Finnish Institute London: First meeting

January 29th, 2006… My notes if they make any sense… Susan

Introduction of the Project. Nodal model. Europe as super-node.
Finland
- The postcolonial
- The recent ‘multicultural’:
- Russian history relationship
- Our mode of working. How to represent a process

Websites
TV broadcast
Movie insert
Public Events
Private process represented to the public
Private process kept private
More self conscious public ‘outputs’

Question of Portugal. Passionately pro-EU, saved their bacon.

Themes ideas/ specific to each place. ‘Expertise’ from each place? Expertise from each group/ person. (eg. Platforma’s diagramatics, architectural expertise, perhaps film/ video)

Taru’s White Sheet
Religion/ Church issues
Stories – vernacular/ unofficial histories (minor histories)
Fiction
Re-development
Transition/ speed – future space
Language, politics of language
Accountability/ stake in public/ civic sphere. Democratising old (hangover spaces) and new political forms.
Alignments/ affiliation. Political spaces
Europe as super node
Selective inclusion/ new border regimes, camps
East/ west, European internal colonialism. Shifting perceptions.
Non-EU Europe?

- Role/ Function of these practices – public practices, strategies for intervening in, constructing these new spaces/ societies.

Who are WE anyway. Different expertise. Citizens and artists with common cause.
Daniel: To work individually or to set up some collaborations/ collaborative frameworks? (seems positive)

Tellervo: what are the motivations? What does each want to get out of it? Personal angle? Specific work that might come out of it. Interesting to talk about it all now. To get excited enough about something to really take this up.

Daniel: Research process is an approach. How this would facilitate the approach. Ongoing, articulated in different ways.

- Something specific. Rural spaces – the changes.
- Aisling – stories that tell you how things are
- Dinko – undeveloped spaces of Europe. Condition of transition spaces. The dark bits on the light map (Taru – maybe they are just unrecognised)
- Dinko – exchanges between places – conditions of habitation. Tourists who live places for a while. Enjoying rurality without the ‘baggage’.
- Nicole – commuter tourists, and ex-pats. Inner tourism (excursions).
- Maybe – mode of inhabitation, condition of being there (temporary,

(Centri as a mode of connection, beyond dominant structures of articulation. Centri through operating a different mode of connection we might posit another space)…

Centri- diagrammatic. Contaminate the clean, outside positioning of the multiplicity type diagrams.

wiki map?
Through characters? Mobile. Frameworks for characters have changed in Croatia. Co-ordinates and reference points wrecked.
Aisling – morphing software – bedroom bigger at night.
Taru – points of view.
Nicole – verse. The vernacular of verse. Esperanto. Fiction, drama and scriptedness. Stage drama in Esperanto. Brechtian strategies. Stuttering in another language. Take them away from the anthropological purism.

A web-site. Keep it open. Plug into it. Space of play, hook up,

PRACTICALS

Project Space of Helsinki Kunsthalle Spring 2007? (Nifca)
Belfast – Splitting residency slot at Flax/ Interface Slot (2007 is full)
Colette, Grant Watson.
Croatia: Protokol. Would have to have a public appearance.2006 funding. £4,000. Lectures on EU policy! SPLIT also.
Commitments/ Conditions
…. Cash, travel grants.

Modes of Operation… the intention

Centrifugal’s multi-layered geography is reflected in the format of the project as well as in its critical aim to investigate the modes of operation defined in terms of the very notion of network. Network is the key critical concern that directs the strategic modes and forms of operation the project sets out to test and develop. The network is rethought in terms of a working “we” that is both mobile and situated. At the heart of the project is an aim to create meaningful platforms for encounter and interaction that can generate strong future collaborations and new networks between these cities. Therefore it is crucial that the collective research and workshops between an active working group create a firm base for further exchange. Centrifugal intends to support both processes simultaneously.

The project is punctuated by a series of residencies followed by public events, forums and exhibitions. To reflect the cumulative process of the project we have called our activities Sequences. The Sequences will, in their various forms and in different ways, mobilise and modify what is defined as an exhibition, a conference, a residency, a public forum.

Themes

Participants, organisers and artists involved with Centrifugal have in common an emphasis on socially-engaged, research-lead, site-specific and collaborative processes. Key themes in common to all participants’ work and research are the following: migration, border negotiations, tourism and travel, networked micro-histories, maritime spaces and the changing public and private civic spaces of cities and informal economies in and around Europe. As artists and cultural producers we bring to these themes a specifically cultural perspective in order to both creatively examine and imagine new geographies and sites of commonality.

Centrifugal: Belfast: Helsinki: Zagreb: London

The project brings together art practitioners and theorists from three European cities, all positioned in close relation to the borders of Europe, particularly as defined in terms of the European Union: Helsinki, Zagreb and Belfast. Focusing on the smaller centres, or “off-centres”, of artistic practice in Europe, the project draws attention away from the cosmopolitan cities such as London, and questions the persisting dichotomies such as centre-margin and global-local. This project re-inscribes London, not as a centre, but as a centrifugal point, from which collaborations spin off to other locations. Centrifugal asks the following questions: What kinds of exchanges take place in the seemingly geographical margins of Europe, where its boundaries are constantly under negotiation? What are the geographical and political borders in Europe, and how do they define citizenship? What do the the terms local and centre mean today in what has been described as a smooth global world, where ‘origins’ and directions of power can no longer be clearly located? What is difference in this context? And finally, what do these positionings mean for artistic practices?

At the heart of the project is a desire to evaluate the idea of the European project from within, problematising the meaning of this notion of belonging and difference. The complex ways that we position ourselves in relation to Europe may be what actually binds together and simultaneously distinguishes the local situations. This shared point of reference is extremely fragmented and contradictory, and it cannot be pinned down even though it persistently haunts our attempts and desire to relate to each other. The project explores this troubled common ground through an investigation of the relationship between historical European Kingdoms and Empires and their inherited and colonial peripheral European lands and how this history also haunts the contemporary European project. These questions and histories are particularly pertinent in the case of applicant countries, such as Croatia, whose interim status pushes against all of these working definitions of Europe. Thus, Centrifugal reworks notions such as centre, periphery and border both on historical and contemporary, conceptual and structural levels.