Mechanisms for an entent
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Mechanisms for an Entente is an experimental approach for an interdisciplinary and transnational collective artistic production based on outstanding research conditions around the issues of the Central-East Europe’s political history since the collapse of the Austro- Hungarian Empire to our days. The key challenge of this project is the production of a collective and multiform artwork in order to promote deep aesthetic, philosophical and political reflections, questioning the notion of European condition. The object of this desire is a train line that doesn’t exist anymore.
Mechanisms for an Entente analyzes the evolving political context that led to the birth, within the diplomatic period called “The Little Entente”, of the train line named “Silesia Cracoviana Karpathy” connecting Warsaw to Bucharest via Kraków, Košice, Budapest and Cluj for almost one hundred years, and its disappearance due to a slow economic shift of the entire railway network, about twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
From October 2012 until June 2013 a series of one month long research residencies took place in Krakow, where French, Polish, Slovakian, Hungarian and Romanian artists and researchers have been invited to confront themselves with issues of the project. These residencies worked in symbiosis with theopen_studio. It was an extension of the pedagogical program of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, a sort of free electron, an off-the-wall space for reflection.
Following this period of research, July 1st we went all together to Bucharest to retrace the route of the train line, step by step, city by city, during a two months long workshop. After going through Bucharest, Cluj, Budapest, Košice, Plaveč and Kraków, this travel ended on August 31st in Warsaw. This movement has been designed as an initiation trip in which each participant was invited to share his/her research and sensibility, but also to confront his/her vision of the world to the others, to make art together by focusing on what binds individuals (Res Communis).
This experience has been conclude with three exhibitions in Kraków, Košice and Budapest during autumn 2013, then two other exhibitions in Bordeaux during Spring 2014.
Marta Jonville & Tomas Matauko // LUNIK
Press review // Exhibitions // Catalogues // Workshop // Résidents
