The Plotting Shed

Sophie contributed to discussion at Borderlines, Athens

Reunion - News from Nowhere

The expansion of the European Union in May 2003 to include 10 former
socialist states caused wide spread media attention in the UK. News
of the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in January 2007 has been met
with the introduction of even more stringent immigration laws. Much
of the press coverage in the UK over the widening of the European
Union has been xenophobic, based on misunderstandings of other
cultures and a fear of invasion of foreign workers. Headlines such as
‘Migrants ruining lives’ and ‘Migrants out of control’ continue to
reflect these views, where as now, they are on the same page as
travel tips to Dubrovnik and Ljubljana. Such double standards have
been normalised and are reflected in Britain’s changing policies on
immigration and human rights. The progression of Europe towards
economic unification is resulting in incidents of rising nationalism.

The diverse ways in which artists are experiencing and interpreting
the issues of a widening Europe was the subject of Trading Places, an
exhibition curated by B+B (Sarah Carrington and Sophie Hope) in May
2003 in London (www.welcomebb.org.uk). The work in the exhibition and
the integral programme of events presented different approaches
artists based in Central and South Eastern Europe are taking towards
issues of migration and border-crossing, from representing the
experiences of migration as migrants themselves or collaborating with
migrants to co-produce narratives, through to direct action by
presenting alternatives to overcoming borders. The participants of
Trading Places shared the need to raise the debate about migration
and create a more complex picture that could challenge the dominant
simplistic, imperial notion of nationalism. It became apparent,
through working on Trading Places, that the concern that artists and
curators have for reflecting and perhaps effecting change in the
current social and political climate is inseparable from the power-
plays inherent in the artist’s role as story-teller, educator,
activator and agitator. The works and discussions in Trading Places
raised the question: what is the relationship between the artist and
her politics; how is a critique of that context and politics formed,
performed, shared and made manifest?

Reunion is a framework through which to continue investigating this
question. As a continuation of Trading Places, Reunion, led by Sophie
Hope, is an action research, contemporary visual arts project that
consists of meetings, experiments, residencies and exhibitions
involving artists and curators based in the UK and South East Europe.
The aim is to try out ideas and reflect on what it means to be
political as a cultural producer in Europe today. The focus on this
geographical area stems from a need to challenge perceptions of the
‘new’ Europe and its borders and to bring questions of unification,
nationalism and identity to the fore. The Reunion projects have been
a process of reviewing differences, commonalities and frictions
across Europe.

Each research trip for the participants of Reunion - the meetings
over coffee, train journeys and experiments in a strange land - are
impossible attempts at trying to understand ones relation to a place.
Who gets to report on these research trips? How is the communication
across borders reciprocal and not just one way? Through Reunion,
artists are moving from ‘east’ to ‘west’ and ‘west’ to ‘east’ to
decide for themselves who and what gets interpreted, understood and
reported.

Posted by reunion at 02:01 PM | Permalink

'Borderlines', Forum European Cultural Exchanges, Athens. Saturday 25 November 2006.

On 25 November, Sophie took part in a panel discussion in Athens about 'Borderlines' organised by the Forum European Cultural Exchanges and the Hellenic American Union. Other speakers included Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss & Katherine Carl, Heath Bunting and Angela Melitopoulos.

Reunion - News from Nowhere

The expansion of the European Union in May 2003 to include 10 former socialist states caused wide spread media attention in the UK. News of the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in January 2007 has been met with the introduction of even more stringent immigration laws. Much of the press coverage in the UK over the widening of the European Union has been xenophobic, based on misunderstandings of other cultures and a fear of invasion of foreign workers. Headlines such as ‘Migrants ruining lives’ and ‘Migrants out of control’ continue to reflect these views, where as now, they are on the same page as travel tips to Dubrovnik and Ljubljana. Such double standards have been normalised and are reflected in Britain’s changing policies on immigration and human rights. The progression of Europe towards economic unification is resulting in incidents of rising nationalism.

The diverse ways in which artists are experiencing and interpreting the issues of a widening Europe was the subject of Trading Places, an exhibition curated by B+B (Sarah Carrington and Sophie Hope) in May 2003 in London (www.welcomebb.org.uk). The work in the exhibition and the integral programme of events presented different approaches artists based in Central and South Eastern Europe are taking towards issues of migration and border-crossing, from representing the experiences of migration as migrants themselves or collaborating with migrants to co-produce narratives, through to direct action by presenting alternatives to overcoming borders. The participants of Trading Places shared the need to raise the debate about migration and create a more complex picture that could challenge the dominant simplistic, imperial notion of nationalism. It became apparent, through working on Trading Places, that the concern that artists and curators have for reflecting and perhaps effecting change in the current social and political climate is inseparable from the power-plays inherent in the artist’s role as story-teller, educator, activator and agitator. The works and discussions in Trading Places raised the question: what is the relationship between the artist and her politics; how is a critique of that context and politics formed, performed, shared and made manifest?

Reunion is a framework through which to continue investigating this question. As a continuation of Trading Places, Reunion, led by Sophie Hope, is an action research, contemporary visual arts project that consists of meetings, experiments, residencies and exhibitions involving artists and curators based in the UK and South East Europe. The aim is to try out ideas and reflect on what it means to be political as a cultural producer in Europe today. The focus on this geographical area stems from a need to challenge perceptions of the ‘new’ Europe and its borders and to bring questions of unification, nationalism and identity to the fore. The Reunion projects have been a process of reviewing differences, commonalities and frictions across Europe.

Each research trip for the participants of Reunion - the meetings over coffee, train journeys and experiments in a strange land - are impossible attempts at trying to understand ones relation to a place. Who gets to report on these research trips? How is the communication across borders reciprocal and not just one way? Through Reunion, artists are moving from ‘east’ to ‘west’ and ‘west’ to ‘east’ to decide for themselves who and what gets interpreted, understood and reported.

Posted by reunion at 04:45 PM | Permalink

In response to the dead line of a conference Sophie was attending in Athens, some of the Reunion resources were sifted under the theme of “borders” to correspond with that of the lecture. A scrap-book was made, which will continue to be added to. Of course, discussion of borders can be limitless rather than liminal. Its agency as a topic- its currency as a buzz-word might begin to dismantle itself.
What does it mean really for a conference to be based on such a thing? Is it necessary to break these Borders? When are borders useful? In an increasingly globalised art economy, and the increased funding available towards the goal of “cultural exchange” one begins to wonder what all this exchange is based on. And yet it is fruitless to be pessimistic. Perhaps it is best to engage, and observe the ideosyncratic details of such events, helping us to see further the nature of their being. Sophie had a good anecdote about the strangeness of the layout, and the way that since everybody in Athens seems to smoke no one stayed inside to look at scrapbooks and other materials any way.

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/exhibitions/detail.asp?strID=500&strCateg=current

And yet behind such seeming frivolous moments at private views, other work of real import is made too. I chanced to see some photos and video made by Ioana Marinescu (see image above) when i went to a private view at the Architectural Association by accident. Also by chance met Nada there, which was nice.

I hope to speak to Ioana soon to find out more about her projects and how they might be helpful for my own work. In a sense, I see it as having a relation to similar ideas to the borders conference. She had been working for some time on a piece of research around the erasure of a central area of the city of Bucharest by Ceucescu- both in physical terms, and in terms of memory, for those that were disposessed of their own homes and relocated to the outskirts of the city. This research culminated in an incredibly moving film with personal interviews with previous residents of the area...

Secondly, she showed a set of images of Gas pipe system in Romania. What had been startling for her, on her return to Romania after 10 years, was this example of new growth- the adhoc in the way they were connected. Perhaps it is a sort of reisitence they presented in the face of possible streamlining re-development- unchecked, unregulated in a country still in the process of re-systematising.

That the pipe are always this yellowish colour- signifying this formless power source, a fragile infrastructure, intersecting the plane of the camera frame in an indeosyncratic manner, jutting out across the landscape, both urban and rural, connecting across borders through bizarre twists and alarming elevated short cuts. They made fascinating 3-dimensional drawings, mappings, nestling within everyday life. Creating surprising new borders, whilst disregarding others.

Posted by reunion at 11:41 AM | Permalink