[spectre] Transcultural Geographies

[geert]

From: Ursula Biemann <geobodies at smile.ch

Transcultural Geographies

A visual research project by
Ursula Biemann, Angela Melitopoulus and Lisa Parks

http://www.tc-geographies.net

Transcultural Geographies is an art and visual research project which
was launched in Summer 2003. The collaborative project focuses on the
transitory geographies of the Balkans, Turkey and the Caucasus.
Immersing ourselves in sites stringing along the Southern axes that join
Europe and the East, we examine dynamics of their economic and social
transformation through a number of large-scale infrastructures and
transcultural campaigns. In three distinct but interrelated research
projects, we explore topographies that are increasingly marked by the
transitions occurring in the post-socialist/post-Cold War period and we
individually and collectively work to generate new audiovisual
representations, geographic mappings and critical imaginings of the
region.

The spaces of our studies are shaped by complex histories of migration,
yet for the purpose of this research, we conceive of migration as merely
one among many strands of interaction between regional and national
spaces. The movement of people is always read in connection with the
flow of resources, information, images and capital.
The installation of new wireless networks and satellite footprints, the
repurposing of old interstate highways, and the construction of gigantic
oil pipelines through these territories is symptomatic of broad
transformations and global structural changes. Yet instead of feeling
plugged in and participating in the world system, people in these
regions often experience such transitions as a kind of disintegration.
The politics involved in laying down highways, fiber cables, satellite
links and oil pipelines across these territories suggests there these
practices have a profound significance for local inhabitants as well as
for the European Union. Superimposed upon the political and economic
logics that determine these geographies lay the maps of memory, stories
of evacuation and displacement, and of loss and recuperation. This
project attempts to understand such subjective experiences in relation
to the transnational infrastructures of the communication, energy and
transportation sectors, which may divide as much as they connect. Our
critical practice blends geopolitical thinking with the tissue of
everyday life and tries to expose the transparent ways in which spaces
are re-configured and people are re-positioned in the present world
order.

A crucial aspect of the project is the audiovisual analysis of
transnational infrastructures during moments of their transition - that
is, in the midst of an oil pipeline's construction before it is buried
and goes forever unnoticed, during a journey through a highway of
brotherhood and unity after the breakup of Yugoslavia, or at the time
when new wireless and satellite technologies are implemented to annex
territories to European and global media space. In this sense,
Transcultural Geographies is also fundamentally about problems of
representation - whether an attempt to make large-scale and dispersed
structures more visible, or to devise new forms of visualization and
mapping, or to construct forms of narration that are interwoven with the
possibilities of the media.

The project develops in a series of workshops in places relevant to our
endeavor. So far the group has met in Amsterdam, Istanbul, Ljubljana and
will meet next time in Zurich and Davos in Spring 2005. Read more about
each of the projects and the meetings on our website.

Transcultural Geographies includes three visual research projects:

The Black Sea Files
Ursula Biemann (Zurich)
The video complex examines the energy geography which connects the
landlocked Caspian fossil resources to the world sea system through a
giant oil pipeline presently under construction. In Fall 2004, it will
begin pumping the Caspian crude to the West. The Black Sea Files track
the logistic technology of the pipeline, comments on the urban and rural
transformations, engage with the people who live along side its
trajectory and reflect on the oil history and politics of the region.

Timesscapes/Corridor X
Angela Melitopoulos (Cologn)
is a collective video project based in South-East Europe that explores
collective memory in video imagery and new forms of filmic
representation through the possibilities non-linear editing via the
Internet. The raw material of Corridor X is part of the image database
of Timescapes and pictures a road movie about a historical transit road
connecting Germany and Turkey via Salzburg, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrad,
Nis, Skopje, Veles, Thessalonica and Istanbul

Postwar Footprints
Lisa Parks (Sta Barbara)
Wireless Telephony and Satellite Television in Slovenia and Croatia
Postwar Footprints is a study of emerging media technologies in Slovenia
and Croatia in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia. The project
combines methods from critical media studies, cultural geography, and
visual arts to document and analyze parts of the media landscape that
formed between 2002 and 2004.

Transcultural Geographies is based at the Institute for Theory of Art
and Design (HGKZ) Zurich and is associated with the KHM Cologn.
The project is funded by the German Federal Foundation for Culture.