Transient Spaces - The Tourist Syndrome

Also see the Open Call for Applications (Deadline: 30 June 2009)

Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome is an interdisciplinary project on the symmetries and asymmetries between contemporary tourism and migration, encompassing research, theory, practice, workshops, seminars, conferences and art exhibitions in Italy, Lithuania, Romania and Germany in 2009 and 2010.

The Tourist Syndrome Summer Camp, 3 - 11 September 2009

An integral part of the two-year project Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome is the upcoming Tourist Syndrome Summer Camp held in Palanga (Lithuania), a renowned seaside resort on the Baltic Sea coast, from 3 to 11 September 2009.

The Tourist Syndrome Summer Camp invites artists, architects, cultural producers, theorists, and academics to an interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange on new forms of mobility today, with a special focus on the relationship between tourism and migration. The eight-day summer camp will offer a diverse programme of workshops, lectures and presentations, and will be open to a maximum of fifty participants to be selected through the Open Call.

The summer camp programme includes three main workshops held by international artists, practitioners and academics Cesare Pietroiusti (Rome/Venice), Krystian Woznicki (Berlin) and Michael Zinganel (Vienna/Graz), and an intense program of presentations, screenings and events by artists already involved in the project, and by the artistic directors and curators of Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome. The workshops will highlight the many aspects of the tourism-migration relationship that exist in different European and non-European contexts and offer the opportunity to explore individual and subjective, as well as socio-political themes, with the goal of developing works of art and projects to be presented at the conclusion of the summer camp in Palanga and at the final, comprehensive exhibition in Berlin in 2010.

Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome is a project by uqbar, Berlin, initiated by Marina Sorbello and Antje Weitzel, in cooperation with Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin; E-M Arts, Naples; ICCA/CIAC, Bucharest; Meno Parkas, Kaunas; funded with support from the European Commission and Foundation of German Lottery Berlin.

Detailed information on application procedures and the project Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome are available online at the address: www.transientspaces.org

About uqbar

In spring 2007 cultural producer Dorothee Bienert, Dortje Drechsel, Marina Sorbello and Antje Weitzel have opened to the public a project space in Berlin-Wedding, a multifunctional space for exhibitions, meetings, presentations, seminars, conferences, screenings and workshops, featuring Berlin based and international artists.

The project space uqbar is a derivation from the non-profit art association Uqbar - Society for Representation Research, founded in 2004 as platform for interdisciplinary projects and international cooperation. Uqbar e.V. aims at promoting contemporary art and culture, above all implementing, supporting and hosting projects, which dedicate themselves to the research and promotion of experimental, interdisciplinary artistic and cultural practices in the international context.

The name uqbar was taken from a short story by the writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). In Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1940) the word “uqbar” is an entry in a fictitious encyclopaedia. The word is a construct, a letter combination without meaning, used by the author in order to show how knowledge and meaning are constructed. The problem of the constitution of meaning, signification and interpretation is central to the discussion around the term of the representation.

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