[spectre] Migrant Navigator / Home project . Darko Fritz

[fritzd@chello.nl]

. announcement
. Home project . Darko Fritz

. 01 - 15. 11. 2002 . posters at billboards close to Croatian borders
. 01 - 04. 11. 2002 . posters at billboards in Zagreb

. 31 . 10. 2002 . 12 h . Migrant Navigator project presentation @ mama . Preradoviceva  18 . Zagreb . participants: Darko Fritz [artist] . Iva R. Jankovic [Motel Jezevo] . Leila Topic [Motel Jezevo]



. Migrant Navigator project . Darko Fritz
. http://artefact.mi2.hr/migrant/navigator.htm


How many people living at the places they were born? The Migrant Navigator project deals with the issue of migration, the notions of home, identity and nostalgia. It consists of three parts:

  . Home - poster project
  . The Future of Nostalgia - flower installation
  . illegal immigrants dis.information - on-line project


. illegal immigrants dis.information . on-line project since April 2002

Recently is included at low-fi list [http://www.low-fi.org.uk] where is described: <We are lead into 'home' by repeated iconography of the home button from Netscape including a fantastic page where the icon has grown to a square meter. Once you get beyond the 'home' icon, this 'dis.informative' site about illegal immigration issues was built by '[mis]using TraceNoizer software'. This process renders pages which are less than helpful and a sort of representation of confused and second hand information. The project develops to question notions of home and displacement.>
illegal immigrants dis.information is listed at Open clone projects by TraceNoizer. [http://www.tracenoizer.org]
Included works by: Netscape, Jo van der Spek, TraceNoizer, Kein Mensch is Illegal


. The Future of Nostalgia . Jun - October 2002

The 'home' icon was planted as a 9 x 9 meter flower bed at the city park close to railway station in Linz, Austria. This work is part of the Talking the City project.


. Home . 1 - 15 . 11 . 2002

3 x 4 meter posters with a black/silver Home button icon only are displayed at the commercial billboards close to Croatian borders.
1 - 5. 11. 2002. posters will be displayed at billboards in Zagreb as well. Billboards locations: railway station, main city square and Savska Street.
This work is part of the Jezevo Motel project.


---
darko.fritz.propaganda . http://members.ams.chello.nl/fritzd 
---




THE JEZEVO MOTEL PROJECT

Participating artists: Hsyein Alptekin (TUR), Olaf Arndt & BBM (GER), Maja Bajevic' (BIH), Miroslaw Baka (PL), Jovan Balov (MK), Sokol Beqiri (K), Luchezar Boyadjiev (BUG), Boris Cvjetanovic' (HR), Tanja Dabo (HR), Danica Dakic' (BIH), Uros Duric' (YU), Vadim Fishkin (RUS), Darko Fritz (HR), Ghazel (IRR), Grady Gerbracht (USA), Igor Grubic' (HR), Aleksandar Battista Ilic' (HR), IRWIN (SLO), Sanja Ivekovic' (HR), S(ejla Kameric' (BIH), Shalva Khakhanashvili (GEO), Ivana Keser (HR), Svebor Kranjc (HR), Andreja Kuluncic' (HR), Anton Lederer & Margharette Makovec (A), Kristina Leko (HR), Pia Lindman (USA), Marko Lulic (A), Dalibor Martinis (HR), Dan Oki (HR), Tanja Ostojic' (YU), Bertha Jottar Palenzuela (USA), Danica Phelps (USA), Marjetica Potrc (SLO), Oliver Ressler & Martin Krenn (A), Sandra Sterle (HR), Nedko Solakov (BUL), Nebojsa Seric' Soba (BIH), Slaven Tolj (HR), Milica Tomic' (YU), Luca Vitone (I), Manuela Vladic' (HR), Zelimir Zilnik (YU).

Curators, critics, theorists involved in the project: Carlos Basualdo, Nada Beros, Boris Buden, Ana Devic', Zoran Eric', Branko Franceschi, Markita Franulic', Marina Grzinic', Natasa Ilic', Silva Kalcic', Zelimir Koscevic', Dejan Krsic', Shkelzen Maliqi, Suzana Milevska, Tihomir Milovac, Rastko Mocnik, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Zarko Paic', Sabina Sabolovic', Branka Stipancic', Leila Topic', Nevena Tudor, Iva R. Jankovic.


At the end of the nineties, newspaper articles about Jezevo, that is, the Reception Centre for Foreigners, a waiting-room of the detention centre type for illegal migrants from the whole world, appeared occasionally and unobtrusively in the local press. At the beginning of summer 2000, the theme of Jezevo intruded all by itself into the consciousness of a small group of artists, curators and critics from Zagreb. We had no doubt whatsoever about the question of "why Jezevo?", but for months we had acrimonious discussions about the methods, manners, objectives... agreeing at the end, in line with the aspiration to start off an artistic project based on the work-in-progress principle, that the ideas and the approaches would necessarily and unremittingly be formed through concrete and common work. <http://artefact.mi2.hr/web/pix/project_jezevo_paper.jpg>
...
Several thousand migrants a year go through Jezevo, the number of them constantly rising. In 2001 the motel got an annexe to meet at least partially the growing needs - now Jezevo can take about 180 people a day. In four years, about 4,000 illegal migrants have passed through Jezevo. They come from some fifty countries, and about 84% of them are men, 12% are women and 4% children. However, the statistics are still more relentless: in 2000, more than half a million illegal migrants entered the EU, only in Croatia more than 23,000 being arrested. There is hardly a border crossing in Croatia at which illegals are not arrested.
...
Jezevo is just one of the many reception centres of illegal immigrants along the borders of Fortress Europe. Unlike that in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, in Bosanski Petrovac, which can receive up to 2000 people a day, in hard facilities or in tents, where the problems are exacerbated and the contrasts of black and white dominant, in Jezevo everything is in shades and transitions.
We decided on Jezevo as the real and symbolic point of departure for a multimedia and multidisciplinary project, the Jezevo Motel, for several reasons. At first glance we were intrigued by the form and one-time function of the building in interaction with its current purpose. The motel building is a typical example of the way modernist architecture was brought down to ground in the former Yugoslavia in late socialism. The modest prefabricated building is an excellent witness of the economy and aesthetics of a time, and of the general belatedness of "peripheral structures", in which the great ideas from the world are facilely accepted and still faster watered down, but still have a remarkable ability to survive, to be transformed and take on new substance. The Jezevo Motel then is a metaphor for life on the periphery, at the darkling edge of things. A motel, of course, always symbolises transit and motion. But its guests, the stowaways, the wretched of the Third World, the Rom
 anians, Iranians, Turks, Yugoslavs, Iraqis, Moldavians, Albanians, Macedonians, Tunisians, and those from even more distant lands like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, China, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Zaire, Afghanistan?. are stopped here, held, before their movement, this time forcible, continues in an unwanted way - into the neighbouring state from which they illegally crossed the border. This is not the end however. Their journeys continue "across seven seas and seven mountains", setting up, in spite of their wishes, a big domino effect of successive deportations from one country to another, until they arrive at their point of origin, where they are most often awaited by an impoverished and disappointed family, quite frequently by jail, and sometimes the death penalty.
We are convinced that no one can be left unmoved by this domino effect, like the butterfly effect. <http://artefact.mi2.hr/web/pix/project_jezevo_paper2.jpg>
In the ambivalence of movement, forced halting and sojourning, and then again of unwanted movement, it is also possible to recognize symbolic figures of civilization such as the Wandering Jew or Sisyphus, but also the paradigm of lasting un-ease that defines the artist per se. For after all, but not last of all, illegal migrants in many ways resemble the world of the contemporary arts: that large international fraternity, ever at the edge of existence, on the edge of the laws, often placed in a ghetto in a society that is profit-oriented, is ever in motion, ever dissatisfied, searching for the as yet untried, ready to put everything it has on the roll of the dice.
Hence there is no wonder that the many artists, critics and theorists who have joined us have seen a new "ethics of solidarity" at work in the Jezevo Motel project.
The Jezevo Motel, started off in summer 2000, is an independent, low-budget project by local and international artists, critics, curators and theoreticians, developing while bypassing establishment cultural institutions and guaranteed sources of financing. 
Since the project is conceived as work-in-progress the list of participants is constantly growing and being added to. For objective circumstances, many of these will never have the opportunity to be in Jezevo. Their participation in the project is based on the experience of similar problems in their own societies, and on theoretical and media acquaintance with the problem area. A large number of the artists, on the other hand, carry out their ideas, and will do so, in direct work with the Jezevo migrants, the process of mutual learning doubtless having a therapeutic effect for both sides (Boris Cvjetanovic', Dalibor Martinis, Andreja Kuluncic', Kristina Leko, Manuela Vladic', Hsyein Alptekin Pia Lindman, Grady Gerbract, Danica Phelps, Roman Ondak, Marko Lulic, Darko Fritz, Shalva Khakhanashvili, Nedko Solakov, Uros Duric'?). Some of the works included in the project were created ostensibly independently of Jezevo (if we forget the lesson about the domino-effect) but are witho
 ut any doubt spiritual kin to the Jez(evo Motel, for which reason we have called on a number of artists to get involved in the project with works that already exist (Zelimir Zilnik, Tanja Ostojic', Marjetica Potrc, Tanja Dabo, Roman Ondak, Sokol Beqiri, Oliver Ressler and Martin Kren, Anton Lederer and Margarethe Makovec, Sandra Sterle and Danica Dakic', Aleksandar Battista Ilic'?)
Alongside the continued sequence of artistic workshops and encounters at Jezevo, where during spring and summer 2001 the greatest number of works (photographic, film and video, drawing and painting workshops) will be accomplished, the Jezevo Motel projects will be available to the general public on the pages of art-e-fact, on the pages of local papers and journals, and in the public areas of cities - posters, neon lights, and in shop windows, at info-points, in travel agencies and in hotels.

http://artefact.mi2.hr/web/frameset.htm

-------
-------
-------
-------

to unsubscribe from darko.fritz.propaganda mailing list please sent mail NO MORE PROPAGANDA to: fritz.d@chello.nl

-------