SYNDICATE / BALKANIA
October 16-23

http://temp.kiasma.fi/balkania

This workshop 'Designing the Future State of Balkania', which will be held in Helsinki between 16 and 23 October 1999. The workshop can be seen as a follow-up of an initiative developed during the Syndicate meeting in Budapest in April this year <http://colossus.v2.nl/syndicate/index_frames.html>. The critical situation in Yugoslavia/Kosovo inspired the founding of a virtual state, a state of mind called the Future State of Balkania.

In Budapest an exploration of the concept took place, and this exploration was continued on a mailing list, established after the meeting. The workshop in Helsinki will gather together about 15 artists, writers and cultural practitioners and will aim at actually designing such a virtual state. During the last 2 days of the Balkania component of TEMP a small group will prepare a small publication as a description of the workshop's process and additional outcome of the workshop.

During a nightly meeting preceding the Dayton agreement, Holbrooke and Milosovic, consuming lots of alcohol, were playing around with an American army computer simulation of the Yugoslavian landscape. Was it the drinks or the technology that created that birds eye sensation in which suddenly an agreement seemed within reach?

Among the many experiments with virtual communities that, particularly, the Internet gave rise to, virtual states are a regular phenomenon, ranging from exercises in political wishful thinking, to refugee republics, to game-like utopias. The virtual state offers possibilities to comment and criticise on real world situations, to fantasise and experiment. Parallel to the rise of the Internet, the situation of national states in Europe changed drastically. We witnessed both the ongoing European integration as well as the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

In 1993 the Yugoslavian disintegration lead the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek to argue:

"The authority of the state is being eroded from the top by the trans-European regulations from Brussels and the international economic ties and from the bottom by local and ethnic interests, while none of these elements are strong enough to fully replace state authority ... utopian energy is no longer directed towards a stateless community, but towards a state without a nation, a state which would no longer be founded on an ethnic community and its territory, therefore simultaneously towards a state without territory, towards a purely artificial structure of principles and authority. "As far as art, according to definition, is subversive in relation to the existing establishment, any art which today wants to be up to the level of its assignment must be a state art in the service of a still-non-existent country."

("There is no State in Europe", Slavoj Zizek)

The workshop, "Designing the Future State of Balkania", is an attempt to take up this challenge.

Artists and thinkers from the area are invited to construct a thought provoking parallel reality that, although deriving its meaning from the history and problems of the Balkans needs to be crucially different. Either utopian or pragmatic, it will add a virtual layer to the layered map of the Balkans and investigate what would be needed to form a synthesis of conflicting historic views and colliding identities. The virtuality of Balkania offers numerous options to obtain such a synthesis. To name a few directions: manipulation of the time-factor, developing a semantic machinery that produces consensus, working out new decision making algorithms or altering the concept of identity through switches and merges.

The participation of the workshop consists of a more or less equal representation of the several Balkan-countries. Participants will also cover a broad range of expertise. They are invited to bring their own material (artworks, software, texts) that can inspire and contribute to the concept.

Using techniques like VRML, linguistic tools like thesauri and translation software, and media like the Internet, during a week of creative effort, Balkania will be designed as a multimediamatic state of mind, that will continue to exist after the workshop as a dynamic, populated place.

http://colossus.v2.nl/syndicate/index_frames.html (see also »Balkanien« - Land ohne Grenzen; in German)

LINKS (page no longer available, and not archived at archive.org)