Syndicate: **report from deep europe / dX / Kassel**

[inke@is.in-berlin.de (Inke Arns)]

Dear friends,

one question before starting my report on the deep europe workshop in 
Kassel: has anybody seen the "Cartographers" exhibition in Zagreb? I would 
be interested in receiving some information about this exhibition - could 
those who have seen the show perhaps post a short report to the Syndicate 
list? That would be great... thanks in advance...

* * *

Deep Europe - some personal impressions: From horizontal to vertical mapping
Inke Arns, Berlin, August 12, 1997

The deep europe workshop took place within the framework of Hybrid 
WorkSpace, located at the Orangerie, during the 10th documenta in Kassel. 
deep europe started July 28 and continued until August 6, 1997. Due to some 
obligations that kept me in Berlin I only arrived Thursday, 31st of July, 
thereby missing the first days of the workshop and the first deep europeans: 
Calin Dan, Nina Czegledy... I spent my first day at Hybrid WorkSpace as an 
observer, lurking behind the scenes and in front of them, noticing the 
public's incredible greed for any kind of stimulation. They come in, and if 
you don't catch their attention within one or two minutes, they just walk 
out again. They have a big tour to accomplish. They only have one day to see 
the whole dx exhibition (which, by the way, is quite feasible, only they 
still don't know about it!). So they rush.

Every day, the deep europe group put together a program for the public, from 
2 - 6 p.m. Mostly video screenings, because we noticed that with this kind 
of public, there is no way to have a public discussion, a lecture or 
anything "long" and "theoretical". I brought four papers with me, mostly 
lectures that I had given over the last two months in various places and 
that I wanted to "recycle" during the deep europe workshop. No way. No 
attention from the public. So, we "fed" them with media images, videos by 
Mike Stubbs (Gift, 1997), The Crossing Over video productions from Sofia, 
Michael Benson's "Predictions of Fire" (documentary on Neue Slowenische 
Kunst, SLO / USA 1995), Marina Grzinic's & Aina Smid's video art 
productions, Peter Vezjak's "Bravo" (Laibach in Film, SLO 1993), albanian 
video programs brought to Kassel by Edi Muka, video documentation of the 
Belgrade / Novi Sad protests by Aleksander Davic, video documentation of 
Aleksander Brener's actions, presentations of web projects from Poland and 
Latvia, and much more....


Catherine's first visit

On Friday, 1 August, at 1 p.m. we had an official visit. Protected by her 
bodyguard, Catherine David came to visit and to get an impression of the 
deep europe group. Everybody said a few words about him or herself, which 
made me feel a little bit like in school. We tried to explain to Catherine 
David what the notion of 'deep europe' means and also talked about the 
V2_East / Syndicate mailing list. Andreas Broeckmann said that the fact that 
there are almost no subscribers from France, Spain, and other 'southern' 
countries made us feel that sometimes Bulgaria is closer than Italy... Mme 
David responded that the absence of people from these 'southern' countries 
could be due to the fact that they prefer "a more direct way of 
communication, having dinner together, not so much through media". Perhaps I 
am misquoting her, but this is basically what she said. She then asked 
whether there were any contacts to artists living in China. Interesting, 
isn't it? Coming to the deep europe WorkSpace and asking about China. 
Actually, she directed this question more to Kit Blake and Andreas 
Broeckmann, both working for the V2_Organisation in Rotterdam. If I remember 
it correctly, for quite a while she then spoke about Chinese artists, how 
interesting some of them are etc. I got the impression that she was not 
really interested in the activities of the deep europe / V2_East / Syndicate 
network because somehow we are "not east enough". Not enough exoticism. 
Sorry, boys and grrrls. 

Iliyana Nedkova did a great job today (Friday August 1), moderating and 
introducing the video screenings. The preparations for tomorrow's visa 
action are progressing. Lisa Haskel bought all kinds of great office stuff, 
everything that's needed for brilliant bureaucratic procedures. We create a 
logo for deep europe (see the V2_East web site, Kit Blake put it up there), 
we cut out stamps from erasers, formulate official application forms and Edi 
Muka translates them into Albanian. The application forms will be available 
only in Albanian.


The Visa Procedure Department

The public program on Saturday, 2 August, consisted of the visa department 
activities. Four hours of office work, with people lining up endlessly in 
front of the Orangerie, body scanning at the entrance door, with the 
official "Apsardzes" (=Latvian for "deep european officials and guards") 
shouting instructions in Polish, Russian, Albanian, Bulgarian, German, 
Latvian, Dutch and other deep european languages. Once inside, people are 
sent to one of the four desks, where they can apply for a visa for entering 
deep europe (starting at 9 p.m. that day with a performance of the Institute 
for Affordable Lunacy from Eindhoven and followed by a deep european party). 
They just have to fill in a form. Available only in Albanian. Sometimes the 
desks are closed for unknown reasons. I saw Luchezar Boyadijev reading a 
journal (even if his desk was "open" - Luchezar, I have a photo to prove 
it!), Andreas and I were bribed with two Rostbratwuerste which we ate on the 
spot (we had a cigarette for dessert). Behind their respective desks, 
everybody was speaking their own language, Branka spoke Serbian, Iliyana 
Bulgarian, Marjan Slovenian, Andreas Dutch, I myself spoke German - 
sometimes I switched to French - and Edi spoke Albanian. (Outside the 
Orangerie there was Dmitri Pilikin performing the "Russian Mission", reading 
a Russian classic in Russian every day - he got quite famous). During the 
visa issuing session, there were only three or four people who said the 
magic words "Asyl" and were immediately taken inside, to undergo "special 
procedures".
It was incredible. People were lining up for one hour or so, even standing 
in the rain, and when they finally reached the visa department, they quietly 
filled in the (Albanian) forms - not quite accurately, we had to refuse 
several applications - got a visa and went out again. Most of them seemed 
happy. At least they had a smile on their faces. This of course attracted 
even more people to join the waiting crowd.
Over the four hours, we played Albanian military music (taken from Edi 
Muka's video) - a tune which still sounds in my ears. Great stuff.


Andreas is flabbergasted...

On Sunday, 3 August at 3 p.m. we had scheduled a public debate between the 
participants of the deep europe workshop. The public came in, stayed for one 
minute, went out again. Extremely distracting. Our 'debate' continued for 
ca. 10 minutes. No audience. Then new people came in, turned their backs to 
the discussion participants and started speaking to each other. Among the 
panel participants there started to emerge a strange feeling of talking to a 
wall. Then.... Andreas was just  f l a b b e r g a s t e d . He told the 
audience that he could not go on like this... that there was nobody who was 
listening (actually, now, everybody was listening, and there was a silence 
among the visitors). We thought about stopping the public discussion 
completely, but we then remembered that this - meeting, talking, developing 
projects - was actually the reason for us to be here, in the Hybrid 
WorkSpace in Kassel. So we sat in a circle and continued talking among 
ourselves. There was even a guest from the audience who joined us and asked 
basic questions such as "What is the Syndicate", "why is it called like 
this" etc. The discussion was recorded and parts of it were transmitted 
during the radio show we made Sunday night at the Freies Radio Kassel 
(thanks to Herbert A. Meyer). It can be also found at the website of Radio 
Internationale Stadt (RealAudio: http://www.icf.de/cgi-bin/RIS/).


Feeding the audience with media images and having fun...

On Sunday evening, after the public program was over, we joked around about 
how to deal with the dX audience. "It's - a fly!", as Edi Muka was reported 
to have uttered around 10 p.m. It was decided that from now on, we would not 
appear in front of the public anymore, but stay behind the wall and be 
present 'only' through a live transmission on the monitors and on the big 
video projection. We called it "Deep Circuit TV". From Monday onwards, 
incredible but true, people seemed to stay a bit longer in the Orangerie. 
The audience seemed to prefer media images to 'real' people...! On Monday 
Edi Muka premiered with "Deep Circuit TV", Tuesday it was my turn. I 
tormented the audience with three performative lectures, the first one being 
the "Small Media Normality for the East", read by Andreas and myself (more 
than one hour), the second was Tom Bass' "The Tarnish of Silver and Black. 
Transsilvanian Obscenity Test" (about 45 min.) and finally "Surfin' the 
Lower East Side of Europe", written by Andreas and me (one hour). On 
Wednesday, the last day of deep europe, all the participants (those who 
still remained) were interviewed for the Deep Circuit TV by Thorsten 
Schilling. When asked about the meaning of deep europe, some of us 
independently referred to Luchezar Boyadijev' reading of the words: "Europe 
is deepest where there are a lot of overlapping identities." With the notion 
of deep europe we refer to a a new understanding of Europe, which leads away 
from the horizontal measuring of the size of a territory (thus including 
East / West etc.), towards something that could be called a vertical mapping 
or a vertical measuring of the different cultural layers and identities in 
Europe.

On Monday we had a discussion with the Chinese poet Yang Lian, who the night 
before had given a lecture at the "100 days - 100 guests" program. The 
interview was partly transcribed (& posted to the list on August 6) and can 
be also found on the Radio Internationale Stadt (RealAudio: 
http://www.icf.de/cgi-bin/RIS/ris-display?870805944)

During the last two days, there was an internal debate on the European Media 
Policy. Andreas posted the results of this discussion earlier on the 
Syndicate mailing list. Andreas Broeckmann, Marjan Kokot and me had several 
talks about a possible Syndicate Publication Series, which could include 
"original publications and multi-directional translations about Deep 
European media culture". We will post a more elaborate concept on this very 
soon. Also, we talked about the creation of a Translator's Network on the 
Syndicate mailing list. This would basically mean, that we will try to put 
together a group of people from the list who could translate texts from the 
original language into English (into English for now - it is planned to have 
'multidirectional translations' later on). We'll post the concept to the 
mailing list as soon as it is ready.

I was planning to write something about documenta X in this report. I am not 
going to, because I don't have the time right now. BUT: To anybody of you, 
who is planning to go to Kassel (again), I would like to recommend an 
exhibition I saw in the former police school of Kassel. It is called 
"Innenseite" and has been organized - already for the fourth time - by a 
group from Kassel. There are artist's works from all over the world, mostly 
unknown people. I went there with Marjan Kokot and we both found it very 
inspiring. 

Today I got the photos I made during the deep europe activities. They are 
great. I will scan as many as possible and put them online. I'll send a 
message as soon as they are available.

Deep Europe is a great experience. 

Inke Arns, Berlin, August 12, 1997


http://www.documenta.de/workspace
http://www.v2.nl/east

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Inke Arns * Pestalozzistr. 5 * D-10625 Berlin * Germany
Tel / Fax + 49 - 30 - 313 66 78 *  inke@is.in-berlin.de
http://berlin.icf.de/~inke/
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