collection of definitions
Extension of time Founder
On-going project, 2013/2014 OnCurating.org Web Journal
Supervisors Participants
Silvia Simoncelli, Michael Birchall Students of the Post-Graduate Programme in Curating of the University of the Arts of Zurich, Switzerland
Project description
According to the Oxford dictionary, a lexicon is “a list of words used in a particular language or subject”. In this lexicon we want to explore the specif ic language of "community". On the map are represented the nationalities of the authors of the Lexicon's entries.
Links
The Lexicon is the first step of a publication concept under the title “Archive of Shared Interests” (OnCurating Issue), that will also include interviews and other kind of submissions. http://archive-shared-interests.tumblr.com/ http://curating.org/ http://on-curating.org/
Mapping Aims Didactic use (the map has to represent the geographical characterisation of the lexicon's entries); simplif ication of the archive contents' reception; integration of knowledges about the authors of the lexicon's entries. Mapping Results Elaboration of a visual instrument that can be used by the students in the next phases of the project; clear perception of geographical coordinates of the archive; Mapping Reception/Reaction Visualisation of the geographical limitations of the lexicon; discussion about the absolute european connotation of the entries; submission-proposals of other definitions on community, coming from the unrepresented world regions.
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Notes: –
the geographical indications are simplif ied as much as possible (e.g. city -> nation), because a general overview, in this occasion, is more important and explicative;
–
the project can include and require more then one map, one for every section: lexicon's entries, interviews, images, other submissions.
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“LEXICON on Community” Map, May 201440 40 https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/e-space.i67kol3c/page.html?secure=1#4/44.06/3.43
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*2.4 Map an art talk or an art event Profile for the mapping of an art talk or an art event: Map Key Points: indication of all the places related to the talk (when more then one) Main informations Title What
Denomination of the event or talk Character of the event: talk, lecture, opening, etc.
When Where
Time and date Address
Curators / Event coordinators Participants
Promoter / organisers of the event Who is speaking: artists, curators, students, etc.
Talk's description Links
Brief definition of the thematics Meaningful websites
Mapping Aims Didactic use (the map can be used as explanatory instrument during a talk); streamlined perception through the data visualisation on the map; integration of knowledges, meaningful to the talk, generally missing in the digital media; supply of practical informations for auditors. Mapping Results Coherence to the main issues of the talk and practical achievement of the aims. Mapping Reception/Reaction Analysis and report of auditors', com-pass users' and participants' feedbacks.
Notes: –
this profile can be adapted to every kind of art event 41, in which the geographical element is important;
–
the action of mapping implies a reflection, sometimes, about the participants' origins, but always about the place where the event/talk happens.
41 See: Case study 2.4.1, p. 27.
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**2.4.1 case study: Being with / the other
Map Key Points: “Gasthaus zum Bären”42, Alaa Abu Asad (Palestine), Pierre Fouche (Cape Town), Victoria Udondian (Nigeria), Rayelle Niemann (Zurich) Main informations Title What
Being with / the other Talk
When Where
10th April 2014, 6.30 p.m. “Gasthaus zum Bären”, Bärengasse 20 - 22, Zurich, Switzerland
Curators Participants
Nkule Mabaso, Ashraf Osman Alaa Abu Asad, Pierre Fouche, Victoria Udondian, Rayelle Niemann
Talk's description
Each country may have its brand of identity and politics, but culture is a multi-layered hybrid and cultural identif ications are imaginary, especially in the digital age. The discussion will revolve around how individual artistic practices approach the question of identity, how cultural, social, political, and urban forms and contexts in their work are researched and discovered, and how their positions are presented to the public. http://www.gasthauszumbaeren.ch/de/curating/being-withthe-others http://curating123.tumblr.com/post/79093096161/artists-in-da-haus http://www.citysharing.ch/
Links
Mapping Aims The map should give indications about the participants' identities and represent an important element of discussion; general comprehension through the visualisation on the map; supply of practical informations for auditors. Mapping Results The map generated a discussion on identity before and after the talk; acquisition of knowledge also by the event coordinators; useful tool for the visitors. Mapping Reception/Reaction Discussion on identity; critical answer of Rayelle Niemann to the question of her provenience and about nationality issue43.
Notes: –
in the section “Where”, the complete address can be also omitted if, as in this case, the institution where the event takes place is already registered in the online database of the art .com-pass.
42 See: Case study 2.2.1, p. 18. 43 Cf. text of Rayelle Niemann (2004), pp. 28 – 30.
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“…Home is where my heart is, home is so remote, home is out of question, sitting in my throat
Maandish balad.
– let’s go to your place ......” Lena Lovitch, one of her popular songs back in the
The last 16 years I had my basis in the German part
eighties
of Switzerland, now I am living in Cairo since one year. I was and still am fortunate to be able to live in
I close the door behind me and I am chez moi. Ich
different countries and cultures, to undertake
bin zu Hause.
intensive commissioned travels that allow me to dive
I am at home. I leave the world outside. I am in front
into varied models of life. If Heimat is understood as
of my computer. I go on-line….. anywhere.
a matter of having rights, enough to eat, being
Heimat?
respected, then it would be a cause of basic simplicity. But this very common interest on Heimat,
When I am asked where I am from a lot of the times
I discovered, is ignored and dashed away by higher,
I answer: maandish balad (I have no country).
prevailing interests. Taking advantage of relatively
Not because this question is getting on my nerves,
modest fundamental needs seems to be no moral
well, it does sometimes. But mainly because I really
conflict.
do not know what to say. This question pushes a
Being born German the question of and the desire
door open behind which a complex realm manifests
for Heimat, linked to a national identity was always
itself. Actually it is a simple question set for a simple
an important and present discourse. Especially for
answer. But it implies a lot of traps.
my parents who belong to the German generation
Any
answer
might
accumulate
clichés
and
which lost their Heimat several times, which had to
confusion, not precision. Maybe because living
move several times, but yet had to defend the
outside the country where I was born since a long
Heimat, it was a big issue as well as a chance after
time makes me sensitive to nuances, which would be
the Second World War. There was the illusion to be
obscured otherwise. There is a demand for
able to start at point zero. All losses, all
reconsideration all the time. Being confronted with
disappointments, all intrusions of privacy and all
other people’s Heimat challenges more sophisticated
regrets were transformed and canalised into a huge
reflections from my side. Maybe because apparently
projection, a dream: to build a morally healthy
the word Heimat is an invention of the German
society, with enough space for the Heimat to expand
language which is closely linked to much more than
once again.
home or homeland will ever imply, laying out a huge tray
full
of
fragments
provoking
tempered
Heimat linked with a national identity I found
discussions.
difficult to refer to. My cultural background is
Usually I do not apply the word Heimat. In recent
German, not Middle European. It is German. I never
years there have been approaches to redefine Heimat
felt comfortable with it as it did not open up a space,
in Switzerland and Germany, to give it a more
but it was rather full of restrictions. I do remember
current aspect and free the word from encrusted
having intense arguments with my parents during my
historical and traditional point of views, in order to
teenage years because I would declare I was a world
adjust it to the multicultural present - as some
citizen. Through their eyes, I was basically betraying
societies tend to carry this attribute nowadays. I
and offending the fundament they were trying to
remain sceptical.
establish after the war, providing a so called secure
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and happy place for their children to be proud of.
find Heimat in different cultures. I find Heimat in
The word Heimat and its connotations made me feel
some landscapes. I find Heimat in talks. I find
uneasy. Always there was something to it, a certain
Heimat in some moments. I have Heimat as
demand I could not adapt to. The offered Heimat
memories. Heimat became more flexible, more
was too narrow, too static. It demanded an overall
challenging, and livelier. Heimat became a matter of
appreciation and identification I could not live up to.
immediacy. I started to feel at home in different
I reached out for a broader world. A world with
languages; discovering that there are expressions one
space to breath, without having to fulfil specific
cannot translate in order to express certain emotions,
behaviours, customs, regulations, expectations. A
certain atmospheres. One can paraphrase, but then
world where I just could be myself, who ever this
allowing that the true meaning vanishes.
would be, without having to face the pressure to belong to something, to be part of something, to be
My Heimat is scattered throughout the world. My
the same as, which did not feel as mine. Of course,
Heimat is in good hands with some people. People I
this causes loss and alienation and fear.
met. People I will meet. Heimat is something very individual. It is something quite intimate. And
The human desire to belong to something is sown.
unique. My Heimat is not tied to a house, a tree, a
But realising intuitively and consciously that the
street, a field, to belongings or a nation. My Heimat
“new world” was being built on disguises, without
is within me. I carry it around with me all the time.
providing space for different needs – mental and
Sometimes I can share it with others. Sometimes I
physical space mostly being identified as a certain
cannot. Sometimes it makes me feel privileged. My
mean for interests serving hierarchies and power – I
passport supports this privilege. I am aware of it.
tried to find family some place else. I did not call it
Although sometimes I have the feeling that I am
Heimat, maybe “geistige Heimat”, but most of the
missing something. However, it was a long and
time I would call it family. Extended families were
sometimes painful struggle to reach this point.
very much in fashion and in need in the seventies
Times of restlessness, resentment, defeat, and parting
and eighties, providing cosy nests for radical
had to be passed. Experiences had to be processed,
thoughts and activism. It was a very important time
reassessed. Heimat became a continual ongoing
to sharpen and shape consciousness and awareness.
process, a lifetime project. I am not concentrating on
To rewrite her-/his-story, to widen the canon despite
otherness. I am concentrating on what is there to be
ruling limitations. But somehow, it became obvious
shared. And there is a lot to share. Not everywhere,
quite quickly, that this implemented new regulations,
not everything and not with everybody. But in the
new limitations, new expectations striving after
wide world, in the small world one meets people
fulfilment; new hierarchies even if the language was
with whom it is possible to share and shape a mental
different. I felt uncomfortable. Once again I had to
and emotional topography, regardless of background,
free myself from sweet and well-meant chains,
education, class, ethnic and cultural heritage, gender.
which claimed to offer security and home. I
Heimat should be a state of mind, not defined by
understood that Heimat, family, was not be linked
exclusion, but defined by the application of common
with a certain place, nor was it linked to certain
sense, acknowledging that diversity enriches life and
structures and ideologies.
the capability of experiences. Something broader,
Heimat is multidimensional and metaphysic. I find
almost something universal, wider then immediate
Heimat in books. I find Heimat in music and songs. I
kinship, blood and ground. Heimat as a construct in
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a conventional sense limits a lot of possibilities. Heimat as a construct on a metaphoric level might leave some chances open. Especially needed in times when neo-geopolitical approaches are launched as ultimate solutions serving economical interests, while exploiting resources and human labour, reestablishing narrow minded national and racial ideologies. Rayelle Niemann, Cairo, May 200444
44 Answer to the talk Being with/the other (see p. 27).
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“BEING WITH/THE OTHER” Map, April 201445 45 https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/e-space.hhoe1h2p/page.html?secure=1#5/50.834/3.252
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3 Free .com-pass The art .com-pass is thought as open source database and tool, always updating and in transformation thanks to the submission of independent users, institutions and the executive team's members. As explained in the case studies, the current online softwares are incomplete. Tools as Mapbox or the OpenStreetMap network are already going in the direction of a more detailed mapping process, but remain unspecialised and mostly connected to a technological connotation and aim. This scientif ic ambition of development has forgotten to comprise the cultural body, that must be considered not anymore as obstruction, but, on the contrary, as support to a more rounded human progress, also technological. Therefore, the art .com-pass is going to be the first online mapping tool dedicated entirely to the art and will take part of the both theoretical and scientif ic natures of the digital space. This last chapter is thought as short overview and declaration of intent for the future development of the art .com-pass project. A project that is essentially free, in the sense of fruition and economical conditioning, and in which to be free doesn't mean to be less then commissioned, but, on the contrary, underlines a conscious acquirement of responsibility.
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*3.1 Public art screens and screens of public: perspectives The german curator Klaus W. Eisenlohr, in occasion of the screening Urban research 2014 at the Gasthaus zum Bären46, explained what he perceived as two main approach orientations to urban and public space: one connoted by the interest about interventions in the space and the another by the interest about the space itself. The art .com-pass should involve and provide useful services to both these artistic tendencies. The digital dimension of today is limited by the same kind of dualism: on one side it seeks the technological innovation, giving meaning to the space just as experiment subject, and on the other hand, still not completely realised, should involve a deepest layer of cultural contents and participation. The example of Google Maps is quite evident. The web search engine is elaborating a project they named Art Project47, that provides just high resolution visual representation of only the most famous artworks or cultural sites, without the implementation of the related theoretical basic knowledges about art history or history in general, not even through the insertion of a wikipedia link about the argument. Cultural contents that Google, the most well-known and important developer of the World Wide Web, the digital encyclopedia, should rationally include. This missing body is the main subject of the art .com-pass and the integration of this knowledges in the digital dimension is one of its essential aims.
*3.2 Stay independent: the act of mapping The act of mapping has always had the connotation of emancipative and empowerment act. The map was used in different times as representation of imperialism through the establishment of colonies or as symbol by the feminist movement48 to represent and create boundaries. The autonomy of art has been and it is still a fundamental issue of the art world debates. In relation to this open question, the art .com-pass should develop in the future as independent reality to guarantee a non-profit orientation, far from the art market conditioning, and to implement equally the educational-informative function and the potentiality of innovative instrument for the elaboration of new projects and ideas.
46 http://www.gasthauszumbaeren.ch/de/curating/urban-research 47 http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/art-project?hl=it 48 Cf. S. Stanford Friedman, Mappings: feminism and the cultural geographies of encounter, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998.
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Conclusions*Where I’m calling from*49 The idea of the art .com-pass came from the personal experiences I made this year in relation to my studies and research needs. I became aware again of the limitations of the currents digital instruments, but I could still fill up the missing informations through readings, because books and libraries remain and, I hope, will remain the most important and suggestive human cultural databases. During this first year of the Post-Graduate Programme in Curating I met perspectives and I heard totally new and unexpected considerations about art and about the world in general thanks to the international character of the class composition, that gave me the curiosity to get deeper in the geographical issue and the courage to face a mapping project. I had forgotten that the globe is smaller of what I perceived and in this months I could observe how in the contemporaneity Africa, Europe, South America and China can be close and how the instrument of a map can be an important carrier of knowledges without loosing its trait of simplicity. I reevaluated my position and my nomadic identity, globalisation and “glocalisation” and from this renewed perception I started the art .com-pass: a project that I plan to develop in a real online platform next year in coherence with the aims I expressed in the pages before and always keeping in mind that to point on a map “where we are calling from” is the first step to decide in which direction to go.
49 R. Carver, Where I'm calling from, Vintage Books, New York, 1989.
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