Nomadic Structures

Artist as Res(iden)t

2007-12-20T21:56:00.000+01:00

In their reflection on the structure of residencies Hito Steyerl and Boris Buden develop some critical thoughts on relations, representation and public sphere I want to share with you who have experienced residencies in Brussels and elsewhere:

(...)

Mobilisation

Lets now unfold the first aspect of the dynamic of residency: the aspect of deterritorialization. Residencies create trans-national sets of relations: like space stations for upwardly mobile self-entrepreneurs they function as accelerators for self-marketing and as training grounds for the lifestyle of highly mobile cultural operators. They shape slightly eccentric subjectivities, which are perfectly aligned to the rhythm of global cultural industries. Residencies are an integral part of those industries, whose ideology is one of competition, relentless creativity and almost mandatory openness to cooperation and mobility. This is the material reality for many artists in a certain stage of their professional life, and it is set within a certain limbo. Because there is hardly any way to jointly influence those conditions of production, to organise or to change them. Just as St. Paul´s rest is at the mercy of God, this secular rest is at the mercy of immigration agencies, employers, commissioners, curators. Colleagues are usually always already competitors. There is no union, no lobby, no party, no parliament, no embassy, no delegates, not even priests or shepherds to take up the case of this constituency. Although it works on and with representation, it is not represented or even representable. In addition, there is hardly any public debate, which might discuss or even attempt to organise these trans-national forms of the common. Organisations like the French „Intermittents du spectacle“, which campaigned for better conditions for precarious cultural workers thus invariably focus on the nation state as the exclusive target of their claims and face the danger of becoming entangled in protectionist and conservative rhetoric. On the other hand there are no forms of organisation either, which could keep up with the fluid and extremely volatile characteristics of the rest. The rest is stubbornly individual, it is connected, but not in permanence. No stable mass can be forged out of this constituency, and no coordinated movement either, since its members all move into different directions. It constantly changes its internal composition, as well as its external appearance. It is mean, charming, treacherous, brave and eagerly participates in its own exploitation.

Moreover, the type of production within artist residencies has been radically altered. This type of production is very contemporary in the sense that its results are not primarily products or objects but in fact relations between people. While artists may or may not produce art works, this is quite unimportant for many types of residency. The „product“ which is expected is performative, not object-based: it implies the creation of relations, of communication, of networks. Thus „residency work“ belongs to a type of affective and symbolic labour, which is becoming increasingly important today. It consists of meetings, greetings, small talk, exchange of e-mail addresses, networking, in short it is in a sense political work already – without any other consequences then replicating itself. The relational „product“ is the creation of a networked space, which sustains, changes and enlarges itself gradually. It is created by a sort of labour, which is no longer separated from an autonomous sphere of politics but has pervaded it. „Residency work“ thus closely resembles sex work, care work, or other feminised form of so-called reproductive labour. That artistic labour is not far from prostitution has been clear since the days of the bohème. But at no point has this connection become more substantial than now, when the artist no longer paints the prostitute in order to conceal that he is a prostitute himself, but when he or she engages in the production of affectivity on all conceivable levels. Especially within a constellation of contemporary art, in which the creation of relation and sensation is the main product expected from artists. Even though the superstructure of residencies is clearly formatted in national categories, the production, which takes place there is directly subjected to the conditions of a global market, where affect, sensation and relation have become some of the most coveted commodities. The artistic practice is now the sustainance of the residency itself with all of its conditions of structural precarity. This leaves artists in a weird position. They are themselves the creators of their own conditions of existence: temporal and spatial fragmentation, and structural insecurity.
(…)
But let’s ask now: to what public space belongs an artist in residence? It seems very easy to answer this question as long as we imagine a trans-national public space as a sort of mechanical extension of a national public. But the condition of residency – as we have indicated above – doesn’t simply displace the public space of artist’s national origin, nor does it simply enlarge the residential public space in terms of adding to it some sort of trans-national quality. Its impact is much deeper. It hybridizes both public spaces and blurs the very boundary between them, thus between a national and a trans-national public space. Moreover, it makes almost all of the termini technici of the traditional public space – the crucial distinction between public and private, its differentiation into separate spheres of culture, material production, politics, etc, its normativity, the very idea of authorship, etc. – obsolete. But what is even more important, the condition of residency challenges the traditional idea of artist’s political engagement. Becoming political meant for an artist before all his or her ability to make an impact on the public and thus on political decisions, which are in a democratic society supposed to be made in accordance with common will, articulated, again, through the public space. But residency participates in, and simultaneously creates, a public space, which has lost its crucial connection with the monopoly of political decision, that is, with the place where the sovereign (more or less democratically elected political representatives of the people/nation) makes these decisions.

Residency is, therefore, a manifestation of the irreducible liminality of a new public space, which transcends all forms of traditional political subjectification and goes even beyond the very idea of political democracy and beyond the way of life it generates. It is a space of an experience, which hasn’t learned yet to speak and articulate itself. Thus the artist in residency is both a living embodiment of this experience and an authentic witness to it, its non-authorized, silent speaker, a subject-object of a new noise without shape and origin, in short, a messenger without message to deliver. The rest is future.

Extracts from the text: The Artist as Res(iden)t by Hito Steyerl & Boris Buden

nomadic plankton bar

2007-12-09T22:45:00.001+01:00

here some pictures of the plankton bar. i discovered reading
an interview of Charles Curtis, the composer and musician of
the Ultra White Violet Light Cd you got in your walkening travel
kits, that one of the starting points of this composition expresses
really what I tried to do with the walks, without being able to put it
into words... feels like reading my thoughts ;)
and the choice of the Cd for the traveling kit was really quick and intuitive,
without thinking much. I love it when things come together like this....

i knew someone who could follow the conversation he was having with me in a restaurant as well as two other conversations at neighboring tables all at once... as we continued conversing he would report to me on what the others had just said... i tried to do it and found it very disorienting, but spacey and exhilarating... gradually i have seen this as a key to perceiving the many layers of the universe around us... one notices that one stops regarding oneself as the controlling authority, regulating and interpreting and interpolating, and one begins to listen and participate in one's surroundings, to be a part of everything... not subjugating the environment to one's interpretation of it, but entering into it...

a very interesting example of this is the observation of non-synchronous time periods... on a very small scale, for instance, you could be taking a long trip in a car, following a baseball game on the car radio, and listening to the ticking of your wristwatch... all of these things take different amounts of time and are measured in different units, and if you manage to take notice of the different rhythms and speeds at the same time, you can feel an unusual, i think in fact a heightened, appreciation for time as an abstraction...

sameness suggests to me the fragmentary, difference suggests wholeness... the more i can be aware of at once, and the more difference there is, that i am aware of, the more sense of wholeness i have... and the freer i feel... this relates directly to the concept of simultaneous play...

Charles Curtis in an interview with Gino dal Soler (to read go here)

Michael's recipies

2007-12-09T20:42:00.000+01:00

Here finally my contribution to the recipies...

This is a recipe by my mother:

Potato soup
(for four persons)

1½ kg potatoes
½ kg carrots
3 stems of leek
1 kohlrabi
1 celery
2 or 3 tomatos
1 red pepper
3 onions
2 further onions
parsley
a tablespoonful of butter
vegetable stock
bay-tree, marjoram, lovage, salt, pepper, paprika, nutmeg

Peel the potatoes, make it cook with a little salt, crush it. Take the remaining vegetables (except the parsley and the additional onions), cut it into pieces and put into a large pot, add the vegetable stock, the bay-tree, marjoram and lovage and make cook with small fire for 20 minutes, later purée. While cooking the vegetables cut the onions up into small pieces and fry it in butter until it gets a golden colour. Remove it from the fire and add the parsley for a moment.
Finally mix all together – the mashed potatoes, the vegetable purée and the parsley-onions. Taste with salt, pepper, paprika and nutmeg.

Good appetite!

The following recipe is not by my grand-mother, a friend gave it to me some years ago. I just didn't have a name for it and this one fits somehow:

Ol’ Grannie’s Apple-Pie

250 flower
Baking powder
80 g sugar
1 package of vanilla sugar
2 yellow of egg
Lemon peel (organic)
100 g Butter
2 ½ big apples
Raisins
Reed sugar
Sour cream
Water

Mix Flower, Baking powder, Sugar, vanilla sugar, egg and lemon peel in a plastic bowl. After having cut the hard butter into pieces, knead all, form two balls and put it into the fridge for 30 min.
Butter a spring form and lay it out with the dough. Nick the base with a fork and form an equal edge of about 3 cm. Slice the apples and choreograph it on the dough. Mix the sour cream, the reed sugar with some water and spread it over all, finally the raisins. Bake for 45 min. at about 160 ° in preheated oven.

Enjoy!

The circle of nomadism

2007-12-05T00:08:00.000+01:00

I had to add one last image to the blog, or one more. I met Isak, a Sami from Kautokeino (the far north) at the airport in Brussels this morning. The Sami are an indigenous people, who, led a nomadic lifestyle. This meeting seemed to work as an ending and a beginning, meeting a traditional nomad in an airport. Thought it was interesting.

the snowball effect a la petter

2007-12-02T01:13:00.001+01:00

05/2007-08/2007
*As if watching clouds drift by.
-Return to Rome where I photographed Bangladeshi Illegal Immigrants, compare and contrast our respective paths over the last five years.
=my past dissappeared somewhere in Rome turned into one photograph

07/2007-10/2007
*The Long Walk
-Work on documentation from a 650k walk across Norway in the Summer of 2007
=made one image for a show at whyandwherefore.com, beginnings.

07/2007-10/2007
*One from the East, One from the West
-compare and contrast my immigration from the west with someone who immigrated to europe from the east
=he never replied to my questions

09/2007-21/10/2007
*Sunsight and Sunclipse
-Two terms coined by Buckminster Fuller to replace Sunrise and Sunset. Contrary to popular belief, the sun doesn't move across the sky, the earth rotates. Thus, our language is 500 years behind in coordinating our senses with our knowledge.
=some how turned into a Geodesic dome

09/10/2007
*Song Line String Theory
-Strings tied across the banister of the upper level using a mathematical equation to determine their placement.
=just forgot about it.

09-15/10/2007
*Geodesic Dome Construction
-Became interested in the writings and interviews of Buckminster Fuller.
=started playing with tape

09/10/2007-present
*Taping perspectives
-Using the two dimensional view of a camera to create a perspective that in actuality is false (see blog).
=seemed to function as a catalyst for new thoughts

11/10/2007-present
*Something Amusing and Clever
-In a conversation with Elie Rabinovitch I said that I just wanted to make something amusing and clever.
=couldn't figure that one out

12-14/10/2007
*Framed reality
-Picture frame cut-outs placed on the street to create the impression that reality was merely a photograph
=too complicated and procrastination

16/10/2007-15/11/2007
*Three movements
-Triptych video images of three differing movements through space-time
=The images didn't work together as well as I imagined and technical problems

18/10/2007
*Various Walks
-Create different walks in order to perceive space differently, not so different from the Situationists International's idea of a Derive.
=got too comfortable living in a real apartment in the posh part of town

23/10/2007
*Steps in the Right direction
-asked several people where a step in the right direction would lead them
=couldn't figure out a coherent way to display the correspondence

27/10-05/112007
*Nomadic Drawings
-Drawing series in two books, first book: drawings from different homes visited as part of learning to draw again. Second book: re-visiting the locations of the first set of drawings, re-drawn.
=impatient with myself

01-17 /11/2007
*Regarding Connection
-An interactive installation with a Kyudo Archery demonstration
=began practicing Kyudo then developed some sort of injury in my left shoulder

02-07/11/2007
*Pecha Kucha Presentation
-A slide show presentation for Pecha Kucha, an elitist designer convention using only slide projectors.
=Couldn't be bothered to spend time making something cynical.

10-13/11/2007
*Existential Crisis
-A photograph which depicted the questioning of my existence here in the residency.
=found out that everyone else is going through an existential crisis too.

11/11/2007
*Nomadic Structures as thought processes
-Powerpoint presentation on my thought process during the residency here in Brussels.
=I really didn't want to "perform" anything

11/11/2007
*Disassemblage/Assemblage
-Taking apart a camper van and rebuilding it in Bains::Connective
=Just a fleeting thought

14-19/11/2007
*Enter Faust into the Congo Museum
-An absurd photograph from the Congo Museum absurdly large mounted as a light box in a constructed room in Bain::Connective(see blog).
=Couldn't justify bringing that large of an object into the world.

05:53 20/11/2007
*Simplicity in a Carousel
-Simply, a representation of my thought processes
<16 total =" 5">
<20 total =" 4">
1=0% Black
2=50% Black
3=100% Black
4=50% Black
1=0% Black

Plankton bar works:
*Correspondence 13 Loose laminated letter correspondences from A step in the right direction Distributed on tables in the Lounge.

*Theatrical Dwelling 3.5x 3.5x 2.5 meter triangle of black felt curtains. During the three days before the Presentation I slept only 9 hours (9 of 84 hours)pondering upon the question of freedom and Determinism, On the night of Plankton Bar, I
finished my room off with a my bed and covers from home. With the curtain closed, a small opening was made at the end of the triangle, lit from within. Inside, a slide carousel turns within a spot light, alternately displaying
the worlds, "Freedom" and "Determinism". Slept for a total of 16 hours and woke very refreshed to a sunny brussels morning. Memories of Mariane Cosserat jumping on me to wake up while Domenico laughed hysterically, Christina Clar placing an
envelope beside me, and saying good bye to Bettina Wind. Dreamt I was floating down a river with several stops along the way.

welcome

2007-11-30T20:00:00.000+01:00

Tonight we try and link the nomadic thoughts and create a space together. When you walk through this space of Bains you might imagine the different directions we came from. Feel free to comment on this blog the impressions and ideas you have watching from outside, walking inside...

we are all foreigners, insular

2007-11-29T18:03:00.000+01:00

the artist eric van hove talked about artistic nomadism when presenting his projects here in eindhoven. I copied some of his lines to share the thoughts with you:

I therefore decided at one point to renounce having a studio and settle for some weeks at a time in a hotel room for example, or elsewhere in other intermediary spaces, in order to see what impact this would have on the work and how significantly that “absence” would infuse it, and become a revealing factor of what we’re becoming. If earlier last century Duchamp famously relabeled the spectator placed in the game of art a “regardeur”, meaning that the one that looks at the work is actively participating in making the work what it is and is not merely a passive eye, today I am interested in pondering the possibility of the “regardeur” becoming a foreigner. For unlike the artists exhibiting in the Salon des Indépendants, I today have nearly as much chances to have a Malayan, Chinese, Danish or Tasmanian viewer at an opening in Paris that they had to be French in 1900.
I think I understand why Michel Houellebecq stays in hotels and his last novel is called “La Possibilité d'une île”: today, a foreigner is inevitably growing inside us ... so there are no more strangers, or we are all foreigners, insular. I am tempted to question that.

http://www.transcri.be/text/interview_Jan_Van_Woensel_2007.pdf

nomadic drawing

2007-11-28T21:49:00.000+01:00

A "nomadic drawing" by Camila (2 years old) on a “structured space" of a diary… in my view, a metaphor for Deleuze and Guattari's “smooth” and “striated” spaces.

Does this mean as we grow older we loose our “nomadic” capacity?

8:00 am

2007-11-28T17:52:00.000+01:00

Paris-Dakar.... Brussels

2007-11-28T17:40:00.000+01:00

La cucina siciliana

2007-11-28T03:50:00.000+01:00

Serves 5-6

SPINACIO E RICOTTA GNOCCHI
Ingredients
500 grams of ricotta,
500 grams frozen chopped spinach, (can use fresh of course, more involved), m sure it is not ‘creamed’
A generous pinch of ground nutmeg (enough so you can just taste it in the mix)
about two tablespoons grated parmesan cheese (or similar - once again just enough to taste it)
3 eggs (use 1 whole egg and 2 yolks)
100 grams approx Plain flour (add enough to hold the mix together but not too much or it will taste very floury and make the gnocchi heavy. It depends on how wet/dry the ricotta is.
Salt, pepper (as desired)
Some nobs of butter

Method
First mix the ricotta and grated cheese and nutmeg together. Stir the egg yolks and the whole egg together then add the egg mix to the ricotta.
Cook the frozen spinach in a pan with a little butter until it is defrosted and just cooked (or chop and wilt fresh spinach). Drain the spinach and press as much water out as you can. Allow it to cool a little then add the spinach to the cheese/egg mix and stir through.

Add the flour and stir it through adding a little more if necessary so it is not too wet and sticky.

Take out about a tablespoonful at a time (traditionally rolled with the back of fork – but this aint easy!). Drop each spoonful into some flour and roll gently into a round shape. Rest them on some paper while you make the others. Perhaps do half at a time.

Drop them into boiling water, about 6/8 at a time. Let them rise to the top of the water then lift them out after about a minute.

Drizzle melted butter on top of them on a serving dish, then add napoli and parmesan

NAPOLI SUGO (everyone has their own way - this is special Vizzini/Vacirca style)

Ingredients
Tinned Whole peeled Italian Tomatoes (can do fresh again but I find the tinned variety perfectly juicy!)
Garlic
E.V Olive Oil
Fresh basil

Method
Mash the tomatoes up in the tin
Heat oil in stainless steel saucepan
Add finely chopped garlic
& a little basil
As soon as you can ‘smell the garlic’ tip in the tomatoes
Add more basil
Stir to boiling
Simmer now – for as long as you can
Taste it a lot along the way – you may need to add a bay leaf but I advise against sugar if it is bitter, just cook it for longer

INSALATA - FINOCCIO E ARANCIA
Ingredients
A couple of fennel
A few oranges
Fresh Chilli
E.V olive oil

Method
Chop off the flowery bits of the fennel (save for soup if you like)
Slice into thin strips or dice as you prefer
Cut oranges into bite sized chunks
mix together
add oil and finley choppes chillis (not too hot as we discovered today!)

BUON APPETITO

Grazie mille to Elizabeth Vacirca and all the Sicilian gastronomes that have come before and after.
Go slow...

Dave Weich interviewing Pico Iyer...

2007-11-27T23:47:00.000+01:00

"Day after day, an ever-increasing traffic of humanity skips from continent to continent, hemisphere to hemisphere, the citizens of a community beyond nations, and for more and more people, the notion of home has little to do with any particular part of the planet. If this isn't quite what we'd imagined home would be, well, maybe it's because home has never been quite like this before." [Pico Iyer]

nomadic museum - ashes and snow

2007-11-24T18:17:00.000+01:00

i first saw a presentation a couple of weeks ago from Gregory Colbert on ted.com -- http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/15 and fell in love with his imagery and drive.

today i did a search for 'nomadic hands' and was lead to the Nomadic Museum designed by Shiguru Ban, created to permanently house Colbert's exhibit.

hmmm yah!

deeplaywords

2007-11-24T18:16:00.000+01:00

based on conversation between christina clar and dario vacirca

--

words of deep play - towards a new nomadism:

1. twalking

looking ahead together and talking - for presence (in perpetuity)

1. gazening

gazing head to head, eye to eye, and listening - for awakening (within eternity)

--

Colombia is just around the corner…

2007-11-19T20:47:00.000+01:00

it’s funny to walk on a rainy day in Brussels and suddenly be dragged to a sunny day on the beach. if not anything it puts a smile on our faces!

nomadology

2007-11-15T11:19:00.000+01:00

funny thing. i just remembered friends of mine set up a blog years ago on nomadology. they have made a book too. some interesting reading there. http://www.dislocated.org/nomadology/index.php

i'll see if i can get a copy of the book to be sent here.

check it

walkening in Tervuren

2007-11-15T02:01:00.001+01:00

walkening (walking & listening)
being in space time motion
being with others, feeling the presence
shifting gravity;
patterns of life organization
maybe it is the search that becomes a pattern
order from noise

Hannah Arendt, Vita activa
"The reality of the public realm relies on the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects in which the common world presents itself and for which no common measurement or denominator can ever be devised. For though the common world is the common meeting ground of all, those who are present have different locations in it, and the location of one can no more coincide with the location of another than the location of two objects. Being seen and being heard by others derive their significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different position."

you can find all the sound files here

Welcome to Congo in Brussels

2007-11-14T21:26:00.001+01:00

Wow, what a WHACK! place! A place where photographers baring the equipment of our forefathers capture images of stuffed elephants while tourists unknowingly pose, where money is tossed at the stuffed animals, like a wishing well. Upon close inspection one can observe the stitched seams of the animals in the dioramas, strangley colonialist photographs and caveman-like sculptures. In the cafeteria stood a wooden sculpture of a black manservant one might find in many tourist traps throughout Africa.
Don't miss it! If you ever get the chance to visit, don't pass it up. This relic from another era is decrepit to the point of amusement to the trained eye, and if it tells us anything of our white imperialistic history, it tells us who we still are..

Translocal wandering

2007-11-12T15:31:00.000+01:00

Only now I got access to internet again and join Nomadic Structures in a virtual way with new food of thoughts. So I will useour blog as diary of ongoing thought.
Saturday / Sunday
Since we arrived in Eindhoven we have been constantly bombarded with questions, talks, comments on shifting identity and the function of art... nobody mentioned nomadism so far but I would like to share with you some lines of thought that are somehow connected to our research in common. When we talked about becoming in opposition or relation to being (inspired from the title becoming dutch) it soon became clear that identity is rather been thought as constant movement, constant effort to try and confortable ourselves again coming to the ground, finding a place, filling the open, the void / but then there was also a countermove of thought demanding the necessity of leaving your identity (via diving into a book, via moving etc) to become a temporary nobody and then visible again / becoming a nobody might be a hard experience seen from the perspective of political neglectence because this is basically what happens a lot to migrants (and nomads in general), so that leads directly to the question what kind of effect models of thought can have in reality / is it productive, political, accessible to try to find out a kind of shifting move of identity or will that move be automatically be blocked by bureaucrazy or everydays encounters? shifting and becoming a new identity seem to be the key words to plug in nomadic structures into becoming dutch so I send you the blog,s link as invitation to come over virtually (or in reality next weekend).
http://becomingdutch.vanabbe.nl/

Transacoustic wandering

2007-11-09T13:35:00.000+01:00

What a wonderful open moment of being and creating!
The brilliant guys of the Institute for Transacoustic Research (see link in the list) were with us (or we with them, or all of us interwoven in and around the space) tuesday and wedesday this week. Instead of just doing a workshop, they suggested doing a performance together, and it was an absolutely great experience, with Petter getting into sound performance, Dario into becoming books and language and movement, Natasha knitting lines of words and me into for once being physically part of this shared space. Getting outside of one's habits and hopping onto the moving ground composed by others. Thank you all, and hope we'll do that soon again!
you can get more images on this server

A fashion show in Manila Avenue TLV

2007-11-07T19:56:00.002+01:00

Manila Avenue TLV

2007-11-07T19:40:00.001+01:00

Manila Avenue

A photographic documentation of certain areas in the “new” central bus station in Tel Aviv and the population of Asian foreign workers that come there regularly every Saturday for the purpose of social gathering and karaoke sing along, inside a place which is a space without a designated functional purpose. The space itself receives a new identity: The name of the inner ‘street’ was changed to ‘Manila Avenue and the non-place takes form and receives a new identity, temporary and performative, that changes the next morning by the passers in the station. Therefore, there is not necessarily a linking/an attachment between an architectonic structure and a meaning and fixed identity, but instead giving the meaning is by creating rituals and routines in the space, also temporarily.

During our sixth walk

2007-11-06T10:19:00.000+01:00

Dario and I discovered the ideal nomadic landscape, not trackable on the city map but of an intense reality: the migrating party close to the old factory and the abandoned land where Cirque Electrique hibernates. Why not put the tent into the swimming pool? Or bring Nomadic Structures to the landscape carrying our thoughts as a virus to other places, as a VIRCUS as Dario would call it?

LE PATRIOTE ILLUSTRÉ 1955 n°38

2007-11-04T20:11:00.000+01:00

a floating nomadic holiday house

hotel everland

2007-11-03T10:23:00.001+01:00

hotel everland, first shown at the expo.02 in switzerland
I thought about it, forgot again and remembered when
Bettina posted all these container-worlds....
see links hotel everland on the right

Nomadic House

2007-11-02T23:06:00.001+01:00

Claudia's last project of documenting her grandmother's house and reconstructing its shape reminded me of Angela Ferreira's contribution to the Venice Biennal, called "Maison Tropicale" (check out more more foto using the link at the sidebar): She researched about an ambitious project by a French architect to reproduce a modern house in different African countries. He even developed a plan how to store the house's elements in a container (here the container enters again). Angela Ferreira visited the place where one of the houses (only three have been realized) should have been, but only the base and the improvised garden huts around were left. The structure itself has been returned to Paris at the meanwhile, and installed as a unique example of modernist architecture... so Angela Ferreira took up the idea of the absent house (the absent dream of an architect?) and the passage - to get into the main exhibition space, you had to cross the (virtual) container with reconstructed wooden elements reminding of the wall elements stored in the container. As I write down this text I realize that Nomadic houses and offices belong to Brussels, too, as the parliament moves every month to Strassbourg, its bits and pieces packed in containers... I will ask a friend who participated in the move Brussels-Strassbourg for years to tell us more about it.

Our walk in the flat space

2007-11-02T22:55:00.000+01:00

There is only one possibility to enter the huge shopping mall at Roodebeek when you arrive from the metro station: You enter a long tunnel and appear finally in a glass tunnel that leads you directly to the first shops and the huge parking lot. Claudia and her daughter approached the shopping mall by car, so they met me in the parking space. We followed the automatical sign system, turning rounds by car, foot and buggy, our conversation twisting around the phenomenon of clouds as indicators for the weather, flat spaces for cars and open skies... Claudia took her daily photo and we re-entered at a new point, childhood memories of the grandmother's house - a reconstruction - a nomadice house in a container - a recycled house of containers - of windows - at this point the waiter added to our flow of words his own questions in portugeese...

From park to park

2007-11-02T22:29:00.000+01:00

Shortly before Dario arrived, Michael and I had a walk, starting from Botanique towards Parc Josephat. We found it amazing how "forgotten" the park looked like: in constant state of construction, with small paths leading through a tamed wilderness. Somehow it reflected the "légère" habit of its visitors. On our way back we were talking about the easy way of entering a multi-lingual city, that gives you at least to chances to try out your skills - and just in that moment it seemed that we had walked too far (were we already at avenue Louise? Flagey?) - but in fact we were quite precise as the small map above shows.

I received this text...

2007-11-02T22:07:00.000+01:00

...and foto by Cheli Wasserman, an Israelian architect and researcher who organised an exhbition about contemporary nomadism in Tel Aviv. I asked her to send more material about the exhbition and to accompany our blog. Here her first part:
"This is where I am. In a wild field, between the urban and the rural, few steps ahead from the old and in front of the new, a min. from the childhood and a cigarette time from the adulthood, a woman and sometimes a man, not holy and never profane, conquering and wild, accelerated development and immobility, as an open field of emergence, as an equation where one invites and presupposes the existence of the Other. m/Other. Co-ordinate in a global-local system of duplicated figures, like the duplicated buildings, present complementary contrasts out of a roleplay between the various parameters that create the physical reality."

Recycled Summerhouse

2007-11-02T21:25:00.000+01:00

I haven't found the images yet I saw about other "container" works, but during the walk with Claudia I also remembered a project by Martin Kaltwasser and Folke Köbberling (Berlin) for which they used only material (mainly old windows) neighbours had thrown away in order to build a new summer house called "Villa Hörstel". You find their link (superbüro) on the right side.

Our walk took us to talk about containers and architecture…

2007-11-02T13:24:00.000+01:00

Shipping containers are in many ways an ideal building material. They are strong and resistant to the elements while also being durable and stackable. Structures made from them can be disassembled, moved, and then reassembled again.The USA imports much more manufactured goods than it exports and those goods come and go in containers. As a result that country has more empty containers than it can fill and these empties are often made available for uses such as architecture...

some links on the right column.

Mapping Session - Centre

2007-10-30T21:49:00.000+01:00

When we tried to create a map from the words and expressions dealing with “Nomadism” it soon became clear that is was impossible to connect all areas: there was a nature/culture linked field, clearly connected, a rather cloudy mind rooted area and some spots that couldn’t be linked to the rest. Following the colour lines (each one of us had chosen a different pen) you could find an approach via body-mind-person but also a structural or general one, a regard on the contemporary process of nomadism as on the traditional way. (A list of “alternative” titles to “nomadic structures” can be found at the sidebar.)

Mapping Session - Landscape

2007-10-30T21:48:00.000+01:00

Then we shifted to the three-dimensional space, looking for a place where the elements of the map might fit. Some places served as an allegory, some cards as indications, pointing at specific objects, but also as parts of an abstract archive of keynotes.

Mapping Session - Spots

2007-10-30T21:46:00.000+01:00

Here are some of the spots that were chosen as favourites…

Walk and Thought

2007-10-29T12:21:00.001+01:00

I cannot help coming back to Virginia Woolf's performance again and again. It was in 1928, she performed her text "A Room of One's Own" in front of young students and in order to protect herself she invented different characters right in the beginning so that she could whatever she would like to say... then she took her audience on a walk through London passing by parks, cafés, libraries, stepping on the forbidden ground, getting lost exactly when her thoughts took another direction. Some call her text a manifesto for feminist literature, but what seems to be stronger and more intriguing about it is the clever ways she mingles walk and thought and how she invites the audience to follow her into tunnels passages nobody has touched before... so I invite you to re-read chapter one and two again if you want to follow her walk-in-mind.

2076 steps

2007-10-29T12:18:00.001+01:00

from the edge of the desk to the edge of the forest.

During our third walk...

2007-10-29T11:34:00.000+01:00

Christina, Alexandra and I discovered a strange combination of whirl pool devices, fitness centre, slaughter house and house boats just to end up between sandy hills and unfinished parks.

nomadic structures in public space

2007-10-28T18:01:00.001+01:00

http://www.pleinmuseum.nl

the second walk...

2007-10-26T12:04:00.000+02:00

... got luea and me to discover green passageways through "forest" until we finally reached a specific point of 100m altitude.

Nomadic Meals visit the good ol' US of A

2007-10-26T12:00:00.000+02:00

Dads chili.. kind of.
vegetarian style

Ingredients:
Olive oil
Red Onions
Salt
Bell peppers (optional)
Jalepeno pepper
Chopped Tomatoes
Red and black beans
Ground cumin
Fresh basil (finely chopped)
Fresh coriander (finely chopped)
Whole garlic cloves (optional: roasted garlic)
Beer
Dark chocolate
Roasted corn (Optional)

Garnish:
Sharp cheddar cheese
Chives (spring onions)
Sour cream

Directions:
Heat pot and add oil. Add onions and salt, reduce heat a bit (to caramelize) adding peppers, continue on medium heat until it all begins to smell sweet. Add chopped tomatoes (canned are fine) and beans. Bring to a boil. Add spices (reserving some basil and coriander for later) and whole garlic cloves. Reduce heat. Cook for about 15 minutes then add beer and bring back to a boil then add Chocolate.
Let this simmer for about an hour so that it get nice and thick. Add salt to taste and the rest of the basil and coriander (be careful, as it reduces, the spiceness becomes more apparent, you can always add more beans and tomatoes if it get too strong). To roast the garlic and corn, cut off the tops of the garlic bulb and add oil and salt, spread corn on a sheet and adding oil and salt, bake for about 45 at 175 or until the garlic is mushy. Just before serving you can add the roasted garlic (instead of the whole garlic cloves) and corn.

Top with grated cheese, chives and sour cream.

Corn bread is a great addition to the chile.

More from our first walk...

2007-10-25T17:11:00.000+02:00

Art and Advertising Nouveau, precision implements and classrooms aplenty!

our first walk...

2007-10-24T22:23:00.000+02:00

... brought us to a hair cutter and an empty school building, to a slaughterhouse without animals and a tunnel connecting a street that is cut in the middle...

strings continued

2007-10-23T21:14:00.000+02:00

http://www.liefooghe.be/

Another kind of strings (GruppoA12)

2007-10-23T20:54:00.000+02:00

Invitation to walk

2007-10-23T20:48:00.000+02:00

I asked you out for a walk, curious about the transitory tracks of each of our routes and conversations. Sometimes when you start walking and talking at the same time you connect details, sounds, gestures and the physical effort to an inner map, a trajectory that surpasses the city space. A “smooth voyage” as Deleuze and Guattari would call it:
“Voyaging smoothly is a becoming, and a difficult, uncertain becoming at that. It is not a question of returning to a pre-astronomical navigation, nor to the ancient nomads. The confrontation between the smooth and the striated, the passages, alternations and superpositions, are under way today, running in the most varied directions.”

mobile phone photographs and videos

2007-10-23T20:10:00.000+02:00

As i mentioned earlier today, i’m working on a ‘nomadic project’:
THE SPACE IN-BETWEEN
The idea is still not matured but i’ll get there.... I got a blog to share ideas and obtain opinions. You can enter it by clicking on the links list.

Nomadic Gastronomy… or Food for Talk!

2007-10-23T19:54:00.000+02:00

Bacalhau à Brás was the first Nomadic strutures lunch.... Is one of the most popular ways to prepare codfish in Portugal. It is made from thin strips of cod mixed with onions and thin strips of potatoes bound by eggs.

Bacalhau à Brás

Ingredients:
1 ½ pounds bacalhau
thin pre-fried potatoes (batata palha)

4 large onions
Olive oil
8 large eggs
Black olives

Soak the cod fish at least overnight, longer if possible. Carefully remove bones and pieces of skin. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet, add the chopped onions and fry till golden. Stir-fry the flaked cod. Add the fried potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Let cook for a while over a low fire and meanwhile beat the eggs in a bowl. Scramble over the cod and potatoes and let cook till everything is set together. Sprinkle with the chopped coriander, and serve decorate with black olives.

no more sheepless nights

2007-10-20T12:54:00.000+02:00

I’'ve been playing around with idea for last few weeks that i'd like to bring to the nomadic structures residency. Lilia suggested I post it onto the blog…

Essentially, i want to sit a sheep in Les Bains with for a week.

I've been thinking a lot about the theme and recently had a bit of vision (the theme and the idea meet each other quite well). I'd like to sit with a sheep in a room (open or closed) for a week, commune with it, look after it, but essentially explore the idea of 'entering' the sheep's consciousness or the sheep entering mine. The image is based on an old japanese myth that I read about recently in Murukami's wild sheep chase - I'm interested in this notion of transmigration as well as the aspect of working with a sometimes nomadic animal, leading one away from the herd, turning the gaze away from the pasture and into a another being. Making ‘real’ a literary image or mythology moves me toward it.

Setting up a pen in the gallery with hay, water, salt lick and grain would be part of the installation.

The idea is to record the experience via video and use this later in a exposition based on my discoveries during the period of communion; I may also follow the sheep 'outside' so it can get grass and see what happens when I follow it (I imagine very slow and circuitous walking)- this too would be recorded. Now, it is a fairly intense and somewhat absurd idea but something I have been researching and thinking a lot about. Would be good to discuss the appropriateness and logistical practicalities of the image; whether there may be some issues surrounding the use of a live animal in the space and…

Now I originally planned to pick up a sheep on the way from Holland to Belgium, then herd it via fields to Les Bains:: I have decided against this for many practical reasons and am now thinking it'd be good to get to Les Bains without anything fully set and see how it may work in the context. I am meeting with a friend in Holland, we are still going to do a walk to Belgium, between 20 and 80 kms and plan to visit a farm or two along the way and meet farmers and sheep.

thoughts.?.?

An exercise in breaking routine

2007-10-18T20:26:00.001+02:00

From 100 paces, 2002

Have you ever counted your steps?
I thought this might work well as a common exercise for us in our separate locations.

Find an hour this coming week to take a walk. On the walk take 100 steps at a time, while you're walking keep your head down and focus your attention on your feet. Walking slower, feel the earth beneath your feet, rolling from heel to toe, the space between each step, notice how your muscles move you, take your time. When you reach 100 steps, stop. look around. take in your surroundings then record the moment using text, video, sound, foto, drawing, collecting an object, what ever you come up with. Try it for at least an hour, the longer you go the better of course.

Then post some of the material here.

The above photo is from my first performance, which used this method as a starting point. I spent 12 hours walking from my house around Oslo and into the opening of our new gallery. I had posed several limitations on that performance, which isn't necessary here.
You can wear shoes, is what i'm trying to say.

Badda bing
Badda boom!

ps, i added a new link, Hitchhiking Transylvania, from a collaborative arts space called m o r i s e n a in Romania.

Glossary

2007-10-17T15:19:00.000+02:00

I published a list of related words on the right column, please feel free to add/edit.
thanks

0:21:28.17

2007-10-15T20:07:00.000+02:00

I thought it would be an amusing adventure to circumambulate the EU in a clockwise manner. I made my way around the circumference of the area in a little over 21 minutes. As far as walks go, this perhaps, was my least exciting. As a center for European commerce trade and lawmaking, I expected a profound experience. I was wrong.

What is it that they do in those fantastic glass and metal structures?

I did, however, get lost along the way; somewhere after the third left turn I ended up in the inner sanctum of the complex and spotted some motorcycle police and a security guard off in the distance. Nobody bothered me.

If only the borders could be similar.

WHEREVER WE GO

2007-10-14T18:12:00.000+02:00

5 items displaced...

2007-10-14T14:58:00.000+02:00

the street movie, urban culture...

2007-10-14T13:05:00.000+02:00

...and relocating!

2007-10-13T22:39:00.000+02:00

displaced objets continued...

2007-10-13T15:39:00.001+02:00

re-deplacement

2007-10-13T15:36:00.001+02:00

and things move on, as we know..... all of the objects
got displaced later on, some quite immediately, some later

Displaced items workshop by Christina and Natasha

2007-10-13T11:27:00.000+02:00

As I was walking down the street I heard giggles behind me. I turned and saw a couple of children with their mother, all clad in their Ramadan best, looking at the object I held in my hand. I chose the broom as my object to displace. My first choice for relocation was a barbershop around the corner, images of a floor littered with hair and my broom amused me. But as I approached I saw that the shop was closed. So, as any good researcher would do, I continued on my path without knowing what to find. Not 15 meters longer down the road I spotted this opportunity as a final resting point for my object.
It was reported that soon after the "broom" was placed in the barrel.
After which it disappeared completely.

paraSITES (http://www.michaelrakowitz.com/)

2007-10-12T23:28:00.000+02:00

about tents and parking lots

2007-10-12T19:54:00.000+02:00

Talking about the weird situation in tents Christina mentioned: There is a strong lack of private sphere in traditional nomadic life where a small group moves through extreme experiences – the opposite of a tourist who tries to understand and control the surrounding by watching it: so the oppositions of audio/visual and linked/separated is at work when we talk about different types of nomads; Petter re-pronounced protection as protection FROM, as obstacle: if you leave the tent half open or leave away the roof you do not turn into “monads”, closed entities, protected from life’s surprises and encounters; the outlines you made go even further: they just memorize a frame without closing a space. Maybe the frame for the workshop idea you mentioned? Vlusser said that our “monadic houses” have already so many windows (like computer sceens, Tvs) that they do not work as houses anymore…so in his words, we entered a nomadic state again – I do not really believe that virtual and media links are enough to turn our life nomadic, do you? The system Claudia wrote about seems to be a perfect metaphor for being virtually guided through the same space (without walls) but reaching your place without any encounter or touch with the others.

Purple Zone

2007-10-11T21:46:00.000+02:00

I was always intrigued by car parking ‘spaces’… but then I got to know ‘Parking guidance system’ and I was fascinated! It’s about real-time space counting with directional signage and customizing directional information. My video “Purple Zone” was recorded at a parking lot here in Brussels… and I’m doing some research to develop it further for a future work. Let’s see!

Nomadic Perspective

2007-10-11T16:28:00.000+02:00

This was a question, and an experiment. I wasn't exactly sure how this idea fit into our theme until i made the last photographs from the sides. It seems to me, that the image in the middle is how we perhaps view the world at first, but as we begin to explore our world, physically or intellectually, the shift in perspective shows us that things aren't always as they first appear.

I would like to work more with this idea, now that i have a better idea of how to construct these perspectives. Lets just see what develops.

"Under Heaven"

2007-10-11T14:05:00.000+02:00

Leo van Munster (http://www.donleo.org/)

2007-10-11T13:59:00.000+02:00

if walls are too tight...

2007-10-11T13:55:00.000+02:00

I think Petter is right about tents giving a new perspective on the dimensions of home, earth,sky... at the same time they make us more vulnerable, providing only a thin skin - people usually seem closer when sleeping in tents, so maybe it is not so much the material (the hardware) but more community and communication that is protective. I found this project of leo van munster, also about being in the sky, vulnerable, protected...

2007-10-11T00:01:00.000+02:00

house, home and sky

2007-10-10T13:42:00.000+02:00

Claudia Conduto sent me these photos of her installation, moradia 361, in Portugal along with an artist statement. In that statement she asked the following questions:

"But what happens when our house is too tight for our life? What happens if our private space does not gives any privacy? What happens if our house pushes us out of the door?"

I replied:

..thus nomadic structures.

the difference between a house and home is so narrow but so important. i have a house, sort of, but i'm not sure i have a home. For the ancient nomads was the sky their third skin as the house is ours? And the earth their home? the tents just houses within their homes. So, houses aren't necessarily homes and homes don't necessarily need to be in a house.

And what about those great friends we have, those wonderful few, who allow us to really feel at home, what are those places?

R. Buckminster Fuller referred to Earth as Spaceship Earth. It is our home beyond our apartments, houses, huts, caves, tents, caravans, cars, and what ever other dwelling we create.
There is no roof in moradia 361, making visible the sky. Perhaps spending more time under the sky will allow us to reconsider our home.

Nomadic Makrolab by Marko Pejihan

2007-10-09T15:41:00.000+02:00

Notes on NOMADIC STRUCTURES I

2007-10-09T15:38:00.000+02:00

If we understand nomadism as de-contextualisation from space and structure as (re)contextualisation in space, we can draw a time line from one term to the other: starting with mobility, a concept that integrates nomadism as constant movement, then slowing down to locality, the perception of space by mapping its structure and finally the reflection of its context.
The operation of creating a (thematic and chronological) distance between both terms opens a territory that might expand its central spots (mobility, locality, mapping, context) to connected regions. There are (at least) two binoculars to look onto these regions: using the concept of agency (the act of creating structures) or structure/disposition (the state of being structured by space)
At the first glance nomads enter a kind of “terrain vague” as soon as they step on new ground. As locality cannot be fixed but seems to be as transitory and imaginary on the surface as translocality, it offers new experiences – a “space of flows” - when being crossed for the first time(s). If the nomad maps the new terrain by walking, (s)he can be drawn into urban dynamics easily: a visual series of buildings, streets and squares creating expectations, the imagination of another scene beyond sight, the contrasts of elements and impressions… in short: space as experience, as stimulus for a “rite de passage” that strengthens the individual powers by disturbing them temporarily. The “geographical imagination” (Harvey) that arises with linking local details in our memory provides us with a sensual knowledge of space and place linked to our biography. As the nomad’s biography follows the line of movement, the act of entering a “terrain vague” might be crucial for re-constructing and reaffirming his/her identity. At the same time nomads know that the new terrain they arrives at will be only of temporary use. To use the space efficiently as resource it is important to analyse local elements along a horizontal line (visual and functional elements) as well as vertically (historical and social layers of meaning, the “depth structure”) – interpreting the local just like interpreting a written text in a structuralist way.
Edward W. Soja calls this immediately perceived and analyzed space the “firstspace” in contrast to the mental “secondspace” that refers to images and representations ( Edward W. Soja: Thirdspace. Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, Oxford/Cambridge 1996. Quoted from sculpture projects muenster 07.) If nomads have access to the first and the second, are they also able to enter the “thirdspace”, the lived space, stage of political praxis? Regardless nomadic movements like the alterglobalist that transform space into a stage of political and symbolic battle for a short period of time, nomads often enter a system as newcomers without being involved in local dynamics, without knowing too well local power structures and alternative networks. Is it possible to link experiences gained elsewhere with observations and interactions “in situ” in order to create a new embedded and at the same time translocal knowledge? Does this knowledge have the power to lead to an action, a transformation of ground, even if it is neither the own nor the only one? What kind of impact do nomads want to achieve on the ground they temporarily use, and how big is their radius of action if this ground is already taken literarily and politically by the residents themselves?