A selection from this interview is published in the DEAF04 book "Feelings are Always Local".

Utopia Travel is a collaborative project by Austrian Artists David Rych and Emanuel Danesch.  The basis of the project is the transport of a video collection from Cairo to Vienna, following the transition from the upper part of the African continent over the Middle East towards Europe. A taxi equipped with a video monitor served as a mobile unit distributing the contents of the video-archive on the distances between the capitol cities of the respective countries. The archive contained pre-selected video material produced by artists/ film directors originating from and in most cases living in one of the countries on the route.  The method of presentation provided the opportunity to touch on a variety of issues, from the complexity of individual societies to the construction of political territories.  In that sense the project is understood to be a temporary, non-institutional platform focusing on the translation and transmissibility of local cultural codes as different aspects of interrelated history. The Archive was shown in the taxi as a mobile video installation on a three and a half months long tour through the cities Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul, Sofia, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Graz and Vienna. The presentations took place to a large extent in public space, while also ‘docking' to different institutions for art and culture.


NM:
Utopia Travel: the combination of these two words already evokes a range of interesting questions. We usually think of "utopia" as an idealistic - rather static - setting, either in time, place or socio-political configurations. In your project you merge utopia with mobility: hence the notion of utopia continuously shifts and is reformulated conceptually as well as geographically. In an era marked by closed borders, is mobility and free movement the only true utopia left? How did the notion of utopia inform and sculpt the project in its conceptual development and in its implementation?

DR:
During the initial work on the project in Cairo, we were passing by a travel agency, that had utopia travel written across its entrance. The name was simply taken over, as we liked to allude to the ironic circumstance that tourism offers a temporary utopia of exoticism in various directions, whilst "discovering" no more than just a transmitted fragment of another culture.
The unrestrained right to cross borders is a common utopia, and even more so in countries of transition. Political/economical borders, and cultural and social gaps have nowadays replaced the pre-colonial horizon towards the vast unknown.

With such a demanding route to traverse (from Cairo to Vienna), we were highly aware of our privileged position to cross borders.  The latter will inevitably remain a barrier for the largest part of the population of the countries we travelled through.

Nowadays expanding markets and technology stimulate a consumerist "utopia" with attributes of freedom.  If you want, this is a superficial attempt of the direct appropriation of the "war machine"  by an economy gone wild. The concept of the war machine in its genuine sense though, is something more than just a tool or method and far beyond corporate ideologies...and very inspiring.

However, in this project we were primarily focussed to investigate the rather heterotopic assumption of a universalizing cultural machine, which merges cultural diversity into one aspect of production (some sort of "uprooted cosmopolitanism" whereas the local is maintained only as a pathetic representation) - as the only sustainable model.
As indicated before, the process of the project made unavoidably visible how particular structures - also to be found within the artistic field - follow the dominant rules of the given dichotomies of the "centre" and the "periphery".

ED:
Further connotations and interpretations of utopia in the project were provided by the variety of social, political and historical systems we temporarily got in touch with.  Another important issue is how the concept of utopia in relation to religion, conditions and coheres society in different geographical regions.


NM:
What was the curatorial process in selecting the material for the video archive, and were there any "universalist" qualities taken into account for "viewability" purposes? What role did the heterogeneity of the viewing audiences play in choosing the material?

ED:
We tried to avoid a curatorial process from our side. As we see it, curatorial methods in a cross-cultural context revolve around a pivot of crucial complications: it seems practically impossible to avoid problems of stigmatisation and stereotypes, and we discussed alternatives to the notion of our own Eurocentric perspective.  This resulted in us asking local curators, filmmakers, artists - basically everyone we could think of throughout our networks in the respective countries - to choose videos/films that concerned themselves with the topic of "cultural identity" - whatever that may mean. We did not choose the video material as such, but collaborated with different people simultaneously in each of the countries. By corollary, we received a mixture of films/videos that were not emblematic for one single curator or institution. It was important for us to have a multiplicity of layers in the processes of setting up an archive, and deciding which works represent a "cultural, social or political identity".

DR:
Universalistic qualities - so to speak - were perhaps granted whilst communicating with art institutions.  Nevertheless, being confronted with local film scenes and educational institutions, it became clear in a short time that it was basically impossible to apply one elaborated collective strategy to any kind of cultural environment.
In general we tried to question the anachronistic models of artist/producer, curator/organizer and authorship.  Everyone collaborating with us was listed and credited for their contribution, and became part of the amorphous body of the project.


NM:
I am very interested in how the project explores the interstices between public space, the semi-public space of cultural venues and the urban fabric...and all this from the viewpoint of an Egyptian cab mounted with a video monitor! Could you elaborate a bit on these dynamics?

DR:
Now the choice of a Middle Eastern taxi might resemble a bizarre detail, but since it was a pretty common type of car throughout the biggest parts of the route, the outlook was less spectacular, than serving as a perfect camouflage for rather clandestine actions as video screenings.  Anyhow a taxi is an invitation by itself!

ED:
There is not one public space that can be dealt with by recipe.  Our objective was to work under very versatile conditions in a very flexible setting.  Different strategies had to be developed for the spaces in public areas, especially involving the communication with the audience. It was - and still is - a crucial point of Utopia Travel to have feedback from the audience.  Semi- public spaces of cultural dispute where topics are negotiated within certain theoretical contexts, engender a different kind of feedback.  Cultural codes seem to be global or they are questioned to be unique.  As we know there are all kind of different layers, but of course you find the dominance of so-called Western values in the domain of art as well.  It has a lot to do with desire.  Stereotypes are the subject of desire, and then economical pressure does the rest.  Art audiences cultivate particular desires and expectations, and obviously this affects the producers of art.  All this mixed with the economical hegemony of the Western hemisphere leads to conservative and conventionalist tendencies in art.


NM:
Did you show the video works in original version with subtitles?  In which language(s) were the subtitles?  For a project that negotiates cultural specificity within a globalised context, what gets lost/is gained in translation and geographical displacement?  For example, watching a film by a Lebanese film maker in Israel or by an Israeli film maker in Lebanon is obviously something wholly different than viewing these films - let's say - in Vienna or Zagreb.

ED:
As mentioned before we did not choose the video and film material. Some of them are subtitled in English some not. We decided not to ask for subtitles particularly.

DR:
Here another aspect turned out: a certain amount of the videos is exclusively comprehendible by an audience familiar with the written and spoken language...

ED:
Without subtitles you are asked to decode the videos/films on the visual layer alone.  You have to ask yourself if you see, is what is meant to be seen.  It is this process of questioning and re-questioning cultural codes that destabilises set opinions and perspectives.

DR:
History seemed to be the most important factor of choice: naturally the changing audience was predominantly interested in what was going on across the border, especially if any exchange of information is regulated by political channels (Israel/ Lebanon).  Some of the films in particular touch very sensitive areas where there is not one official truth, only different angles of interpretation. In some cases the tapes had to be "smuggled" as these contents could have caused severe problems
But interrelated historical concern was not only to be found in neighbouring states.  For example, we noticed a mutual interest in Beirut towards the films from Sarajevo and vice versa. Exactly these investigations on the transmissibility of locatable codes signify the core of our efforts.


NM:
How was the archive structured? What kind of information was given to the viewers in order for them to determine their choice?

DR:
Every single videotape was labelled with the name of the author and title of the work.  The only indication marking region on the label, is a colour code, created by melting the colours of every national flag into one.  Since in certain regions (like the states of former Yugoslavia) the colours of neighbouring nations remain quite similar, differences are visible only in very subtle nuances; this made people guess the precise origin of a work, even if the basic region was quite obvious.

ED:
We were often asked by viewers to give suggestions.  The process of suggestion is mostly an excursion from one point of the archive to another.  Once you know the archive by heart you might have your favourites, but you're also not supposed to tell to everybody.


NM:
Did you feel that as artists/mediators you were willing or unwillingly creating a certain type of canonical corpus?  I mean hereby that by the mere fact of showing so many diverse works, they run the risk of becoming generic and representative for such generalising and useless categorisations such as: "Turkish video art", "Balkan aesthetics", "Middle Eastern docu-fiction"?  Was this a concern?

DR:
These generalisations truly are a problem, but neither a recent one, nor reduced to the sector of film/video alone.  Generic categories are informed over periods of time and always recreate themselves - maybe there is a certain kind of dominant code within each culture and time, sometimes becoming representative for an entire production (like the phenomenon of Bollywood).  Still, this canon is less apparent within independent film or art video production, which operates remote from the mainstream.  However, one should not forget that also within the realm of art, the rules of the given dichotomies East/West-North/South according to the flow of capital, partly influence the output of entire scenes.  So sometimes the generic becomes a production by itself, as a guarantee for success.
In that sense we were working to bring together a rather heterogeneous archive, also to question those very simplifications in representation.


NM:
Tell me about how your self-shot footage of during the travel, which resulted in the compilation "Beyond the Map: Constructing Narratives", sits with the rest of the video archive.

ED:
The video archive and the mobile setting function(ed) as a platform for dialogue with and for the audience. The videos/films evoke various responses, and often were the starting points for the conversations and interviews we recorded.  In that perspective the archive is also a basic setting to trigger questions, and to try to find answers in discussions with the viewer.  It also happened that we were interviewed and taped by the audience.

DR:
This additional footage is not planned as part of the archive.  Following the original concept, all the tapes were supposed to be visible in all participating countries - our footage was edited afterwards.  Furthermore, these fragments are not to be seen as single channel video works, but rather as descriptive alignments of feedback from the travel. That's a separate archive of material, which is still in progress.
Some other fragments compiled from our own footage were collated from a request concerning the social/ political responsibility of the cultural worker (as to "speak truth to power" ...).  Most of this material show interviews with locally active protagonists of different cultural backgrounds, mainly filmmakers, political activists, journalists etc.
Our main interest within the entire frame of this research was to examine to which extent cultural practice - in this case a solely audiovisual one, like filmmaking - can have an impact on social/political mechanisms within society.



Emanuel Danesch (AT) is an artist and filmmaker based in Vienna. Educational studies include the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.  His Recent works predominantly investigate topics related to cultural, political and economical transformation. Since 1999 he is collaborating with David Rych on the project "Utopia Travel".  He has exhibited and shown work a.o. at the Transmediale (Berlin, DE), Digital Art Lab, (Holon, IL), Le festival Bandits-Mages (Bourges, FR), Moderna Galerija (Ljubljana, SI), Espace SD (Beirut, LB).

David Rych (AT/D) is a polymedia artist based in Berlin. Educational studies include the University of Innsbruck, Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem.  His most recent works predominantly investigate topics related to cultural and political transformation.  Since 1999 he is collaborating with Emanuel Danesch on the project "Utopia Travel". He has exhibited and shown work a.o. at the Transmediale (Berlin, DE), Digital Art Lab, (Holon, IL), Pancevo Biennale (SCG), Moderna Galerija (Ljubljana, SI), Espace SD (Beirut, LB), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo, EG).