Letzte Änderung: 06-02-98
grelle.musik@kfunigraz.ac.at
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A cross-cultural exhibition honoring
and connecting women artists
at theonset of the 21st century
The idea to initiate a worldwide women's Mail Art project was born in Santa Barbara, California, in 1993. A group of women artists centering around Lorraine Serena and Elena Siff developed the concept of WOMEN/Beyond Borders (W/BB). Women artists were asked to establish the transgression of feminist discourse through interpreting objects by forming them and via the medium of exhibition.
Small pinewood boxes (9 x 6 x 5,5cm) were sent to curators in 15 countries who each, in turn, invited 12 women artists to shape a box. Gina Ballinger curated the Austrian project.
At the same time, an electronic network linking all participating projects was established. Sky Bergman initiated the set- up of a homepage for W/BB in the World Wide Web. It not only documented the various projects but also the course of the exhibitions, the media response etc. Meanwhile, an additional W/BB journal page has been established.
In November 1995, 178 boxes were displayed - for the first time - in the Contemporary Arts Forum Santa Barbara. The boxes originated from: Argentina, Australia, Cuba, Finland, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Austria, Spain, Sweden, the United States, and Vietnam. Some of the boxes were funny and ironic statements on women's daily lives, others were literally meant to be filled with treasures such as secret wishes and desires, sometimes they contained the memories of drastic experiences that the artist had actually gone through. Thus, one artist focussed on the death of her mother. Another artist who escaped as one of the boat people from Vietnam touched upon the theme of escape. All together the exhibition was an impressive anthology of different biographies and powerful personal statements about the daily lives and the labor situations of women from all over the world.
Each individual box hints at the artist's nationality. Splendid and shiny boxes in Mexican silver, velvet and silk, next to the sober and sophisticatedly designed Japanese ones, to Cuba's mystical boxes alluring to Voodoo-magic, to Austrian works of minimalist reduction .....
In 1995, the Antikmuseum in Basel, Switzerland, initiates a second strand of W/BB: as contemporary supplement to the exhibition "Pandora - Women in the Classical Greek Age" which also chose the topic of "receptacles". Boxes of women artists from Switzerland, Germany, Greek, and the United States were displayed. Among the artists were Ulrike Rosenbach, Lili Fischer, Elvira Bach.Meanwhile, in March 1996, the main exhibition traveled to Israel. Bill Clinton was among the visitors. One picture has him standing somewhat bemusedly in front of the show-cases at the ICC Contemporary Gallery in Jerusalem. August 1996 was the scheduled date for exhibitions in Graz followed by St. Petersburg.
W/BB Austria: Corroding Borders by Publication
The public staging of the transport of the boxes from Graz to St. Petersburg, was a convincing development of and comment on the overall project for Austrian artists in charge (Gina Ballinger, Inge Pock, Renate Rosalia, Doris Jauk-Hinz, Eva Ursprung). The concept was established by Veronika Dreier, Doris Jauk-Hinz, and Eva Ursprung.
A sleeping car of the RZB (Russian Railway) was rent and sent from Russia to Graz. Graz thus marked the first step of the project designed as sculpture in progress. Through the installation of the objects in the carriage, through the setting out on the journey itself as well as through the accompanying tasks needed for publication this process of sculpturing was initiated.
The sculpture comprised a nostalgic sleeping car with golden curtains and silver china, three women artists, a writer, a photographer, two computer experts, two Russian sleeping car attendants, one notebook with modem, and a video camera that filmed according to its inherent laws of observation, and 178 boxes from all over the world. Redefining the carriage's purpose was meant to foreground Ð for the purpose of publication - the limits given by the route Graz, Budapest, Lvov, St. Petersburg as a restricted public sphere. Thus, a form of transgression was perpetuated.
In the course of the journey eight borders were crossed: Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Russia. The sculpture was accessible for all passengers. The processes of transporting itself provided the form and organization of the sculpture and the publication of these process served as the basic structure of organization and was executed accordingly. The public approach was part of the sculpture.
In Graz, the city counselor for culture, Helmut Strobl and the representative for women affairs, Barbara Kasper gave an official farewell to the artists, Veronika Dreier, Doris Jauk-Hinz, and Eva Ursprung. Press conferences were held at the stops in Vienna, Budapest, and Lvov. Invitations were distributed to people passing by, and tours through the carriage were offered. While traveling, passengers on the train were guided through the exhibition and familiarized with the intentions of the project.
Intention and course of the journey were incessantly published or documented depending on the means available. Apart from the press conferences, the public relations work focussed on the employment of the Internet. In order to provide an appropriate forum Doris Jauk-Hinz set up a W/BB Austria home page. Now data could permanently be broadcast Ð via the telephone as well. The carriage - as the analogous object to the boxes - acted as "analogous" gallery and mobile interface between the journey in its real=political dimension and its virtual equivalent in the communicational sphere, the "digital gallery".
At the arrival in St. Petersburg, an online event connecting the train, the artists who had remained at home (Ingeborg Pock, Gina Ballinger, and Renate Rosalia) in the Werkstadt Graz, and Sky Bergman in Santa Barbara had been scheduled.
On Thursday, August 29, at 19:25, the virtual and real journey from Graz to St. Petersburg was supposed to start. The scheduled arrival in St. Petersburg Varshavski: Saturday, September 1, at 12:50. A journey of adventures, obstacles, and border crossing took its course.