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| | | PANOSCOPES
| | | PANOSCOPES are an ongoing collection of interviews RADICANT conducted with individuals arguing out of a multi professional and international perspective.
| | | PANOSCOPES introduce art initatives and projects with a political- & social reflective activist approach to society, art networks and their mission, appearance and political contextualization, individuals on a move and their ways of implementing instability and rootlessness into their art work as well as viewpoints of people RADICANT finds relevant to put up for discussion.
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||| PANOSCOPES in 2013
4 | A NEW STRATEGY FOR CULTURE - establishing art networks in Skopje and Mazedonia | Elena Veljanovska
NOTES & SOUND EDITING BY ANA ELISA ESTRELA FERREIRA
Elena Vlejanovska an independent curator from Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, studied Art History and Archaeology and currently signed up for a MA in Cultural studies in Skopje. Since she has started working at the cultural center Tocka in 2003, she got deeply interested in the practical field of art, especially in curating and advocating for independent and contemporary art. Elena is co-founder of Line Initiative and Movement, a platform for new media art and technology in 2006, and was a program director of the same organization until 2011. In order to develop suitable conditions for the independent cultural workers and cultural centers, which are ruled by collectives and independent artists, she struggles in her country on a continuous basis. Nowadays, she works at Jadro ? Association of the Independent cultural scene (http://jadroasocijacija.org.mk) and Kontrapunkt (http://ngokontrapunkt.wordpress.com/about/), an organization that works in fields of art, cultural theory and cultural policy.
Via Jadro, which means ?core?, she and her colleagues have created an advocacy network in Macedonia. The first idea behind it was the strengthening of the Independent cultural sector and uniting the actors under one umbrella platform. Therefore, the members of Jadro decided for the creation of a legal body, an Association of the active Independent cultural organizations in Macedonia. In its first year of existence, Jadro focused on
- working on improving the advocacy skills of its members and communicating the needs of the Independent cultural sector to the authorities
- working on the model of hybrid institution, which would be managed by the artists, with state support.
So far, Jadro intends to monitor the Ministry of Culture, in terms of money expenditure and transparency in the funding for culture. A first occurrence for this is actually about to come, a planned discussion in late March. Besides the advocacy activities, Jadro held in the beginning of December 2012 a 3-day-event. The idea was to show the main aspects of its presence in the cultural scene in the past 20 years. The event consisted of three core parts:
- the Radio Show
- the Archive of the Independent cultural scene
- the program with various events, such as workshops, poetry readings, cooking, music events and exhibitions.
The first part, the Radio Show was a strategy for spead out the event and its activities to a wider audience by setting up a daily radio program in cooperation with the Independent radio Kanal 103 (kanal103.com.mk). The Archive was built around the project of two artists, Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska, and their artistic project entitled ?To the Independent?s ? true stories?. This work commemorated and made visible the efforts of the five independent art spaces which worked from the 1990?s till 2010 in Skopje. The former art spaces were presented in cubes built especially for this installation and showed a collection of posters, catalogues, videos and different materials produced-a time travel through the past. The installation was guided by an archive of materials of the other Macedonian cultural organizations, which worked with and used those spaces. The idea was to show the lack of space for independent art, but also to show the continuous efforts on creating contemporary art in the country.
Within the following interview Elena emphasizes the relevance of independent cultural groups for developing new art practices, new ways of distributing art and language forms, and adressing new audiences, beyond supporting emerging artists. She points out that the art produced has impact on raising the interest of the public and facilitating their aesthetic non-formal learning."
We met Elena Veljanovska at the Digital Backyards Conference in Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin in October 2012. You can listen to exerpts of a talk between Elena and radicant-network author Tatjana Fell which took place at arttransponder Berlin in January 2013
Interview
5 | ARTS IN TRANSIT - reach out to public through PASAJ |Seçil Yaylall | Istanbul Turkey
NOTES & SOUND EDITING BY ANA ELISA ESTRELA FERREIRA
On Sep 7, 2012, Seçil Yaylali, a Turkish artist, spoke to arttransponder about her art projects. Beginning from her interest on clay, Seçil studied architecture and design. When she started dealing with her installations and public art projects, the artist chose for a participatory approach. The work is therefore done with the active collaboration from others, regardless their artistic background. This has also to do with the artist´s beliefs, that everyone can be an artist. In order to achieve this, they share their ideas among themselves. Seçil monitors them, and has also the chance of learning through it. The answers which came belong to all of them. Under this participatory approach, people who were working on domestic positions in Beirut, for instance, were able to have another social role during the project.
In the course of a collage process using family pictures, from their own as well as from those they worked for, in a Zico House residency, this group of people managed to build a story. The artist believes her work can be seen as a way of emphasizing the need for better conditions for migrant workers.
Seçil is also into independent and experimental art as an organizer and curator. In Istanbul, she and other artists, keep a place, called ?Pasajist? ? Passage, in English. With the goal of being an independent centre for experimental art, ?Pasajist? does not work as a commercial gallery. On the contrary, it does not deal with this aspect. The chosen projects to be shown there are done with the condition the place gets ready for the next exhibition. Once more, a community interest raises here. ?Pasajist? has a sound rule for good neighbourhood. The group had the initiative of inviting neighbours, showing them some gallery projects, and always inviting them for the exhibitions. They realized the shop owners started comparing the events, with interesting remarks. There is even a couple, from a shop which sells ?extra size? shoes, who invited the Pasajist staff and some artists to their house and showed the gardens around the secret city walls of Istanbul.
||| PANOSCOPES in 2012
1 | THE CHANGE MAKERS - building up JAAGA | Archana Prasad | Bangalore, India
SOUND EDITING BY ANA ESTRELA FERREIRA | NOTES BY TATJANA FELL
Archana Prasad is artist, social activist and initiator of various projects and networks in India. With her very specific project space JAAGA located in Bangalore India she created a structure and platform for artistic and activistic projects. Jaaga is dedicated to foster relations between art and technology, provides exhibition- and event space as well as rents workspace to socially engaged start up companies. The interview introduces the general ideas, aims and specific conditions of Jaaga as well as personal motivations for initiating and running this project space.
2 | PERFORMANCE ON THE MOVE - sensing the usual using unusual methods | Vera Maeder | Copenhagen, Denmark
NOTES & SOUND EDITING BY VERONIKA SIMIKOVA VLACHOVA
Imagine you are in a familiar city, you?re walking and exploring its neighborhoods that you might have visited many times before. But this time everything is different. Anything you do feels new and adventurous. You?re part of an exciting game, for which you only need two things: yourself and your mobile phone on which you?re receiving messages that instruct you where to go and what or who to be noticing.
Vera Maeder ? a dancer, performer, actor, and theatre director born in Germany ? called her project hello!earth. Its main purpose is to provoke thoughts about reality ? how it comes to exist and what it actually is. By using new technologies she draws her audience in action in an appealing way. The embodied experience of the audience becomes the performance, the dance, and the artwork. The invisible reality show, which has been underway under Maeder?s guidance since 2005, provides the audience with multiple frames to perceive their surroundings, situations, and themselves from mixed stand points. ?Our starting idea was to make a shift by which the audience wouldn?t just be watching something but participating. Instead of coming from the background of perfoming arts, instead of just sitting and seeing something, it is rather like creating a frame where people would go through the experience themselves, which would also involve the sensory layer of an experience,? says Vera Maeder for RADICANT. ?I always felt that there was a rich playground outside the theatre, there was so much happening there already. Why reconstruct that in the theatre?? continues Maeder, who keeps moving with her project around the world, to places that include Brazil or India. Have a look how the project hello!earth went in Brazil HERE
And it is Bangalore, India, where the project took place last. Compared to the previous instances, in which audioguides were used, this one was different. ?We used mobile technology. Once you called a number, you would become part of a 36-hour performance. You would receive a series of text messages that deal with your participation in the community, guide you in the city and make you explore it in different ways,? says Vera Maeder about her first experience using this kind of technology for her project. Even though there were some technical problems along the way, Maeder would like to continue sending the instructions for participants by text messages.
VERA MAEDER is movement artist and coreographer born in Germany, based in Copenhagen and working on international art projects in various countries. We met her in India where she just finished her collective project we are here . Her organisation Hello! Earth involves residents into practical performative experiences to sharpen their sense for the daily live activities and "do rather than sit and see?. She gives us an insight into her thoughts and processes about developing participatory art projects for the public space as well as she shares her experiences and challenges working within changing cultural environments in various countries.
Interview
3 | TRAVELLING IDENTITIES - on nomadic experiences | Clemence b.t.d. Barret | Paris, France/Bangalore, India
NOTES BY ANA ELISA ESTRELA FERREIRA
Clemence Barret is a French artist dealing with documentary filmmaking. Currently based in Bangalore the artist is really a ?globetrotter?. She has travelled all around the globe and this aspect dominates her work, once art to Clemence means a reaction to the environment which surrounds us. In India, for instance, she believes emotions come to one easily. It might sound a bit cliché, but she does feel her senses get more intense there. Travelling and the experiences during moving out constantly, with its challenges, discoveries and (re)adaptations made the artist pretty much interested in migration as well as in the process of acculturation. Here cultures considering globalization, modernization and cultural identities (just to name some aspects) blend themselves in, in order to show a new outcome.
In an interview Clemence introduces us into her art process of how much this is intuitive without anything planned. At 1ShantiRoad, a contemporary art gallery in Bangalore, Clemence presented some of her works. The first show in 2009 which had a focus on people in Bangalore who were not natives but moved out to this city, Clemence mostly did because of her interest in compound identities.
One year later she realized an installation at Jaaga, a contemporary project space for arts, also located in Bangalore. The installation called ?miss miss hop o' & friends?. Works as ?The Wizard of Oz? and "Hop o my thumb", by Charles Perrault inspired her installation which consisted out of yellow painted pebbles Clemence collected during her traveling period and made a path, representing her journey, with all the changes comprised in that. At its beginning, there is a pair of red shining shoes ? Dorothy´s shoes ? meeting hers/ours, making us think reflexively about our journeys, changes, and discoveries. Finally, in Montreal, another place she stayed, the artists worked with a plastic bag given to her at a drugstore, in order to collect products, emotions, experiences, and ?hopes for a better new life?. In this work full of juxtapositions, the bag has printed on it ?Vive la vie?. Definitely, an invitation for experiencing.
You can listen to Clemences experiences in the soundfiles below, which are exerpts of a talk between Clemence Barret and radicant-network author Tatjana Fell which took place at JAAGA, Bangalore India in July 2011
Clemence´s website: www.clemencebarret.com