ARTISTIC CITY TRIPS, 6–9 October, Krakow

ARTISTIC CITY TRIPS

Are We Again Travellers or Still Tourists? An Encounter with the Other or Looking Through Another’s Eyes.
Artistic City Trips is a project featuring artists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldavia and Ukraine.

Curator: Nini Palavandishvili (GeoAIR, Tbilisi)

Time
6 – 9 October

Starting Point
Pod Baranami Palace

Description
For many contemporary artists and cultural operators, global mobility is an essential part of their lives and work. The network in which artists operate, which increasingly determines the modern society’s organization and production, also sheds light on the image of globalism - a world of people on the move. The guided trips that artists from 6 countries of the Eastern Partnership (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine) will offer in the city of Krakow, without their prior being there, will deal with these issues. This will be an encounter of two aliens when a guest claims to be a guide in a host country. On the basis of their own research and interests, the artists will design their own city tours, referring to the place of their origin and departure. The willingness to delve deeper and to understand better will lead to manifold results. Generally, a tour includes the act of leaving and then returning to the starting point, and therefore, one who undertakes such a journey can be called a tourist. How much of a tourist we will become by coming back to the original starting point or how far we travel, is always up to us, individuals permanently on the move.

ARMENIA: AJZ SPACE (HARUTYUN ALPETYAN AND NVARD YERKANIAN)

Title: Seven Krakow Narrations (the unknown history of a known city)
Start time: 13:00
Duration: 90 min

Have you ever thought to be part of the history of your city? Do you think you are just an inactive, transient element in world history, or do you consider yourself more or less as someone who can contribute to shaping it? Do you believe the history of a certain place can be told or written down?

Discover a part of the city history through the unfolding of its inhabitants’ personal stories: seven narrations from Krakow are drawn together to give a glimpse of the infinite number of life stories a city can enclose.

AZERBAIJAN: TORO MANAFOV

Title: Krakow Veni Vidi Vici
Start time: 13:00
Duration: 90 min

Have you always felt there is something royal about you? Can nothing stop you if you get a chance to do some shopping? Is there a little of Genghis Khan in you (they say that 1 out of every 100 Europeans is his direct descendant)? Do you get sooo excited when you see fortified walls of a medieval town? Everybody has a chance to be king for 2 minutes, shop in style and try to conquer (but obviously fail) Krakow with Toro from Azerbaijan and his creative history project. Re-live history with Toro!

MOLDOVA: VLADIMIR US

Title: Krakow Shapes Us & We Shape Krakow
Start time: 12:00 noon
Duration: 180 min

The tour is about ideology and how it shapes public space, about the role that public authorities play in this process along with citizens' responses to it in particular historical, cultural and social contexts. Taking as example the Krakow built environment we will discuss the situations in the cities we come from.

On the way, starting in the Krakow Old Town and ending in the Nowa Huta district, you will walk through various gates and cross invisible borders that used to separate different communities and worlds. You will be given a chance to perform as readers on public transportation (don't forget to take a newspaper, magazine or a book with you) and recite proletarian or any other type of slogan on the sites of former monuments (pick up a slogan or a message of your personal choice). Please also wear a hat, a cap or just cover your head with a scarf during the tour.

UKRAINE: ANNA ZVYAGINTSEVA

Title: This (That) Place
Start time: 12:00 noon
Duration: 120 min

This guided city trip by Anna Zvyagintseva is devoted to people, events, processes, experiences and locations which have no chance to go down in history. The tour is a sliding view of the migrating artist-observer mentioning the reflections of some places in others, twin situations, the same actions repeated independently in different locations. The artist travels between places and times, and also between poetic observations and political conclusions. The artist uses the story of 'this' single place to tell about 'that' one, and represents differences and similarities of social conditions through rhymes of singularities.

BELARUS: ALEXEY LUNEV

Title: Life Is So Simple. The Way of Multiplication
Start time: 17:30
Duration: 90 min

Modestly shining in the sky, SERGEI SHABOHIN, a young progressive star of Belarusian art, comes back to Krakow! Artist, curator, critic, art activist, the Son of his Father - go find HIS way of MANDORLA! Talk to him! His Communion Soup! Be Him!

Alexey Lunev’s trip is dedicated to the project of a Belarusian artist Sergei Shabohin, which was completed a couple of years ago in the streets of Krakow. The visitors will be able to recall the story of that project and get an idea of it in a new interpretation.

GEORGIA: GROUP BOUILLON

Title: Rendez-vous
Start time: 18:00
Duration: 120 min

In this artistic city trip you will be able to visit a couple of Polish families and in a short period of time see and hear not only their family histories but the history of the city and the country as well as look through old family photo albums, listen to their love stories, happy and sad moments, take photos with them, and last, but not least, have some tea with them. We promise you will spend a great time.

For more please visit: http://www.ietm.org/