W/BB Österreich: Im Zug nach St. Petersburg
Theory

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focussing: through the electronic eye of one participating artist
Actress: Doris Jauk-Hinz

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Camera

Subject

Theory

A railway carriage which looks different from the others at the stations: golden curtains are framing its windows. They reduce the section of my view which is directed outside. Since the compartments are very narrow I can experience the room only very slowly and tentatively. I look at show-cases and have a hard time sharpening to focus on the various different boxes displayed inside. The window-glass has an irritating impact on my view: the reflections of the images that are passing by in fast succession are all blurred. It prevents me from perceiving the whole variety of colors. The contours gradually fade.The long narrow corridor allows me to enlarge the angle of my vision. I watch my companions and the many people who are moving at a slower or faster pace through the compartment. As soon as they stop to look at all the boxes or to talk to my companions I get a chance to take a closer look at them.It is very noisy in the compartment, a monotonous noise that blends into the language of people's conversations.

What people might say:
They might say that the nostalgic sleeping car of the Russian Railway with its golden curtains is luxurious. They might wonder about the purpose of the transparent show-cases with the boxes. Maybe they might not even want to understand it. They might say our soft-ware - two Russian sleeping car companions - and all the tools that qualify the sleeper as a means of transportation is 'user-friendly'. Admittedly, all this would be necessary in order to cross that many borders. The journey would result in a clash of many different cultures, signifying a cultural difference that, nowadays, is established by ideological borders.

"boxes"
The purpose of the boxes is transgression. They are content and tools for transportation at the same time; they are signs and bearer of their origin. They are "mail" and "boxes", message and tool. And their destination is again a mail box.The "boxes" of the Mail Art Project, WOMEN/Beyond Borders, artists originating from different cultural contexts, are now transgressing via network within their original cultures. They are now on their journey from Graz to St. Petersburg; eight borders are to be crossed. Accompanied by a video camera, three female artists, a female writer, a photographer, two computer-experts, two Russian sleeping car attendants, and a notebook with access to the Internet.

Automatic record mode
I work completely independently. Often, I am .totally on my own. It hasn't always been like that, though. At the beginning of our journey people smiled at me looking directly into my lens. This changed over the time. They pass by - sometimes they are so close it is impossible for me to sharpen. Then they stop and start talking to my companions. Most of them wear peaked caps - particularly sharp-edged ones. And I see, again and again, the same clothes in the same colors with shiny pieces of metal attached to them.

Kept within borders
Since it is explicitly forbidden to film within the border areas and at particular places of the former "East" the filming mainly followed the inherent laws of the observing video camera - 'hidden', uncontrolled and with a fixed focus. The camera was - unnoticed by the officers - on constant record mode. Pictures like those are far from any subjectively designed presentation.

Sound-worlds
At the first stations, I perceived the language of the cap wearing people as an endless succession of umlauts and consonants. The sounds in the background: a rush with interruptions in regular intervals. Later on I recognized it as a language characterized by preciseness due to short syllables and an emphasis on vowels.

The monotonous sound of the moving train together with the beating noise of the wheels - an acoustic icon for a train in motion - is opposed to the unfamiliarity of the languages of countries passed through. Since we cannot understand the language it is reduced to a prosodic sound. We perceived it as rhythmic tune; the conveyed material content of information is reduced to immaterial acoustic events, to sound constructs. Thus, the language is freed from its communicational function.

Indoor
Inside the compartment with its golden curtains it is only me and my companions. Again and again people stop by. Some of them wear caps. Others just cross the carriage and look at the boxes in the show-cases. I try to follow them which is exhausting because there are so many carriages. They all look different from the carriage with the golden curtains. And the people seem to be quite different, too. I have a hard time figuring out what is going on.
Outdoor
The images are passing by tremendously fast, interrupted only by the stops at stations and by the darkness. Only for a moment can I capture the people outside then they disappear. My electronic eye starts yet again scanning...

Living sphere and artistic sphere
The physical journey which lasts 75 hours and 25 minutes (we arrive with a delay of 12 hours after having to cope with many obstacles) takes place simultaneously, telescoped , as well as parallel, in various actual and social spheres. Their merging, caused by the interior movement - walking from one carriage to the next - becomes a conscious process. This artificial merge of spheres takes place in a constant passing through exterior, inexperienced spheres. One sphere occurs simultaneously in the other which it is folded into.

The Dimension of Time (75:25)
The familiar room is the participating actors' living sphere as well as artistic sphere. The room is isolated and public due to the personal confrontation with the observers of the art objects which are displayed in the train. The room - limited by the carriage and inhabited by the participating actors and the boxes in their compartments - becomes gradually more familiar while we continue on the dimension of time. This familiarity is opposed to a constantly growing "outside strangeness"; we become more acquainted to it, but not more familiar. The perception of the room is not only due to the leaving behind of physical distances. The impact of the expansion of space that grows with the distance between cultures has a much stronger impact. The perception of space develops into a primarily cognitive one. Crossing distances and leaving behind cultures within a couple of hours ignores the perception of either. The experience is reduced to the perception of the room as a means of transportation. The airplane becomes thus the analogy for the function of the boxes as a means of transportation and not for the process of transporting boxes. On the Internet the journey is reduced to leaving behind distances. The crossing of cultures cannot even be guessed. Unlike the linear course of the physical journey (on tracks), the digital journey follows a network structure. At all ends of digital communication networks stand similar technological tools, sit people with similar experiences in handling them. Removed from their particular cultural origin, technology and knowledge renders them

People might say:
People from the Western cultural sphere might say that tapping and drawing on several drums of fuel from arailway engine equals 'stealing'. But what does it mean in this context?

Commentary/key
sticks to its view. During the process of transgression it conveys its own cultural parameters. And while cultures are folded into each other this disposition constantly subjugates that which is seen. Here, it is the subjective view of a female Central European artist. The appropriate reading requires an appropriate person.


Die Camera seeks the object which always remains the same - independent from the particular cultural perspective.

Das Subject sticks to its view. During the process of transgression it conveys its own cultural parameters. And while cultures are folded into each other this disposition constantly subjugates that which is seen. Here, it is the subjective view of a female Central European artist. The appropriate reading requires an appropriate person.

The Theory observes from outside the contextual system. It is intersubjective and intercultural. Its reading is independent of either subjects or cultures.

The artificially created division of views intends to follow the shift of contexts of this transgression and its multiple variations in order to match the character of this Mail Art project. The different readings are again realized in an intercultural setting, on the Internet, as WWW-pages.