Hotel Kyjev: Time's Up

A Radical Public Program and Exhibition on the Topic of End/Ending

APRIL 7-13, 2008

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

United States

Germany

Switzerland

Romania

Slovakia

Poland

PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS

PETRA FERIANCOVA (*1977)

Maria Turnova is an opera soloist "soprano colorato", and an old family friend. She used to guest as a Soloist at Operas in Dresden, Leipzig, Antwerpen, Prague, Belgrade, and Bratislava National Opera. I followed her with a camera a few years later, when she had retired, and was teaching at a school (1999) and now singing occasionaly at the local club for retired people (2006). She was Gilda at Rigoletto, Rosina at Barbiere di Sevilla, Pamina in I have recorded always only a certain part from her interpretation of La Traviata. The various recordings, I made over the years show (maybe not clearly to whom who´s not involved) that the singer is losing the capability to sing high C note,.This perhaps to us might be noted only as an absent nuanse, but can be very sensitive and fatal for the professionals. I remember her singing since I was a kid, she would sing while cooking dinner. She always kept the exact expression, even changing the location of her performance to those most unappropriate and contrast ambients. But it was very effective. Opera was exactly what it was meant to be. Artificial but pure emotion. It didnt matter how, but it always worked out. For Kyjev, with regard to the original text (libretto), i have selected a few parts from various spectacles, and made her study them. All the parts create a new narrative which reflects somehow the end. I chose opera, cause of the stright way to acces the proper emotion, and its capability, especiallz in this case, make death appear as something beautiful. Another reason is to create a situation reminding the old, and at the same time lost fame., and that only this kind of performace can perfectly be surrounded by Hotel Kyjev´s particular and definite memories.

Gianni Schicchi is an opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini Aria ´O mio babbino caro, is with despered Lauretta kneeling infront of her father begging him for help in this unfortunate lovestory with the threat of her suicide.
Tosca an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini (act 2/Scene 5) Tosca, in the dolefulness is praying in slightest pretence assuming her hurts and hopeless future. She feels that her self sacrifice is inevitable. (crying)
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi (act 1 scene 5) Violetta, alone, rejects her lover because She convinced herself that his love means nothing to her. However, there is something about him that touches her heart. She acts in the opposite way as she should. (Violetta : Ah, fors'è lui – "Perhaps he is the one"). But she concludes that she needs freedom to live her life (Violetta : Sempre libera – "Always free"). (act 3 scene 4) (Violetta confused, having a letter), She cries knowing the end is coming, knowing she cannot help, she cannot could love. She knows She is going to die.. (Or tutto finì!) Violetta fell apart..

„É tardi..“
It´s late.

This piece is a work taking Opera presented as a media by it self. In this public occassion are presented the sequences where the interpreter avoids for her the difficult parts (with regard to my older work „Absent C Note“99/2006).
I studied the text which I found as much important as a musical expression. I created a new narrative concerning to characteristics which are indispensable for a temporary and processing situation. I pointed at Libretto´s solving ethical even philosophical issues, considering Anthic Drama being an antecedent to opera. The End as a magnitude, raises an issue determined by reason,- causa/act, consequence,. and moral or religious result of behaviour (emotional),- such as punishment, sacrifice, rejection, supplication, confession...

An Act is a consequence of a will, which is gained through love. Inaction is also based on love because we are fascinated by impossibility. Time is the only condition.

1 Traviata- act 1 scene 5, subtitled "Rejection of a Beginning" part with Violetta is about the rejection of love caused by her insecurity about being abandoned
2 Ó mio babbino caro, subtitled "Threat of an End" part with Lauretta is about threats because of her fear of the end of a love
3 Tosca act 2, scene 5, subtitled" "Self Sacrifice- acceptance of an End" part with Tosca is about the decision to self sacrifice under the condition of death
4 Traviata act 3, scena 4 subtitled "Falling apart-The End is Inevitable“ part with Violetta is when the fight is slowly given up and its life saying good bye

Performed TEXTS:

Traviata
VIOLETTA:VIOLETTA:(alone)
I feel so strange! I feel so strange! His words are carved in my heart. Would a serious love be fatal to me? What is the solution for my troubled soul?
No man has yet stirred love in me. Oh, I've never known such joy, to be loved and loving! Should I reject it now for all the empty follies in my life?
Perhaps he will rid me of my unhappiness, and bring joy to my tormented soul!
He is modest, forthright and honorable, and has stirred my emotions by awakening love.
It is a love that throbs like the entire universe, bringing mysterious pain and ecstasy to my heart. When I was a child, I had gentle visions of the man in my future, whose beauty and wonder was divine. I felt love throbbing like the entire universe, bringing mysterious pain and ecstasy to my heart!(After pausing in rapt concentration, she cries out)

VIOLETTA:VIOLETTA: (alone)
What nonsense!
This folly is a mad illusion! I'm an unfortunate, lonely woman, abandoned in this populous desert called Paris. What more can I hope for? What must I do?
Just seek pleasure and perish in this turmoil
I must always be free to enjoy the pleasures of life. I want to glide through my life on the path of pleasure. Whether day or night I aspire to happiness and toward new joys, always flying on the wings of my desire.

Gianni Schicchi
Oh My Beloved Father,
I love him, I love him!
I’ll go to Porta Rossa,
To buy our wedding ring.
Oh yes, I really love him.
And if you still say no,
I’ll go to Ponte Vecchio,
And throw myself below.
My love for which I suffer,
At last, I want to die.
Father I pray, I pray.
Father I pray, I pray

Tosca
(nel massimo dolore)
Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore,
non feci mai male ad anima viva!...
Con man furtiva
quante miserie conobbi, aiutai...
Sempre con fe' sincera,
la mia preghiera
ai santi tabernacoli salì.
Sempre con fe' sincera
diedi fiori agli altar.
(alzandosi)
Nell'ora del dolore
perché, perché Signore,
perché me ne rimuneri così?
Diedi gioielli
della Madonna al manto,
e diedi il canto
agli astri, al ciel, che ne ridean più belli.
Nell'ora del dolore,
perché, perché Signore,
perché me ne rimuneri così?
(singhiozzando)

Petra Feriancova born in Bratislava. Petra Feriancova graduated from Accademia Delle Belle Arti in Rome in 2003. Petra began in Rome with a solo show as represented by Valentina Moncada gallery at Rome. She also cooperated with Fondazione Adriano Olivetti, where she exhibited in 2002. In 2003 she returned to Bratislava. She has taken part in shows at Anthony Reynolds Gallery (London), twice at Prague Bienale, October Salon in Belgrade, Festival of Contemporary Arts, Ljubljana, Musee De Saint Etienne,/all last year. Since 2005 she has been represented by Gallery Jiri Svestka in Prague where she had a solo show in 2006. In 2006 she founded and began running Bastart gallery in Bratislava. Currently Petra is preparing a solo show for the Moravian Gallery in Brno.

JOËL VERWIMP (*1972)

The never ending hospitality of the Kvjev hotel will be put to the test with the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. In analysing day and night shifts, using bow and arrow just like the philosopher Zeno, we will inhabit the reception desk and investigate ours as well as the employees’ motion. Motion, at the smallest physical level, may be a series of jumps from one quantum space-time coordinate to the next, each occurring over distance and time intervals that are not divisible into smaller measures. This means that my arrow is not moving, Yet movement has to happen in order to find the end. For a start I would like to situate my work in the lobby / at the reception of the Hotel and would like to suggest that I work night-shifts (this could also turn our double room into a room inhabited by one at different times). As a beginning work I can imagine that Joël and I will collaborate on the bases of receptionists who will inform each other on the occurrence during our shifts.
JOEL VERWIMP collaborates with INGA ZIMPRICH.

ProjectUploadVerwimp-Zimprich.pdf

Joël Verwimp is an artist, studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and is based in Berlin. His practice explores the charting of situations in cultural production today. He applies a research-related approach towards organisational experiments and post-disciplinary reflection on how spaces for art can be thought about and arranged. These scenarios range from registered associations, process based platforms, Ltd to network arrangements. According to the circumstances, these physical and discursive spheres, venture a changing conception (course of action) of space that has the capacity of transforming the relations it imposes. www.hotelgridiron.org

INGA ZIMPRICH (*1979)

I would like to work closely with Joël to find out how we together can relate to the question of ending in Hotel Kyiv. For a start I would like to situate my work in the lobby / at the reception (if possible) of the Hotel and would like to suggest that I work night-shifts (this could also turn our double room into a room inhabited by one at different times). As a beginning work I can imagine that Joël and I will collaborate on the bases of receptionists who will inform each other on the occurances during our shifts. As a key question which might relate the ever-readiness of hospitality of a hotel, the request for continuity apparent in the rotating shifts and the different intensities of day and night-work I would like to use a (vaguely quoted) question of Max Frisch Diaries ('66 – '71) "If you have ever given up on an essential hope, have you been able to give up on it without immediately creating another hope?"

Inga Zimprich works as an artist and curator and is based in Berlin. She develops social frameworks which invite to question institutional and curatorial formats and to negotiate the conditions under which we are public, we cooperate, we create and distribute knowledge. Questioning the formats of exhibition making, publishing and conferring I consider necessary preconditions in order to enable us as artists, curators and cultural producers to develop meaningful practices in exchange with other practitioners.

CHRISTIAN RATTI (*1974, Scuol, Switzerland)

In 2006 I visited Magda Stanova in the district Bratislava-Petrzalka. There, between the apartment-buildings you find small houses, which where planed for social live and culture. This idea has found an end now-a-day. Who owns them? What for could they be used? Who would invest? I would like to assist or collaborate with other artists on this subject or any other topic.

Christian Ratti aufgewachsen in Chur wohnhaft in Zürich und Winterthur, Lehre und Arbeit als Goldschmied, Studium Bildende Kunst in Zürich, Diplom als Turmführer. Christian Ratti arbeitet häufig im öffentlichen Raum. Indem er mit kleinen, fast unmerklichen Eingriffen die Umwelt verändert, verdeutlicht er, wie wenig wir Details unserer Umgebung wahrnehmen oder hinterfragen. Die Stringenz und Kontinuität im künstlerischen und philosophischen Ansatz, der nicht so sehr von der Erzeugung von Objekten für den Kunstbetrieb als vielmehr von der Reflexion von Wahrnehmung bestimmt ist, kennzeichnet sein Werk.

SUSAN SCHMIDT (*1973, Arnstadt, Germany), DAVID BUOB (*1972, Calw, Germany)

Considering the terms End/Ending we want to look at the end of a situation from different perspectives. The ending seen as suffix of conjugation and declination should determine the point of view on a kind of last scene or showdown. That means, that the perspective will be declined and conjugated with the persons and object that are in this last scene, the end of a story. So there is the question of truth of an Ending and if it’s possibly not defined.
For our project Declining Conjugation we want to shoot a video work during the time of the workshop. We would like to do that with the help of other artists in the hotel. The video should be a situation like one at the end of a story, the last scene. The very abstract or reduced action should be seen trough different perspectives in terms of narration, the first second and third person singular and plural. As well as the relations between persons and objects should be seen in the different declinations, the different cases of genitive, dative and accusative. That should possibly affect the content of the narration of the story. Due to a voiceover the different position of the narrator should get more clearly. And though it is an ending scene, which will be repeated through different perspectives, the repetition itself will become some kind of continuousness and so it will tell a new story. the lobby if possible with a projector plus a monitor, to have different views. If there might be a slide projector available we would be very pleased and we would like to put some digital prints story board like on walls, to have different visual narratives at the same time.
www.davidbuob.de, david@davidbuob.de

David Buob | participating German artist, lives and works in Dresden. Born 1972 Buob studied architecture in Kassel, got educated as a stone sculpture and subsequently studied sculpture at the School for Visual Art in Dresden and Vienna. From 2003-05 he was the Meisterschüler with professor Lutz Dammbeck. Buob received many awards and project grants like the 2001/02 Erasmus grant at Academy for Visual Arts, Vienna, 2004: work grant from the Sächsische Staatsministerium for science and art and the DEFA-foundation project grant; 2005: studio grant for ISCP, New York, the Caspar-David-Friedrich-Preis and the Robert Sterl Award. www.davidbuob.de

Susan Schmidt | participating German artists, lives and works in Leipzig. Born 1973, Schmidt studies Art and English at the University in Leipzig and Brock University Canada; 2000-03 Visual communications and artes liberales studies at Bauhaus University Weimar and Academy of Visual Arts Vienna. Schmidt is widely awarded, her most recent grant being the 2005/06 DAAD studio grant for the Netherlands. Susan Schmidt and David Buob have realized 3 video-cooperations so far. In their work they reflect on the space between the images. One of the artists being socialized in the former East Germany the other one in West Germany. In their work which is mainly shot in East-European regions they focus on places of their past, treating them as psychological spaces. They create narrative non-linear stories made up of improvised gestures to artistically mirror the psychological state of remembering and to capture its intensity and fugitiveness.

CHRISTINA DELLA GIUSTINA

For 'Hotel Kyjev' I shall be in an on-line dialogue with someone participating in the project on-site for to exchange impressions, thoughts and questions rising from the gatherings, discussions, and events the project initiates.
This daily dialogues will be summarized in the form of brief texts, such as statements, questions etc., which will be projected during the project’s time-span with up-dates on a daily base.
Where exactly the projections take place I will have to leave to someone familiar on-site. Important is that the resulting texts are available not only to the participants of the 'Hotel Kyjev' project, but to people in Bratislava too, they hsould be projected on an oustide wall or on the hotel entrance. In collaboration with PIER TAYLOR.

Born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, Christina della Giustina, lives and works since 2000 in Amsterdam. Christina Della Giustina studied Philosophy, Art History, and Linguistics at the University of Zürich, and completed her postgraduate studies in Fine Art and Political Theory at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Next to her artistic practice is Christina Della Giustina since 2000 docent for digital media in the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design at the HKU in Utrecht. Christina Della Giustina works since 1999 in diverse ways with real-time data, rendering dynamics particular to specific environments and as complex as water, weather, underwater sounds, liquids within trees etc., publicly accessible and perceivable. In many ways the work focuses on an ongoing research on diverse languages as sets of tubes between the gaze, hearing and touch. Using divers digital media in combination with writing, the potential of these works lies in the direct communication with the actual surrounding they are conceived for and intrinsically correspond with. Without adding anything to the actual environment, fluctuations, dynamics and rhythms inherent to sites reveal themselves. In generating ‘ways of saying’ for the environment the work let’s its surrounding speak, disclosing and addressing the power and intimacy of our presence.

MIROSLAV TÍŽIK (*1973)

Alfred Schutz: Don Quixote and problem of reality from Selected Papers vol. II, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1964

Although it is a 40 years old text, it is devoted to specific type of behavior of people who are not involved in mainstream common sense and have another understanding of meanings of words, symbols and reality as whole. Their interpretation of reality is based on the same processus as the ordinar common sense but with different content. It means that what is for some people end for donquixotians can be begining and vice versa. The main ide of discussion on this text should be to think who have influence on common sense to define the begining or end or the meaning of some symbols. Consequentally who is in position of Sancho Panza and is able to adopt the new definition of reality.

Miroslav Tizik is a research fellow at Institute for Sociology of Slovak Academy of Science and at Department of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, Comenius University in Bratislava. He works in the field of sociology of religion, interpretative sociology and sociology of art. He is a member of editor board of revue Anthropos and Journal not only for biographical and reflexive sociology - Biograf. www.fphil.uniba.sk/~tizik

KARIN CAMPBELL

I would like to propose a performance within the Hotel's public areas: bars, the lobbies, dining rooms and also hallways and stairways. Between 10 to 15 performers would be positioned around the hotel, within eyesight and earshot of each other but separate. They will have to, though, be able to hear at least one of the others in the group or "choir". The performers and I will have chosen certain texts of their own making or found pieces, cries, laughter, and perhaps even humming a tune, a song. Each text will be performed simultaneously by the performers, then, after a pause, moving to perform the next text. The audience for this will be in the middle of this "choir", or to the side, or right in front, or behind. As the performance can never be seen or heard or experienced as a whole—it doesn't have any edges—the audience will be left to put the project together for his or herself. I imagine it this way: You are wandering around the hotel and you hear something but, then again, what is it exactly? Is it repeated or duplicated or triplicated? I would like the performers to move from one location to another; for the stage, the performers and the audience to shift and mix. When you hear the doubled or tripled or even quadrupled text of the performance, you are going to look around to find the other side of what you have heard. How do you tell one person from a "performer"; how do you tell if someone is a part of a group or not? (The texts I would like to keep fairly short to facilitate this sort of questioning, making it difficult to locate the sources) Other questions could be: What is a shared experience? What is being shared? What is it to be alone, to feel oneself isolated? What is "inside" of an individual? can it also be "inside" of another? It is crucial to the project for the texts to be created for this place and out of the experiences of the performers. I am very interested in working with performers, artists and others to create the texts which would be most relevant or personal to the Hotel Kyjev, to Bratislava, to Slovakia.

Participating US artist Karin Campbell, is best known for her performances, is an artist working with painting, photography, video and motion to explore confrontations of our interior spaces with an outside world. Ms. Campbell’s "When I Close My Eyes" was presented at PS1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA (LIC, NY) and was part of 2002 Whitney Biennial. She has performed and exhibited at many venues including White Columns, Exit Art, The Brewster Project, Art In General, Parlour Projects, Bellwether galleries, the Sculpture Center, Artists Space, Vox Populi, and LFL gallery in the US, IASPIS in Stockholm, Sweden, and 24/7 Centre for Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania. Ms. Campbell received her B.F.A. from The Rhode Island School of Design where she received The Florence Leif Award for Painting, and her M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art and the Skowegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has been the recipient of “In the Public Realm” award from the Public Art Fund and the Wanas Foundation award in Sweden. Karin Campbell split her childhood between southern Indiana and London, England. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

GIVAN BELA

Thinking about Hotel Kyjev
Menschen Haben Krizen (and Gívan Belá)

Names for the installation could be
- an homage to the medvedkine group
- the autocritical machine
- a blind empiricist
The initial question could be
- how to use critique as a method for eliciting creativity
- how to oscillate between the imaginary and real (jean rouche)
- how to bring the distant observer close and the involved distanced

What if critique is
- an attitude
- an expression
- an interface

How to make a formal and conceptual set up that gives
- a content
- an algorithm
- a work of art

GUY VAN BELLE

Guy Van Belle lives in Bratislava and Brussels. He has been prominently involved in the use and development of media for artistic purposes since 1990. Since 2000 xgz has been working under the name of the collective digital band mxHz.org (machine cent'red humanz), creating collaborative performances, concerts, workshops, exhibitions and unexpected experimental/abstract art projects. MxHz.org is co-organizer of the umbrella organization OKNO, a non-profit technological art organization situated in Brussels. MxHz.org are currently developing 2 sets of autonomously communicating heliumbots. Performances were set up in Brussels, Den Hague, and New York. The current new generation is being developed in Brussels (http://okno.be), Berlin, and Karlsruhe. A special focus for mxHz.org is on Balkan/Central/Eastern Europe to work towards a new sustainable kind of collaborative projects. A recent ongoing work - 2WR or two-way-radios - is a net-remake of John Cage's Imaginary Landscapes #4 (for 12 radios and 24 performers) based on some historical texts by innovative radio artists. The project started in Prague during the FM@dia conference 2004 and was recently set up as a networked installation at Skolska Prague. With Akihiro Kubota he started the 'Society of Algorithm' in 2001, working on net-based music performances. They participate both in festivals, connected concerts. Since 2005 open workshops were added and a residency exchange Europe-Japan to expand the concept. Recently they contributed to the Berlin Sonambiente Exhibition, together with the young Belgian artist Ishtar, living temp. in Beijing. Society of Algorithm is grouping the internet based work of several contemporary artists focusing on collaborative networks for audio and visual pieces. He is also a freelance curator with Leonardo Music Journal CD 1999, deaf04 festival, and reviewer for European Photography, Leonardo, and as lecturer at University of Brno.

Guy van Belle travels widely in Europe and Asia, and moved to Bratislava (away from the “West-West”) three years ago in order to quickly find himself intensely engaged in the Bratislava art scene collaborating with single artists and art institutes like “13m3” and the annual “multiplace festival”.

ILONA NÉMETH

participating Slovak, Hungarian artist. Born 1963, lives and works in Bratislava .

ANNA OSTAYA

The project proposed for the ‘Hotel Kyjev: Time’ Up’ is an installation to be presented in the conference room. It evolves around the concept of a symposium about Kazimir Malevich theories of art, creation and utilitarianism. It consists of three elements:
- Recording of fragments of Kazimir Malevich text ‘The Non-Objective World, Suprematism’ played aloud from two sculptures hung in the corners of the room. The sculptures are three-dimensional translations of the painting ‘Black Square’ made out of foam board. The loudspeakers are hidden in them. The broadcasting should take place only at certain hours.
- Painting (31x40 cm) depicting two Malevich self-portraits, one suprematist and the other figurative one, collaged together.
- Four digital collages printed on transparent foil and projected with an over-head projector on a wall.
Additionally a poster announcing the symposium and hours of broadcasting will be placed in the hotel lobby. Format: Open discussion for the participants of the project and the visitors to rethink Malevich idealistic proposals in relation to Hotel Kyjev situation. I would prepare a paper summing up and explaining Malevich ideas to be read as the starting point for the discussion.

Anna Ostoya is a participating artist from Poland. Born 1978 in Krakow, Poland, lives currently in London and Germany. She received Hesse Cultural Foundation Award, Frankfurt, in 2007 and Supermarket Sztuki award, BWA (Bureau for Artistic Exhibitions), Warsaw, in 2003. Anna is an initiator and a participant of Zapis (Recording), a six woman artists’ questioning the very idea of a ‘project’ as artistic enterprise; and of Ignoto Errantique, an investigation of anonymity and loss engaging writers and artists from Poland and Germany. She is a contributor to Ha!Art magazine in Poland, organizing public discussions and designing illustration series By Ostoya. For the project, Anna will create a site-specific installation of sculptural forms and sound, inspired by Kazimir Malevich’s writings. The work will reflect an idealistic claim on objects and architecture being made not as a fulfilment of temporary practical purposes, nor as a symbolic representation of power structures, but as an outcome of primal urge for creation. It will distill and transmit an original “creative yearning” in Hotel Kyjev’s architecture and its history.

MANUEL SCHMALSTIEG (*1976, Bern)

My investigation will focus on the hotel as a physical memory block - corridors, staircases, elevators and other structural elements will be scrutinized, recorded and reconstructed as an electronic environment, following the rules of "text-adventure" games («you are in the bedroom of a small hotel apartment»), rendered through the color spectrum of the Didaktik Gama (a legendary slovakian 8-bit computer). http://n3krozoft.com

Manuel Schmalstieg studied at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Geneva (with Hervé Graumann and Enrique Fontanilles). Diploma obtained in 2003. Before that he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Cracow (Poland) in the animated film department. Previous projects and related experience in interdisciplinary work include ÆTHER9: remote performance workshop, Mapping Festival, Geneva, May 2007. BLACKBOX:GVA was shown as a stage performance mixing real time video, voice, acting, marionettes. BLACKBOX:GVA follows an open storyline which allows for moments of free improvisation. The spectacle was premiered at Cinema Spoutnik, Geneva, on 17th November 2006. www.n3krozoft.com; BABEL PROJECT BUCHAREST: tactical media workshop, 2nd Bucharest Biennale, Romania, May–June 2006. LOL – laughing out loud: media performance, developed for the Swiss digital arts foundation «sitemapping.ch». Presented in Paris (Galerie Les Voûtes), Belgrade (SKC), Basel (Plug.In), St-Gallen (Neue Kunst Halle), April 2004 - March 2005. In 1999, the Swiss population was informed of the existence of the ONYX project – a governmental spying program whose task is to scan and analyze international satellite traffic (e-mail, fax and telephone communications). Since 2003, Manuel Schmalstieg has been carrying out a photo and video documentation of the various interception sites. Presentation of results included multimedia installations, video footage from the different antenna fields, an aural archive of encrypted satellite feeds and parliamentary debates around the legality of this project.

GABY STEINER

The topic end/ending concerns me in that I think there is always something that will not end. It is this indiscernible fleeting moment that creates something that is often called memories which are always connected to a place and to a time. My intention is to explore these memories or interpretation of memories through the use of an electro-sensitive glass that has the ability to change from opaque to transparent and makes it possible for images to appear and disappear in reaction to the audience’s movement.

Gaby Steiner | Master of Arts in Media Studies at the New School University, New York, Specializing in the field of Video Art, and at Parsons School of Design; Freelance video editor for Swiss National TV and various postproduction houses (industry, advertising, TV, trade show, documentary and short), Bachelor of Arts in Applied Linguistics and Film at Schule für Angewandte Linguistik, Zurich Specializing in film analysis and editing. 2006 Art Grant by Steo-Stiftung, Switzerland, 2007 Special Award for Avantgarde Composition, New School, NYC. Steiner has shown in several exhibitions in Switzerland and New York.

ERIK BNDER (*1974, Hnúš?a-Likier)

...ending-begining-ending-begining-ending...

(1) I would like to make destroy-party in one room. Music, drinks & destroy, then leave it like it would be and let sound of party play. Destruction – is a part of the end & end is new begining. (2) "Visit" ... me. I will be in room and just one person can come and visit me for a while.

Erik Binder | participating Slovak artist, PhD candidate, Department of Design | lives and works in Bratislava.

The Luxembourg artist MARK DIVO is invited to transit.sk on April 12th to talk about the D.I.V.O. project. www.divoinstitute.org/ DIVO_INSTITUT&dadafestwochen08.pdf

MARK DIVO (*1966)

Between 1988 and 1989 Divo worked in West Berlin. After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 he moved to East Berlin, where he organised exhibitions at the Kunst Haus Tacheles. Between 1990 - 1994 he organised exhibitions, performances and murals with the Duncker group which was awarded a prize by the Berlin senate. In 1994 he moved back to Zurich where he created a number of murals and organised a group of travelling mural painters (including Gabriel Serra). There he became notorious for organising a number of underground art projects funded by the Swiss government, including the first exhibitions / events in the subways of Escherwyssplatz. In 1995, he organised an international festival of underground art for which he received considerable critical acclaim. The work was given the name "post Industrial Baroque" by critics. Amongst the artists who exhibited were Ingo Giezendanner, Leumund Cult and Lennie Lee. In 1996 he exhibited at the Rich and famous gallery, London. In the winter of 2002 he occupied the famous Cabaret Voltaire with the artists including Mikry Drei and Dan Jones. Together they succeeded in preventing the famous building's destruction. As a result of considerable publicity in the Swiss and international press, the building has now been turned into a museum dedicated to Dada. In 2003 he organised another international art festival at the Sihlpapierfabrik. He has exhibited in a number of prestigious museums including the Helmhaus in Zurich, The Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, the Casino Luxemburg, the Kunsthaus Zurich and the Kinsky Palace, Prague.

BEATRICE FLEISCHLIN/NICOLAS GALEAZZI

In Hotel Kyjev fleischlin/galeazzi get ready for their old age. During the Residence in Bratislava they draft an experimental flat, to work out and think through the own sunset years. A laboratory home-base for a 80 year old couple. This flat will be open for several occasions. A little audience will be invited to join this real- and long-time "exercises". fl/gl will create different test arrangements to explore possible scenarios for ones End.

Beatrice Fleischlin | participating Swiss artist. Born 1971, lives in Zürich/Berlin. Training as a farmer and florist. Traveling includes Southeast Asia and Africa. She worked as an office worker, geriatric nurse, and wedding photographer. 1989-1996 various theater projects in the “Freie Theaterszene” Lucerne, 1996-2000 education at the Theater College Zurich. After her studies Beatrice Fleischlin was involved in a variety of projects including: directing assistant for “Die Schwarze Spinne” Theater Neumarkt, Zurich. Director: Volker Hesse >Mosimann< documentary film about a life in Zurich’s 5th district (idea / realization 2000) co-initiator and director of “rimini-rimini” installation-performance. Festival “stromereien”, Zurich 2001 writer for texts for the project “le voisin” Innerschweizertag Expo. 2002. Director Patrik Müller. Work as an actress includes: 2006 "wann stören wir uns endlich" Text/Director: Liebmann. Sophiensaele + Theaterdiscounter Berlin, 2004 Emma in “Vom Fallen und Fliegen” by R. Burckhart. theatre Biel Solothurn. Director: Ariane Gaffron, 2004 “Labyrinth.Chor” Text/Director: A. Liebmann. Theaterdiscounter Berlin / Theater Wismar / Theater a.d. Winkelwiese, Zürich / 100% Festival Berlin / Festival Zwischenräume Bremen, 2003 Evil Stepmother in “Schneewittchen” theatre Biel Solothurn. Director: Ariane Gaffron; 2003 “Der Gesang vom flexiblen Menschen”, Director: A Liebmann. Wismar / Wien /Berlin.

Nicolas Galeazzi | participating Swiss artist, lives in Zürich/Berlin and is currently writing his MA in England. Born 1972 he is educated as a teacher in Rorschach, followed by a six-month theatre training with actors of Peter Brook in Paris, studied at the Academy for Music and Theatre Zurich stage director and finished with a degree in 1998. He produced his own plays and installations, worked as an actor in theatre plays and as singer in operas, stage designer and musician in diverse theatre projects in Switzerland and Germany. The conflict with the classical theatre practices brought him to performance art and to his own performative practices. That includes a mix of political and philosophical reflections, hyper-private and absurd aesthetics and discourses. He works form a radical subjective point of view and often in a direct interaction with his audience. Together with artist collectives like GASTSTUBE°, whom he is a co-founder of, or the Berlin n@work, he created several performances and long time research projects as hybrids between interactive installation, concert, choreography, exhibition and theatre. With Beatrice Fleischlin he created in several research trips to Los Angeles and other places the complex "ÖNGEL – a better living for all", photographic works and interactive performance events over urban development and building of visions with a lot of cardboard (L.A., Vienna, Berlin, Switzerland, Marseille, since 2004). In the research project >7 1/2 searches for the unfinished< he studied how the end is ticking (Vienna, Berlin, Zurich, Bordeaux 2006), and his last works (2007) he exhibited in a collaborative project of Bolivian and European artists in the Museo Tambo Quirquincho in La Paz, Bolivia. In 2002 Fleischlin and Galeazzi founded the Label GASTSTUBE° together with Andreas Liebmann. In the beginning they worked together in Wismar, a former GDR city in the North of Germany. As the inhabitants of the city did not really like to go to the theatre, GASTSTUBE° started to bring the theatre to the city in form of installations and invited the audience to emptied-out stores as well as various activities and actions in backyards. They started to perform site-specific work and developed their very own performative language. For some years they were performing together on the interface of reality and fiction, documentation and absurdity, which was represented as a hybrid of different media and discourses. The last project >7½ searches for the unfinished< understood itself as a constantly metamorphosing complex about the unfinished, the imperfect, and the uncompleted.

ROLAND ROOS (*1974)

Some of the rooms at the hotel Kyjev are not any longer in service and therefore have already reached their end. Roland Roos is interested in those rooms. Roland will try to get access into one room that is not any longer maintained by the hotel. The goal is to rebuild this room so that visitors again can reserve it. The newly designed room may doen’t looks like a hotel suite but enables visitors to stay over night. This room can be booked for a small amount of money (the price should be lower than the regular prices) by people who heard about this room – the room itself will not be advertised by the hotel but on the artist's website. The money that is collected with the use of this room has to be spent for coffee and tee for all construction worker who, when time comes, torn down the hotel. Roland Roos was born and raised in Lucerne, studied Electronics and Audio Engineering before he achieved a diploma from the Zurich University of the Arts, zhdk, in the field of New Media. He studied at the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he worked with and for Nicolas Collins. In his work he is exploring the boundaries between minimal acoustic composition and contemporary computer music - based on a co-dependent interaction between digital technology and musicians. His most recent work steps beyond the use of com¬puters to mediate performing instrumentalists but is more concerned with installation and the relationship of awareness, perception and memory with acoustics. Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2006/07, New Media at the University of Applied Science and Arts Zurich 01-05, Audio Engineering and Sound Design at SAE Zurich 1996 – 1998, Study of Electronics, Lucerne 1990 – 1994. Awards include a one year scholarship from the Yvonne Lang-Chardonnens Foundation, Rare distinction for his Master Degree Projects (RWO) from the HGKZ, Performance Scholarship from the “Bundeskultur Stiftung” Germany. Selected shows: Scheherazade, Composition for 2 Musicians and Computer, Performance at School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Rooms For Manöver, Sound Installation for Knowbotic Research/Skuc Gallery Ljubljana; Händelhören, Opening Performance, Electric Renaissance Festival in Halle (Germany) in collaboration with Hans Rotman and the Halle Symphonic Orchestra; Das Kleine Händelhören, Art Festival Zurich, for 4 Musicians, Voice and Computer, Rolywholyover, Sound performance for Electronics and 8 Musicians; Re-Performance, Performance of three Alvin Lucier compositions; Portraits Of Triggers, Dialog Festival, Zürich, Solo Voice and Computer.

SPEAKERS/GUESTS

CLEMENS BELLUT

key speaker and panelist, lives and works in Zurich.
Clemens Bellut is the Co-director the institute Design2context at the Zurich University of Art along Ruedi Baur and Stefanie-Vera Kockot. He also co-directs the study program “Design Culture“ and the research program fostering new connections and crossover strategies between philosophical and philological studies. After years of research at universities in Bonn und Tübingen, he briefly left to work for an airport company in Frankfurt in1989. Since 1993, he works as a freelance publisher and guest professor at the Merz Academy, School for Design in Stuttgart, the FU Berlin and the Technical University in Ilmenau. His initiatives include work with and for migrants on new methods of language access in Frankfurt. Widely published, Bellut has co-edited Mensch und Moderne. Beiträge zur philosophischen Anthropologie und kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie, 1989. Currently, he is exploring the tensions and interdependencies of image and text. His new research is on the Transitional (das Übergängliche) and the phenomenon of ¨project”.

ANTON HYKISCH (*1932)

Born in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia. A writer, publicist and diplomat. As a student, he made an unsuccessful attempt to flee to West Germany. Later he studied at the University of Economics in Bratislava. He entered the community of writers as a member of the “1956 Generation”. A Step into the Unknown (Krok do neznáma) (1959), his literary debut on the life of university students, was shredded by the order of the censors and was not published until four years later. His short stories I’ve Met You (Stretol som ?a) (1963) as well as his successful love story Na?a depict the emotional life of young people. In the 60s, he expressed himself as an energetic publicist. His autobiography A Square in Mähring (Námestie v Mähringu) (1965, 2000) speaks about the desire of young people to know the free world. Hykisch´s work can be described as realistic, sociologically oriented prose taking the form of short stories, novels, non-fiction, travel literature and essays. He has published more than 30 books. The most successful are his historical novels. The two-part novel, The Time of the Masters (?as majstrov) (1977) about the Gothic painter Master M.S. at the end of the Middle Ages, was also published in Hungarian, Russian and German (2007). The biographical novel on Maria Theresa and the 18th century enlightenment, Love the Queen (Milujte krá?ovnú) (1984, 1988, 1998), turned out to be another success. It has been published three times in Czech and twice in German, along with translations in Romanian, Croatian and Polish. He deals with the dialogue of civilizations in his fantasy prose.

Prof. MARIA BATOROVA

Author, Slovak PEN Centre President.

maria_batorova.pdf