Running Freight on the River. A Clean Cargo Prefiguration
(2023)
author(s): Tim Boykett, Tina Auer
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
We are interested in exploring the types of futures that are preferable for us all. Discussions of preferable futures can be made difficult by a lack of understanding of the lived experience of that possible future. We like to think that some wise person once said: “I hear futures and I forget. I see futures and I remember. I do futures and I understand.” In order to explore scenarios of possible futures, we thus look into experiential modalities.
This exposition examines our Danube Clean Cargo project. The prefigurative process imagined what small scale localised transport could be like and attempted to run a pilot scheme. Reporting on that, merging the quantitative, qualitative and experiential aspects of the project, we present some resulting insights and imaginations. The project leaves us with speculations and visions drawn out by the process of prefiguration. It also leaves us with questions around heterotopic instantiations, queered economics and the everyday to be pondered as artistic research. This helps us reflect on the process of imagination and speculation, on dreams of various freedoms and the harsh realities of logistics chains.
The exposition develops ideas in both internal and external reflective modes. The exposition is oriented along a chart of the Danube river for the region of interest. Along the south bank of the Danube the project and its internal reflections are arrayed as episodic text fragments, leading up to a short vision that echoes older stories of sailing cargo barges. Along the north bank a more external reflection is positioned, bringing the project and its understandings into context with a collection of previous developments and external references. The entire exposition is arranged as a single page paper nautical chart, which in contrast to a digital chart plotter, always displays all of the information and does not hide features.
This exposition is part of Curiouser and Curiouser, cried Alice: Rebuilding Janus from Cassandra and Pollyanna (CCA), an art-based research project from Design Investigations (ID2) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and Time's Up. It is supported by the Programme for Arts-based Research (PEEK) from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): AR561.
DAYS IN BETWEEN
(2020)
author(s): Marianna Christofides
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
In accordance to generic tropes in the way the Balkans are represented, conflicts in the region are repeatedly ‘naturalized’ in their description, and attributed geological-seismological features. With the essay film Days In Between Marianna Christofides and her collaborator Bernd Bräunlich recursively visited the Balkans between 2011 and 2015, at first seeking out littoral borders where the course of the boundary remains indefinite. Rivers as invisible yet politically instrumental borders was one of the initial narrative strands. Having lost the first few years worth of audiovisual material, the data on the hard drive being unretrievable, they decided to return, only to find that the places no longer existed in the same way. Both topography and social fabric in ceaseless flux. Their approach extended accordingly, now focusing on loss, omissions, obfuscation and disappearance. The appropriation of nature’s workings in political discourse came to the fore. As did the filmmaker’s inhibiting yet empowering fringe location. Through a reflective lens of doubt agency was re-calibrated. The project grew wider in a recurring attempt at approaching, and began to expand, up until the present and in multiple iterations. Within this non-finite process the constant failure, and the beginning anew, became integral parts of the narrative.