organiser

 
Project

REAL-TIME-NOMADS

art project 2010

  • Maja Weyermann

    Maja Weyermann - 

    Recalling Aditya Prakash's Studio, 2009, Rendering

REAL-TIME-NOMADS
real-time-nomads.com

I will interview shop keepers or food stand owners from different cultural backgrounds** and work together with them to reconstruct childhood memories of rooms and spaces from their countries of origin.

Then I will virtually simulate these reconstructed rooms in 3-D. The medium of 3-D simulation allows for the creation of virtual spaces out of private memories. This process makes these realms, in which perception and imagination are merged, accessible to others.
However, the rooms created in this project are not documentary depictions but rather artistic translations of my understanding of what my interview partners have told me. Narrative, research and imagination converge into hybrid rooms.

The completed installation will combine elements of the remembered rooms and the current workspaces of my interview partners, i.e. the semi-public business spaces in which the interviews take place.
In the shops, the interviewee’s native land is reflected in the range and arrangement of goods, or in small memorabilia from their respective places of origin. In their native country the same shops would look different. In this sense, the businesses are hybrid spaces as well.

The three elements of the installation are the renderings of the virtual memory rooms, sound collages and short video loops which combine the memory rooms and the current business premises of the interview partners into an artistic portrait.

The interviewees should also - if they are willing - participate in the presentation of the work. That is why the exhibition of the renderings will be supplemented with so called city-walks to the shops and small restaurants of the interview partners. The visitors can download the addresses of the shops and restaurants as well as the sound collages onto their mp3 players or mobile phones and listen to them as they wander from one location to the next. Small TVs will be installed in the shops and restaurants to play their respective video loop.

Movement through the installation creates a new space in the mind of the viewer that is more than the sum of the depicted rooms.

** e.g. Polish grocers, Turkish bakeries, Vietnamese tailoring, Hungarian restaurants, Lebanese food stands etc.

Implementation

process

I will prepare for the interviews with the help of the Office of Psychosocial Processes (International Academy for Innovative Pedagogy, Psychology and Economics, INA gGmbH, Freie Universität of Berlin/OPSI, PD Dr. D. Becker). The collaborator’s professional knowledge of dealing with the past and of inter-cultural projects as well as their communication skills and experience will help to improve the interviews and the quality of the dialogues.

multimedia installation

The final installation weaves the different levels of of the remembered rooms and the current workspaces of my interview partners’into a dialogue with each other.

The installation consits three elements:
1. the renderings of the virtual memoryrooms,
2. sound collages and
3. short video loops which combine the memoryrooms and the current business premises of the interview partners into an artistic portrait.

1.
I will create a 3-D simulations of my interview partners’ childhood rooms. Since I am not culturally familiar with the described spaces the reconstructions of these very personal realms will automatically be influenced by my imagination as well as internet and media research. For instance, I need to find out what a Vietnamese greengrocer pictures when he says „bed“. However, the rooms created in this project are not documentary depictions but rather artistic translations.
The simulated spaces can be walked through on a virtual tour. Individual settings can also be transformed into high resolution stills. These so called „renderings“ will be exposed as photographs. Such photographs are one element of the installation.

2.
The videoloops will be realized by means of a montage of virtual tours through the remembered rooms, quotes from the interviews and filmed material from the shops or restaurants. The videos do not have soundtracks.

3.
The third element of the installation is the sound collages which transmit sounds from the stores and restaurants to the listener.

Sustainability

It is planed to exhibit the project not only in Berlin but in other European cities as well (e.g. Warsaw, PL and Brest, F), because Real-Time-Nomads is dealing with the experience of diversity in societies of immigration and shows a new approach for improving and intensifing the intercultural dialogue.
Instead of a catologue or a book the project will be documented on an internet site. This is easier (e.g. for friends of the interviewees in their countries of origin) to take part in the project.

Maja Weyermann, Berlin, July 2009,
ⓒ all rights reserved

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