Travel Route Boutique

2008-07-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

Préface

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If geographically separated from mainland Russia, the region of Kaliningrad is often seen as testing ground for European and Russian geo-political games, indeed at the foreground of tensions or interactions dialectics between the two entities. Nevertheless, the situation of fragment, or isolated territory the region has chosen for identity-marker became criteria for the region definition since the 1920s. At that time Kaliningrad was not existing as such, but as East-Prussia capital Königsberg. If cut off already from its mainland after the Treaty of Versailles, the region maintained connections to Western Europe through its administrative adherence to the Weimarer Republic. When renamed Kaliningrad 1946, repopulated by Soviet citizens from Europe and Asia, Kaliningrad became, under its quality of war loot, military zone closed to foreign visitors. By the end of the Cold War, the region managed to maintain its connection to the neighboring countries Poland and Lithuania, but since the EU-Enlargement of 2004, Kaliningrad became at the real intersection of Russian and European policies.

Not only the border, in its banal typology, but also the bureaucratic procedures became physical brake for the inhabitants. The projection of the abroad that is often for the Kaliningrad the 30min away Gdansk or 1hour away Kaunas now rhymes with non-ending bureaucratic processes, any European Citizen would already be impatient about. Not really Russian, but not really European, the Kaliningraders desperate from an identity that has been fiddled 1946 as Soviet-type city. If influenced by its neighboring countries, because of being a border region, Kaliningrad should be considered as a platform for European and Asian privileges instead of an island cut off from its mainland, due to the cultural and linguistics origins of its inhabitants.

The project Travel Route Boutique decided to deal with on one hand the bureaucratic unfortunate step of applying for Schengen visas, on the other with the concept of place-construction the region of Kaliningrad is facing by not finding its scale on the national, regional and local identity levels. It resulted in an encounter that took form in a fictive Agency that followed the frame of the visas in the context of the German Consulate.

Dominique Hurth, Berlin, 2008

Maps - Ideal & Birth Places

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Archive #46-#54

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Archive #34-#45

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Archive #19-#33

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Archive #10-#18

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Archive #1-#9

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Setting

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The setting followed a low-budget realisation: an outline space on the floor, a table with photocopied questionnaires, a catalogue of pictures to be added to one of the questionnaire, stamps the artist will deliver, a world map to add the destination in a work-in-progress manner, and a background for a polaroid instant -photograph.

Contextualised Project's Situation

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Travel Route Boutique: 2nd and 3rd of July in Kaliningrad

2008-06-25T06:52:00.000-07:00

The Travel Route Boutique will open from the 2nd to the 3rd of July,
in front of the Visa Office of the German Consulate in Kaliningrad.

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The peculiarity of Kaliningrad resides in its shifting layers of identities and cultural references, and its geo-political situation: on one hand the near Europe, on the other the farther mainland Russia. The projection of the abroad, both the near European Union and the farther mainland Russia is a determining question in the identity of the city; but also strengthens the isolation of the region through the effects of border regulations.

In a form of a Travel Route Boutique, that takes the codes of a Travel Agency, the intervention in Kaliningrad would open an abstract view on the idea of travel while using the bureaucratic codex of the Consulate. The visitors of the German Consulate find themselves in the situation of preparation of one travel often stepped by the visa procedures, but maybe in the situation of imagining some other future journeys. The visitors of Travel Route Boutique would enter a process of imagination and daydreaming: instead of pre-defined package tours, they will create their own itinerary made out of their expectations, desires, experiences or souvenirs.

This project is part of the Bauhaus Kolleg IX of the Bauhaus Foundation, Germany. This year, the Bauhaus Kolleg investigates border cities in the Baltic Sea Region as locations at which a new Europe is taking shape. Within this framework the cities of Copenhagen, Malmö, Tallinn, Helsinki and Kaliningrad are platforms for interrogation and research.

Thanks to: the Bauhaus Kolleg IX, the German Consulate in Kaliningrad, NCCA Kaliningrad, the Goethe Institute Saint Petersburg, and BMW.