Airtime

AIR TIME ANNA HOETJES JORDI FERREIRO JOANNA VON MAYER TRINDADE FLAVIU ROGOJAN KERRI MEEHAN and ALEX RESSEL ALEXANDRE POISSON and ALICE LAHANA ROMAN ŠTĚTINA ELISA ABELA NATALIYA TODOROVA WOJCIECH TYMICKI Under the direction of the artist collective Ligna (Ole Frahm and Torsten Michaelsen).

AIR TIME AIR TIME is an audio work and collective action that was performed synchronously in public space in 10 cities across Europe.

5th October 2013 at 1:30 PM PARLIAMENT SQUARE, London 2:30 PM DAM SQUARE, Amsterdam FORAT DE LA VERGONYA, Barcelona ALEXANDERPLATZ, Berlin PLACE DU TROCADERO, Paris VACLAVSKE NAMESTI, Prague STAZIONE TIBURTINA, Rome NICOLAUS COPERNICUS MONUMENT SQUARE, Warsaw 3:30 PM PIATA UNIRII, Cluj-Napoca IVAN VAZOV NATIONAL THEATRE SQUARE, Sofia

Cover image: Air Time, Amsterdam

2

AIR TIME is the result of the collaboration between 12 artists under the direction of the artist collective LIGNA (Ole Frahm and Torsten Michaelsen). The artists have been invited by International advisors:

ANNA HOETJES, Amsterdam Invited by If I Can’t Dance (curators collective) JORDI FERREIRO, Barcelona

by Latitudes (curators collective) JOANNA VON MAYER Trindade, Berlin

by Sigrid Gareis (curator and director of the Academy of the Arts of the World, Cologne) FLAVIU ROGOJAN, Cluj Napoca

by Ciprian Muresan (artist) KERRI MEEHAN and ALEX RESSEL, London

by Grant Watson (curator at Iniva, London) ALEXANDRE POISSON and ALICE LAHANA, Paris

by Tania Bruguera (artist) ROMAN ŠTĚTINA, Prague

by Marketa Stara (curator at DOX) ELISA ABELA, Roma

by Mike Watson (curator) NATALIYA TODOROVA, Sofia

by Boyan Manchev (philosopher) WOJCIECH TYMICKI, Warsaw

by Grzegorz Kowalski (artist and professor at the Academy of Arts)

AIR TIME AIR TIME was performed synchronously across Europe on the 5th of October - the opening day of Transeuropa Festival organized by European Alternatives.

It was a collective action which took place in public space in ten European cities and invited everybody to actively take part in it. In order to participate it was necessary to download the audio track from the website of the Transeuropa Festival to a player, and then reach the chosen square in one of the festival cities at the agreed time.

The performance is the outcome of three workshops that took place in Rome (MACRO — Museum of Contemporary Art and Teatro Valle, April 2013), Berlin (DAZ — Deutsches Architektur Zentrum, July 2013) and Sofia (Red House, August 2013).

— The workshops focused on the role and use of radio as a communicative and educative medium as well as a potential tool to explore the idea of collective action.

Keeping in mind the recent and on-going mobilisations taking place all over the world (e.g., in Turkey, Brazil or Greece), the process of collaboration established among the artists intended to reflect on the relationship between new ways for sharing information offered by new technologies and the potential collaborative practices that emerge as a consequence. The performance looks at strategies of appropriation of a mass medium such as the radio and its possible mode of use in public space.

Airtime - Transcript

A. T. Q. S.

Authors Note Time Indication Quote Sound Effect

Read slowly and hypnotically:

A.

Walk around for a while as a wanderer.

Dispersed all over the space, you’re listening to a voice, a spectator of your journey.

Fig. 1 Cluj Napoca

long pause to wander

T.

Please stop and close your eyes,

Fig. 1

short pause to close eyes

T.

Try to escape reality.

Use your imagination as a way to travel.

Your mind is powerful.

You’re standing without moving, leaving the sensations of your direct environment behind you. short pause

Fig. 1 Warsaw

6

T.

You are now far from your body.

Feel free to go further.

There are no limits.

Traveling is easy, you only have to let the images pass through your mind.

Are your eyes still closed?

You are moving on.

Imagine seconds that pass, and how they turn into hours, into years, into decades You are moving so fast. How do you feel?

7

How is your memory of the real world?

Let it be vaporous.

T.

short pause to let memories vapourise A fog slowly appears around you. It is enveloping you. It’s caressing your body. All you can see now is a deep white.

There are so many people around you but you can’t see them.

You are in the same thick fog.

The place where you were is gone.

Do you feel your body floating in space?

You are not touching the ground anymore. There is no ground.

You can fly but there is no sky. You can move, there is no wall.

You are evolving in this white infinite space.

Try to make all images disappear into your mind.

This place has to be blank Take a deep breath.

Contemplate this infinite space you’ve created with your mind.

T.

Fig. 2 Prague

short pause Two parallel lines are now appearing. This is your homeward bound, back to the surroundings you departed from. Take your time. You can stay in this space longer, you can also travel back whenever you want.pause You can now open your eyes.

You’ve been standing here together with many other people.

Standing silently, listening to this voice, which is heard simultaneously in ten different cities over Europe.

You transformed the “you” into “we”.

We have created an open space together.

You are at the beginning of your journey, evolving between the physical world and this intangible platform we’ve made together.

Fig. 2

8

Slowly start walking.

Fig. 2 Paris

9

T.

short pause to start walking You are outside, but still enclosed.

Look around, you are in a Square.

Walk forward.

The rhythm will keep you going.

Try to match your pace to the music.

Keep on walking until you reach the edge of this place.

Upon reaching that point turn left, keep on going left, you will go around this place, circle around, walking on the margins.

Everyone defines the border differently, each taking a different path, but together you are now part of a vortex, a counter-clockwise flow, like a stream or a river that encircles this Square.

You are orbiting, we are orbiting, we are all walking counter-clockwise. We are part of the movement. Right now, people are orbiting in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Cluj, London, Paris, Prague, Rome, Sofia, and Warsaw. At this moment, they are hearing the same as you. You are all walking together.

Q.

(Franco Berardi Bifo’s Voice): What is a movement? It is an event opening up a new landscape. When a movement happens (in the field of art, in the field of social politics), this is the effect. Thanks to the movement (literally, a displacement), you are able to see things that you did not see before. A new rhythm makes it possible to see a new landscape. And when you see the landscape, you discover new ways.

On the edges of the space a vortex flow has formed, an evolving rotational movement that defines a new space. The constantly shifted and dragged perspective marks out temporary collectivities.

The people inside are now part of the movement, some happen to pass by, going about on their usual route, they inadvertently overlap the vortex movement and thus join in only to enhance the flow.

As such, everybody that is encircled, surrounded by the vortex also

10

contributes and is part of this newly formed space.

Slow down your pace until you stroll the streets; like someone on a day out in town. pause

T.

Look around you. We have arrived in a zone separate from governmental structures, a zone that only knows temporary organisational forms and that might move to a different location at any time. This is what Hakim Bey calls a temporary autonomous zone. There are many of these zones being formed as we speak. At least in 10 other cities at this very moment, but also on pirate islands, in virtual hacker communities and in apartments filled with silent protests.

Look at the ground. Think about lying down here. Are you worried about the dirt? Or are you uncomfortable disrupting normal behaviour? Smell the air around you. Does it smell bad? If it does, take a few steps away until it smells better. Don’t worry, we are still in the temporary autonomous zone here, no dirt or normalities will stop you. Now lie down on the street. pause to lie down

Fig. 3 T.

Lie comfortable on your side or stomach. Let your head rest on your arm and put your ear to the ground.

Listen carefully to what you hear underneath. Close your eyes.

Temporarily, we refuse to take part. We can start writing our own laws from scratch. Borders and nations are temporary, moving entities that we can adapt and re-define.

Listen. Do you hear the other autonomous zones shouting out in solidarity with you? Temporarily, you can rise up against that which you don’t agree with. You refuse to move along, to abide, to step aside. You lie down and resist. You barricade the temporary autonomous zone. However brief as it may be. Think of those others that are resisting with you, each for their own reasons, all over the world. You are strong.

11

(Hakim Bey’s voice): Uprising [is a word] used by historians to label failed revolutions. […] By failing […], the up-rising suggests the possibility of a movement outside and beyond the Hegelian spiral of that “progress” which is secretly nothing more than a vicious circle. Realism demands not only that we give up waiting for “the Revolution” but also that we give up wanting it. “Uprising,” yes — as often as possible and even at the risk of violence

Fig. 3 Warsaw

Q.

Listen further into the ground. Listen to the moving earth. The continental plates are shifting.

Africa is slowly moving towards Europe. It will join and form the supercontinent Eufrasia.

Millimeter by millimeter, mountain ridges are forming and borders are changing. The earth underneath you is rising up and you are catching on as a temporary traveler. short pause

T.

Stand up and look around you. short pause to get up

T.

Walk over the square and try to merge with the other people passing by. Try to become invisible. Stand next to a tree or lamppost, sit between people that are resting or copy the walking movements of others. long pause to merge

T.

Look at the other people on the square.

Please find rest of your group, it is important to be within eyesight.

You must see all or most of the group.

Fig. 3 Sofia

12

Look at each other, create a visual connection, this is what the collective looks like, blended in but aware of its existence. Keep looking at each other, 13

pay attention to what the others look like and how they look at you, what they wear, what you think of them.

Now please come closer together. Yes, start walking towards each other so all of you are very close together, don’t be shy you are not strangers. Please stand closer to each other, you are a collective so look like one, stand as close to each other as you can, do not talk to each other.

Feel the body of the collective swarm a little bit - you can poke, (now always spoken with a little pause)

Fig. 4 Amsterdam

Fig. 4

T.

touch, scratch, rub, shake, push Feel the body of the collective.

Stay close together and do not walk away under any condition.

Now please listen carefully.

Now the collective starts walking. Moving forward, with everyone.

Fig. 5

The collective stays together, walks together and has the same direction. You are walking now.

Just walk, but stay together, do not spread, do not disperse, you are the collective.

Walk towards whatever the collective wants to walk to. Remember, stay as close to each other as you can. Feel the will of the collective, keep on moving.

You move as one and you walk as one. Stay together, let the will of the collective find a destination.

Fig. 5 Cluj Napoca

14

Keep on walking, find your own direction. But walk together.

15

Walk a little bit more.

You have walked long enough.

Stop now. Stay together.

Are you stopped?

Do not move.

The collective has stopped.

T.

short pause Determine where you are standing on the square. Are you in the middle or on the edge of the square? If you are on the edge, walk towards the middle.

T. Fig. 6

T.

Pause to walk to middle Stretch out your hands sideways. Hold hands with the others and form a circle.

Fig. 6 Berlin

(20 second pause) Everybody should be part of the circle.

T.

(5 second pause) Move back as far as you can whilst holding hands.

T.

(20 second pause) calm background music Lean backwards, the tension of the circle will hold you.

T.

Q.

16

(15 second pause) How do you feel on this border? Does feeling the skin of two other hands give you more energy?

Slowly start walking sideways to the right side and start to make this circle spin like a planet lost in space.

Fig. 6 Rome

17

T.

(40 second pause) music gets faster

Q.

(Newsreader Voice): “Turkey: Protesters Turn To Street Dancing Protesters hit back at the Prime Minister Erdogan’s description of them as looters and vandals and mark their opposition with peaceful dancing as a form of resistance.

They danced through the night in Taksim Square in what has become a defiant carnival of protest.. Hundreds joined traditional Turkish folkloric dances in the square, while others released paper lanterns into the skies above. Dancing has become a form of protest!”

Please stop turning.

Q.

(Newsreader Voice): People are dancing in the streets in Greece and Turkey, while police target them. They dance to protect one another from the police.

They dance because dance is a suspension of the rhythm of the economy and also the suspension of the rhythm of history.

Fig. 7 Amsterdam

Gently free your hands from each other.

Fig. 7

When you hear a loud Bang, run to the center of the circle.

S.

SOUND EFFECT: Bang!

T.

(5 second pause) Come as close to each other as possible.

Form a concentric mass of bodies.

T.

Fig. 8 T.

18

(15 second pause) Lean against each other and feel the weight of each other. Once you feel a compact and concentric mass of bodies drop together on the ground.

(20 second pause)

Fig. 8 Amsterdam

19

Lie on the ground all together and feel the weight of other bodies.

T.

(20 second pause) Slowly and with the help of your hands stand up. Stretch yourself when you stand. Make sure, you are not entangled anymore with somebody else.

T.

(10 second pause)

S.

SOUND EFFECT: Bang!

Fall back down again

T.

(5 second pause) Slowly stand up, stretch yourself and…

T.

(5 second pause)

S.

SOUND EFFECT: Bang!

Run away from each other. Run as fast as you can, until you reach the most distant point in space you can within this square.

(20 second pause) STOP, Observe each other at a long distance.

T.

short pause You are listening now and you are silent, everything around you is not silent.

There is a lot of noise out there. But you make no noise, you are silent and stay silent throughout the whole exercise, you are not allowed to make any sound.

Now we are in the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

We are roughly in the middle of Professor Vaclav Bělohradský’s lecture,

20

which he called “The Parts Without the Participation”, or “About PostSociety”: (Prof. Vaclav Bělohradský:) What are the four events that we cannot miss out when we want to describe the present times? The first one is the total inefficiency of protests against the political and economic status quo. Protests have the form of some sort of carnivals.

But what characterizes them most is that they have no influence on the system whatsoever.

Q.

Open your mouth, not too wide, not too little, imagine that you are making long and constant sound, but remember that you must stay quiet.

We are just pretending. That is all we do here.

Keep making silent noise.

(Prof. Vaclav Bělohradský:) “Nowadays, we live in a society in which the establishment no longer needs to be legitimate; in which the power no longer seeks any consensus. It is no longer hegemonic, because it does not need symbols..“

Q.

That is good for now, close your lips. Now we will try something harder. Just remember do not make any sound. Yell but make no sound: Yell as much as you can, yell so strong that your face turns red and you run out of breath.

Yell until you cannot anymore.

(Prof. Vaclav Bělohradský:) The protests are in vain because we are obsolete - we use symbols and try to legitimise the system symbolically. But the society is already indifferent to it.

Q.

(Protester’s Voice): The police operation may have scattered the chanting, marching crowds - but we are turning silence and stillness into a new form of resistance. It started on Monday, a man was standing dead still in Taksim Square, hands in his

Q.

21

pockets, staring silently. For five long hours, he simply did not move. We noticed the solitary figure, and decided to follow his example. Erdogan banned demonstrations on Taksim Square, and the government announced that anyone caught protesting there would be treated as a terrorist.

But we were simply standing, saying nothing, and making no demands. Finally, the police dispersed us, quietly.

Find the others and create a barricade with your body.

T.

pause Try to block the walkway together with the barricade.

Q.

(Franco Berardi Bifo’s Voice): Social solidarity is not an ethical or ideological value: it depends on the continuousness of the relation between individuals in time and in space. The material foundation of solidarity is the perception of the continuity of the body in the body, and the immediate understanding of the consistency of my interest and your interest.

Fig. 9 Amsterdam

Maintain the barricade.

Q.

(Newsreader’s Voice): The Platform “stop deshaucios”, an anti-eviction activist group in Spain, prevented the eviction of a 35-year-old woman and her 15-year-old daughter by blocking her doorway to prevent police access. Over 30 people have blocked the door of the building. The eviction was requested

by Banco Sabadell Atlántico.

Do not let anyone pass, unless they are innocent and in distress. Maintain the barricade.

Q.

(Newsreader’s Voice, Attenborough style): A city is a dead structure made by living beings.

Fig. 9

22

The police have just stormed the barricade and injured one of us.

Somebody from the barricade - volunteer to be the injured one. It is not

Fig. 9 London

23

important who it is. Please injured protester, lie on the floor.

The rest of the barricade, lift up the injured protester and take them to the other side of the square. Take care of them before they are trampled!

T.

long pause Gently lay down the injured protester and help them to get up.

T.

short pause Protest rejects a view of the city as a public place where subjects act as private citizens: sitting, strolling, and shopping. Politics is no longer restricted to a particular institution or place, it can be exercised everywhere, whenever citizens come together as citizens and debate the public interest.

Run away, disperse.

Lose the others out of sight.

Run into the side streets of the square.

T.

long pause Stop.

Stand still.

Put your hands in your pockets and look ahead.

T.

short pause Since 2010, there have been protests in over a hundred countries.

Algeria, Arabia, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Catalonia, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Herzegovina, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan,

24

Palestine, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Ukraine, Western Sahara, and the Yemen Approximately 122 000 people have died from injuries sustained at protests around the world in the last 3 years.

No protest is like any other. Each is singular in time and space and in relation to other phenomena.

Protest can be regarded as an almost continuous state of temporary instances, fleeting occurrences in cities, towns and countryside that contest the status-quo, that demand equality and freedom. It could be seen as a state of revolution, of people like you striving to improve the lives that we lead.

We will not attempt to integrate these diverse protests into a unified concept of protest worldwide, but underline that other protests are being planned and executed right now. It might not always be covered by the media, but we should remember that people like us, right now are recovering after being stuck in a police kettle, or being locked in jail, or hit, or killed.

Look around, you are one person in a city, who is taking part in a collective action, which is taking place in 10 cities around Europe. In each of those cities there are people listening, at the same time, to the same thing.

We can’t always see each other, but we know one another is there.

END

A.

25

INTERVIEW An interview about shared references and how to work together.

Questions by Emanuele Guidi and LIGNA (Ole Frahm and Torsten Michaelsen).

Answers by Anna Hoetjes, Jordi Ferreiro, Joanna Von Mayer Trindade, Flaviu Rogojan, Kerri Meehan and Alex Ressel, Alexandre Poisson and Alice Lahana, Roman Štětina, Elisa Abela, Nataliya Todorova, Wojciech Tymicki,

Q: SHAREs is a project that unfolds around the notions of mobilisation, collective actions, protests. Looking at your closer environment (be it your city or your country) and at a more transnational scenario, what are the events and practices that influenced your research during the production?

Elisa: I do not have much interest in macro-political events, so I’ve always looked at personal reactions – for example at the inhabitants of a specific geographic area. Somehow I felt the desire to strongly support the importance of the actions of every single person. I think the positive force of a mass of people often degenerates and turns into something very dangerous, if each of these individuals are not well aware of their motivations, and those of all the others.

Alexandre and Alice: While we started the first workshop in Rome in May 2013 there were massive protests against gay marriage in France. For the first time right wing groups, Catholic movements and conservatives invaded the streets using the same forms of protests developed by the usual protesters, like billboards, songs, walks, space occupation. They used a smokescreen of family values to hide their homophobic motivations and brought their children to the front lines of demonstrations to prevent the police from firing smoke bombs into the crowd. But at the end, the question for us was more philosophical than a reference to a concrete situation.

Kerri and Alex: The privatisation and the growing control of public space in London remains a concern, as local authorities have been selling off large tracts of land to private developers. We saw this come into the fore at the 2011-12 Occupy London protest, originally based in Paternoster Square, the camp was evicted and relocated into the grounds of St Paul’s cathedral, and eventually some other publicly owned, but less visible squares in the city. During the production of Airtime we were very much inspired by the Indignados who created physical barricades with their bodies to prevent evictions after the world-banking crisis in Spain. We wanted to express the power that people create when working together. This was not just a symbolic restaging, but an echo of an act of resistance.

27

Flaviu: The global economic and social crisis of the late 2000s had been unfurling for several years, and in Romania, a country with a numbed, latent population, protests were still a very rare sight. 2012 and 2013 saw the start of a new spark on the local and national scene. Cluj-Napoca, was at the forefront of a protest struggle to save Rosia Montana, an idyllic village and forest covered mountain area from an international gold mining company.

The movement boomed in 2013 after many years of small protests. Solidarity movements started popping up as people got more involved and started seeing the bigger picture. Protests stopped being party funded rallies serving party interests and started to reflect public opinions.

Wojciech: I had rather focused more on collaboration than on a particular event. Warsaw didn’t have many demonstrations that were an inspiration or could have direct influence on our performance. For me the idea of collaboration and collective movement was the most interesting and inspiring subject that I was drawn to.

Nataliya: I was directly inspired by two mass protest mobilisations in Bulgaria: the environmentalist movement in the summer of 2012 against privatisation of national parks and the nationwide protests against electricity price hikes that brought down the government.

What was common to these protests was the rejection of traditional political parties trying to mobilise “the people” and/or “the citizens” against the corrupt elite of the politicians, and thus calling for the construction of new institutions, enabling more direct citizen participation in governance. What was key to me is how the commonalities translated into shared practices, aesthetic forms and repertoires of contention. For instance, temporary occupations of public space, street blockades, sit-ins, minor clashes with the police, forging temporary autonomy against the perceived corruption of “the system”.

Jordi: In Spain we have a strong artist movement participating in political parades and events. I was inspired by “Los reflectantes”, Nuria Güell and “Los Iaioflautas”. My work often features crowds and large groups of people as participants, so you could say that collective action is part of my discourse.

28

Anna: It seems to me that there has been a kind of protest-paralysis in western society. At least in the Netherlands I feel this is the case. It was interesting to compare situations in different European countries. In each country there is a feeling of the uselessness of protest, but there are also always small instances, movements and ideas that show the power of public action. Reading texts by Bifo Berardi, Irit Rogoff, Hakim Bey, Václav Bělohradský and others have helped us formulate critical thoughts and think of social urgency in a different way. On the other hand protests in Turkey, Brazil and Greece, or more tragically in Syria, the Middle-East and North Africa, also strongly influenced the research and enabled us to generate some productive physical action in the end.

Joana: Looking at the inefficiency of many current protests and their inability to produce any effective change or impact, I got very much interested in ways of protesting that could both be more silent and more disturbing. A silent mass made of many individual humans just doing, just being there, just present.

Roman: -----------------------------------! ! !

PROTESTS ! !

ARE ! !

INEFFICIENT !

-----------------------------------o o o o o

29

Q: And what are the challenges, the urgent issues and the positive aspects you felt it was important to stress in your contribution to the production of the action AIRTIME? Flaviu: My contribution focuses on the creation of space through collective movement. Movement, direction and perspective defines new spaces.

Through collective movement you can open up a space for protesters, for dialogue or disruption. While this space is mostly thought to be inclusive, I wanted to point out that even the most open and inclusive movements still exclude and set borders.

Natalyia: What I found particularly challenging is the evaluation of the efficiency of various forms of protest, asking myself constantly what are the exact connections between the aesthetic form of action and its result. When we observe mobilisations of protest we often ask ourselves the question what would be best for the protesters to do next? Should they occupy this or that square, should they block this or that street, should they clash with the police or should they step back?

I found it important to introduce this kind of spontaneous reflection on protest forms into the AIRTIME action, to imagine that ‘if we really were directing a group of protestors, what would we ask them to do?’ To think about what would be truly effective. Moreover, I did not want to stay at this level of external reflection, but also wanted to introduce it to the participants. The AIRTIME action was, in a sense, a way to direct participant’s actions, to manipulate their bodies. But I asked myself the question: What if we direct them in a way that stimulates internal inspection, self-reflection and self-consciousness?

Anna: Unification and change occur on different levels in a digital age than during the baby-boomer generation, for example. Relations and connections are more spread out and complex. I think it’s important to change the perception of how protest is effective. For me it has been inspiring to think that there is this huge potential for uprising, but not in the way that people are used to thinking of it. There is this fragment from Hakim Bey that I used at some point, about how we should stop waiting for a revolution, but engage in uprisings as much as we can, over and over again. There will not be one 30

solution for our problems, because we will always have to keep re-defining problems and solutions. Charlotte Rooijackers and I, who worked together in the beginning here in Amsterdam, talked a lot about borders, earth and transgressing celebrations, and how these notions gather completely different meanings when we shift our sense of time. This is how we brought in the part about the celebration of the moving tectonic plates. It has also been a challenge to combine theoretical thoughts and a more direct physical experience.

Working with a group of people wearing headphones in public space means that you are working with text, instructions, sound, performance and architecture. Both participants and passers-by become audience and performers at the same time, but they have a completely different experience.

Joana: Finding ways for the body to gain such a presence and force that there is no need to shout slogans or to do empty speeches. The body contains knowledge to be explored, and that can be used to pierce through difficult and impossible phases of society /history. Like the ones we are going through.

Q: You have been working with twelve other artists from ten different countries on one collective project. What do you feel is important to share about this process of transposition from local to the transnational (both critical and positive points)?

Elisa: The consciousness, that in order to exist and act, we need to create direct contact and relationships with other people, the distance can be defined as concrete ‘’ common space’’.

I found this collective creative process to be very fruitful.

I have experienced what it means to have a brain consisting of twelve brains. it was very fun and exciting, but also laborious to metabolise so much intelligence and so many mental reflections.

Alexandre and Alice: The project, in gathering artists from different places and inviting them to meet in « neutral spaces » created a new place with specific codes, the addition of individualities constituted a panorama that gave us the opportunity to face the scale in which we developed a project.

31

Kerri and Alex: We were a microcosm of different backgrounds and cultural attitudes, and what was interesting was the consensus and dissensus that formed in the group around different parts of working together. For example, standing still could be a defiant act in Taksim Square, but in Wenceslas Square it might be more suggestive of apathy as Professor Velohradsky mentioned in his lecture about the futility of symbolic protest, that Roman contributed to the project. The antagonisms were at times unsettling, but reflect the inclusive nature of this collective action and the open debates within protest around the world. On the day of the performance, we each led the action in our city, it was an empowering feeling to know that you are taking part in something that is happening at exactly the same time across a continent. We can’t always see each other, but we know one another is there.

Wojciech: Tossing twelve artists in one pot with the idea of creating something together was a very risky idea, and in the end we all had to give up on some of ours ideas and came to a compromise that might not be satisfying for all of us. The process of creation even though it was very hard and painstaking was a great experience. We were collective not only during the performance but during the workshops.

Jordi: I think it was crucial to see the different perspectives from different countries about the economical crisis. The way global phenomena affect different regions and the artists operating there.

Flaviu: Although each participant came from a unique background, from countries that each have a unique mix of problems, shared objectives were still found, that somehow transcended borders. On the other hand, one can always argue that as protest tries to change things at a larger scale, it loses grip on the local, and can become foreign to the people of the city. I think we Romanians at least are still not fully aware of our status as European citizens, and thus see transnational protests more like a solidarity movement for foreigners that have some issue far far away.

Roman: -----------------------------------! ! !

ART ! !

SHOULD STAY ! !

LOCAL  ! !   !

-----------------------------------o o o o o

32

33

AIRTIME is part of the project SHAREs – Informing Transnational Action Organizer and Curator: Emanuele Guidi Produced by European Alternatives With the support of the Culture Program of the European Commission and the Allianz Kulturstiftung.

SHAREs has been kindly supported by: DEPO (Istanbul); MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art (Roma); Teatro Valle (Roma) DAZ, Deutsches Architektur Zentrum (Berlin); Red House (Sofia).

A special thanks goes to all the artists, advisors and the activists of Transeuropa Festival.

More Information on www.transeuropafestival.eu and www.euroalter.com

Back image: Air Time, Warsaw

35

36