Jingo Karaoke / Petko Dourmana [Sofia] / Installation + Public Action / Skopje City Park
Throughout the Victorian era, Russia was viewed as a threat both to the Western/European order and to British interests in India. The crisis increased during the Russo-Turkish war in 1877-1878 and ended at the Congress of Berlin when the Great Powers forced the newly created Bulgarian state to restore much of the land awarded at the peace treaty of San Stefano back to Ottoman rule. A war song by G. H. MacDermott and G. W. Hunt, commonly sung in pubs at the time, was used to construct public opinion showing British interests as offended by the Russians. This song is now seen as one of the first uses of popular music for propaganda. At the time when the song appeared it had such great influence in political life that it inspired the popular term "jingoism" to be coined in 1978. Jingoism is today generally employed as a deprecatory term for the confident expressions of a Western, and particularly Anglo-American, culture that viewed its superiority as both self-evident and merited. Artist Petko Dourmana invites the passers by at Macedonia Square in Skopje to sing MacDermott's song “By Jingo” with a karaoke set in a military tent. The artist believes that exactly 130 years after having been created, the song “By Jingo” has not lost it's quality of explaining the conflict between West and East that reflects in close border areas such as those in the Balkans. The lyrics of the chorus:
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do ...
We've got the ships, we've got the men,
we've got the money too!
We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople...
The Mobicases – Live Sampling of the City of Skopje / Public Art Lab (Ela Kagel, Susa Pop, David Farine) [Berlin] / Collaborative Action / All venues (nomadic)
The Mobicase portable units can be carried as backpacks, vendor trays or be used as tables or chairs. The units are made of lightweight material and are comfortable to wear. Each unit provides space for a laptop, cables, headset, microphone, video camera, photo camera and other technical tools. In order to be constantly connected to the Internet, the backpacks are portable wifi hotspots, providing constant possibility to add new data to the archive. Each Mobicase-messenger can be clearly recognized by a branded T-Shirt. During the workshop for 8 participants, Mobicase teams function as independent media units. The teams, led by various Upgrade! International artists will walk with public participants throughout the city of Skopje and the Chain Reaction sites in order to document whatever they find interesting in that context. Because the leading Upgrade! International artists come from different cultural and creative backgrounds and have differing technical expertise, each group will explore the city with unique focus and methods. After a 2 hour walk, each group will commonly edit the material they have collected and upload it on the community website. In this way, an increasing public archive of the Chain Reaction and current Skopje city events will be built. This community website will function as a tool for collaborative documentation and as a forum for feedback on the Upgrade! events. The whole process of the Mobicase project is a “Live Sampling of the city and the festival.”
A DAY IN THE LIFE II: Global Bridges / Curation and Coordination: Horst Konietzny and Tamiko Thiel [Munich] / Streaming Web Event / Skopje City Park
A DAY IN THE LIFE builds bridges, highlighting the familiar in the foreign and the foreign in the familiar.
Further development of a streaming event between nodes of the Upgrade! International network. The first version was held between Munich, Istanbul, Boston and Oklahoma City as part of the annual Upgrade! International gathering on November 30, 2006.
CHAIN LETTERS OF REACTIONARY LOVE / tobias c. van Veen | quadrantcrossing.org [Montreal] / Video & Public Action / Skopje City Park
+ on a piece of paper, write a love letter to someone you miss and have not seen in many years, and would like to be here with you, where you are now. include your email address.
+ once all letters are ready, fold into paper airplanes.
+ scale the highest possible structure in Skopje, by whatever means available.
+ throw the letter in the direction of where you currently believe the person to be.
KAKVU PIJEŠ KAFU? | HOW DO YOU TAKE YOUR COFFEE? / Savić Rašović a.k.a Pirun [Boston] / Public Action / Skopje's Old Bazaar
I am originally from Podgorica, Montenegro... I moved to the US in the 90s of course, escaping an army draft, and other things... my home is literally now a parking lot, a gas station and a street light... although aware of the flow of life, going "home" became a totally different experience... construction lobby is strong, personal histories lost, old is set aside, new is always better... What are the effects of these major changes on the culture of the city and its inhabitants? What personal stories and connections to various city sites are lost? What new histories are constructed? How Do You Take Your Coffee?/Kakvu piješ kafu? Join us for the first in the series of events in the Balkan cities centered on social kafenisanje (coffee time) at a specific location in Skopje, Macedonia. Enjoy a free, freshly brewed coffee to suit your personal taste, and join the conversation about the location and its histories, memories, past or present issues and stories that might be disguised, transformed and erased by the development: under the asphalt -a garden, under the street light -a rebellion, next to the pedestrian crossing -a brook, an old neighbourhood now a new neighbourhood. The kafenisanje events series will be published as a multilingual "coffee table book" guide to the specific urban locations and the conversations surrounding them.
Green Space / Addie Wagenknecht [New York] / Public Installation/ Skopje City Park
Using found or reusable everyday objects, Addie will design and fabricate a public architectural structure for small pets and wildlife to inhabit or thrive off on the streets of Skopje. In her work, Addie looks for unconventional ways to cohabitate using other peoples trash. This is a community project, and involves multiple variable design challenges to fuel ideas and re-think the way we design and consume. This installation is based on applied sustainable strategies that transform one day's trash into ways for humans to consider the animals in their everyday lives and how to design for coexistence with thought-provoking public installation.
Vancouver Fraction: P2P Outdoor Art Videos [Vancouver]/ City park
Curated by Sean Arden
Participating artists: Crystalbeard, Brandon Blommaert, Tasha Brotherton, Eric Deis, Barry Doupe, Julia Feyrer, Stefan Gruber, Robert Hamilton, Oliver Hockenhull, Jody Kramer, Weekend Leisure, Paul Morris, Heidi Nagtegaal , Ricky Lee Owens, Playpen, Sam Scott, Stephen Wichuk.
