<font style="font-family: tahoma,sans-serif;" size="1">apologise for cross-posting</font><br><div class="gmail_quote"><font style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:tahoma,sans-serif" size="1"><br>________________________________________<br>
<br>Drifting Identity | 12 October - 5 November 2011<br>
</font><font style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;color:rgb(0, 0, 0)" size="1"> Opening: 11 October, 19.00 pm<br>
Project curator: Stefan Rusu<br> <br>
Participating artists:<br> Marina Naprushkina<br> Kristap Gulbis<br>
Stefanos Tsivopoulos<br> Societe Realiste (Ferenc Gróf and Jean-Baptiste Naudy)<br> Tilmann Mayer-Faje<br> <br> Seminars and workshops: DRIFTING IDENTITY STATION by Gülsen Bal and Stefan Rusu<br> Location: Institut für Kunst und Gestaltung, TU Wien<br>
11 - 18 October 2011<br> <br> Round table talk/discussion: De-linking, de-coloniality by Marina Gržinić<br> Location: Open Space, Open Systems<br> 3 November 2011, 19.00 – 20.30 pm<br> <br>
The Drifting Identity Station uses a model of former Soviet Polar
Stations, which was a trend in the 50's to explore the arctic
environment while experiencing extreme cold. Station operates in the
harsh climate associated with “political winter,” while researchers
interested in the socio-political environment by deploying various
devices and methodologies in order to collect and monitor the data that
is relevant to the given context. While exploring the frozen landscape,
researchers analyze old trajectories (derived<br> from the former USSR
political construct and a new formation in European Union progress) to
identify what characterizes the mapping of states and identities in an
attempt to determinate the intensity and temperature of the political
debates connected to ongoing process of EU enlargement. The process of
formation of European Union have polarized the issue of the identity of
the states and its inhabitants in certain contexts.<br> The underlying
idea of National Costume of the European Union developed by Kristap
Gulbis is a starting point for a debate concerning the identity within a
European context and the adjustability of various EU directives and
regulations to its historically and mentally diversified regions.
Belarus in figures by Marina Naprushkina is part of of a larger
initiative Office for Anti-Propaganda is focused on the critical
examination of the contemporary Belarus state which is authoritarian
ruled by Alexander Lukashenko; The opposition is oppressed and
marginalized, the media are brought into line. Because of this
circumstances Belarus is also an outstanding example of how to establish
a modern dictatorship and how the western democracies handle this case.
Lost Monument by Stefanos Tsivopoulos takes upon a controversial
monument, a statue of former American president Harry S. Truman located
in downtown Athens that appears as though it were a still unidentified
archaeological find. The Truman Doctrine shifted American foreign
policy toward the Soviet Union and historians often use it to mark the
starting date of the Cold War. Societe Realiste (Ferenc Gróf and
Jean-Baptiste Naudy) shows two maps extracted from the collection London
View. One is a map superimposing the political frontiers that existed
at the turn of each century between year 0 and year 2000 on the European
peninsula and its surroundings. The other graphic is a colorimetric map
of European segmentations, where every single portion of land divided
between these frontiers has been associated to a specific taint,
averaging their respective trans-historical surrounding frontiers.
Dulcification Measure by Tilmann Mayer-Faje examines how people nowadays
live in the huge skeleton of the industrialized urbanization that took
place in the Soviet time and analyze how the functions of micro district
could be transformed to the contemporary life and needs of the
inhabitants. While reproducing the ornaments as they where stamped on
the houses in order to indicate a local identity, he plays with the
failure of this machinery.<br> The Drifting Identity Station is
initiated as a research platform to monitor and preserve the data
related to the evolving state of identity in a given context, here in
the context of European Union and the countries of Baltic region and
neighboring countries of the Eastern Partnership (Belarus, Ukraine,
Republic of Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan). Visual art
projects and other contributions that will be on display in the Station
comment on the evolution<br> of the social engineering project of
European Union, as a political construct in progress and the political
identity of the neighboring countries at its current state. At the same
time the artists assume the posture of researchers that collect the
samples from the field in order to preserve the residual traces that
rearticulate the post-socialist condition. The area of research is
extended to Mediterranean region that most recently become a fertile
ground for the export of European democracy.<br> <br> About curator:<br> <br>Stefan Rusu<br>
<br>Stefan’s artist and curatorial agenda is closely connected to
undergoing processes and changes occurred in the post-socialist
societies after 1989. Among his preoccupations are the aspects of
mass-manipulation techniques, political engineering strategies
(political engineering), forms of colonization and culturalization that
culminated in some cases with the construction of artificial entities,
as it is the case of Republic of Moldova. Rusu was trained as visual
artist and later extended his practice to curating, managing and
fundraising projects, editing TV programs, producing experimental films,
TV reports and documentaries. <br> <br> Starting from the year 2000 he
is involved in the evolution of KSAK Center for Contemporary Art from
Chisinau where he develops curatorial projects and art
initiatives. In 2005/2006 he attended the Curatorial Training Program at
Stichting De Appel from Amsterdam where he co-curated Mercury in
Retrograde (<a href="http://mercuryinretrograde.deappel.nl/" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank"><span>http://mercuryinretrograde</span><span></span>.deappel.nl/</a>). His latest curatorial project (completed in 2011) is
CHISINAU - Art, Research in the Public Sphere – a cross-disciplinary
platform that investigated the connections between political and
cultural symbols and propaganda and its impact on the urban environment,
the interferences between personal narratives and imported ideologies
and cultural discourses in relation to the public sphere. The project
aim was to explore the dominant institutional and political discourses
that have shaped the society and the urban landscape of the city of
Chisinau in the course of its recent history. (<a href="http://www.art.md/2010/sfera_publica_prezentare_en.html" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank"><span>http://www.art.md/2010/sfe</span><span></span><span>ra_publica_prezentare_en.h</span><span></span>tml</a>)<br>
<br> Seminars and workshops: DRIFTING IDENTITY STATION<br> Institut für Kunst und Gestaltung, TU Wien<br> <br> 11 - 18 October 2011<br> Seminars and workshops by Dr Gülsen Bal and Stefan Rusu<br> Language: English<br>
<br>
Location:<br> Institut für Kunst und Gestaltung, Karlsgasse 11, Hochparterre, Seminarraum 2, 1040 Wien</font><font style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:tahoma,sans-serif" size="1"><br>
<br></font><font style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;color:rgb(0, 0, 0)" size="1">
</font><p style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;color:rgb(0, 0, 0)" class="MsoNormal"><font size="1">Based on collaborative project work, Dr Gülsen Bal and
Stefan Rusu will offer a joint course in the Visual Culture programme at Vienna
University of Technology. In the first leg of the course, Bal, the founding
director of Open Space will introduce the current field of contemporary
artistic engagement with changing spatial and cultural realities. The second
leg will comprise a four-days workshop with the artist/curator Rusu, including
lectures, discussions and conceptual designs. Bal's contention resides in line
with Deleuzian reading by exploring the problem posed by an insistence on the
productive nature of theory in an understanding in which “the concept is not
given, it is created, or to be created; it is not formed, it posits itself in
itself [...] The two imply each other, since what is truly created, from the
living thing to the work of art [...] The more the concept is created, the more
it posits itself. What depends on a free creative activity is also what posits
itself in itself.” This introduces perhaps a call for an expanded notion of
what art practice<br></font></p><font style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;color:rgb(0, 0, 0)" size="1">
</font><font style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;color:rgb(0, 0, 0)" size="1"> Along side, Rusu aims to
explore the residual traces that re-articulates the post-socialist
condition of the societies that are EU members (Estonia, Lithuania,
Latvia, etc.) as well as very recently integrated ones (Romania,
Bulgaria) to EU in which what happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall
and the dissolution of Soviet Union within the given context. His
approach is based on his recent artist and curatorial projects that
explores the political dimension of the public space as well the use of
habitat as a platform for democratization of the cultural discourse in the public sphere of</font><font style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;color:rgb(0, 0, 0)" size="1"> post-socialist societies</font><font style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;color:rgb(0, 0, 0)" size="1">.<br>
<br> Supported by:<br> bm:ukk<br> MA 7 - Interkulturelle und internationale Aktivitäten<br> ERSTE Foundation<br> European Cultural Foundation (ECF), STEP beyond<br> Mondriaan Foundation<br> kind support provided by:<br>
University of Vienna - Department of Meteorology and Geophysics<br>
cyberlab - Digitale Entwicklungen GmbH<br> In Cooperation with Institut für Kunst und Gestaltung, TU Wien<br> <br> About Open Space, Open Systems:<br> <br> Open Friday, Saturday 13.00 - 18.30 and open for the rest of the week days by appointment only.<br>
Admission free<br> Open Space, Open Systems<br> Zentrum für Kunstprojekte<br> Lassingleithnerplatz 2<br> A- 1020 Vienna<br> Austria<br> <a href="tel:%28%2B43%29%20699%20115%20286%2032" value="+4369911528632" target="_blank">(+43) 699 115 286 32</a><br>
<br> for more info: <a href="mailto:office@openspace-zkp.org" target="_blank">office@openspace-zkp.org</a><br>
<a href="http://www.openspace-zkp.org/" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank"><span>http://www.openspace-zkp.o</span><span></span>rg/</a><br> <br>
Open Space, 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<br> improving improving new approach.</font><p style="margin:0.1pt 0cm;font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;color:rgb(0, 0, 0)"><font size="1"><span> </span></font></p>
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