Category: Agency

On tongues and languages: towards a decolonisation of the sensible

English

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, in her talk Historia oral, investigación-acción y sociología de la imagen (Oral history, action-research and sociology of the image), invites us to read the metaphor of ‘the Babel tower’, not as an apologetic and reductionist translation in which linguistic diversity is seen as a punishment, but as the capacity of people of adapting to their environment; this, she argues, is so because we live in an inmensely diverse world, which no only tongue could ‘name’ its in entirety and it would require many tongues and languages to acknowledge oneself in such diverse landscapes.

From this perspective, it is importante to acknowledge the linguistic diversity that overcomes us, and which we cease to recognise due to the effects of colonialism and the ‘hegemonic project’; this project’s main tool has been the suppression of subjectivities, which have their roots and essense in language, in how we recognise ourselves in the territorio. This suppression has been enacted by imposing writting, and imperial and christian languages as totalities and universal narratives, denying the posibility of existence to totalities otherwise and hindering us from seeing those other languages (or language otherwise) of communities as embodied forms of archiving.  Such process has forced us to build boxes to categorise things we do not fully understand, as is the case with what we understand as ‘crafts’.

Enter this project, which aims to establish a dialogue between such other languages -and sensibilities- generated by communities as autonomous expressions of their worldviews, and which have been silenced (or controlled?) by giving them the tag of crafts (such is the case of Kuna culture Molas, Uitoto community baskets or the threads woven in afro-Colombian peoples’ hair). Moreover, the imposition of writing by the hegemonic project as the only valid language for concretising imaginaries, has pushed us to see these other sensibilities barely as products to be admired for their aesthetic qualities and formal manifestations.

 

Español

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, en la conferencia: Historia oral, investigación-acción y sociología de la imagen, nos invita a leer la metáfora de la torre babel, no como una traslación lastimosa y reduccionista en donde la diversidad lingüística es entendida como condena, sino que podríamos considerarla más bien como la capacidad de la gente a involucrarse con el paisaje, ya que estamos en un planeta tan diverso que ninguna lengua podría nombrarlo en su totalidad y que se requeriría de muchas lenguas para reconocerse en esos paisajes tan diversos.

Desde esta mirada, es necesario entender la diversidad lingüística que nos desborda y que dejamos de reconocer desde la colonización y el proyecto hegemónico, cuyo principal vehículo para lograr los propósitos de colonización fue la supresión de las subjetividades, las cuales tienen su raíz en el lenguaje, en el cómo nos reconocemos en el territorio; y esto, mediante la imposición de la escritura, los lenguajes imperiales y de la cristiandad como totalidades y relatos universales, negando la posibilidad de totalidades otras, en donde dejamos de observar esos lenguajes otros de las comunidades que basan sus técnicas de archivo en formas más incorporadas y no necesariamente mediante una escritura ortográfica como la conocemos, y que optamos por encasillar simplemente en categorías como artesanía, porque excede nuestro entendimiento.

Este proyecto entonces, tiene como objetivo el establecimiento de un diálogo entre estos lenguajes otros –sensibilidades— generadas por las comunidades como expresión autónoma de su concepción de mundo y silenciadas bajo el concepto de artesanías (como las molas de la cultura Kuna, los canastos de la comunidad Uitoto, o las trenzas que tejen en sus cabellos las comunidades afro), y la imposición de la escritura, por parte del proyecto hegemónico como único lenguaje válido de concreción de imaginarios, empujándonos a ver en estas sensibilidades, únicamente, un producto con incontables riquezas estéticas que no trascienden el plano de lo formal.

Women in transition, duaghters of tradition

ENGLISH

This project -which title is inspired by Martina Muzi’s project The Feminine Space between– emerges when attempting to confront the patriarchal tradition of Colombian society and the different narratives that occupy the diverse contexts and institutions that we deal with on different stages of our daily lives. Having its roots in patriarchy, such narratives and their discourses reinforce and strengthen the ideals and behaviours of an oppressing and discriminatory society.

Women in transition, daughters of tradition pretends to recognise the common places in which the patriarchal society is manifested and intervene in them through critical-political design. Such process aims at making evident the situation of oppression, which will, in turn, trigger conflict that might lead to women intervening the different narratives related to upbringing (seen as a life experience) from traditions.

Opia is the most visible initiative of this project, which begins by recognising tradition as the essential narrative that maintains and reinforces the patriarchal system and, as such, it carries within itself multiple practices that degrade women in different levels. Therefore, this initiative attempts to provoke women to recognise and cuestion their position in this system and thus create a new -alternative- tradition emerging from dialogue and a sense of community, resulting in new narrtives that contribute to deconstruct the patriarchal system.

 

ESPAÑOL

Esta iniciativa surge al abordar la tradición patriarcal encontrada en la sociedad colombiana y en ella las diferentes narrativas que se presentan en los contextos e instituciones a las que nos enfrentamos en diferentes etapas de la vida, que al desenvolverse dentro de una sociedad patriarcal, los discursos encontrados en cada una de ellas afianza y refuerza estructuras cuyos resultados son pensamientos e ideales sumergidos dentro de una sociedad desigual y opresora.

Mujeres en transición, hijas de la tradición pretende reconocer los lugares comunes en los que se presenta la cultura patriarcal e irrumpir en ellos por medio del diseño crítico para hacer evidente la situación como problema, generar conflicto y por medio de ello lograr movimiento desde la incomodidad que genera el reconocimiento a partir de intervenir las diferentes narrativas de la crianza (vista como la experiencia de vida) desde la tradición.

Opia es la iniciativa que surge de Mujeres en transición, hijas de la tradición en la que a partir de reconocer como opera el sistema patriarcal encuentro en ello la narrativa predominante que permite la continua reproducción del mismo y es la tradición, que esta cargada de diferentes practicas que degradan en diferentes aspectos a la mujer por ello esta es una iniciativa que consiste en generar el reconocimiento y cuestionamiento en mujeres que se ubican como parte de este sistema y por medio de ello propone crear una tradición que surja a partir del diálogo y comunidad entre todas para que con ello podamos construir una tradición al proponer nuevas narrativas que deconstruyan el sistema patriarcal.

Yai: design fictions for epistemic conflict

ENGLISH

This project attempts to provoke (epistemic) conflict via a narrative based on the question ¿What if shamanic practices would take over Bogotá? The narrative is structured through several elements; on one side, there are 5 ‘crafts’ based on the anaconda’s body according to the makuna: the ‘malokeros’, the ‘cantores’ (singers), the warriors, the shamans and the ‘chagreros’. On the other side, the story has two central characters: César, a western(ised) man who embraces his western episteme and refuses to acknowledge others, and Haku, a shaman apprentice who guides Cesar in his healing process. The narrative -materialised in the form of a design fiction– is also structured around 4 decolonial ‘rules’: the ‘pagamento’ (tax or offer that indigenous peoples do to the gods or the territory), reciprocity, non-anthropocentrism and tori uke (taken from Judo).

The characters and scenarios of the narrative have been represented through illystrations and concept art (from the perspective of an industrial designer). The whole narrative excercise has seeked to provoke a conflict in the interlocutor (reader), aiming for him/her to begin a ‘journey’, being the fiction the path of such journey and cause of conflict, as well as triggering questions that unleash the approach and understanding of other epistemes. The reason for this is a concept I dubbed epistemic lethargy, a ‘sleepy’ state in which western(ised) men and women are, which does not allow us to see other valid forms of understanding the world; instead, when we confront ourselves to other epistemes we do not understand, we attempt to reduce it or discredit it, as the tools that our episteme gives us are not enough to understand others.

 

SPANISH

El proyecto se enfoca en causar un conflicto a través de una narrativa que tiene como base el desarrollo de la pregunta ¿Qué pasaría si llegaran las practicas chamánicas a Bogotá? La narrativa esta creada alrededor de varios elementos: el desarrollo de 5 oficios según el cuerpo de la anaconda para los makuna, los cuales para la narrativa son: los malokeros, los cantores, los guerreros, los chamanes y los chagreros. También la narrativa contiene 2 protagonistas: César el cual es un hombre occidental que se abraza a su episteme occidental y se niega a entender otras, y Haku un aprendiz de chaman el cual va a guiar a César en un proceso de auto sanación. También la narrativa se crea a partir de 4 reglas decoloniales, las cuales son: El pagamento, la reciprocidad, el NO antropocentrismo y finalmente tori y uke, la ultima es tomada del Judo como arte marcial.

Los personajes instaurados en la narrativa y los escenarios de la misma se representaron a través de la ilustración y el concept art desde el diseño industrial. Todo este ejercicio narrativo esta en pro de causar un conflicto al interlocutor, para que este entre en un viaje, siendo la narrativa el camino y causante de este conflicto y preguntas que desaten el acercamiento y entendimiento de epistemes otras. La razón de esto es un estado que descubrí en la investigación, el cual llame el letargo epistémico, entendiéndose como ese estado de somnolencia en el cual nos encontramos los hombres y mujeres occidentalizados que no nos permite ver otra formas de entender el mundo como un igual, todo lo contrario, cuando no entendemos una episteme, intentamos reducirla o desprestigiarla, porque las herramientas que nos da nuestra episteme no van a ser suficientes o en algunos casos serán nulas para entender otras.

Institute for Objects’ Birth Control

[ENGLISH]

From a speculative design perspective, I asked myself the following question: What if the house was nomad? To answer this question, I suggested a fictional scenario where the house liberates the ‘exiled objects’, which are those objects that have been stored in homes for years, devoied from their function, removed from their ‘original homeland’; but, what is homeland of objects? Industrial / Product Design is the homeland of objects insofar as it is the practice that conceives them with a specific function. In exile, the object is devoided of its function, exiled from its industrial design homeland. This project seeks to reivindicate exiled objects by exploring other uses from those originally intended by the designer, more specifically their narrative, political and aesthetic functions (which, in turn, open space for dialogue, critical reflection and/or positioning).

Enter ICONO (short for Institute for Objects’ Birth Control in Spanish), a design fiction aimed at preventing designers from creating unnecessary objects that will, eventually, end up in exile. The workers of ICONO (children from 5 to 7 years old) repatriate exiled objects from their own homes (which were, in turn, once ‘designed’) by creating new narratives with/for them and giving them a new life; by giving a new life to exiled objects, they prevent new (unnecessary) objects to be born.

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[ESPAÑOL]

Desde una aproximación al diseño especulativo me hice la siguiente pregunta: ¿Qué pasaría si la casa fuera nómada? para responder a esta pregunta me plantee un escenario ficcional en donde la casa libera los objetos en exilio, que son aquellos objetos que han sido guardados en las casas por años, desprovistos de utilidad, alejados de su tierra genuina… en este sentido, ¿Cuál es la tierra genuina del objeto?¿Cuál es la patria de los objetos?. El diseño industrial es la patria de los objetos en cuanto a que es la disciplina que los concibe (que les da genealogía) desde una funcionalidad específica.

En el estado de exilio, el objeto es eximido de su función, es exiliado de su patria diseño industrial. En mi proyecto busco reivindicar al objeto en exilio desde otras funciones que se alejan del uso concebido (aquel que el diseñador creó específicamente para el objeto) y que buscan ser funciones narrativas, políticas y estéticas (funciones que permiten establecer diálogo, reflexión, postura de un sujeto frente a algo).

El objetivo general del proyecto es problematizar los objetos en exilio con niños de 5 a 7 años, a partir de la creación de una ficción de diseño materializada en una narrativa audiovisual. El Instituto para el Control Natal de Objetos ICONO se encarga de impedir que los diseñadores industriales creen más objetos que queden en el exilio de las casas. Los trabajadores del Instituto para el Control Natal de Objetos ICONO reivindican los objetos del exilio de sus casas, objetos que alguna vez fueron diseñados, pero también los que nosotros, como estudiantes de diseño, dejamos nacer a lo largo de nuestro tiempo en esta academia.

Center Precariat

//English//

Center Precariat for diagnosis and treatment of precariosis

Center Precariat (CP) is an institution focused on the diagnosis and treatment of precariosis, an illness that has been spreading across the world since the industrial revolution. Patients are diagnosed with precariosis when they work in unequal conditions without dignity; we have identified three types of levels of precariosis, the third being the most severe:

Level 1: precarised. In this level of the illness, the patient is victim of working conditions without dignity and begins suffering loss of memory and forgetting his rights.

Level 2: self-precarised. A more advanced stage of the illness, the patient begins to develop practices that normalise the working conditions without dignity, arriving to self-harm.

Level 3: precariser. The most complex stage of the illness, where the patient considers that neither him nor anyone else should hace access to dignity at work and presents destructive behaviours towards others.

CP has developed a all-round treatment for the different stages of precariosis. The treatment comprises both a behavioural and a pharmacological treatment. The medicines developed by the researchers in the laboratories of CP are:

Digniprophen: anti-imphlamatory of the prolongued feeling of humilliation.
Defensis: contains high levels of respectonine, raising the levels of value and self respect in the patient, which generates in him the constant need to defend his/her rights.
Procrastinol: analgesic to relief stress, is recomended to patients of any stage to take at least one a day.
Equivitamins: vitamins that balance the ethic of the patient and inhibits the normalisation of inequality, resulting in seeing others as equals.

If you wish to self-diagnose yourself on precariosis use our online test and visit our website for further information on the treatment.

*This project is one of the results of the studio-class ‘Critical Dynamics’ of the Industrial Design program of the Jorge Tadeo University of Bogotá (Colombia). The studio aims to challenge students to build design fictions and critical design projects that challenge several notions on society and design. This semester (2019.1), students chose and problematised one of the SDG of the UN and built fictions that allowed interlocutors to question the base of the goals in themselves.

 

 

//Español//

Center Precariat – Diagnóstico y tratamiento de la Precariosis

El Center Precariat es una institución que diagnostica la Precariosis, una enfermedad que crece entre la población desde la revolución industrial, la Precariosis se presenta cuando el paciente trabaja bajo condiciones indignas y desiguales en el campo laboral, existen 3 etapas de la enfermedad:

Etapa 1: Precarizado, en esta el paciente sufre de condiciones indignas presenta pérdida de la memoria, empieza a olvidar sus derechos.
Etapa 2: Auto-precarizado, una etapa más avanzada de la precariosis, el paciente después de haber pasado por la precarización empieza a desarrollar prácticas que normalizan las condiciones indignas auto infringirse daño.
Etapa 3: Precarizador, es la etapa más compleja, en esta etapa el paciente considera que ni él ni nadie debe acceder a condiciones dignas, el paciente presenta comportamientos destructivos causando daño a otras personas.

El Center precariat desarrolla un tratamiento completo para aliviar los síntomas de la Precariosis, el tratamiento se compone de dos partes, la primera es un tratamiento conductual y la segunda es una tratamiento farmacológico. Los medicamentos desarrollados por Center Precariat son:

-Digniprofeno: desinflamatorio del sentimiento prolongado de humillación.
-Defensis: contiene respetoronina que aumenta los niveles de valor en el paciente generando una necesidad constante de
defender sus derechos.
-Procrastinol: analgésico para aliviar el estrés, es bueno para la salud mental tomar por lo menos un procrastinol al día.
-Equivitaminas: vitaminas que equilibran la ética del paciente e inhibe la idea de desigualdad haciéndole ver a todos como iguales.

Para diagnóstico haga el examen aquí: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScR3TVUDF2niuzVi6CYY9jsdCqNmGFvzVCoEoi0kO-var6V9g/viewform

Visite nuestra página: https://precariosis.site123.me/

*El proyecto nace como una respuesta a la investigación sobre el cuestionamiento de cómo la ONU aborda los objetivos de desarrollo, estudiando cómo se normalizan problemas sociales causados por el crecimiento económico, cómo esto pasa por encima de los derechos y la dignidad de las personas. El proyecto se centra en la precarización laboral, busca visibilizar el tema proponiendo la precarización como una enfermedad, la Precariosis y pone en perspectiva cómo los estudiantes se autoprecarizan de esto sin haber entrado aún en el campo laboral.

AMP-UTA(TE)

//English//

AMP-UTA (Alternative Methods for Payment – Universal, Technical and Accessible) is a financial institution commited to offering financing alternatives to low-income students who wish to pursue studies in private universities with ‘quality certification’ in Colombia and prefer not to get endebted to traditional institutions. The name itself hints to the alternative methods we offer: in exchange of body parts of the applicant, AMP-UTA gives the monetary equivalent to the University where the student wishes to study (or is already undergoing his or her studies).

Amputations are made with absolute safety, thanks to the technologies available at our offices. But we can also do ambulatory procedures, with our flagship dispositive HANDBOX, a compact artefact that can amputate a hand in an average of 10 minutes, with absolute cleanliness and nanometric precision (achieved thanks to anaesthetic spray and laser which cuts and cauterizes at the same time). Our institution is committed to the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN, particularly that of “Access to Quality Education”, and we understand that diversifying financing methods is a great step to reaching such goal.

*This project is one of the results of the studio-class ‘Critical Dynamics’ of the Industrial Design program of the Jorge Tadeo University of Bogotá (Colombia). The studio aims to challenge students to build design fictions and critical design projects that challenge several notions on society and design. This semester (2019.1), students chose and problematised one of the SDG of the UN and built fictions that allowed interlocutors to question the base of the goals in themselves.

 

 

//Español//

AMP-UTA (Alternativas para Métodos de Pago – Universitarios y Técnicos Accesibles) es la propuesta de una entidad financiera, que ofrece alternativas de pago no monetario a los estudiantes o aspirantes de bajos recursos económicos que desean ingresar a una universidad (privada) con certificación de alta calidad en Colombia, pero que no desean endeudarse con entidades financieras tradicionales como ICETEX. El mismo nombre de la entidad da pistas de los métodos de pago alternativos que ofrece, pues a cambio de partes corporales del estudiante, AMP-UTA realiza el pago del valor monetario correspondiente a la parte corporal (determinado por la calidad de la misma) que será consignado directamente a la universidad en la que el estudiante se encuentre realizando sus estudios.

Las amputaciones serán realizadas gracias a las tecnologías disponibles en las instalaciones de AMP-UTA. Por ejemplo, el dispositivo insignia de la empresa HANDBOX, es un dispositivo compacto que en un tiempo estimado de 10 minutos realiza la amputación de una mano con limpieza y precisión nanométrica, mediante anestesia en spray y corte láser que a la vez cauteriza la herida. De esta forma, en aproximadamente 1 hora desde la firma del contrato hasta la realización de la operación, el estudiante habrá asegurado el pago de hasta 3 semestres académicos. Esta propuesta es realizada con la intención de aumentar la posibilidad de acceso a la educación superior de calidad, según lo planteado por los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible de las Naciones Unidas, que propone calidad en educación y aumento de la accesibilidad a través de el aumento de métodos de financiar la misma.

ECOLE MONDIALE

http://ecole-mondiale.org/

Ecole Mondiale was originally  initiated by King Leopold II of Belgium in 1902 as a postgraduate school to develop and prepare young men for a colonial career in the overseas areas of the European nation states.

Filip Van Dingenen and Ive Van Bostraeten aspire to rethink this project trough the design of 9 thematic ‘field stations’ on various locations. The aim is to redefine and investigate the feasibility of the Ecole Mondiale as a pedagogical project. In 1905, King Leopold II placed a cornerstone at Tervuren to mark his project to build Ecole Mondiale. The classic eight departments included: Agronomy, Ethnography, History, Languages, Law, Mathematics, Medicine and Natural History. These departments were accompanied by a documentation centre with the expectation that its graduates would build an international knowledge hub. In particular, Leopold aimed to prepare people to explore new territories.

Today, we no longer have to explore the world, but to learn how to care for our existing world.

Meta(data)morphosis

Thanks to the relevations of Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers before and after him, the public has gained incredibly insight into the state of global mass surveillance in the 21st century. Platforms such as The Intercept continue to drive this high-level critical discourse on surveillance, while new leaks continue to shape the global political agenda.

In this context, Meta(data)morphosis (MDM) is a design research project with a drastically different scope, namely a local, low-key engagement with the public over the personal consequences of big data and global mass surveillance. Specifically, the project looks at metadata (defined by Snowden as ‘the fact that a communication occurred’ (VICE on HBO, 2016)), in the context of digital shadows–the online proxy versions of ourselves that intelligence services use to determine if we are prospective terrorists, Facebook use for fine-tuning targeted ads in our news feeds, and much more. By doing this, the project aims to heighten the metadata (and hence big data/surveillance) awareness of the public, offering a highly personal, low-level entry point to the massive issues.

Meta(data)morphosis is a longer research project consisting of several experiments, the key one being a workshop with members of the public that was carried out in Or Gallery, Berlin, on July 31, 2015 as part of the annual JVEA event. The workshop was facilitated by Søren Rosenbak, Henrike Feckenstedt and Régis Frias (with Régis also acting as a participant). Based on design ethnographic extractions of personal metadata from the workshop participants, each metadata set was designed into a short film script template by the designer researchers. These templates would contain metadata such as locations, characters and time stamps, but importantly no actual content such as dialogue. A concluding session saw each participant co-speculate on top of another participant’s script template by filling out the blank spaces, producing a narrative of an alternative present which was then finally read back to the participant whose metadata the template was based on. This was the uncanny moment when participants faced their digital shadows: plausible, perhaps more tedious, perhaps more disturbing, versions of themselves. Following this final performance, the workshop ended with a collective reflection session, connecting the digital shadows back to the larger issues of global mass surveillance.

A big thanks to the M(D)M participants, the M(D)M team, JVEA, and finally Kempefonden for financial support.

– – –

VICE on HBO. 2016. State of Surveillance. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucRWyGKBVzo

a curatorial approach for real-world system transitions?

An economist, a landscape architect, and a sociologist were invited by the region of Lazio, Italy, to host a three-day workshop to revitalise a 400+ hectare asset of land in the city of Rome. The land in question has been held up in an intractable deadlock for nearly 3 decades. Our task was to identify a common vision for it amidst a multitude of differing and antagonising positions. To do this, we began exploring a curatorial approach to participatory planning in public space; how can we entwine different forms of knowing, what is our ethic of care, what does a stakeholder meeting-as-exhibition look like? If an exhibition is a ‘knowledge event’ then why not frame or stage the stakeholder meeting as an exhibition?

Our first step involved looking at different definitions of curating across a body of literature. We identified a number of relevant themes: a curator as caretaker, which we took to signify a deep interest in the process and outcome of the event; a curator as mediator and translator of different types of knowledge, working with analytical and poetic messaging; curator as meaning maker, framing the event towards transferring significance; curator as narrator across scales, giving attention to the constitutive and constituted narratives, which emerge at the micro-to-macro/ matter-to-meta level, from the individual artefact to the overall message of the exhibition.

The three-day event, attended by policy makers, urbanists, representatives of business interests and local initiatives involved working between knowledge worlds and creating passages between individual and collective interests, between rational pursuits and emotional sensibilities. The most significant shift from traditional approaches was the pursuit of meaning-making in lieu of consensus building. Our intention was for participants to leave with a renewed connection with the site and a belief in its potential for the local and regional community. We believed that this was more important and lasting than focusing on finding a solution that was agreeable to all the stakeholders.

The role of the curator was to frame and promote individual and collective explorations of multiple types of knowing in relation to the context—from deeply personal to collective, from analytical to experiential. We framed the event as an exhibition, which included a series of artefacts acting as sensorial stimuli, physically situating the participants within a gallery. Analytical discussions, such as using systems thinking to understand the context was paired with creating visual artefacts that represent the discussions—each group established a socio-technical bricolage of images, sketches and even poems to represent their ideas, desires, dreams and future trajectories. These artefacts, we anticipated, would better retain their memories and inspiration from the event than any written policy report afterwards.

As curators, we subtly guided the processes with an interest in creating significance around certain themes for particular objectives. Our care for the context led to carefully reframing debates, nudging themes towards our own ideological interest. This is a controversial element, whereby the curator is ideologically present within the on-going negotiation. To avoid overt questions of accountability and transparency we attempted to be clear with our personal interest in the event and our desired outcome.

In this case, the curatorial approach for multiparty stakeholder negotiations is a prime example of rethinking the way we engage with singular forms of knowledge. To call what we did ‘curating’ is a stretch, nevertheless, it is inspired by, and borrows from, the curatorial, providing a new mode of engagement that produces meaning and that is rooted in ‘care’.

Détours Travel Agency

Détours Travel Agency- A Traveling Travel Agency

A project by Enrico Tomassini, Milly Reid, Michel Gölz & Markus Gebhardt

Détours Travel Agency conducts tours of urban exploration in Vienna. Its target group is people that have recently arrived in the city, and who are in a state of transition between places. We, as travel agents and equally as participants, attempt to discover places previously unknown to us all. Through the documentation of experiences and personal perspectives being made in our city tours, we aim for this collective practice to become a methodology that fosters a familiarity and connection to place. We believe that the quality of being a stranger can bring a new perspective on the city. By sharing stories of places that each of us frequent, we want to uncover the spaces that hold a special meaning to us, and hence build-up a contextual understanding of where we are and where we hope to go.

PROJECT EXPLANATION

We operate our travel agency with the use of a Chinese rickshaw cart, equipped with mobile furniture, in order to temporally dwell and create a setting in public space. An heterogenous group of people is invited to be part of each new ‘journey’. Each new journey starts at a specific location where the participants, future travel agents, are introduced to a series of tools encouraging interactions with others and the cityscape that we will be drifting collectively. We say drifting because no destination is predetermined but it is negotiated on the surface of a map at every new beginning. A series of rituals introduce the ‘new arrival’ to the tour. We take out the map and gather around it as each of us mark the places we already know.

The questions asked to facilitate the process of marking are relatively straight forward: When did you arrive? Where are you from? Where did you live? What places do you frequent in Vienna? What’s your favorite place? Where do you go with friends? Where do you live? Where do you wish to go? Etc., yet the responses brought forth stories, memories and trips made to other places in other times. We roll-up the map, pack the Chinese rickshaw and distribute tags, with string and pens and tools for documentation amongst the participants. It is an invite to leave an ephemeral trace pinpointing a perception, an associative memory to another space and time or an emotion along the way, every participant is guided but yet the possibility listed above are spontaneous reactions we could document in the previous tours.

The city becomes a canvas where the process of marking, with paper badges, claims a space of representation for each of the participant: a temporary and unconventional monument is placed. The first badge is fixed to mark the start or a place to go. Is it south, is it north? We are on the move. A space for the construction of oneself memories, that we also use to call future familiarities, is enabled hence a process of familiarization is initiated. The process of marking define an open trajectory along which attachment and identification to a place are fostered in a process ofplacemaking. Ways of orienting in space are questioned. As we walk, we experience the city differently, roles are interchanging then we find a place where to stop.

A mobile space of living is unfold to make everyone comfortable with the new surroundings. We consider each element of our travel agency as part that plays a role in conducting what we like to call our ‘nomadic happenings’. With this in mind, the production of our agency began with the reparation of the rickshaw, and evolved into a series of designs for transformable benches, durable cushions, and the preparation of tea and picnic food before each journey in order to create moments of conviviality for otherwise strangers. Through the elaboration of a flexible method triggering different events throughout a yet not written dramaturgy of the tour we trace out and occupy temporarily a space to let stories and perspectives be told, recorded and framed within final outcome of a map and travel guide that are used as an invitation for others to discover and venture to, hence, new familiar places.

OUTCOME

The outcome of the project is a travel guide where the process of arriving and familiarization of the previous tours’ participants is mapped out and narrated. The aim of the travel guide is to invite others to discover and rediscover the urban space through their own eyes, unfolding one of the main quality of being on the move, travelling: the one of being a stranger.This project is for newbies and established ones. It is about arriving and maintaining the capacity to see routinized spaces from a new perspective.

“The only way we can move is collectively, the only way forward is together.”