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10/10/2011

Drifting Identity Station

Open Space - Zentrum fur Kunstprojekte, Wien

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 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.

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. Société Réaliste (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 analyse 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.

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 neighbouring 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 of the social engineering project of European Union, as a political construct in progress and the political identity of the neighbouring 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 re-articulate 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.

Participating artists:
Marina Naprushkina
Kristap Gulbis
Stefanos Tsivopoulos
Société Réaliste (Ferenc Gróf and Jean-Baptiste Naudy)
Tilmann Mayer-Faje

Project curator: Stefan Rusu

Seminars and workshops: DRIFTING IDENTITY STATION by Gulsen Bal and Stefan Rusu
Location: Institut für Kunst und Gestaltung, TU Wien
11 - 18 October 2011
Language: English

Round table talk/discussion: De-linking, de-coloniality by Marina Gržinić
Location: Open Space, Open Systems
3 November 2011, 19.00 – 20.30 pm
Language: English

Opening: October 11, 19pm

Open Space - Zentrum fur Kunstprojekte
Lassingleithnerplatz 2 - Wien
Hours: Friday, Saturday 13.00 - 18.30 and open for the rest of the week days by appointment only.
Admission free

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