Interventions in Public Space

LOGBOOK SAVA

Temporary intervention at Urbanfestival 09

At the spot where there used to be a ferry that connected the two banks of the Sava, visitors are invited to cross the river on the sound installation of Iris Hoppe:

“During my research stay in Zagreb, I noticed that there's just one pedestrian bridge crossing the Sava (“the magical border”). In order to encourage communication and exchange between residents of the old part of the city and New Zagreb, I’m building a ferry that connects very different neighbourhoods. The in situ intervention aims at permanently contributing to the promotion of the community. While the passengers slowly and leisurely cross the river on the ferry, they are listening to a radio play made up of songs about the Sava and Zagreb as well as excerpts of interviews made during the research that contain wishes, fears and dreams of Zagreb’s inhabitants. During the journey the passengers are left to contemplate and can leave a note in the logbook at the end of the journey”

Logbook Sava (2009)

BORDERMARKING - Cologne (2008)

BORDERMARKING - Cologne (2008) by Iris Hoppe

I feel displaced (2005/2006), is an extended concept for a site-specific interaction commissioned by EURAC (European Academy Bolzano, South Tyrol) in the larger context of the project unity in diversity, an art/science collaboration between the Institute for Minority Rights, the Institute for Studies on Federalism Regionalism and four invited artists working in the field of interaction in public space. I feel displaced aimed to be a series of actions including performative interviews to take place in Bolzano (along the river Talfer/Talvera, a symbolic border and dynamic contemporary lieu), a resulting poster project, a documentary exhibition and an audio installation. The project intended to examine the tensions between local, national, European and global identity constructions and challenge the "invisible" borders we inherently create as a result of prejudices and fear of the "other“. Preliminary work was done in Bolzano and remotely, during which time I conducted conversations with sociologists, journalists, linguists, theologians and various inhabitants living in Bolzano. Specifically, I collaborated closely with Juridical Scientist Günther Rautz in researching issues of border areas and the struggle for individual identity in the context of culturally diverse and complex, multicultural and politically constructed sociological situations and conflicts, such as is to be found in Bolzano. This scientific research was later to be incorporated into the documentary exhibition and collaborative collage to be shown at EURAC.

The interviews along the river Talfer (the boundary) would feature local inhabitants, tourists, and immigrants, and would end with a request to each participant to physically mark a symbol of their personal border with coloured pigments along the grass and pathways of the river. A photo would be made of this action and one photo of each participant "in action" would be arranged together with her/his statements on a poster presented on billboards and fixed to street lamps along the Talfer. Approximately 20 posters were to mark the way to the EURAC. In the exhibition inside the EURAC building, I intended to transfer the identity topic to the research scope of the Institute for minority rights and create a direct link to the world-wide border problem. For this, Günther Rautz would prepare scientific material about the following border situations: Bolzano/Brenner (local/national), Cyprus (Europe), Asia/Pakistan (global). Statistics, graphs, photos, text excerpts etc. were then to be assembled by me in the form of a collage. As the visitor receives insight into the border problems through the collage, he/she would also be able to listen to recorded interviews with notable South Tyrol natives living abroad. I would pose the same questions about identity to these persons as I did to the passers-by along the Talfer. The project would conclude with a series of roundtable discussions in the three identified border regions, Brenner, Cyprus, and Pakistan, in which I would confront local juridical scientists with the personal and individual interpretations of the subject “I feel displaced”.

I feel displaced (2006) by Iris Hoppe

Crosser of Borders / Creator of Borders (2004) by Iris Hoppe / Olaf Hirschberg, Cologne Central Station, waiting-room, platform no. 1

Crosser of Borders / Creator of Borders (2001-2004), a project in co-operation with artist Olaf Hirschberg (Cologne), is a confronting examination of the societal and self-imposed borders of our individual realities. An evocative and complex installation, first presented in a waiting room of the Cologne central train station and currently placed in a window-shop of ARTWALK (Amsterdam), is the result of a unique discussion between us and the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Meisner. After a sustained dialogue with the Catholic Church, we organized a meeting with the Cardinal to engage him in an exchange on the subject of borders, using two of our own artworks as catalysts for debate. The conversation and photographic portrait taken during the encounter come together in this piece, a reflection on the position of the artist, the power of the symbolic and the potential of the viewer as a dynamic giver of meaning. The work’s inexorable gaze forces us to deal with the entanglement and intersection of borders in the textual and visual components of the piece itself, but also to question our own interpretations of image as truth and consensus as identity.

Individual Borders (2003) developed in the context of [ve]01: border counter, a project that gathers together different experiences of border crossing along two pre-determined routes: Berlin - Venice / Jerusalem - Venice. Curated by Multiplicity and Officina Plug-in.

Travelling by car along the trajectory between Berlin and Venice, I crossed various kinds of borders, both on peripheral and main roads between: Germany / Czech Republic, Czech Republic / Austria, Austria / Slovenia, Slovenia / Italy.

Along these borders, I approached people on the street and asked them to define their own personal border around themselves, while in front of the official one. I offered them a box full of different coloured chalk with which to draw their borders on the street.

Individual borders (2003)

Most of the 40 participants instinctively defined their personal borders in a public space as a circle around themselves.

My particular approach to audience can also be seen in Meeting Point (2002), a video project which in 2002 takes the form of projections on the Bahninform information-screens in 26 rail stations at the same time in Germany. Video sequences, 60 acts of greeting between people from various cultures and generations in public spaces, are displayed on the Bahninform in between the regularly scheduled information and entertainment programs. Travelers in the train station are confronted, in a vivid way, with personal gestures of others who are also in public situations. I was very conscious about "giving it back" to those who participated in the original recording of the video segments. I think the work in itself has to meet people.

Screening on LED wall ZeitHaus, commissioned by VW Autostadt Wolfsburg.

Cologne: Foresight / Insight (2000)

Cologne: Foresight / Insight (2000)

In this internet piece, I visualized a network of representative people of economical, political and cultural power in the city of Cologne. Playing the role of a mediator between public and private, I filmed these individuals shaking my hand, an inevitably intimate and sometimes awkward gesture. By making these meetings public on the Internet, I brought the often inaccessible to a broad range of public, people who had probably rarely been in contact with either contemporary art or these individuals before.