June 16 the tourist art

From: cfront-admin@cfront.org [mailto:cfront-admin@cfront.org]On Behalf Of Aleksandar Gubas
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2001 8:57 PM
To: cfront@cfront.org
Subject: [CFront] the tourist art

Hi everybody,
Now we are all back from Plovdiv and forced to switch
our minds from CFront to our local realities. To me,
it's the best moment to turn back and try to bring
some conclusions.
Let's go from the beginning. First, I must say that
Dimitrina is a very good curator. She has perfect
sense for recognizing interesting people and inviting
them to make some good things together. Choosing and
inviting the artists can be a risky business
sometimes, but I think Dimitrina knows how to choose.
She and Alain and Emil are a very good team, and Alain
and Emil done their best in satisfying our needs.
These two guys were a discreet but necessary support
to everything we were doing there, so thank them too.
Dimos is also an efficient co-ordinator. Sometimes it
was not easy to follow the working rhythm he imposed,
but it was the only way to do something. And sometimes
it was not easy to follow some theoretical debates,
but there _were_ really interesting theoretical
contributions there in the Mexican House, thanks to
Dimos. There were some misunderstandings regarding the
interface, but I believe that in the end the Web site
will look pretty good. And we all needed a man like
Dimos to remind us on the deadline and to keep the
working discipline, because we all generally tend to
be laid-back.
The general feeling I have after CFront 2001 is that
it is becoming one of the most important events of the
kind in Europe. I think that European media art scene,
whatever it is, needs that kind of workshop, gathering
some 30 or something artists from different countries
to produce something together. Regarding this year's
CFront, the product will be the content of the Web
site - but maybe it's not necessary to be like this in
the future events of that kind. The product can be a
CD or travelling exhibition or multimedia theatre
performance, or even a film. I think the type and kind
of the final result is of the less importance - the
most important thing is that we really need
well-curated and co-ordinated CFront-like workshops as
the best way to interweave our differences, to
articulate the scene and maybe to mark some new
tendencies.
Multiculturalism, diversity, East-West understanding,
communication - these are all phrases when you just
talk about that. But these are not phrases when you
work. And we really _did_ work at the CFront 2001. And
I hope we will continue to work in this way.
For the future events, whatever and wherever they will
be - me myself, I would like CFront to survive and to
stay in Plovdiv, I think it's the best solution, if
possible - I suggest it to be conceived primarily as a
creative and productive workshop, with some individual
or group presentations of the participants and with
some theoretical content. The afternoon should be for
the work; the evening should be for the presentations
and discussions; the night should be for the parties
and fun; the morning should be for a few hours of
sleep.
I haven't seen the Turkish Bath. Everybody say it's
beautiful as an exhibition space, and if CFront
remains in Plovdiv (which I believe we all would like)
maybe it could be used for some big event (the final
presentation?). But I think the gallery in the
basement is also a very good solution and it enables
participants themselves to present their work to each
other right there in the Mexican House. Using the
basement as a working space enables concentration of
the whole interaction process at one place.
Technically, future CFronts really need the better
internet connection and the more stable internal
network. And I think it would be good to have one Mac
platform installed.
I was thinking about those i-love-u short videos we've
seen the last evening. As somebody said, they were the
tourist art. Before the CFront01, there was a
discussion in the Syndicate circles has the list
turned into a group of art tourists, in the sense that
people use the art as an excuse to travel around the
world. But the i-love-u videos, as well as the whole
CFront01, raise a new subject: maybe we can talk not
about the art tourists, but about the tourism artists
instead. It was exciting to watch Bulgaria discovered
by a group of Swiss videomakers - from the airport in
Sofia to the people in the streets of Plovdiv or in a
mosque. And all the time some communication was going
on.
When speaking about the communication: this event is
called Communication Front - which really may sound
like a phrase, and I must admit that I arrived in
Plovdiv with a sort of fear that it will be some blah
blah, especially with that subject "netizens and the
new geography". But while making that short film with
Adnan and Sia, unexpectedly I've realized that it _is_
the communication what we studied in Plovdiv. All the
time there was some general dialogue line in
international English, with some lateral conversation
in Bulgarian, German, Serbian/Croatian, Slovenian,
Greek and American and British English. Possible
misunderstandings were removed by using gestures. That
phenomenon of the total communication and the huge
desire to communicate was so interesting to me that
oftenly I didn't care what the people were talking
about; I was fascinated just by observing them
communicating. This is what I tried to express in that
film: I love that movement of Steve's eyebrows and
shoulders after telling his dream; I love that girl's
exclamation "Zvezda!" when pointing to the interesting
details in that museum.
I have a strange feeling that CFront01 really has
improved my communication skills. When I was returning
to Belgrade, of course I missed the train from Sofia.
Then I planned to spend the night at the Sofia railway
station (centralna gara) until the morning train, but
the gara is getting locked at midnight, can you
believe it! So my plan failed and I decided to take a
taxi from Sofia to the Serbian border (70 km), in
order to try to catch my train during its customs
procedure (which eventually I managed). And I spent
all those 70 km communicating with the taxi driver who
spoke no other language but Bulgarian - but we were
talking all the way from Sofia to the border! I've
learnt all about his family (he is married and has two
little children) and his wish to take them to the sea
this summer; I've learnt about his long-distance taxi
experiences - he was driving even from Sofia to
Pristina (of course, three years ago, before the war)
and was stopped at many police checkpoints in Serbia
and Kosovo. What an interesting ride I had with this
guy! And it was all due to The Communication.
Considering the final presentation: well, we've seen
and heard many different things there. We've seen
everything from the efforts to reach Plovdiv (and the
Mexican House in it) to the studies of the human faces
and sewage bars seen in Plovdiv. We've heard so many
sound impressions and a lot of inevitable noise
interfering and enriching the experience
(unfortunately, nobody recorded the morning cries of
Plovdiv seagulls at 5 a.m. - it's so beautiful). I
would say that all this stuff we've made for the Web
site was inspired either by Plovdiv or by the
communication itself. Or both. As I mentioned, we've
discovered the tourist art - and the communication art
too. And this is what really makes sense to me.
Personally, I've had enough of sceptic and dark
visions of the world. CFront01 has shown me a
different approach - how to actively love and enjoy
the other people and cultures, not to be afraid of
them. So, the tourist art is what we need: studying
The Other and celebrating it in our work.
And yes, I've told this already, but I have to repeat:
editing that film with Adnan was also a revelation to
me. I, a native Serbian speaker, was working with a
native German speaking guy from Switzerland,
communicating in English about some Bulgarian speaking
footage. And it worked. Isn't it amazing?
A conclusion of mine about the main subject "cyber and
my sp@ce - netizens and the new geography": cyberspace
sucks. It's a delusion. The true things happen
off-line only; the on-line can't replace it, it can
only support it when no other kind of exchange is
currently possible. So I wouldn't talk about the
netizens; I'd rather talk about the worldizens - the
people who are open to the world and who want to merge
themselves with the variety of the world. Primarily
off-line, of course; the net only makes arrangements
and correspondence easier. The worldizens movement is
what we need; this is the way of turning this
continent and this world into a hopefully better place
to live in. And if you ask me what that new geography
should be, I will agree with Kristel: _people_ are
geography.
So, let's make the next events. Let's really be a
Communication Front.
Aleksandar