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)

Blaue luftdurchlässige Wolke (vor März 2020), II

Przestrzeń Działań Społecznych

In the workshop led by Simone Rueß, a collective map was created based on a performative exploration of urban space. The starting point were mental images of selected spaces of Katowice and performative and linguistic interactions with places such as the train station, the shopping center and the pedestrian zone.

The aim was to draw attention to the network of socio-spatial relationships in Katowice. According to Martina Löw's relational spatial concept, space is a constantly changing arrangement of people, other living beings, goods and architectural objects. This space is synthesized through the processes of
perception, imagination and memory.

Furthermore, Simone Rueß' concept for the workshop was based on Kevin Lynch's (1960) idea of the mental image of the city and Grzegorz Kowalski's theory and teaching of the “own/common space”. (Excerpt summary of the workshop at NIAiU, Warsaw)

In dem von Simone Rueß geleiteten Workshop wurde eine kollektive Karte auf Basis einer performativen Erforschung des städtischen Raums erstellt. Ausgangspunkt waren mentale Bilder ausgewählter Räume von Katowice und performative und sprachliche Interaktionen mit Orten wie dem Bahnhof, dem Einkaufszentrum und der Fußgängerzone. Ziel war es, die Aufmerksamkeit auf das Netz der sozialräumlichen Beziehungen in Katowice zu lenken. Nach Martina Löws relationalem Raumkonzept zufolge ist der Raum eine sich ständig verändernde Anordnung von Menschen, anderen Lebewesen, Waren und architektonischen Objekten. Dieser Raum wird durch die Prozesse der Wahrnehmung, der Vorstellung und der Erinnerung synthetisiert. Simone Rueß‘ Konzept für den Workshop stützte sich außerdem auch auf Kevin Lynchs (1960) Idee des mentalen Bildes der Stadt sowie auf Grzegorz Kowalskis Lehre vom „Eigenen/Gemeinsamen Raum“. (Ausschnitt Zusammenfassung des Workshops at NIAiU, Warschau: https://niaiu. pl/2024/05/przestrzen-dzialan-spolecznych-podsumowanie-warsztatow/)

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.

Park Tysiąclecia, Millenium Park. 2014

Gendera, Marta (2014), Park Tysiąclecia, Millenium Park. Próby, szkice nowej przestrzeni publicznej, Zielona Góra:
Fundacja Salony, pp. 166-173

Soziale Strandgüter

The landing stage at this exact spot, the location of Monfort Castle, the promenade that was built, the filled-in beach, a structure that gives Langenargen its character. A cityscape in our memory. Crowds of people on sunny days, scattered figures on the beach in fog and cold. Interaction between water and land, people and Lake Constance, between structure and action. Built paths, facilities, and their users. Social goods and people in an ever-changing arrangement with each other. Action, interaction. Hosts and visitors, temporary spatial connections. Remnants of New Year's Eve fireworks, campfires, washed out, fused, smoothed by sand and water, washed up again and again by the surf. Traces of activity on the banks, of life, celebration, and economic activity, bearing witness to shipping traffic and travelers. Plastics, metals, and glass are embedded in the driftwood, lying among shells and stones in the sand, forming a mixture of the natural and the artificial. (Text: Simone Rueß & Matthias Reinhold)

Der Landungsweg an genau dieser Stelle, die Position vom Schloss Monfort, die errichtete Promenade, der aufgefüllte Strand, eine Struktur die Langenargen seine Eigenschaft gibt. Ein Stadt-Bild in unserem Gedächtnis. Menschenströme an Sonnentagen, vereinzelte Figuren am Strand bei Nebel und Kälte. Wechselwirkung zwischen Wasser und Land, Mensch und Bodensee, zwischen Struktur und Handlung. Gebaute Wege, Anlagen und deren Nutzer. Soziale Güter und Menschen in einer sich immer verändernden Anordnung zueinander. Aktion, Interaktion. Gastgeber und Besucher, temporäre räumliche Verknüpfungen. Überbleibsel von Sylwesterraketen, Lagerfeuern, verwaschen, verschmolzen, verschliffen von Sand und Wasser, wieder und wieder angespült von der Brandung. Spuren der Aktivitäten am Ufer, vom Leben, Feiern und Wirtschaften, die vom Schiffsverkehr und den Reisenden zeugen. Die Kunststoffe, Metalle und Gläser sind eingebettet ins Schwemmholz, liegen zwischen Muscheln und Steinen im Sand, bilden eine Mischung von Natürlichem und Künstlichem. (Text: Simone Rueß & Matthias Reinhold )

Besucherwellen, Langenargen (eng.: waves of visitors), pencil on paper 14.8 x 21 cm

Soziale Strandgüter (mit Matthias Reinhold, Leon & Milan), 2017, Rauminstallation mit Zeichnungen, Fotografien, Objekten, Galerie im Kavalierhaus Langenargen

Soziale Strandgüter, 2017 (mit Matthias Reinhold, Leon & Milan), Rauminstallation mit Zeichnungen, Fotografien, Fundstücken aus dem Bodensee und Objekten, Galerie im Kavalierhaus Langenargen (Detail)

Na fali (Warsaw)

Na fali [1] is the result of a formal analysis of the topographical form of the Princely Garden in Warsaw. The characteristic element of the Warsaw landscape - the layout of the Warsaw Escarpment Skarpa Warszawska and the Poniatowski Bridge - has been transformed into a series of abstract forms, operating with strong colors. Situated in a clearing, the sculpture spreads out in front of the pavilion's terrace, creating not only a recognisable spatial accent, but also a usable piece of plein air furniture for enjoying the summer. Created specifically for the summer pavilion Stacja Mercedes, the realization is a consequence and development of the artist's earlier work. She understands the city as a giant sculpture defined by the movement of its inhabitants. Szymon Żydek, 2013, Curator of the Bęc Zmiana Foundation, Warsaw.

1: pol. fala: wave – poln. byc na fali: to ride the wave / to be "in"

Na fali [1] ist das Ergebnis einer Formanalyse der topografischen Gestalt des Fürstengartens in Warschau. Ein charakteristisches Element der Warschauer Landschaft - die Anlage der Warschauer Weichselböschung Skarpa Warszawska und der Poniatowski-Brücke - wurden mit Hilfe kräftiger Farben in eine Reihe abstrakter Formen verwandelt. In einer Lichtung platziert, breitet sich die Skulptur vor der Terasse des Pavillons aus und bildet nicht nur einen wiedererkennbaren räumlichen Akzent, sondern auch ein benutzbares Pleinair-Möbel zur sommerlichen Erholung. Hergestellt im Hinblick auf den Sommerpavillon Stacja Mercedes steht die Realisierung für die konsequente Weiterentwicklung vorangegangener Arbeiten der Künstlerin. Sie fasst damit die Stadt als riesige Skulptur auf, die sich über die Fortbewegung der Bewohner*innen definiert. Szymon Żydek, 2013, Kurator der Bęc Zmiana Stiftung, Warschau. 1: poln. fala: Welle – poln. byc na fali: auf der Welle reiten / "in" seinThis is a block of text. Double-click this text to edit it.

Na fali to wynik analizy form topograficznego ukształtowania Parku na Książęcem. Charakterystyczny element warszawskiego krajobrazu – układ Skarpy warszawskiej oraz Mostu Poniatowskiego – został przetworzony w ciąg abstrakcyjnych form, operujących mocnymi kolorami. Fala umieszczona na polanie rozpościerającej się przed tarasem pawilonu stanowi nie tylko rozpoznawalny akcent przestrzenny, ale również użyteczny mebel plenerowy umożliwiający letni odpoczynek w słońcu. Stworzona specjalnie z myślą o pawilonie Stacji Mercedes realizacja stanowi konsekwencję i rozwinięcie wcześniejszych działań artystki traktującej miasto jako ogromną rzeźbę zdefiniowaną przez ruch jego mieszkańców. Szymon Żydek, 2013, Kurator Fundacji Bęc Zmiana, Warszawa

Na Fali (Warsaw), 2013, steel, paint (9 modules), each up to 70 x 130 x 170 cm

remembered site of the Vistula bank, with the Poniatowski bridge (Warsaw), 2015, pencil and coloured pencil/pens on paper, 15 x 30 cm

The site of the Summer Pavilion is located directly on the important link - the Poniatowski Bridge - between western Warsaw and Praga to the east of the Vistula. The bridge not only crosses the Vistula, but also directs traffic over a long stretch of the Powiśle district in the river valley. Here, the city has been organically adapted to the topography, with an almost uninterrupted bushy slope down to the river. The woody slope towards the river valley has been preserved almost in its entirety, creating a green strip from south to north, which can be walked along. On this green slope, directly under the Poniatowski Bridge, is a romantic garden, the so-called Park na Książcem (Prince's Garden). Slightly overgrown, winding and playful, it cascades down the slope towards the Vistula River, separating the centre of Warsaw above from Powiśle on the waterfront below. With the sound of traffic almost always filtering through, high arches of the bridge provide a link to the city centre in this garden. Both this topographical interface and the eastern bank of the Vistula, which has remained quite naturally green, are important oases for lingering and meeting friends. These green strips–strips because they stretch along the length of the Vistula–give the urban structure air to breathe. The Poniatowski Bridge, the crucial link between east and west, overrides the topographical shape and creates a pulsation between the two sides of the city and the riverbank. The seating sculpture picks up on this oscillation between the neighbourhoods, the ever-increasing convergence, as well as the slope towards the river, here as a place to sit and rest. The interplay of colours expresses the feeling of dynamism and energy that immediately prevails in the city. Colours that confront each other, bringing together different poles. The initial form of a ‘bridge’ of nine modules can be put together in a wide variety of combinations, inviting you to change the form, to design it yourself, to create something new from the given. The colours and shapes thus also relate directly to Katarzyna Kobro, whose works deal with the interpenetration of space and sculpture.

Płocka (Movement Space)

The movement which takes place every day follows
the given spatial and architectural elements and
forms an additional invisible space within and in
relation to the architecture. This movement space
is shaped through an aggregation of moves over a
longer period and usually has soft, round edges, as
corners are generally avoided by people. After observing
and tracking the daily paths between rooms and
objects in the apartment in Płocka Street in Warsaw
Poland, I moulded the body of movements with its
soft round edges in silicone.

Alle Fortbewegungen und Handlungen über einen längeren Zeitraum zu einer Gleichzeitigkeit räumlich zusammengefasst, ergeben den Bewegungsraum innerhalb der Wohnungseinrichtung. Das Silikonobjekt ist eine abstrakte Annäherung an meinen Bewegungsraum in der Ulica Plocka der Jahre 2009-2011.

Movement Space (Płocka), 09.12.2011, pencil on paper, 42 x 29.7 cm

Płocka (Movement Space), 2012, Silicon, 9 x 27 x 50 cm

Andocken, Infos austauschen

Ballonartige Membran

Verfaulte Pfirsiche (K. H. Stauffer)

Roots between two people

The same spine but in different places

Park Tysiąclecia, Millenium Park. 2014

Eingeladen

Ballonartige Membran

Garten

Lebensräume IV

Lebensräume III

Lebensräume II

Raum

Roots between two people

Amorphous shape

Plant

Plant with roots

My flat

The same spine but in different places

Mental space

All spaces moving with me

Continuity

All spines moving with me

Spine of a Fish