BALKANIZE IT!
Balkanize: <tuerk.-nlat>: divide a territory into small
states; create political confusion. (Duden)
A project by:
Eva Ursprung (Graz), Stevan Vukovic (Belgrade), Mihael Milunovic
(Paris/Belgrade)
Website programming: Ales Zemene
Participating artists: Sule Esdik, Doris Jauk-Hinz, Johanna Lettmayer,
Sabine Maier, Paula Miklosevic, Mihael Milunovic, reas, Eva Ursprung,
Heimo Wallner.
Until 1918, a huge part of the Balkans was part
of the „Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy“ or „Danube-Monarchy“, or,
the other way round – Austria was part of the “Balkans”.
Borders continuously change, but the idea of
The Balkans remains strong. So where do The Balkans begin and
where do they end? Is there something like "mental"
Balkans? Where is it located? Europe is growing together nowadays,
but the borders to the "outside", to the "Other"
- which is mostly located in the East -, stay. What precisely
makes the difference? Where is the "real" Balkans, and
what is it all about - through the viewpoint of artists, theoreticians,
politicians and "ordinary" people from all around Europe?
THE BALKANIZE MAP
Everybody is invited to upload images, texts,
and sounds which express their personal, subjective, individual
view of The Balkans to our website: http://balkanize.mur.at.
What are your connotations, the images, that
come to your mind? What are your experiences? Let´s reverse the
“europization” of the continent - join the balkanization of Europe!
THE BALKAN TOUR
Graz – Belgrade – Sarajevo – Cetinje – Ulcinj – Tirana
– Ohrid – Sofia – Belgrade – Graz
In order to compare their inner views with the
real world impressions, 7 Austrian and 2 Serbian artists / theoreticians
explored the area on The Balkan Tour, collecting and recording
“live” impressions to leave their traces on the route of the virtual
map. This is the "core" of the project, the meeting
of the inner and the outside views, as well as seed for new contributions.
The sounds and visuals collected on The Balkan
Tour from April 7th – 18th 2003 are creating a new environment
between documentation and abstraction, resulting in
THE BALKANIZE PERFORMANCE
A multimedia-event combining video and still
images with live electronics (processed sound samples), as well
as analogue instruments like saxophone and bass guitar.
Sounds: reas – samples / loops, bass guitar; Eva Ursprung
– saxophone
Ales Zemene – pd (live sound processing)
Visuals: Doris Jauk-Hinz, Eva Ursprung – video
Sule Esdik, Sabine Maier, Paula Miklosevic – still images
This project is part of LokalTask, http://localtask.mur.at/
Graz 2003, Cultural City of Europe.
LocalTask is a project by mur.at. The net art
platform mur.at, established in 1998, is a strategic alliance
of art initiatives and artists in Graz, dedicated to creating
an electronic network. mur.at allows networking between different
initiatives in the field of art and culture in a [common] virtual
space by creating an infrastructure for the arts sector.
