A project with Open Modes — Akademie Graz, Camera Austria, esc medien kunst labor, FORUM STADTPARK, Grazer Kunstverein, Institut für zeitgenössische Kunst / TU Graz, Künstlerhaus KM–, Halle für Kunst & Medien, < rotor > Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, and Schaumbad – Freies Atelierhaus Graz
From 2014 until 2018, I was part of the organization of Open Modes Graz, a network developed by nine Graz cultural institutions and initiatives; its projects confront the changing requirements for educating artists in the wake of a continuing discussion of the deteriorating conditions for “Learning” in general. During 2015 I coordinated the program for a dispersed conference. The City Mobile Chaperone (Bewegte Stadtgefährtin) was used to allow the public to interact with the spaces adjacent to the events. Designed by Balloon Architecture Office, this camera is a 1:1 trial model to project the outside in the inside for people with diminished mobility. Franziska Hederer and I decided to use it as a mapping drawing device to draw with light each point of our conference.
It was implemented in 2015 as part of open modes (offenerbetrieb.mur.at) — mobile networks in Graz. The project consisted of a refurbished trailer to function as a camera obscura that visitors could enter into. During the two weeks run of the alternative art academy, the mobile trailer traveled through Graz’s city to different locations accompanying interventions and events that were taking place. Using the camera obscura as an observation instrument and an agent to produce drawings, different perspectives of the city were generated. Separated locations were joined through the camera’s movements, provoking a new way of understanding the city. The Mobile City Chaperone was an ambulatory device that offered places of silence, communication, and transposition. It traced the network that was being produced, interweaving occurrences, experiences, and locations as a lively organism — a structure and a tool offering new ways of mapping the territory—a tool for critical and embodied education.
