© Tracing Spaces, Photo: Wolfgang Thaler
Stop and Go. Nodes of Transformation and Transition
Free entrance
Road corridors represent the modernization of states and unions of states but are also great reserves of imagination and imaginaries. They function as docking stations for tethering numerous dreams (and nightmares). They operate like magnets, attracting both things and individuals that come within their orbit or accumulate around them. Those experiences are registered in official control body statistics, mass media news clips, stories from the daily lives of road users and residents, in research reports and art works. The points where the flow of traffic is interrupted—bus terminals, logistic centres, motorway service stations, markets or border crossing points—are noteworthy for allowing us to read the strategies of control of (supra)national organizations and large enterprises and the motives and biographies of the actors en route. A dynamic model of urbanity emerges from this process, interconnected archipelagos some of which are transmuted by the daily routines of the actors’ multi-local existences from non-places to intimate anchor points.
During the research project Stop and Go, Michael Zinganel and Michael Hieslmair re-examined post-socialist transformations at nodes of transnational mobility and migration along the pan-European traffic corridors, by traveling the roads between Vienna, Tallinn and the Bulgarian-Turkish border in their Ford Transit transporter van. The three case studies are presented in the form of large-scale diagrams, art works and semi-documentary videos by other artists, the curators brought back ‘from the field of research’ during their journeys.
The exhibition offers a multi-local walk through ethnographic and cartographic representations (including films) that constantly shift between macro- and micro-political viewpoints, tracing the transformation of everyday life at nodes along selected road corridors connecting the former East and West of Europe.
With contributions by international artists and scholars:
Noël Burch | Boris Despodov | Thomas Grabka | Martin Grabner | Michael Hieslmair | Emiliya Karaboeva | Mindaugas Kavaliauskas | Matthias Klos | Vesselina Nikolaeva | Katarzyna Osiecka | Zara Pfeifer | Tarmo Pikner | Maximilian Pramatarov | Rimini Protokoll | SO MAT-Archive | Allan Sekula | Gabriele Sturm | Las Vegas Studio | Tatjana Vukosavljević | Želimir Žilnik | Michael Zinganel
Curated by Michael Hieslmair & Michael Zinganel
© Tracing Spaces, Photo: Wolfgang Thaler
Talk: Tracing Spaces ft. Steel Cities
with Michael Hieslmair & Michael Zinganel (Tracing Spaces) and Kateřina Frejlachová & Martin Špičák (co-curators of the exhibition “Logistic Landscapes” 2019 and co-editors of the book “Steel Cities” published by VI PER & Park Books 2020), moderated by Karolína Plášková
While “Steel Cities” criticized logistic landscapes and archipelagos as unbearable land consumption, the project “Stop and Go” adds an ethnographic approach perceiving these places also as a temporary habitat of mobilized individuals: The result is a network of transport structures, buildings, vehicles and people, technical and “social” infrastructures, whose work makes our high quality of life in prosperous cities possible in the first place.
Production: Karolína Plášková | Viola Rösch | Ruslan Dimov | Daniel Bemberger | Eva Truncová
Graphic design: Pavel Holomek
Translations: Moudrý překlad
Project support: Lucie Zádrapová | Adéla Šoborová
Supervision: Jan Kristek
The Brno exhibition is realized in cooperation with the Faculty of Architecture of the Brno University of Technology, under the auspices of the Mayor of Brno JUDr. Markéta Vaňková and with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture, the State Fund of Culture, the Statutory City of Brno and the Czech Chamber of Architects.
