Transient Spaces - The Tourist Syndrome

Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome invites artists, cultural producers, theorists, and academics from the
European context to an interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange on new forms of mobility today, focusing
in particular on the relationship between tourism and migration, two of the most significant social and
economic phenomena of contemporary society. The project adopts a comparative perspective on tourism
and migration issues in order to highlight new forms of circulation and temporary mobility, and ultimately
of existence; it also considers the growing impact of economic and cultural globalization in producing new
forms of leisure, working and retirement lives. The aim is to examine transitional spaces and notions of
subjectivity that emerge from current movements of goods and people, and immigration politics, and
thereby to look at the proliferation of new types of social, political and cultural borders within various
regions and metropolitan centres in Europe.
Transient Spaces is structured by means of various elements: a series of four exhibitions in Berlin (DE),
Bucharest (RO), Kaunas (LT), and Naples (IT); a research section that will include artist residencies as well as
site-specific projects, travel, workshops, discussions, and lectures; a summer camp in Palanga (LT) with
intensive didactic and laboratory program; a website; and a final publication. The individual modules,
taking place from 2009 until 2010, will be developed in cooperation with the partner institutions and in
dialogue with the local contexts. The interdisciplinary approach of Transient Spaces is designed to make
room for a wide range of perspectives from the most diverse parts of Europe, especially the periphery of
“New Europe,” and to capture current transformations and realities. At its core, the project intends to
challenge stereotypical representation and reciprocal psychological borders, and promotes concepts and
ideas for a new kind of European cultural citizenship.


Organizer
Uqbar – Gesellschaft für Repräsentationsforschung e.V. (DE)

Artistic Directors and Curators
Marina Sorbello & Antje Weitzel, Berlin

Co-organizers and Co-curators
Arvydas Zalpys and Virginija Vitkiene, Meno Parkas, Kaunas (LT)
Irina Cios, International Centre of Contemporary Art (ICCA/CIAC), Bucharest (RO)
Raffaella Morra, E-M Arts onlus, Napoli (IT)
Stéphane Bauer, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien Berlin (DE)