In fact 2050 is a work series partly inspired by fieldtrips, sometimes in trans-disciplinary collaborations with artists, scientists or architects reflecting on upcoming transformations of social and geo-political phenomena and challenges like suburbanisation, migration, labour, human rights, social decay, loneliness, mental overload and so on.
The resulting works show flashes of my (sometimes ironic) visions of our globalized world or specific parts of the world according to the latest research or fieldtrip by using different art practices and formats, for instance interventions or installations like experimental landscapes including objects, video-pieces, lectures and photography.
Each realization called "module" combines the overall concept of 2050 with particular situations including local characteristics of the global phenomena by fusing documentary with fictive moments.
The idea is to create and provoke the vision of a system of globally connected modules of public social spaces counterbalancing the gated-community tendencies.
This system could be built by appropriating already existing and established networks of (mostly) not-public spaces and locations which today are often owned by trans-national private corporations, like the world wide existing network of gas stations. The locations of gas stations, like a kind f a contemporary version of the historical caravanserai, are crystallisation points of our evermore migrating and nomadic society interfacing at transit-spaces that serve as global intersection points as well as hangouts for the local population. These spaces, non-places and other-places that exist already today, but refer to a certain future, to other possible societal conditions of an open society, without the classical structure of center and periphery, reflecting the challenges of our shifting and drifting world order after and under situations of crisis.
2050
power building site
Peripheral Structures
Fishing in
Potemkin Village
2050 p, stageshot, 2009
2050 was shown at:
2009
AiOP, art in odd places, guest curated by Erin Donnelly and Radhika Subranamiam, 14th Street, New York (2009)Visit the blog "Don't visit 14th St NYC in 2050"
SCHUBUMKEHR / THRUST REVERSAL curated by Johannes Rauchenberger, MINORITEN GALLERIES Graz (A)
2008
Field Trip curated by Radmila Iva Jankovic and Marc Ganzglass, PM Gallery / HDLU Dom, Zagreb, Croatia2007
Yokohama Boogie. Under the Influence: curated by Koan Jeff Baysa, ZAIM, Yokohama, JapanD21 Salon: D21 Kunstraum Leipzig, Germany
Moving Pictures: Screening at LMCC open studio weekend, 120 Broadway, New York, US
ARTmART: Kuenstlerhaus Vienna, Austria
Excuse me, you have art in your teeth: Pocket Utopia, New York, US
2006
FIT, "Free International Tankstation", Berlin, Germany2005
in the context of K.U.L.M. Vorstadt/Suburbia, steirischer herbst, K3 Pischelsdorf, Austria2009
Don't visit 14th St NYC in 2050, videostills, New York, 2009
2007
2050 Rewinded, Views of the Installation, 2007
2005
Tankstadt 2050/Ride-Share-Point, Fotocollage, 2005
Gas stations are (also historically seen) important crystallisation points of a hang- out and transit-culture in sub-/urban areas and in-between spaces. Gas stations, these "other-places" that exist already today, but refer to a certain future, to other possible societal conditions.
The project 2050 works with fictions of utopian gas stations, as experimental settings, interventions or installations. They are given new aesthetics and functions, installed as small and local semi-public spaces, and called according to the reflected phenomena, for instance Freespace Module, Luna Park Module, Ride-Share-Point Module, Calm Module, Refuge Module, Human Rights Module, Translation Module and so on.
2050 Modules (Excerpts):
Freespace Module
Shielding. Debugged. Surveillance-Free.Survival area in politicis. Sound-proof + Tap-proof. Climatized + with Power Supply. The absolutely neutralised space.
Luna Park Module
Money. God. Luck.Gambling Machines. Lottery Outlet. Toy Chests. Everything blinking.
Glittering. Sparkeling.
Ride-Share-Point Module
Driving. Speaking. Helping.Colored Box as Waiting Zone. Passengers as company for life management, security, and more... [The room installation "Ride-Share-Point" thematizes potential reasons and situations for future ride-share communities.]
Calm Module
Physis. Fullness. Pebbles.Serviced dormitories. Protection from sensory overload. Proven Hygiene.
Massage. WC. Sunshield.
Desire Module
Sahara Green. Killer Blue. Crazy Yellow.Via Live-Image-Sound transmission possibilities worldwide exchange per special life atmosphere. Over Horizons. Meaning Structures. Typology of Expectation, Expression, World.
Refuge Module
Safety. Third. Power.Security and waiting space as definite shelter from weather, natural catastrophies, climate turbulencies.
Vehicle Module
Car-Wash. Exhaust. Brakes.Total Auto Service with integrated Crash Center. Replacement Parts.
Tankstadt 2050/Ride-Share-Point, Views of the Installation, 2005
Erwin Fiala, in "Falter", City Magazine in Vienna; K.U.L.M. Vorstadt/Suburbia, steirischer herbst 2005
In a mobile nomadic society, whose architectonic tentacles form the life lines of the mobile being in the form of proliferous street networks, there is a need for the crossing points which can offer in moments of brief pauses the opportunity to orient from-where, to-where, when and why. Non-located territories - Net culture on the road. Displaced localisations of the movement impulse which is briefly interrupted to refuel new movement energy. Network centers of an auto-mobile, social-mobile, job-mobile, communication-mobile, event-mobile, shopping-mobile, sport-mobile, desire-mobile, administration-mobile and coincidence-mobile society and its people who revitalize their movement -meaning life cycle- in "Tankcities".
In a vision of the future, Klaus Schafler draws the picture of the "Tankcity" as an example of "future centers and places in (sub-)urban regions". They represent the centers of an economic, social and cultural life of a society which since longer has globally networked it's functional organisation and which no longer defines itself through the classical structure of center and periphery.
Centers are becoming diffused into countless intersection points in sufficient density and distribution. The movement energy will disseminate, seperate and freshly connect not in hierarchical, vertical lines rather heterarchically. Simultaneously, these intersection points, as transit-places, as in-between spaces and meanwhiles, will be a datastream of people, occupations, needs and wishes which is flowing through them. Thereby the places will become -in an almost paradoxical manner- connecting elements of connecting lines, equally central as decentral, "Heteropies" as Michel Foucault sketched out.
These "Tankcities" will be places without local anchoring or boundary, equally territorial as deterritorial, public and yet private and intimate: in-betweens and semi-publics will constituate in them and again disseminate in streams of communication. These in-between spaces are in the end "intersections that are often not perceived" (K. Schafler), but whose function is that of a universal interface medium - USB, energetic synapses, crystallisation points of the mobile everyday, of the mobile lebensraum.
The conception of this "Tankcity" provides to-date 25 modules: from the Module "Work Space" through "Stage", "Freespace", "Contemplation", "Luna Park", "Singles Bar" and "Desire" to the Module "Ride-Share-Point". The Module "Ride-Share-Point" is found arranged as an exemplaric room installation in dominant plastic-orange: as a waiting room for developing ride-share and interest groups which one can organize for diverse purposes, a service desk for job-seekers as well as for contractors, for escorts as well as chauffeurs, security personnel etc.
K. Schafler already realised the concept development of this "Tankcity" utopia as a global networking project, as communication and information network of future "Tankcities" parallel to the running research on gas stations and their international development in social-economic but also architecture-specific, cultural and aesthetic perspectives. The so-developed artistic model, in the sense of an artwork in public space, aims for it's prototypical realisation. As a real "Tankcity", it would be an artwork that proves itself as such in the societal reality.