[spectre] Exhibition announcement: „Mapping Mobilities" | 5 June, 19.00 pm

[Open Space]

° *Mapping Mobilities *| 6 June - 7 July, 2012



Opening: 5 June, 19.00



Project curator: Christine Takengny



Participating artists:



Michael Hieslmair / Michael Zinganel

Gulnara Kasmalieva / Muratbek Djumaliev

Esther Polak / Ivar van Bekkum



‘Cartography is the signifying practice of both location and identity, a
mode of writing through which we can uncover a set of general laws. Much of
the argument I am making regarding the un-mapping, re-mapping and
counter-cartographies to be found within contemporary art practices
revolves around the structures and signifying systems by which knowledge is
organised and conveyed.’

Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma, Geography’s Visual Culture, p. 73



The exhibition *Mapping Mobilities* presents six international artists who
develop new and experimental approaches to mapping to explore questions
around mobility, displacement and migration.



Using film, installation, print and audio Gulnara Kasmalieva/Muratbek
Djumaliev, Esther Polak/Ivar van Bekkum and Michael Hieslmair/Michael
Zinganel blur the boundaries between art and scientific mapping to
challenge the authority of official maps and their role in the nexus of
power knowledge. Their mappings develop alternative visions on currently
pressing socio-economic and geo-political global issues such as
transnational migration, spatial implications of global commerce, border
policies and the digitalisation of geographical information, thereby
discrediting the grand narratives of history in favor of a focus on
everyday lives, individual journeys and personal narratives.



Globalisation has dramatically changed our experience of space. It seems
that the static, two-dimensional map no longer adequately reflects the
constantly shifting world we live in and the global networks that migratory
experience produces. *Mapping Mobilities *questions the traditional map as
an objective representation of the ‘real’, aiming to present
counter-cartographies that draw attention to what is often left off the
map, by exposing the fragmentations and inconsistencies of transitional
spaces in the age of migration.



The power of the map long resided in its function as a ‘fixed’
representation of the world. Today digital technologies such as GIS allow
us to produce mobile, more fluid and democratic spatial information. The
artists in *Mapping Mobilities *engage with mapping as a process-oriented,
collective practice from different perspectives. Interested in questions of
power, identity and place they chart not only geographic realities but
thought processes relating to other disciplines such as colonial
imperialism, urbanism and global economy, offering new potential for
shaping contemporary experiences of space.



*Artist information: *

* *

*Michael Hieslmair / Michael Zinganel*

*Exit St. Pankraz,* 2007-2011

Mixed Media installation, dimensions variable

* *

Michael Hieslmair’s and Michael Zinganel*’*s* EXIT St. Pankraz* (2007) maps
a motorway service center located in Upper Austria as a hub where streams
of mobility and transnational migration routes intersect. Post-war
commercial development, increasing traffic and the extension of the road
network has gradually transformed the motorway at the end of the Alps into
one of the most important trans-national and trans-Alpine north-south
connections in Europe. The route is known as the ‘guest worker route’,
stretching from Holland and Germany to the states of former Yugoslavia and
Turkey. The installation *EXIT St. Pankraz* consists of interviews with
staff, regular customers and people who stopped at the motorway service
center in the course of their travels. Their individual stories track the
political, social and commercial changes within Europe, reflecting issues
such as the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Yugoslavian crisis or the
situation of ‘guest-workers’ in Europe. Initially co-produced with Maruša
Sagadin and presented on site, the exhibition *Mapping Mobilities* at Open
Systems 2012 will showcase a site-specific installation of *EXIT St. Pankraz
*.

* *

*Gulnara Kasmalieva */ *Muratbek Djumaliev*

*A New Silk Road: Algorithm of Survival and Hope*, 2007

Photograpy, dimension variable

Courtesy of Laura Bulian Gallery

* *

Kasmalieva's and Djuamaliev's project *A New Silk Road: Algorithm of
Survival and Hope*,* *which was commissioned by the Art Institute of
Chicago, consists of a 5-channel video and a series of photographs mapping
the local impact of today's global economies along the remains of the
Central Asian Silk Road. *Mapping Mobilities* will present a selection of
photographs that document the new reality of this ancient trade route that,
after the fall of the Iron Curtain, has become a cross-road for the
economic and political interests of Russia, China and the United States.

Shot along the Silk Road in Kyrgyzstan, the images capture derelict
Soviet-lorries as they haul carriages of rusting iron from Central Asia
into China, juxtaposed by the caravans of shiny, large Chinese 18-wheelers
that, barrelling through the narrow passes in the opposite direction, are
loaded with cheaply manufactured mass goods destined for the European
markets.

Along the way, entrepreneurial residents of small Kyrgyz farms and
poverty-stricken tiny towns creatively embark on this new road of commerce,
economically exchanging with and benefiting from both sets of trucks.****


*Esther Polak / Ivar van Bekkum *

*NomadicMilk*, 2007 - 2010

Mixed-Media Installation, size variable


**

**Today traditional cartographic normative and codes are challenged through
GPS and GIS, new fluid and democratic mapping strategies that are able to
situate the individual in the complex network of relations within and
between communities and places. Esther Polak’s and Ivar van Bekkum's
project *NomadicMilk* (2009) tracks the daily routes and spatial
intersections of two milk related economies in Nigeria with GPS: the routes
of the Fulani, nomadic herdsmen who move with their cattle in annual
migrations in search of water, food and markets and the distribution
networks of PEAK milk, a Dutch company whose condensed milk cans and milk
powder sachets are available on every street corner in Nigeria. The
*NomadicMilk’s
*project was thoroughly documented online in a weblog, and has known many
different presentation variations. At Open Systems the website is presented
together with 12 mono-prints that depict specific milk routes.
**



*         supported by*:

* *

BM:UKK

MA 7 - Interkulturelle und Internationale Aktivitäten

Mondriaan Foundation



*kind support provided by*

* *

toolsatwork

* *

*
*

*About us:*

Open Friday, Saturday 13.00 - 18.30 and open for the rest of the week days
by appointment only. Admission free.

* *

*Open Systems *

Zentrum für Kunstprojekte

Lassingleithnerplatz 2

A- 1020 Vienna

Austria



(+43) 699 115 286 32



for more info: office at openspace-zkp.org <office at openspace-zkp.org>



http://www.openspace-zkp.org



*Open Systems* - Zentrum für Kunstprojekte aims to create the most vital
facilities for art concerned with contributing a model strategy for
cross-border and interregional projects on the basis of improving new
approach.

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