Geography and the Politics of Mobility | 2003

Generali Foundation, Vienna, January - April, 2003

GEOGRAPHY AND THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY sets out from the transformative quality of geography in a time of increased mobility in which subjects are no longer tied to one specific location. These "transitory existences" constitute and transform the space that they cross or temporarily occupy due to migration or new working conditions. Human trajectories but also the traffic of signs, goods and visual information form particular cultural, social and virtual landscapes which inscribe themselves materially in the terrain.The resulting locations and non-locations re-articulate in their turn the relationship between social and territorial conditions. In a directly geographical sense, the exhibition traces the logic of human economic circuitswithin a changed world order: the feminizedteleservice industry in India, illegal refugee boats crossing the Mediterranean, smuggling routes over the Spanish-Moroccan border.

Different proposals of geographical practice are manifested both in the way the projects operate as a network, and in their esthetic strategy with regard to a "politics of space." By combining electronic and material landscapes, the art projects address systems both of representation and of navigation. The exhibition thus brings together connective and transgressive artistic practices: on the one hand it takes a critical look at an increasingly consolidating Europe and its borders, while on the other it presents emerging formations of artistic and activist geographies.

foundation.generali.at

The exhibition includes five collective projects conceived by international artists: Bureau d’études from France, Frontera Sur RRVT from Spain and Switzerland, Makrolab from Slovenia, multiplicity from Italy and Raqs Media Collective from India Guest curator: Ursula Biemann The exhibition is accompanied by a publication in German and English with texts by Ursula Biemann, Irit Rogoff, Lisa Parks, Brian Holmes and the artists. catalog

Art Projects

Makrolab

is a temporary, sustainable research station designed to listen in to data from around the world from locations in remote and fragile environments. Four times has the nomadic art-science laboratory been installed so far: after Kassel and Slovenia, it stayed on the Rottnest Island off the Australian coast and in the Atholl estate in the Scottish Highlands over the summer 2002.

Frontera Sur RRVT

the European Southern Border in Real Remote and Virtual Time
The group of artworks takes a critical look at the Spanish-Moroccan border area and its multiple strata of meaning. The project focuses on the varying necessities for mobility, ranging from plantation workers to commuting domestic personnel, clandestine boat crossings, and radar patrols.

Raqs Media Collective

A/S/L (Age/Sex/Location) maps the time geography of shifting identities in a new economy. With the multi-video work the Delhi based media collective addresses the gendered conditions of the new data outsourcing agent: the online working woman who is the quintessential twenty first century worker.

Bureau d’études

With their pictographic installation bureau d’études takes the politics of space on an abstract level. The artist duo from Paris conceives gigantic maps that disclose an increasingly interconnected network of data-gathering systems involving the military, energy and biochemical sectors as well as the entertainment, information and social surveillance systems.

multiplicity

The Milan based collective proposes Case 01 and 02 of their ongoing Solid Sea project on the nature of the Mediterranean Sea and on the fluxes that cross it. While Europe reformulates its borders, multiplicity presents the Mediterranean as a solid space that is traversed by vessels and individuals holding different statuses: ghost ships, high-tech cruise ships, tourists, immigrants and refugees.

Stills