Syndicate: (Fwd) Transnacionala book in Veni

[Inke Arns <inke@berlin.snafu.de>]

Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 08:50:02 +0200
From: Miran Mohar <miran@kud-fp.si>
Subject: Transnacionala book in Venice

a project  by IRWIN

T    R    A    N    S    N    A    C    I    O    N    A    L    A

edited by Eda Cufer

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You are kindly invited to join a presentation of the TRANSNACIONALA book on
June 11th at 11 am in the Russian Pavilion in Giardini, Venice.
The book and TRANSNACIONALA project will be presented by Eda Cufer and
members of IRWIN.

On this occasion Michael Benson of Kinetikon Pictures will also present
material from his upcoming ?global road movie? MORE PLACES FOREVER, which
incorporates footage from the TRANSNACIONALA trip.

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On June 28, 1996, an international group of artists departed from
Atlanta on a journey across America in two recreational vehicles which
would be their home for the coming four weeks. The unlikely assemblage
of travellers consisted of three Russians--Alexander Brener, Vadim
Fishkin, Yuri Leiderman; six Slovenians--the five-member IRWIN group and
Eda Cufer; and one American--Michael Benson. They engaged in an artistic
project that took the form of an actual journey across 6000 km of
highway, and a spiritual journey of incalculable distance into deeply
personal country.

The aim of the predominantly Eastern European crew was no more or less
ambitious than what Columbus had set out to do 500 years earlier: quite
simply, to discover America.  Their intentions lay in gathering
impressions of the indigenous culture, to exchange views with the
natives, and to make contact with the American system of art, politics,
theory, ethics, economics--and with the myth of America itself.  And in
doing so, they began the discovery of and about themselves as outsiders
on a road of indeterminate destination coming from places barely visible
in the rear-view mirror of America.  While traversing the continent and
probing the culture to see what new social and aesthetic models might
present themselves for observation,  the Transnacionala crew stopped
along the way to perform the quotidien rituals that all travelers must
obey: eating, washing, sleeping, drinking, eliminating.   They also
parked to exchange views with each other and engage in the local art
community wherever possible, most memorably during scheduled events in
Atlanta, Richmond, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. These
pre-arranged but unscripted encounters with the public took place in
cooperation with friends and hosts Goran Dordevic, Mary Jane Jacob,
Katharine Gates, Randy Alexander, Charles Krafft, Robin Held, and Larry
Reid. From the journey,  short textual and video reports were sent via
the internet and transmitted on a TV monitor located in Irwin?s vehicle
in the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam.

This book is a selected memoir of a four-week journey called
Transnacionala--part conceptual art project, part search for community,
part alien encounter between East and West, part investigation of
individual vs. collective identity, part research into networks,
protocols, and communication, and part psychological endurance test.
This book records the outward journey via the live testimony, public
witness, and dialogues taken from road notes, snapshots, and recordings
made along the way.  What remains unrecorded are the private journeys of
the ten individuals for whom Transnacionala remains a trip in progress
and who have continued traveling in their own directions since the
communal journey ended--inwards.

published by KODA



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