Go Home Go up a level

'ZINE #01

Democracy 2.0

Freedom For the Free?

June 2017

 

- THE PROJECTION ROOM -

Agnes Villette + Elisabeth Blanchet

Liberland of the Free

This month The Unstitute is delighted to present the excellent documentary by Elisabeth Blanchet and Agnès Villette about Liberland - a political 'no man's land' between the two Balkan countries of Serbia and Croatia, currently under appropriation and colonisation by the contentious micro-state called 'Liberland', where international settlers, corporate interests and many others stake their claims in this new 'free' country.

"'Thank you for helping us define the borders of Liberland' shouts the man to the border patrol boat approaching the shore. Vit Jedlicka is the president of one the newest nation on earth, but he is still unable to access his territory, on the Croatian side of the Danube. Since the proclamation of Liberland on the 13th of April 2015, 460 000 requests for citizenship have been recorded on Liberland's website. Liberland, which motto is "To live and let live" is based on Libertarian principles and is attracting a lot of interest and money... Liberland of the Free by Elisabeth Blanchet and Agnès Villette tells a story of hope for freedom and of a crazy summer."

EXPLORE ARCHIVE


- THE CUTTING ROOM -

The Unstitute presents:

Marcin, the Wanderer

In November 2015 The Unstitute dug a tunnel from London, UK to Auroville, India - an experimental community dedicated to the development of human consciousness, and hoping to produce the ideal city of the future. This Utopian project aspires to a society without money or politics in a co-operative co-existence between peoples and nature - an idealism which produces both tension and contradiction within its diverse international communities made up of members of some 49 different nations.

"After the monsoon rains broke we encountered Marcin, a nomad who had just returned to Auroville having travelled from Manali in the Himachal Pradesh. Marcin described to us the founding of Auroville in 1968; how Mirra Alfassa (known as The Mother) put her finger on a map of barren Union land where there existed nothing but a banyan tree, and from which her acolytes began to create the future city of Auroville, set within a hand-planted forest which now counts over one million mature trees. This experimental video was recorded on the afternoon we met, serving as our only memory of the Polish wanderer."

EXPLORE NEO-INDIA


- UN[dis]CRIMINATE -

Garrett Lynch + Frédérique Santune

Best of Luck with the Wall (variant)

This month, we are proud to announce an exciting new addition to the UN[dis]CRIMINATE encampment by artists Garrett Lynch + Frédérique Santune, who literally take us for a drive - all 34 hours of it - along Donald Trump's mythical southern border wall via Google Maps.

"In Josh Begley’s film, Best of Luck with the Wall (2016), a comment on the proposed border wall between the US and Mexico by American President Donald Trump, Begley states: 'What would it mean to try to ‘see’ the entire southwest border at once? To travel the whole 1,954 miles in, say, six minutes?… According to Google Maps, it would take 34 hours to drive its entire length.' We wondered, why six minutes? Why should this heavily politicised place, much of which is inhabited and sees a million people officially cross the border every day, be temporally reduced and become the visual equivalent of what Begley terms is “a place abstracted into a sound bite”?

UN[dis]CRIMINATE is a new archive exploring these seismic shifts in geopolitics, vivisecting 21st Century Tribalism and the individuals' situation within - or more properly - without Statehood. Come into the temporary encampment to investigate for yourself, and consider submitting relevant content of your own...

VIEW UN[dis]CRIMINATE


- WORLDS -

The Unstitute presents...

New Town

Explore Trail #1, a digital walking tour through the virtual borough of New Town. We begin our territorial incursions at 'Immigranta's House', and from there we hike up through the ersatz landscapes of the surrounding digital area, hear tales of the trappers in the hills from locals steeped in liqor with the trail culminating at the ancient and mysterious ruins of the 'Temple of Velocity', high above the settlement of New Town. For those who wish, this tour can be taken incognito:

"The art of not being seen does not exclusively relate to disguise, deception, cover, camouflage stealth technology or other conventional methods of not being seen. There isn't sufficient budget with the Town Hall to equip my person with stealth technology, especially given the record of my ‘type’ of research..."

VISIT NEW TOWN


- VIDIOT -

Siyanda Marrengane

Manners Mansion

The Unstitute is pleased to announce a new addition to the Vidiot project -a new video by Swazi artist Siyanda Marrengane. Currently an MA student at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (SA), Siyanda is exploring the concept of the liminal space to create imaginary spaces that are based on the experiential as well as the ideas of foreign identity, bodies, borders, time, space and surveillance.

"The video shows two places that are a couple of blocks apart in downtown Johannesburg, but have been placed in one screen. This gives the illusion that the places are either directly next to each other or, possibly one place. And it is something to consider when thinking about location and dislocation, how the liminal expresses these concepts. In a number of cases when I have talked to foreigners, they say that this city [Johannesburg] is simply a gateway to other places: the way they move through the space is formed by aspirations that they are moving toward an elsewhere."

VIDIOT WINDOWS


- PARTICIPATION -

Open Submissions

The Unstitute offers the opportunity for artists to take part in our experiment through a progressive community alliance in which we mutually advance the possibilities of the browser-based digital experience as a medium for the artist. We do not offer a traditional gallery experience for the artist or the viewer - we are incubating a hybrid, experimental model of artists’ community with the time, energy and integrity required for such a project.

APPLY TO OUR PROJECTS

Go Home Go up a level