Previous stories on this panel: Positions in Flux – Panel 1: Art goes politics – Hans Bernhard from UBERMORGEN.COM and Positions in Flux – Panel 1: Art goes politics – Wafaa Bilal.
Geert Lovink has already reviewed the whole panel on his blog: Political Work in the Aftermath of the New Media Arts Crisis.
The third person to take the stage was Christian Huebler from Knowbotic Research who are also artist in residence at NIMk this year. Knowbotic Research (Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Hübler, Alexander Tuchacek) was established in 1991, and has experimented with formations of information, interface and networked agencies.
Ok, now this will sound weird but Knowbotic Research happens to be one of the art groups i find most interesting today. And that’s in spite of the fact that i don’t understand fully what their work is about. But now was my chance to get a better idea of what they are doing.
Image yw_krcf
Huebler’s presentation focused on BlackBenz Race (BBR), a semi-fictitious car race of black Mercedes from Zurich to Pristina (Kosovo) and back to Zurich. The project refers to the big Kosovo-Albanian community that migrate to Western Europe with Zurich as a node. The aim of BBR is to make visible the translocal space produced by Kosovo-Albanian migration across Europe. BBR explores the intersection of public spheres and migrant networks by using the metaphor of the race. The ‘Black Benz’ represents both a status symbol, and a symbol of the mobility that is inherent in migrant culture. The site of that mobility is the corridor along which the cars travel, from Pristina and Tirana to Zurich, Rotterdam, or London. The Black Benz is both a tool and a symbol, a vehicle for trading and trafficking of people and goods, as well as a sign of economic success. Knowbotic Research was using a discrimination platform to hack into the space.
Image yw_krcf
Unfortunately, the city of Zurich (which had commissioned the project to KR) was not ready to accept their idea. It would have been an interesting experience for Albanians living in Zurich as they feel alienated both in Switzerland and in their home country. KR doesn’t work with participants but provide a framework for them to get involved. Certain stages of the races nevertheless took place. The artists managed to get the authorization to organize a race in front of the United Nations headquarters in Pristina. They pretended they were shooting a film and got the city blocked for the ghost race from 3 am to 6 am. While in Pristina they discovered there was also a burnout party going on. A group of men would block a car that a driver brings into full gear until the tyres totally dissolve and no one can see anything because of the fume.
NEWBORN – undeliverable? is the second project of Knowbotic Research that engages with translocal spaces and Kosovarian migration. It took place in Zurich but this time the artists didn’t ask for any permission. The idea was inspired by a photo (see below) the group saw in NYT article about Kosovo declaring its independence from Serbia.
People signed the back of a sculpture, reading “Newborn” in English, at its unveiling on Sunday in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo
Knowbotic Research copied the sign and paraded it on a truck around Zurich.
Obviously the reference to the historical event was evident mostly to migrants from the Balkans. KR invited a rapper form Kosovo who had migrated to Switzerland to use the sign as a starting point to explain what it means to be ‘newborn’ in a political space. Besides the circulation of the NEWBORN sign through Zürich coincided with the kick off of the EURO2008. Because the public and imaginary space was monopolized by commercialism, people who do not belong to the Kosovo Albanian community probably assumed that the NEWBORN circulating through the streets was just another advertisement signage on its way to be installed somewhere in the city.
The Project NEWBORN — Undeliverable? conducts research into the constitution and interaction of multiple, parallel publics within the local space of Zurich shaped by the dynamics of translocal migration, national identity and globalized commercialism. Such a research endeavor needs to take place in the public space itself. Only by intervening directly the latent, often invisible dynamics can be brought to the surface. Activating existing and triggering new dynamics is an essential part of the approach.
One of the battle cries of KR is that they want to see the development of new zones of intransparency in which people can fully experiment and circulate, where one is neither representable nor identifiable. A bit like the character (some kind of Cousin Itt alter-ego) that appears in their projects macghilie – just a void. What would happen if we fight surveillance society with transparency?
The project tiger_stealth explored in a more tangible and direct way this idea of navigating through space without being detected. Together with with Peter Sandbichler, the group re-engineered a stealth boat as depicted in a propaganda video of the Tamil Tigers, the Tamil liberation army based in northern Sri Lanka. The boat (which appears in an online video) seems to be a formal adaptation of the stealth bomber F117 Nighthawk, a myth of invisibility.
KR’s stealth boat cannot be detected by radar and other modern technology. It appears to be unmanned, but a person is hidden inside the boat. Equipped with a silent electrical engine it stays invisible for a radar station positioned on the river bank. The boat can be purchased online. It is thus fed back into a commercial public context where its technical invisibility becomes a good that must be shown.