REAL-TIME-NOMADS

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

Real-Time-Nomads grew out of the observation that immigration is a vital and fascinating aspect of urban reality. Cities have always been places where people of various backgrounds converge.
Real-Time-Nomads emphasized the positive and enriching nature of cultural diversity in a political climate hostile towards immigrant groups.

The objectives of the project were to analyze the multi-dimensional spaces in which we move and to explore the possibilities of communication and the boundaries of intercultural understanding in the act of (re)producing space.
The results were reflected in a multimedia installation.

Maja Weyermann began by interviewing shopkeepers and café owners from different cultural backgrounds in Berlin and worked with them to reconstruct their memories of rooms and spaces from their childhoods in their countries of origin.

Based on these conversations, the artist simulated these remembered rooms in 3-D.
Three-dimensional simulation is a medium which allows for the creation of virtual space rooted in private memory. The process makes these realms, in which perception and imagination merge, accessible to others.
As such, the renderings are not documentary depictions, but can be considered artistic translations, based on sketches Weyermann made with her interview partners.

The final installation combined photographic prints of the renderings with videos, sound collages and a city walk.

In the videos, virtual tours of the memory rooms were woven together with quotes from the interviews and filmed material from the current business premises of the interview partners.

The sound collages mixed sounds from the shops and restaurants with specially composed music. They could be heard on an audio tour through the exhibition's accompanying city walk, which was accessible by internet or telephone.

www.real-time-nomads.com
The project website formally mirrors the content of the project: it evolved and continues to evolve parallel to the project and reflects in its programming, in its graphic appearance and in its content the many, diverse cultural facets and the spatial malleability of a metropolis such as Berlin.
The many links and cross-connections permit an individual navigation through the contents of the site, such that the user can, according to his or her own
personal interests, gain access to the project. Thus, the visitor navigates the
virtual space as he or she navigates urban space: by selecting an appealing route, taking detours where neccessary or desirable, stopping to observe something or someone in detail, etc.

The website will remain in place until January 2015 as a virtual platform and exhibition.

The combination of the different facets of the remembered rooms and the current workspaces makes it clear that memory is not only a reflection on the past, but a temporal dialogue with the present and a spatial dialogue with the places in which we move.

Maja Weyermann, Berlin, 2010,
ⓒ all rights reserved