Translocal, Transnational, and Hybrid Spatial Spaces

We (Francesca Ceola and Simone Rueß) designed a processual multimedia workshop to encounter, reflect upon, and upend questions on translocality, of transnationalism, and of hybrid cultural and space-oriented structures. Working actively with the workshop room using time-based, graphic, and performative languages, we aimed to ground broad, abstract concepts in graspable experiences. We first got into the atmosphere of thinking visually by watching and discussing Camilo Bravo Molano’s audio-visual work “Liquid Homes”: a film portrait mapping a displaced person’s experience in Portugal. The participants were then invited to share ideas and explore possibilities to translate and elaborate on the broad concepts of translocality, transnationalism, and hybrid spatialities. We used graphic prompts, language, and performative explorations to enhance this embodied analysis that we developed both individually, then collectively. The workshop closed with a lecture by Prof. Dr. Magdalena Nowicka through a self-reflection on spatialities of migrants and transnational affect. She put in words aspects and differences of transnational and translocal homes introduced to us through Bravo Molano’s film images in the beginning of the workshop.

More to read about on our blogpost @sfb1265

Facing Pairs and Changing Dialogue Partners: A Drawing-Exchange in Transition

The participants were sitting along tables, in a line, in the room. In the middle of the tables, a line of drawings was laid out: to stimulate sensorial reflections including division, connection, detachment, leaving behind, and new beginnings. The lines drawn on paper represented a visual simplification of complex relationships of translocality, transnationality or hybridity. They could be associated with borders, border crossings, border dissolutions, and separation. The drawing paper and pens handed out to each participant invited personal pictorial reproductions, transformations, or further developments of the graphic proposals. Participants in pairs exchanged about the graphics lying between them in one moment, only to be urged to abandon the conversation at the next, leaving their exchanges behind, and proceeding to the following dialogue partner. Engaging in couple-of-minutes increments almost overwhelmed us with a threefold intensity: the sound of all engaged voices, the flow of ideas, and the frantic timing of conversation changes.

The series of drawings laid out on the tables to initiate and orient participants’ conversations were inspired by the artist Chiara Carrer’s book Pensar el espacio. Reflejos, superficies, y colores (transl. “Thinking the Space. Reflections, surfaces, and colors”). Some drawings are a direct re-interpretation of Chiara Carrer, while others were developed from the drawing research of Simone Rueß and her conversations on spatial imaginations with more than 30 interviewees from all over the world. (excerpt of the blogpost @sfb1265)

A Room with Borders, Barriers, and Open Forms: An Embodied Non-verbal Interaction

(...)

Participants were confronted with the challenge of having to leave their present position in the room to reach another point in the space, limited by the four structural walls but also some additional cardboard walls. Acting in their own space, participants initially imperceptibly created a common structure of changing distances in the room. Forms and shapes of paper left behind, foreign lines, and cut-outs found at the next position, they gradually triggered more conscious interactions with spatial traces of the others. One sequential letter after the other, local and migrated shapes formed fragile hybrid common figurations. (excerpt of the blogpost @sfb1265)

Islands of Creation and Synthesis: Individual and Collective Reflexion, drawings and ensembles by María Linares (1), anonymous participant (2), Ludovica Tomarchio (3), Workshop part 5, 2024.

Islands of Creation and Synthesis: Individual and Collective Reflections in a Shared Space

(...)

The rapid, time-framed and place-constrained interactions explored during the workshop can be observed and were intentionally initiated as cues for refiguration of spatial, social, psychological, and cognitive (as in how associations of ideas are enhanced) arrangements and constellations that tell us something around concepts of translocality, transnationality, and hybrid cultural space-oriented structures. The setup of a laboratory with sequential tasks and reflection allowed us to grasp the nature of these spatial structures both in an abstract and elementary way. Film, verbal exchange, figurative language, movement, drawing, symbols, performance, objects, language, and lecture. In diverse media and transdisciplinary reflections, we looked at these formats and terms from various sides, as if we deconstructed their characters into multifaceted multiple layers. Thinking towards expanding the edges of the refiguration theory vis-à-vis territorial structures, we engaged with the diffracted meanings of translocalization with a postnationalist critique to explore practices, memories, and meaning-making at multiple levels: socio-material, ecological-economic, and symbolic-transcendent. As a result, the drift of notions, shifts, and hybridization were not just a conceptual exercise but also a figurative and embodied one". (Conclusion in our blogpost @sfb1265)

Harte Zeiten – Ciężkie Czasy

Simone Rueß (2021). de-re-konstrukt – "Lass uns von vorne beginnen...", pp. 98-107

K. H. Stauffer (space biography)

Since September 2019, artist Simone Rueß has been visiting people with dementia in the Stephanus Foundation's Ernst Berendt House. In returning conversations, she invited them to describe their spatial experiences, which she then visualized in drawings. In 2022 she presented the series of drawings in the exhibition “FRAGILE REMEMBERING” on the site of the Stephanus Foundation, together with an site-specific installation in the Friedenskirche.

In the direct neighborhood of the exhibition FRAGILE REMEMBERING, the open air cinema Freilichtbühne Weißensee was showing a short film portrait of K. H. Stauffer, which documents the moment of fragile memory of biographical experiences. K. H. Stauffer fled with his family in 1945 from present-day Poland to the Rhineland-Palatinate, where he grew up with his family on a four-sided farm. He later managed this farm by himself for many years. Resettlement and escape as well as the Iron Curtain play a central role in his memories. In addition to a spatial biography album, which the artist is constantly expanding in collaboration with the protagonist, we see and hear three excerpts from the large-scale project “Space/Time/Resonance” (2022), in which Simone Rueß explores “how geopolitical caesuras are written down in spatial biographical narratives…”

Seit September 2019 besucht die Künstlerin Simone Rueß Menschen mit demenziellen Veränderungen im Ernst-Berendt-Haus der Stephanus Stiftung. In wiederkehrenden Gesprächen lässt sie sich Raumerlebnisse beschreiben, welche sie im Nachhinein zeichnerisch visualisiert und 2022 in der Ausstellung „FRAGILES ERINNERN“ auf dem Gelände der Stephanus Stiftung präsentiert.

In unmittelbarer Nachbarschaft zeigt die Freilichtbühne Weißensee anlässlich der Ausstellung FRAGILES ERINNERN ein Kurzfilm-Portrait von K. H. Stauffer, welches den Augenblick des fragilen Erinnerns an biografische Erlebnisse dokumentiert. K. H. Stauffer floh mit seiner Familie 1945 aus dem heutigen Polen in die Pfalz, wo er mit seiner Familie auf einem Vier-Seiten-Hof aufwuchs. Später bewirtschaftete er selbst jahrelang diesen Hof. Die Flucht sowie der Eiserne Vorhang spielen in seinen Erinnerungen eine zentrale Rolle. Neben eines Raumbiografie-Albums, das die Künstlerin in Kollaboration mit dem Protagonisten ständig erweitert, sehen und hören wir drei Auszüge aus dem umfassenden Projekt „Space/Time/Resonance“(2022), in dem sich Simone Rueß damit befasst, „wie sich geopolitische Zäsuren in raumbiografische Erzählungen niederschreiben...“

K. H. Stauffer (space biography), 2019-2022, short film, Freilichtbühne Weißensee, based on conversations with K. H. Stauffer, 4min

Animation

Diagrams with a vertical historical timeline and a horizontal narrative timeline summarize the narratives (in this case narratives by K. H. Stauffer). Weightings of certain space biographical data become visible in relation to memory capacity. Superpositions and condensations reveal how certain experiences of respondents, influenced by geopoliti- cal caesuras, acquire more frequented resonance.

Light recording [micro-light installation]
On the 18th of January, 2022, for the duration of eight hours, daylight was recorded on a sheet of paper with a small funnel in a darkened room on a micro scale while appearing on a monitor via a webcam. The digital light cone translates the phenomenon of filtering perceptions onto the screen (as a magnified sensor).

Sound piece by Catherine Lamb
Filtered ambient sounds are the basis of the piece inter sum (2019). Taking into account the various transitions of acoustic perception between indoors and outdoors, Lamb applies a resonance band-pass filter to her ambient field with her synthesizer instrument, thus reflecting the constantly fluctuating field of attention.

Lichtaufnahme [Mikrolichtinstallation]

Am 18. Januar 2022 wurde für die Dauer von acht Stunden in einem abgedunkelten Raum Tageslicht auf einem Blatt Papier mit einem kleinen Trichter im Mikromaßstab aufgenommen und über eine Webcam auf dem Monitor eingeblendet. Der digitale Lichtkegel übersetzt das Phänomen der Filterung von Wahrnehmungen auf die Leinwand (als vergrößerter Sensor).

Klangstück von Catherine Lamb

Gefilterte Umgebungsgeräusche sind die Grundlage von Lambs Stücks inter sum (2019). Unter Berücksichtigung der unterschiedlichen Übergänge der akustischen Wahrnehmung zwischen drinnen und draußen wendet Lamb mit ihrem Synthesizer-Instrument einen Resonanz-Bandpassfilter auf ihr Umgebungsfeld an und hält so das ständig schwankende Aufmerksamkeitsfeld fest.

Spotkanie na granicy ⁄ Treffen an der Grenze

When the pandemic started, the Warsaw–Berlin train could no longer cross the border. The disrupted connection became the theme of the artists’ action Meeting at the Border of 8 June 2020. At the Frankfurt–Słubice border crossing on the bridge across the Oder, Simone Rueß was stopped 50 meters before the checkpoint, where Krzysztof Franaszek stood waiting. Separated by only a few meters of space, the friends could not talk to each other directly. They approached passers-by to carry their drawings and notes across the border. The border guards asked Rueß after 30 minutes to leave the border area. Franaszek was requested to step back, as well. For another two hours, the artists exchanged notes across the bridge with the assistance of random mail carriers. Thanks to their experience, the artists understood the difficult situation of the inhabitants of Słubice and Frankfurt (Oder) when the possibility of cooperation and communication was interrupted.

Als die Pandemie begann, konnte der Zug zwischen Warschau und Berlin die Grenze nicht mehr überqueren. Die unterbrochene Verbindung wurde zum Thema der künstlerischen Aktion „Meeting at the Border” am 8. Juni 2020. Am Grenzübergang Frankfurt–Słubice auf der Oderbrücke wurde Simone Rueß 50 Meter vor dem Kontrollpunkt angehalten, wo Krzysztof Franaszek auf sie wartete. Nur wenige Meter voneinander entfernt, konnten die beiden Freund*innen nicht direkt miteinander sprechen. Sie baten Passant*innen, ihre Zeichnungen und Notizen über die Grenze zu tragen und zu überreichen. Nach 30 Minuten forderten die Grenzbeamt*innen Rueß auf, den Grenzbereich zu verlassen. Auch Franaszek wurde gebeten, zurückzutreten. Weitere zwei Stunden lang tauschten die Künstler*innen sich mit Hilfe zufälliger "Postboten" Notizen und Skizzen über die Brücke hinweg aus. Dank dieser Aktion, konnten die Künstler*innen die schwierige Situation der pandemischen Grenzsituation, der die Bewohner*innen von Słubice und Frankfurt (Oder) ausgesetzt waren, für einen Moment lang teilen und nachvollziehen.

Meeting on the Warsaw–Berlin Express Train

The action Meeting on the Warsaw– Berlin Express Train of 14 December 2019 speaks about both the personal relationship between Simone Rueß and Krzysztof Franaszek and, more broadly, the relationship between Poland and Germany. The artists boarded trains departing respectively from Warsaw and Berlin at 5:36 in the morning and travelled towards each other. Their joint journey started in Poznań. The train car turned into a place of encounter along the line joining two points, always moving towards one of them. Whenever the artists became disorientated, they would record their experience in the two languages.

'Granica' - Meeting on the Warsaw–Berlin Express Train

‘Meeting on the Warsaw–Berlin Express Train, 14.12.2019’, action in the frame of de-re-konstrukt, note card "border"

'Grenze' - Meeting on the Warsaw–Berlin Express Train

Meeting on the Warsaw–Berlin Express Train