Universität für künstlerische und industrielle Gestaltung LinzKunstuniversität Linz

Institut für Medien

Interface Culture

Art & Culture On Ships, Rivers and Seas

Marie Polakova

Masterarbeitzur Erlangung des akademischen Grades

MA - Master of Art

Betreut von:

Univ. Prof. Dipl. Ing. Martin KaltenbrunnerUniv. Prof. Dr. Christa Sommerer

Univ. Prof. Dr. Laurent MignonneauMag. Art. Leo Schatzl

Datum der Approbation: 11/02/2016

Linz, 2016

Chapter 1 : Introduction Chapter 2 : Research Context Chapter 3 : Research Methodology 3.1. Making Friends3.2. Being Where The Action Is3.3. Putting It All Down3.4. Putting It All Togetehr

Chapter 4 : Research Documentation 4.1. Making Friends Artist Residency Aboard Eleonore Ship

4.2. Being Where The Action Is 4.2.a. Maintenance4.2.b. Cultural Programme4.2.b.1. Schone Eleonore’s Film Boudoir 4.2.b.2. Dorkboat Workshops Lectures and Presentations4.2.b.3. Eleonore TV 4.2.b.4. Dreampunk TV

4.3. Recording Observations and Data

4.4. Analysing DataArt & Cultural Practice Around The Water Environment4.4.1. landscape theatre4.4.2. adventure performance4.4.3. experimental adventurism4.4.4. maritime media art4.4.5. social sculptures

IndexNetherlands

5

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16

18192020

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25

28282929

31

3233

34

3939

4141414242

4.4.6. events & venues

4.5. Case StudiesSchone Eleonore Film Boudoir & DorkboatAdventure Performance

Afloat a BoundaryAbstractEnvironmentThe HappeningAudience ParticipationAfloat a Boundary : Concept

Cogo Ahoi PerformanceCreative ProcessThe FantasticalIntense Being River TimeThe Performance

DownriverProject DescriptionThe Journey

Notes

Chapter 5 : Art and Cultural Practice Around the Water Environment: Summary

5.1. Landscape TheatreSleMFloating MazeFoghorn Requiem

5.2. Adventure Performance/PerformanceCogo AhoiWaterhouse TheatreLod TajemstviFall I./Broken Fall(Organic)

5.3. Experimental Adventurism Sailing for Geeks (S4G)Search for the MiraculousCargoAntii LaitinenWesternCamping Glocke

42

4343

44

454747475153

545460606062

666667

68

69

72737475

76

77787981

82838586878889

Nomade des MersAvon Canoe Pilot Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea & Swimming Cities of Serrenissima C.O.C.

5.4. Maritime Media ArtIllutron Ghost Ship Life Boat SyrenRiver Studies

5.5. Social SculpturesEleonore Floating VillageMuseumsschiff Frederic MistralHawilaFredens Havn Flydende By Miss Rockaway ArmadaFloating Neutrinos The Principality of SealandAlternative Sailing CommunityBreak Water Maker SpaceWaterpod Project

5.6. Events & VenuesStubnitz RadicalSeafaring23 Days At SeaFordham GalleryArt UnAnchored FestivalLilacISEA 2004 Salt Assault Fest

Conclusion Bibliography Appendix A Schone Eleonore’s Film Boudoir

Appendix B Dorkboat Appendix C Dreampunk TV 2015

909192

93

95969899

100101

102103104106108109110111112113114116117

118119120121122123124125126

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Fig. Eleonore (2014)by Marie Polakova

Chapter 1Introduction“The boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea... (it is a)great instrument of economic development, but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the Imagination...” (Foucault, 1984)

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This Masters thesis provides an overview of existing artistic and cultural works around the water environment, contextualised with the author’s artistic practice that happened in that environment over a period of the last three years (2013 – 2016).

Many people are not aware that the rivers, seas and harbours of the world host vivid cultural and artistic scenes, which so far haven’t been coherently documented and described. These spaces form a base for artists, who permanently or temporarily, choose the waters to be their studio, their home and their gallery or stage.

The artistic and cultural practice around the water environment has become increasingly important over the last years, to the extend that it is been referred to as a new movement in the arts.

“The increasing number of works created on the water by contemporary artists in the last decade is approaching the critical mass of a movement like Land art, only at sea.“ (Grover, Parrish Art Museum, 2015)1

This new form of expression is an artistic response to environmental and social changes that we all need to face in today’s world.

Changing weather patterns and rising sea levels might affect the coastal habitats to the extend that a large number of the global population would need to relocate.

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“Due to sea level rise projected throughout the 21st century and beyond, coastal systems and low-lying areas will increasingly experience adverse impacts such as submergence, coastal flooding, and coastal erosion. The population and assets projected to be exposed to

coastal risks as well as human pressures on coastal ecosystems will increase significantly in the coming decades due to population growth, economic development, and urbanization.” (IPCC, 2014)

The artists who engage directly with water environment respond to the impacts , regardless if they already taken place or are assumed scenarios, of such changes.

“The artists (...)figure prominently at the centre of a universal and yet contemporary inquiry: how do we live in a natural world from which we are detached not only physically but emotionally and intellectually. These artists apply direct engagement strategies that remove this distance and reignite a sensual, heuristic, and watchful understanding of the water (Grover, Parrish Art Museum, 2015)2

In overpriced metropolis of the world, the economically less privileged inhabitants are being pushed further and further from the city centres by unregulated, rapidly rising rents. In some cases to move, to establish a cultural venue or artist studio on board a ship is an economically viable alternative. We might have a look for instance at the city of London, United Kingdom:

“There are now just under 3,250 boats on the Trust’s waters in London (3,255 inMar.2015)”(CANAL & RIVER TRUST, 2015)which their owners describe as residential.

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According to Canal & River Trust annual surveys, “This is a 66% increase in total boats in London from Mar.2007 (1,276 extra boats in total, whether they have a home mooring or not)” (CANAL & RIVER TRUST,2015).

The data about population residing permanently aboard their boats does not directly reflect any artistic or cultural activity, and quantitative data for such conclusion are simply not available. However, based on observation done during the author’s research stay (December 2014) there seems to be a significant number of artists and cultural workers within Londons boaters. They form a semi-nomadic, bohemian community afloat. “Of all boats in London, about a third have no home mooring”(Canal & River Trust,2015).

The nomadic lifestyle of this community is a consequence of limited availability and high costs for mooring places within the London

district and the British Waterways regulations, which require the boat owners to relocate every two weeks if they dont have permanent mooring .“... the boat must not stay in the same place for more than 14 days ” (Canal & River Trust, 2012)

For some of these practitioners their boat is merely a home, for others a place of their artistic practice, while for some people a combination of both.

Fig. Sealand

Fig.Narrow Canal Boatsby the Tow Path by Stuart France

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The other reasons are utopian, guided by the impression that on the vast of the oceans it is still possible to create one’s own worlds that function differently to established societies on land. Waters can be seen as “a tabula rasa on which other realities can be built “(Grover, Parrish Art Museum, 2015) And to some extent at least,

an establishment of such a “new world” on the water is indeed possible. We can refer to, for example, the micro-nation of Sealand, that was founded as a sovereign Principality in 1967 in international waters, at Fort Roughs Tower, Second World War Fortress islands six miles off the eastern shores of Britain.

“Fort Roughs Tower, situated at the high seas, had been deserted and abandoned, res deelicta and terra nullius. From a legal point of view, it therefore constituted extra-national territory. In 1966 Roy Bates (...)decided to take over the fortress. Roy smarting from a legal battle with the British government over his offshore radio station “Radio Essex” which had broadcast from another abandoned fortress that was found by the British courts to be within UK jurisdiction. These stations were known affectionately by the press as “Pirate” radio stations (...). Roy never did bring his radio station back to life but instead after taking much advice from his lawyers had the idea to declare this fortress island the independent state of “Sealand”. Claiming “Jus Gentium” over a part of the globe that was Terra Nullius..“(The Principality of Sealand)3

The freedom from the laws’ restrictions valid on land had been part of seafaring historically. As can be seen on pirate utopian settlements of the 18th Century’s Golden Age of Piracy - of which some been historically proven to exists and other remain rather fictional.

“In linking the European mercenary traditions to the discontent of oppressed sailors, the Brotherhood of the Coast became a sanctuary for dropouts, deserters, outcasts and social failures, and so created a myth of freedom and independence that eventually developed into the dream of Libertalia. In their rough way they kept the ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity that exploded the world of the Ancient Regime more than a century later” (Snelders, quoted in Kuhn,2010, p.129).

The art works around the water environment are, in most cases, site specific, partially formed by and reflecting upon the special environment where they are placed. This results in art forms that wouldn’t necessarily emerge on land. These projects vary from temporary works, their duration ranging from hours to seasons – to platforms operating for years, providing bases for others. Some of these projects are made by an individual practitioners while others involve a group of people. In any case, the community of water based collectives and individuals is one of the essential factors here.

On water, no matter how experimental the vessel and how artistic its author’s intentions, they have to deal with the same issues as any other individual afloat. And in comparison to a building on land, ships are far more delicate places, whose balance can (literally) tilt very easily. The millimetres of steel or centimetres of wood planks of the ship hull are the only barrier that separates the human from the hostile depths of water, where we can not stay without aid for an extended period of time.

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The ship based art collectives all have to juggle a very similar task of maintaining their vessel and creating art. Water environment based artists and cultural workers are not only connected with other water based artists, but also to other boat owners, harbour masters, cargo ship captains, boat engine mechanics and all the folk who

live upon or near the water. Apart from the artistic community, they are therefore also part of the community of mariners. To become a part of this community was an important step in order to get any insights. For that reason, an approach of an anthropological and social sciences research method called Participant Observation had been used.

The research component of this thesis is based upon the author’s personal experience and claims no attempt of general objectivity. This approach comes from the Participant Observation, where researchers’ personal „subjective“view and input into the research is a recognised factor: “The observer is more part of the phenomenon being studied, because in order to understand personal meanings and subjective experiences one has to be involved with the lives of the people being studied.” (Ebrahim, 2002, p. 199) And Practice-based (practice- led) Artistic Research that, although different otherwise, is similar to Participant Observation in regards of direct involvement of the researcher. “Academic research utilising this approach is conducted in dialogue with the researcher’s creative production, the emphasis of which is equally placed on theory and practice as well as the reflection and documentation of practice.” (Mäkelä & Nimkulrat, 2011, p.37) In certain environments – and this one can be considered as such – direct research methods are the only possibility to gain any insight into the phenomena that is to be studied. The field of artistic and cultural practice around the water environment lacks academic resources. However, where such material is available, it has been referred to in this text.

In this chapter artistic and cultural practice around the water environment was introduced and discussed as a possible new movement in the arts. The chapter further explained the research methodology used by the author, which will be discussed further. In Chapter 2 the art and cultural practices around the water environment that are the concern of this thesis are put in context with other art practices. In Chapter 3 The the phases of Participant Observation research methodology, based on writing of J.T. Howell (Howell, 1972) are explained. This methodology has been used as the main framework of my research, which is explained further in the fourth Chapter. In Chapter 4, apart from discussing the application of Participant Observation methodology within my research, the artistic and cultural activities relevant to the research topic that I conducted within the years 2013 – 2016 are introduced. The chapter also discusses a proposed system of categorisation for artistic and cultural practices around the water environment and compares it with another system proposed by A. Grover for the radical Seafaring exhibition (Grover, Parrish Art Museum, 2015). The Chapter 5 provides and overview of art and cultural projects existent around the water environment worldwide and structures these according to the categories described in Chapter 4.

Chapter 2Research Context

Fig. Bas Jan Ader by Brad Spence, University of California Irvine, 2000

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In order to define the context of this thesis, the first part of Chapter 2 is focused on describing artworks that, although closely related to the water environment, are not in the scope of the author’s research interest. The art practice that forms the focus point of this thesis is

later contextualised with the artworks discussed in the first part of this chapter.

The artworks discussed below all contain an element of water. Either a depiction of it, such as in case of painting or video art, or its direct representation, such as in fountains or installations. No matter how suggestive, the water element here is highly controlled. The water, at least when everything is working as intended, has no way to escape or modify the boundaries set by the author of the artwork. On contrary, the works that are of my concern, involve (or are involved in) uncontrolled elements of water. That does not have to mean necessary absolute “no control” by human - such as would be in a case of mountain river cascading wildly through a gorge, or the high seas of Atlantic Ocean. Water in a harbour is of course controlled, but not to the same – near to absolute – extent as water in a pipe. The tides, seasons and changing weather conditions, same as the other ships and wildlife, provide enough uncontrollable and unforeseeable influences that the artist who decided to use it as his gallery or studio has to dynamically respond to.

The following examples of art works illustrate the cases where, although water forms a significant conceptual or physical part of the art piece, it is not an active element.

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The British 19th century painter J.M.W. Turner was among the biggest masters in depicting dynamic sea environment and perhaps even more importantly, a reflection of this environment on the surface of human imagination. As well known art historian and art writer

E.H. Gombrich beautifully writes in his text describing Turner’s Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth painting:

“Nobody could reconstruct a nineteenth-century steamer from Turner’s seascape. All he gives us is the impression of the dark hull, of the flag flying bravely from the mast – of a battle with the raging seas and threatening squalls. We almost feel the rush of the wind and the impact of the waves. We have no time to look for details. They are swallowed up by the dazzling light and dark shadows of the storm cloud. I do not know whether a blizzard at sea really looks like this. But I do know that it is a storm of this awe-inspiring and overwhelming kind that we imagine when reading a romantic poem or listening to romantic music. In Turner, nature always reflects and expresses man’s emotions. We feel small and overwhelmed in the face of the powers we cannot control, and are compelled to admire the artist who had nature’s forces at his command.” (Gombrich, 1950)

Bill Viola, American video artists, uses water as a base environment in many of his artworks. His well known video installation Five Angels for the Millennium (2001) that pictures a human (angel’s) body resurrecting from a water surface, can serve us as one example. The movement of the body through the water is intense and beautiful and when watching the artwork at big high quality projections of dimmed space - such as at the Tate Modern gallery in London where it is part of the permanent collection – the viewer nearly feels droplets of water splashing from the angel’s

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body touching her skin. But watching the “making of” video about this installation, would make the viewer realise that this dynamic and intense image was filmed in a very controlled manner in order to create exactly the effect the artist desired. Similar to Turner’s painting, Bill Viola’s work touches viewers’ imaginations. It taps at the feelings they know, or imagine of knowing. Vertigo or fall, submergence and resurrection. The other group of art works that

will be discussed are those that use water directly as their component. Water sculptures – fountains, for instance. The particular example that will be described here comes from the 16th century Renaissance (thats not to exclude their ancestors and descendants)sculptors were masters in creating very elaborated ways to include water seamlessly in the body of their artwork. In fact the mass of

the sculpture was wrapped around the body of the water, accommodating its physical properties and directing the dynamic motion of the water to be such, that it completed the stone and fulfilled highly aesthetic vision of its creator. One example of such sculptural work can be seen in a garden of Belvedere, the summer palace beside of the Prague Castle (Czech Republic). This fountain (1568) not only uses the water as Fig. Bill Viola, Five Angels for the Millennium

(2001)

Fig.J.M.W. Turner. Snow Storm Steam Boat off a Harbours Mouth.

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its visual element, but it lets the sound of droplets falling into a bowl cast out of the alloy used for bells, to resonate in pleasing, nearly melodic, frequencies. The viewer can also feel – or in the case of example below, rather not feel – the water in nowadays galleries, such as when stepping into the Rain Room (2012), an interactive installation by UK-based artists collective rAndom International, that allows visitors to pass through a downpour while staying dry.

The experience of these artworks is sensory and intense, but even so, the water does here exactly what the artists decided for it to do. But this thesis is focused on art forms, where the water is an active as in contrary to a controlled element. The following is of course a unique and extreme case, but it illustrates well the difference between controlled and active elements of water in art: In 1975, Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, set sail across the Atlantic Ocean to form the first part of his new triptych “Search For The Miraculous”. He vanished, his body never to be find and his boat washed to the shore six months after his departure. The reader surely agrees, that this would hardly happen to anyone in a gallery space, no matter how wild the installation might be.

This thesis considers the art forms that take into account the power and unique character that each larger body of water inevitably has. The artworks where the water is completing, forming and altering the actions of the artists, that are submerged or afloat and in some cases are also exhibited in the water environment. We will read

about artists that work with seas, rivers and lakes, as they are, not depicting or controlling the water, but rather collaborating with it. Practitioners who take the audience out of their usual habitat, ask them to explore areas where they might never venture before and invite them to step on an unstable ground of a floating vessel. An experience that can be powerful just by it self and of course strongly influences the perception of the art work. In some cases however, inviting the audience onto the site is not possible and the art work has to be presented in a more conventional exhibition space on land. On example is the outcome of the cargo ship residency 23 Days at Sea that invites artists to travel for 23 days, aboard a cargo ship. Obviously, since this is working cargo vessel, there is no possibility for the audience to step aboard, and hence the art created during (or reflecting upon the) journey has to be exhibited afterwards. However even in this case the uncontrollable ocean and the specific working cargo vessel environment is the platform upon which these art pieces are created, it has direct impact and a strong influence at the artists and their work alike. The Pacific Ocean is an active not controlled element here and for that reason this project is included in this research, while others (such as the Rain Room or the fountains) are not.

As discussed above, this Master Thesis is focused at art and cultural practices, which embrace water or water environment as an active, participating element. Where the artist and audience is required to immerse in this environment, metaphorically or even literally. The following chapter will introduce the research methods used to gain data about such practices.

Chapter 3Research Methodology

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The research methodology employed by the author is loosely following a qualitative research method called Participant Observation. “Participant observation, for many years, has been a hallmark of both anthropological and sociological studies “

(Kawulich, 2005).One other research approach significant for this thesis is the method of Artistic Research:“practice-based and practice-driven research within that large entity that is called ‘contemporary culture’. Its attitude is to open and to include, not to exclude or to build barriers between mediums of expression and methods of knowledge production. “(Hannula, Suoranta, Vadén, 2005)

Although this text is not a work of Artistic Research per se, it provided the author with a justification for her directly involved, inevitably subjective, personal approach that is centred around her own artistic practice.

Participant Observation is highly appreciated and used in certain situations – such as analysing problematic behavioural patterns of a specific group – where “objective” neutral observation carried by an outsider to the community, would provide very twisted information, if it would gain any results at all. The method is based upon gaining a close connection and familiarity with the community of research interest. The research is usually carried over an extended period of time, one year being the minimum, and it requires the researcher to be involved with people and life of the community she wishes to study.

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“The research is characterized by a prolonged period of intense social interaction between the researcher and the subjects in the milieu of the latter. During this period of interaction data are systematically, but unobtrusively, collected in the form of field notes. The researcher

watches and records what people do and say whilst immersing himself in the host society learning to think, perceive, feel and sometimes act as a member of its culture, and at the same time as a trained researcher from another culture. There is involvement as well as detachment.”(Ebrahim G.J.,2002,p.199)

The personality as well as gender of the researcher affects the nature and quality of information she / he can obtain. The methodology of Participant Observation is not strictly defined – it is changed and modified according to the needs of particular situations.

”Whyte (1979) notes that, while there is no one way that is best for conducting research using participant observation, the most effective work is done by researchers who view informants as collaborators; to do otherwise, he adds, is a waste of human resources. His emphasis is on the relationship between the researcher and informants as collaborative researchers who, through building solid relationships, improve the research process and improve the skills of the researcher to conduct research.”(Kawulich, 2005)

The participant observation method emerged as the essential approach to ethnographic research by the end of 19th century. It was used by Frank Hamilton Cushing as his primary method for studies of the Zuni Indians, followed by other researchers of Non-Western societies,

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such as Bronisław Malinowski and Margaret Mead.

“One of the first instances of its [Participant Observation] use involved the work of Frank Hamilton Cushing, who spent four and a half years as a participant observer with the Zuni Pueblo people around 1879 in a study for the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology. During this time, Cushing learned the language, participated in the customs, was adopted by a pueblo, and was initiated into the priesthood.(...)Then, in the early 1920s, Malinowski studied and wrote about his participation and observation of the Trobriands(...) Around the same time, Margaret Mead studied the lives of adolescent Samoan girls.“(Kawulich, 2005) This research method however, is not used only for studies of (to us) distant communities, both culturally and geographically, but also to gain data about marginal communities, sub-societies and subcultures. The method had of course evolved and was elaborated by various researchers. I based my approach mostly on the work of Joseph T. Howell, who summarised the basis of the participant observation in his work “Hard Living on Clay Street: Portraits of Blue Collar Families”, published in 1972. Howell describes six basic rules of successful participant observation:

“1. Be honest about who you are and what you are doing. 2. Be yourself. 3. Be involved with people. 4. Record every day as soon as after the observation as possible. 5. Be patient.6. In your analysis stick to your data, dont go beyond what you have seen or heard. (...)No bullshit.“(Howell, 1972, p.381)

The phases that form participant observation research are defined as following:

3. 1. Making Friends

During the first phase of the research the observer needs to establish a connection and gain the trust and acceptance of the community they wish to study. “The acceptance problem, therefore, is the first obstacle that must be overcome before much else can happen” (Howell,1972,p 367)

3.2. Being Where The Action Is

Once being accepted by the people in the community, the researcher needs to involve themsef in situations where they can collect valuable data and conduct observations important for their research. “In other words, he must try to be where the action is.” (Howell,1972, p. 372)

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3.3. Putting it all down

This phase of the Participant Observation research essentially means recording the observations. It requires defining suitable methods of recording that suits the type of data being preserved and the researcher. “In this phase the participant observer is faced with a number of crucial tasks. He must be able to figure out what is happening; he must be able to determine what is worth remembering about it; he must remember it long enough to record it; and, finally he must be able to record the observations accurately and vividly.” (Howell,1972,p 376)

3.4. Putting it all Together

This final phase of the participant observation research is essentially summarising, categorising and analysing the collected data. Howell developed and described methodology he applied during his research on low-working class families. This methodology, however, is not general and would not make sense to be described here. For the purpose of research of art and cultural practice around the water environment, the collected information was structured according to the following criteria:

1. META DATA - Captain (leading person / author of the project) - Flag (country of origin)

2. CONFIGURATION - Vessel type - Duration (permanent or temporary project) - Location (fixed mooring / cruising / on shore) - Is it an individual project or a platform for other projects? In a case of platform: What projects does it support? - Does the project involve living aboard?

3.ROLE OF WATER IN THE ARTISTIC PRACTICE - Water only as carrier - Water as actor - Water/ship as a production site - Water/ship as a gallery or stage - Ship as laboratory

4. ART CONCERN – GENRES - Marine DIY - Environmental Monitoring - Bio Art - Art Brut (projects created without an intention to be art) - Political Statements/ Reflection Upon Global Issues - Ship (nautical) Culture and Community - Life Upon Water /Experimental Inhabitation of Water Environment - Performance/ Happening

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- Land Art - Interactive Art - Sound Art - Conceptual Art

These categories, described in Chapter 4., were created by the author in order to classify artistic and cultural projects happening around the water environment.

As discussed above, the Participatory Observation is based on the personal experience of the researcher who needs to gain close contact with the community they study. This method has numerous advantages, however the subjectivity of the Participatory Observation is a known factor, and it is considered to be a disadvantage or limitation of this method.

“For example, DeWalt and DeWalt (2002) note that male and female researchers have access to different information, as they have access to different people, settings, and bodies of knowledge. Participant observation is conducted by a biased human who serves as the instrument for data collection; the researcher must understand how his/her gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and theoretical approach may affect observation, analysis, and interpretation.” (Kawulich, 2005)

As will be discussed in Chapter 3, the community I have observed is predominantly male and the factor of the gender inevitably played its part. I would state that it influenced my position within this community and define how (as who) I was accepted by them.

The following chapter documents the phases of my research, loosely structured according to Howell’s methodology of Participant Observation, combined with the practice centred approach of Artistic Research. As described in this chapter, within both of these research methods, the person of the researcher has significant influence on the data their research gains. In a case where profound objectivity of the research is required, additional – often quantitative-research methods have to be used. Since this work is not aiming at providing objective research about art practice around water environments, but rather to bring a report of it, additional research methods were not used. That is not to undermine my aim of objective observation and validity of data. That includes providing proofs wherever such possibility exists. In line with other writings that use the research methods described above, the text in Chapter 4 is written from a subjective – first person perspective and does not aim to conceal the person – and personality – of its author.

Fig. Eleonore kitchen by Marie Polakova

Chapter 4Research Documentation

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The events described in this chapter happened across the course of 2013 - 2015. The most profound experience and a base of my research was a stay aboard Eleonore, a ship in Linz that in total covered 17 months out of these two years.

Others were shorter travels and collaborations around Europe. Most of these travels from ship to ship happened by land, with an exception, the journey aboard MY Art on Danube River. These travels were namely to: Netherlands, United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia.

Eleonore

Eleonore is 24m long barge, as for now (2016) permanently moored at Winterhafen Linz, Austria. The ship was brought by Franz Xaver (“Xav”), Taro Knopp & Chris Eder as a wreck for 1 Euro via the online marketplace Ebay. The legend says that these three friends arrived with tools needed to deconstruct the ship and a plan to sell the scrap steel and other materials. After stepping aboard the ship they looked at each other and they all knew, without saying a word, that they would have to go and get different tools. Eleonore, being around 100 years old at that point, was not to be destroyed, but fixed and to become a hosting venue for an Artist In Residence program and a central point of gravity for the Donautics community, a group of Linz-based boat owners and their friends.

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Eleonore was originally built as a vessel for accommodating workers who carried out tasks of river maintenance: she used to host 8 – 9 men. Her mooring place, the Winterhafen, is composed of two parts coexisting together – the rear part of the

harbour is a yacht harbour, with standard, paid mooring places for leisure boats and a visitors section. The entrance of the harbour belongs to the Linz Schiffswerk, a shipyard where ships are being taken out of the water and repaired, while other, mostly large working, cargo and passenger ships are awaiting for a free place or repairs that can be done on water.

Eleonore is moored at a site belonging to the Schiffswerk. This was possible due to personal connections of Xav and creates somewhat problematic feelings amongst the yacht harbour neighbours, who have to pay fair amount of money for their mooring places. This arrangement however has another side – Eleonore is not connected to land electricity and water lines. She functions off-grid – with electricity generated by solar panels and stored in a rather chaotic bank of old car batteries. There is also a gasoline generator, which is used when more power requiring tasks need to be carried out. The water for washing comes from 2 thousand litre tanks where rain falling onto the roof gets collected. If these tanks get dry, there is always water in the harbour that is clean enough to be used. Drinking water has to be carried.

As mentioned before, Eleonore functions partially as a hosting venue for an Artist In Residence programme organised by Stadtwerkstatt, an established alternative cultural organisation in

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Linz. The program invites artists (or a collective of maximum 3 members due to space restriction) for two week stays. The artists live aboard as well as using the ship as their studio. The conditions described provide unusual and challenging settings for artists who often came from European new media and performance scene and are used to having unlimited electricity and more controllable environments at their hands.

4.1. Making Friends

Artist Residency Aboard Eleonore Ship

In 2013, I,together with Nanouche Orianno and Miriam Velacott, applied for a Floating Bodies & Spaces artist residency. This particular programme was focused on performance arts and in total hosted 4 residencies between the years 2012 /2013. Our project was entitled Afloat a Boundary. We aimed to work with the ship as if she was another living entity collaborating with us.(See section 4.5. for detail case study of this project.) Afloat a Boundary resulted in a happening at the end of the residency. Although the original proposal altered severely due to the conditions of the ship, which differed significantly from our imagination of how situation aboard will be, our residency and especially the

Fig. dinner AboardElonore during Afloat a Boundary Residency by Rinehart

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originally they were probably used by the officers, while the other 6 working men slept in the remaining room which functions now as a studio space.

It was beneficial to experience a whole year there, from the pleasant time of summer, where the day can be started by jumping into refreshing water and swimming, literally a few meters from your bedroom. And days filled with visitors and boats coming over from longer or shorter journeys.

final happening was successful.

From a social perspective, our stay resulted in an invitation for us to stay aboard for a further two weeks – this time not as artists in residence, but as friends.

This was based of course on personal sympathies and a somehow mutual feeling of belonging between us and the Eleonore community. We became friends and at that point I didn’t know that this stay would alter the next

years of my life to the extend, that in December 2013, I moved permanently aboard the ship and resided there for one whole year. Eleonore being my home, I could not have wished for a closer connection with the environment of my research interest.

Currently I inhabit a cabin of 4 square meters of floor space. There are two such private cabins at Eleonore, and

Fig .Dorkboat #1 Illutron Underwater Lights

Fig .Dorkboat#1 Illutron Underwater Lights

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To the winter, when the harbour becomes quiet and nearly isolated and the conditions aboard somewhat extreme. (During the winter months, the average temperature in my cabin is around 5C, which I strangely enjoy. Perhaps due to my childhood love of Jack London’s books of extreme Alaska explorations, that formed an urge to have

such an experience on my own. An urge, I never fully got rid of.) Fire wood (as the beautiful, old stove is the only source of heating), frozen water pipes and melancholic mist over the water in the mornings. And being alone most of the time apart from Mondays, that host regular gatherings of the Donautic community.

The core Donautics community is a group of approximately fifteen people, of which th absolute majority are men. The few woman present here are mostly girlfriends of these men. There are some female friends (not girlfriends or partners) associated with the group. But none of them regularly participates. Being accepted as a female in a dominantly male community has its difficulties and there was, besides gender, the problem of language. This is a German speaking community and my German is hardly enough to sustain basic conversation. My approach to this situation was to ask my self a basic question:” What needs to be done here? What is it, that I – being myself- can contribute to this community?” I looked around and did what I thought I could contribute, leaving the others to do their things. (This is described in the following part 4.2.)And I was there, every day, my daily life was happening in the harbour.Additionally, I learned how to steer a ship and obtained an international certificate for operation of pleasure craft. And I soon became some sort of Eleonore guardian with voice in the community decision making processes.

There is yet another very important aspect to this – being home and closely involved with a ship that has her own cultural program (no matter how small), made me part of not only the Donautics group, but of a worldwide community. Wherever I travelled and looked for other ship (water environment) based art & cultural practices at that place, I was always welcomed and accepted in extremely friendly and open manner.

To conclude, while I had very little problem with establishing a rapport, being accepted by the community and becoming its(active)participant, I failed at being an observer. An observer still needs certain distance that allows them to observe. I became so close to this community that it become mine and I am one of theirs. Within ethnographic research, I would be criticised for “...having gone native, meaning that he had lost his objectivity and, therefore, his ability to write analytically about the culture” (Kawulich, 2004) However, I assume the factor of “having gone native” has no such importance within the scope of this work, since it is not intended to be an objective ethnographic study, but rather a report and a practice-based, artistic research, which allows a larger degree of subjectivity.

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4.2 Being Where The Action IsFollowing the methodology of Participant Observation, the next step was to join and participate in the community activities: Eleonore has a tradition of regular Monday meetings for the Donautic community, which are attended by the core of the group, approximately five men, under any weather conditions(Including the 2013 floods where the ship could not be accessed from land at all). These meetings were of course a perfect place to be, in order to gain insights into the life upon the ship.

Apart of participating as an observer, I tried – and succeeded – to add another element to these meetings and also to make Eleonore more welcoming and open for visitors outside of the Donautic community. Eleonore has hosted an Artist In Residence programme every summer since 2012. In the last two years the programme has been curated by Shulea Cheang and each summer three artists are invited for separate two week stays. A lot of people feel uncomfortable to stay on the ship alone, which is one of the reasons why I was appointed as a host and their companion during the residencies. I arrange with these artist to make a presentation about their work at the beginning of their stay, which makes it easier for them to can get in contact with the local community. This programme is otherwise organised and financially supported by Stadtwerkstatt.

As mentioned previously, apart from the residencies, the group aboard Eleonore is dominantly male. To have a solely male “club” was however never an intention, but due to the environment aboard it happen that way. I decided upon two steps I could take in order to improve this gender unbalance situation and to transform Eleonore to a welcoming place for people of any gender and to those who are not necessarily associated with the boat life.

These steps were: a) maintenanceb) a cultural programme

a. Maintenance

The mundane task of maintenance has a large impact. Some people do not feel comfortable in dirty, untidy places. Punk is not for everyone and if I wished that the ship would welcome all audiences, she needed to look accordingly. Describing a ship cleaning duties falls out of academic interest, but my attempt gained a positive response and I would conclude it had worked – at least partially – as I intended. I have been told by several individuals that Eleonore had changed and that they felt welcoming and more comfortable to come there.

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b. Cultural Programme

b .1. Schone Eleonore’s Film Boudoir

2013 – 2014

Schone Eleonore’s Film Boudoir was a regular fortnightly program of movies on ships, waters and seas that I started following the suggestion of Leo Schatzl, who kindly contributed his extensive knowledge of marine themed cinematography. Unfortunately after a year of its existence the programme was cancelled due to a fear of problems about unclear copyrights in the case of some of the films. The events were attended by an audience ranging from 5 – 25 people (Around 20 people being the maximum that can fit in the largest “studio” room of Eleonore.) The amount of visitors depended largely on weather. Each screening was accompanied by insightful introduction and the savouring of alcoholic (mixed) beverages, carefully selected to match the spirit of each film. My approach was to provide a basic introduction about the film and the process of its making, including a thorough introduction about the events behind these movies. as interestingly, many of the films with marine thematic are based on real life events. These background stories were sometimes more fascinating than the movie produced upon them. As an example, we might have a look at

Fig .Schone Eleonore’s Film Boudoir poster by Marie Polakova

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Anne of The Indies, extremely sweet 1950s film adaptation of a rather harsh and fascinating real story from the 18th century. We are in the 18th century - golden age of piracy. Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two pirate women whoes paths coincidentally crossed and their life stayed connected since then on. Mary Read, for example, was raised as a boy and later, in male disguise, joined the British Military. This was alone extraordinary, as in 18th century Europe women were not allowed to work independently and to join the army or navy. If such women were found – and that usually happen when she got injured in a battle - they were sentenced to death. In later years, when Mary Read joined the navy, her ship got taken by the pirates who forced her to join them, which is how she met Anne Bonny. Anne Bonny and Mary Read were the only woman who were recognised as pirates by the authorities and consequently sentence to death for piracy.

“ They [Read and Bonny]had to enter pirate society disguised as men and had to maintain their right to be part of it by “acting as men.” How much they seemed to identify with this role is piercingly expressed in Anne Bonny’s comment on the execution of her former lover, John “Calico Jack” Rackam: “she was sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a man, he need not have been hanged like a dog.” Mary Read and Anne Bonny’s story confirms that “just as freedom meant noble status for a man, it meant male status for a woman”—among golden age pirates as much (or more so?) as in other communities.”(Kuhn,2010, p.71)

This story of women who gained a status in a male dominated community, reflected the gender related issues that I, inevitably, also had to face. My approach to this issue is discussed in part 4.2. While things have changed from the 18th Century, whether a woman can preserve her female qualities, yet be accepted as equal by a male dominated community is still to be answered.

According to feedback I gained, my introductions and designated cocktails became somehow a trademark of these events and made them more of a happening rather than merely a film screening. Some events were even more than happenings, with live, site specific performances – for example the screening of Battleship Potemkin, the 1925 Russian propaganda silent film by Sergei Eisenstein. We show the film accompanied by the live music of Alberto Boem who used environmental recordings from the ship, together with original sound recordings of political speeches from that era, electric guitar and other sound samples to mix a live and unique soundtrack for the film. Sadly no recordings of this event exist. The films shown during Schone Eleonore’s Film Boudoir are listed in Appendix A.

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b.2.) Dorkboat - Workshops Lectures and Presentations

From the autumn 2014 I started to organise an irregular programme of presentations, workshops and artist’s visits. The aim of these events is to provide platform for cultural exchange and possible artistic collaborations, as well as an exchange of skills and knowledge related to art and life around the water environment.Since the Film Club got cancelled, the Dorkboat also occasionally hosts film screenings. The most recent event (January 2016) that happen aboard Eleonore under the Dorkboat umbrella, was a celebration of the 1,000,053th Art’s Birthday. This tradition was started by French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou who declared, on January 17th 1963, that Art had been born exactly 1,000,000 years ago when somebody dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Enrique Tomas approached me with an idea of celebrating this important anniversary aboard Eleonore, together with a group of his students from the Interface Cultures department. The idea was to create a networked interchange of images using old Slow-Scan TV techniques. The event was a tribute to Robert Adrian X., a pioneer of telecommunication art, who spent part of his life in Austria. The idea fell onto fertile ground, as Franz Xaver, captain of Eleonore has a HAM radio licence and Eleonore is equipped with radio broadcasting equipment. He also personally knew Robert Adrian, who passed away in 2015. During the event, we were able to connect with several radio stations in Europe. As well as to send and receiving images via phone or Skype connections. The event was not accessible physically to an audience - as they would not fit aboard – but it was live streamed by Linz Local TV station Dorf TV and can be still seen online. The Dorkboat Events are listed in Appendix B.

Fig. Dorkboat Art Birthday impression by Klimentina

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b.3.) Eleonore TV

Eleonore has a regular monthly TV broadcast on the Dorf TV channel – a local community TV station in Linz. It is broadcast live, directly from the Eleonore. I was invited to prepare and moderate several of these broadcasts. Although there are some exceptions, my concept was to introduce projects that are happening in the mostly local cultural scene, which might not be widely known. All of these projects are grassroots activities, conducted by members of the community and often with restricted resources. Grassroot art and cultural activities, coming from the citizen community rather then being introduced from above – that is not to lower the importance of cultural activities organised by cities and governments – play a key role in sustaining and promoting community identity (Ramsden H. et al., 2011). To share the knowledge of such activities might therefore inspire community members to proceed with realisation of their own ideas.

The structure of the interviews I conducted was meant to provide a sort of basic user manual – guidance for anyone interested in conducting their own activity. Some of these interviews were related to this thesis research topic and were used as a method of data recording. I will discuss these specifically in the section 4.3.

Basic Structure of The Interviews for Eleonore TV 1. Short introduction of the project.2. Further information about the project activities. 3. History – How did the idea came up? How did it start? 4. How is it managed - how do you keep it running from a social perspective? (Group dynamics, organisation)5. How do you manage it financially? 6. Is there any way for others to get involved? How? 7. Future plans? Invitation for future activities.

b.4.) Dreampunk TV

In January 2015, I was invited to create the Dream Punk TV channel for the Dorf TV station. This show is not broadcast live, which extends the possibilities – for example of more elaborate camera work, the addition of archive materials, music etc. It also allows filming in locations where technical facilities for setting up the live streaming don’t exist.Dreampunk TV is introducing its audience to people that might as well just stepped out directly of their favourite adventure book, even though they live next door. Dreampunk TV is a journey of discovery, which takes viewers to fascinating people and places that are simply worth to know about. For example, as Captain Franz Scheriau, who at the age of 22 was the youngest owner of a fleet of oil tanker ships. Who, when once dancing with Jackie Onassis, told her that in three years he will be more rich than her husband. The oil crisis hit and his words were not to came true. Never less, it was time to sail solo to New Zaeland and to continue with the life of a sailor and finally, in his later years to set up a historical ship museum in Vienna. “You know if you are collector of stamps or something... but if you are collecting ships , you soon get

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in troubles” says the Captain and continues to describe truly incredible stories of the ship we are just aboard.

Some of the Dreampunk TV broadcasts however, deal with different topics, related to grassroots cultural activities – such as the report about independent art collectives in Istanbul, Turkey. Others reflect upon topics that currently move the world. That was for example the reportage from the Refugee camp in Ottensheim a village 10km away from Linz. The concept of this reportage was to share different views at the situation of the Refugee Camp.. Therefore I interviewed Uli Böker, at that time the mayor of Ottensheim, who provided an overview of the situation : Ottensheim has around 3.000 inhabitants and 80 refugees is therefore a relatively large number. The people interviewed were two inhabitants of the camp (Ali and Aola), who provided a view from their insider perspective. The last person I talked with, was Dodo Dorothea Schuster, a social worker who is employed at the camp, as well an “insider“, but with a different positions than the refugees.

The Dreampunk TV broadcasts are listed in Appendix C.

The Dorkboat and Dreampunk TV activities described above are continuing, being part of the official programme of Stadtwerkstatt in 2016 related to Eleonore and art practice around water environments. I am also organising an Exchange Residency Programme between Eleonore and Illutron (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Invited Artists Project, that allows an artist collective from another country (Karkatag, Serbia, in 2016)to come and make they work on the Danube River.

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4.3 Recording Observations and DataVideo interviews were the main source of recording my observations. Together with short diaries, photographs and sketches. The interviews were structured similarly to those described above in 4.2., b.3. Eleonore TV , with additional questions: 1. Why did you decide to move from land to water? 2. How did this move affect your artistic (cultural) practice?The interviews were conducted in an informal way, mostly aboard the ship of the interviewee. To have a direct experience of the environment was an important part of my observations and I have organised such visits whenever possible.To summarise the answers from most of the interviews, it seems that the decision for such a move was mostly combination of two reasons. Firstly, passion: A love for boats, adventure and alternative ways of living in nowadays world, that in case of Western Europe might feel overly organised and restricting. The world “love” came in nearly in any interview I did with captains and shipowners, no matter if they were doing some artistic activities or not.From some of the interviews I recorded:

“And my story is like this, I fallen in love with the ship and then I took care of it...”Samuel Faucherre, Hawila, Copenhagen

“The reason that we choose a boat theatre was..well they are actually several reasons. One I always loved boats.”Kid Redstone, Waterhouse Theatre, London

“Yes, we are in love with our ships..”Peter Wainig, Marie Anna, Korneuburg

“I’m understanding ships, I love ships..”Cpt. Franz Scheriau, Vienna

This emotional bond with ships, seems to be a conceptually interesting topic to explore as ships seem to be perceived somewhere on the boundary between living beings and inanimate objects. This is reflected even in English language where nearly all inanimate object and even animals are referred to as “it”, but a ship is a consider female - a “she”.

I shall confess that I had also fallen in love with Eleonore. Same as the other captains, I would argue that my ship has a personality, definitely a character. The topic of Eleonore’s “being” was explored during our residency Afloat a Boundary, which is described below. We even experienced some moments where we were genuinely convinced that Eleonore feels with us. That would be, however, another essay to write.

The second most present reason is economic. Although the running costs of a ship are rather high, it still might be an affordable option in contrary to

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a building in overpriced city, where even just a rent of suitable space might not be affordable. The buying cost of a ship is remarkably cheaper than that of a building and so it gives a chance for the artists(collectives) to become owners of their venue. As long as they manage to sustain the running costs, the ship is theirs and it is a property that can be sold, if things would become unmanageable.

An example of this is Waterhouse Theatre, a ship based theatre in London. My question:“Why did you decided to move from the land to water? From a building to a boat?” was answered by Artistic director Kit Redstone as:

“The reason that we choose a boat theatre was..well they are actually several reasons. One I always loved boats. And I used to go on holiday with my dad on a narrow boat which we would take across to Norfolk, I think we went...and I loved it, it was amazing. And I really love small spaces. And also the fact that we make very intimate work, so we were really interested in creating really intimate environment for our audiences. I think we performed in auditoriums, not huge auditoriums, but auditoriums and actually the kind of work we make always works better in an intimate space. because it’s really about having a close relationship with the audience and speaking directly to them. And I don’t know we just come up with the idea..also it was financially viable in a way that taking over a building didn’t seem so possible. And we love the idea of having a theatre space that can travel, which we thought was really unique and exciting and the idea that we can take it across London and outside of London. I mean even to Holland one day...or even to France if we manage to cross the channel[...]I am really inspired by the idea of travelling theatre and I think historically you know like the way that

Fig.Recording in the harbor of Bratislava by Leo Schatzl

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Grotowsky for instance would take his theatre trip and go all over the world and perform in small villages and stuff. I feel really passionate about taking theatre out of sort of possibly intimidating big institutions and sort of bringing it to the people. Bringing it to them literally wherever they like it or not. Turning up at their door step [..] we want to program work and the work that we make that threads the fine line between theatre, traditional theatre and life art.And I think that of lot of people for various reasons don’t have access to that or feel it’s not for them. And we would like to change peoples’ minds about that. And poor theatre as well, we really believe in making trying to make engaging, exciting, magical, transformative work with very little. We always have a very small budgets for shows. We have slight minimalist approach to making work and a boat kind of suited that.[..]There were many many reasons why we choose to do this.“

The second question: “How did this move affect your artistic (cultural) practice?” had also one answer in common – yes it does affect it, as described even in the example above. I can confirm that based on my own experience, especially the one of Afloat a Boundrary residency, which was for me the first time I worked artistically on a ship and in an off-grid conditions.

My experience is described below in Section 4.4., but to summarise, I would argue that essentially any work created aboard a ship or in water is site-specific and can not be otherwise. Artists working in these environments are closely interlinked with their surroundings that they can influence and control only in very limited degrees. The environment here can be defined by several factors that we will have a look at in the following paragraphs.

Fig. 16 Interviewing Captain Sheriau by Raphaela

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Firstly, the artist working on/in water environment has to respect the forces of nature. And take these forces into account. It is not that somebody will force them, but to fail to do so might simply yield undesired results, such as a loss of (their) life. I wouldn’t dare to say that lack of preparation and respect to nature was the result for which

Bas Jan Ader vanished in the Atlantic Ocean during his conceptual art piece Search for The Miraculous.

“… after three weeks, radio contact with his boat was lost. Although it was spotted 60 miles out to sea and again near the Azores, he was never seen again. To this day, no one knows whether Ader was swept to his death by a freak wave, became disorientated and jumped overboard, or whether, from the first, his intention in staging his last work had been to commit suicide. “ (Dorment R,, 2006)

On the oceans, even the experienced and well equiped ships might sink. It could have been just bad luck, but sufficient preparation and awareness to natural circumstances, is something to consider.

Apart from the laws of nature, artists working here have to also be aware of the “human made” laws. As long as the water is classified as “waterway” the rules of marine/river traffic apply and this has to be followed by all, no matter how experimental the art vessel. A rather humorous example is the underwater sculpture Agnete and the Merman by Suste Bonnen (1992) , located in Slotsholm Canal in Coenhagen inner city, that is marked by official marine buoy- sign signifying danger under water . However, in most cases to know the marine traffic rules is just necessary for surviving – as who wants to have their small nice arty raft sunk by a huge cargo ship, whose captain wouldn’t even noticed that such a thing happened, because the artist did not know who has right of way?

To put it simply, environment rules here to a much larger degree than we are normally aware of. Further, ships and water based artworks are rather seasonal. To plan such a project, one must take seasons (again the forces of nature) into consideration. As, for example, to be close to or even inside the water with temperatures around 0°C requires a rather extreme adventurous approach from the artists, that not everyone wishes to undertake. With the travelling projects, the navigation of a vessel through the winter months is difficult if not impossible. Fogs, storms and short days form remarkable obstacles to such endeavours. Further, ship based venues are often remote from the centers of the cities and not that many people would enjoy struggling through a fog or a snow in order to go to see an exhibition, performance or screening. This does not mean however, that ships can not operate through the winter, but the activities are somehow limited and usually less audience attend. Of course, if the art activity happens aboard a ship, the “internal” conditions are another powerful factor, that make these works site specific. In the majority of cases, the ship was built for a different purpose and the reconstruction works done for the art activities are rather minimal. They are exceptions of course, such as the Fortham gallery, a floating gallery and lecture space on a barge sailing through British waterways that was built with the purpose of gallery and lecture space in mind.

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Other exceptions are of course those, where the vessel itself is the artwork – such as in case of Swimming Cities of Serrennisima by Swoon and crew or Rainer Prohaska’s “Cargo” (Please see Chapter 5 for further information)As an example, let’s look again at an excerpt from an interview with Waterhouse Theatre’s director:

M: How does this affect or alter your work? Can you see a difference between the work you did before and what you are doing now on the boat?

K: Well definitely. I think our latest show which is the 1st piece of work we made on the boat..it’s not directly about being on the boat but the environment shaped it. I mean from staging to how the intimacy of the space, the fact that the audience is so close, the fact that we are really contained and you feel like we are sort of underground. And that massively informed the piece that we have made and the way this is performed as well. And I think also the expectations from the audience are slightly different. You know they enter here and [..] we really feel we have their attention. I mean they are really trapped here as well and if they want to leave is really awkward..everyone could see them leave we see them leave..it creates a real intimacy. maybe too much intimacy. Almost.[..]and it is not just the boat itself. I think in London particularly everything is so fast and busy and stressful and I find personally that since I been on the canal, you know like 80% of my time, I feel calmer here, I feel better here. It’s a beautiful place to be so it’s not just to give people experience in the boat, but it’s also you know the all along the tow path and them seeing the other boats and seeing the community of boaters as they come to reach us...they have to step out of this busy cosmopolitan environment into somewhere sort of .. it’s like a fairy tale the canals.”

List of Interviews I conducted

• Kit Redstone: Waterhouse Theatre (London/ UK) • Captain Franz Scheriau – Steam Ship Museum (Vienna) • Franz Xav – Boat Punk Culture (Linz) • Julia Blawert & others: Cogo Ahoi journey and performance (Frankfurt/

Germany) • Eksben Banke – FREDENS HAVN (Copenhagen/ Denmark) • Samuel Faucherre: Hawila (Copenhagen/ Denmark) • Bruno: SLEM (Amsterdam/ Netherlands) • Christian Liljedahl: Illutron (Copenhagen/ Denmark) • These projects will be described further in Chapter 5.

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4.4. Analysing Data

My research made me aware of over forty projects that are happening or happened around the water environment worldwide. I observed their characteristics, as was described in Chapter 3.4. and I considered six groups by which they can be categorised, based upon this observation.

The projects are structured into these categories according to their artistic or cultural activities. This is of course only one of the possible systems of classification. The projects could be as well sorted by the time of creation, location (Such as: ship, harbour, river, sea.), permanence (Are they temporary or long lasting.) or by their quest. The later was used for the upcoming exhibition Radical Seafaring, which is discussed later in this chapter in comparison with my system of classification.

Art & Cultural Practice Around The Water Environ-ment

Landscape Theatre (Landscape Theatre transforms viewers’ perception of the landscapes.)

Performance – Adventure Performance (Refers to performing arts in general. Adventure Performance is site specific, based upon interactivity with the audience and the environment. It contain a large degree of non - predictability for the audience ad the performer alike.)

Experimental Adventurism (Adventures conducted nor for the sake of the adventure alone.)

Maritime Media Art (New Media Art works created especially for marine environment.)

Social Sculptures (Projects where the community–social fibres are the main purpose of the work.)

Venues & Events (In comparison with “social sculptures”, with which they sometimes overlap, these have much more clear goal of history preservation(museums) or providing space for cultural and artistic activities, rather then conducting them alone(venues). Events are for example festivals or Artist in Residence programmes happening around water.)

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Fig.Adventure Performance White Island by Marko Dimitrijevic,

To compare the above described system of categorisation of art and cultural practice around the water environment with a different one - the only other one existing to my knowledge - we look at a work of Andrea Grover, Century Arts Foundation’s curator of special projects, who decided to divide the upcoming exhibition Radical Seafaring at The Parrish Museum of Art (US) into three sections according to the quest of the projects:

Exploration (the quest for new experiences, the ineffable, and living in an exhilarated state) Liberation (self-reliance, freedom from terrestrial social contracts, the desire to shape one’s world, and Utopian impulses)Fieldwork (hands-on, methodological intelligence gathering about the environment, such as an artist laboratory or studio at sea).

As we can see, these sections overlap with categories of Experimental Adventurism and Social Sculptures, while some of Maritime Media Art works fall under the Fieldwork section. The simplicity of these sections is to be appreciated, however they exclude some of the existing projects, such these in the Performance, Landscape Theatre and Venues & Events categories described above. Since the aim of this Thesis is to create an overview ofart practice around the water environment, these more detailed descriptive categories are more suitable. The text below introduces these categories in detail.

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4.4.1. LANDSCAPE THEATRE“Landscape Theatre forces the visitor to experience the landscape with other eyes and other hands. New mental landscapes.” (SleM)

The landscape is not merely a stage or a backdrop. Landscape Theatre aims to reveal the essence of a landscape through art. By transforming it, by letting events take place that have either a lasting or temporary effect on it, Landscape Theatre aids us in transforming our perception of the landscapes. The term “landscape theatre” was coined by Bruno Doedens from SleM.

4.4.2. PERFORMANCE / ADVENTURE PERFOR-MANCE

The term performance means in this text simply performance arts in general.Within Adventure Performance, the performers and the audience are subjects in an event with a great degree of unpredictability. There is an outline - a skeleton of the performance, however it is clear to everyone involved (or at least to the performers) that this skeleton will grow and branch into unforeseen directions. Adventure Performance is based upon interactivity with the audience and the environment. Upon direct experience, when both the performers and the audience alike might need to jump ahead into unknown situations, to experiment and to quickly “learn by doing”. The term Adventure Performance was coined by Julia Blawert of Cogo AHOI project, described in section 4.5. of this chapter.

4.4.3. EXPERIMENTAL ADVENTURISM

Projects included in this category are those that contain what would be com-monly perceived as an adventure – as well as those that normally wouldn’t, but are conducted with adventurous approach. Crossing an ocean or an expedition to unknown territories, distant or in ones near proximity, might be an example. But they are not solely “sport” adventures, made for the sake of the adventure alone or as a quest to touch someone’s limits. They would have different, artistic, activist or other purpose and apart of the adventure, they contain other elements, that would not be necessary for the adventure alone to happen. “They do require a state of experimental adventurism.“(Bunting H., 2007)

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4.4.4. MARITIME MEDIA ART

Media and new Media At works that are created especially for, or with and extensive use of marine environment. I extend this category to the artworks created for other water environments – such as the rivers. The title “maritime” is used merely for the sake of simplicity. Term coined by Rosemary Lee.

4.4.5. SOCIAL SCULPTURES

Projects where the “social fibres”, the community and perhaps the intentions to transform the society from below are as important as the artwork itself. Some of the projects included in this category were made without an intention to create a work of art, being – similar to master pieces of Art Brut – an outcome of a need present in an author’s mind.

“Social sculpture is a theory developed by the artist Joseph Buys in the 1970s based on the concept that everything is art, that every aspect of life could be approached creatively and, as a result, everyone has the potential to be an artist. “ (TATE).

4.4.6. EVENTS & VENUES

Festivals, Artists In Residence Programs, Galleries and Museums that don’t fall under the Social Sculptures section, perhaps because they are organised more structurally than Social Sculptures are and have more clear goal of history pres-ervation (Museums) or creating a space or an opportunity for artists. They would also have more defined roles than the Social Sculptures projects, with clearer distinction between an actor(Such as an artist, performer and so on.), audience and organiser (I.e. curator, director etc.)

The artistic and cultural projects around the water environments are listed structured according to these categories in the Chapter 5.

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4.5 Case StudiesThis section of the Chapter 4 is focused on works where I was actively involved. These projects are contextualised with works of other authors and the reasons why they fall within one of the above described categories are discussed. The projects described are: Social Sculptures: Schone Eleonore’s Film Boudoir and Dorkboat. Further Afloat the Boundrary and Cogo Ahoi that are both Action Performances. At the end of this chapter, an upcoming project Downriver, belonging to the category of Experiemental Adventurism is described.

Schone Eleonore Film Boudoir & Dorkboat

Schone Eleonore Film Boudoir and Dorkboat were described already in the Chapter 3, hence there is no need to repeat their description here. But to put them in context of above described categories, they – together with Eleonore Ship alone, belong within the Social Sculptures.

Although the activities conducted (such as learning new skills during the workshop)have significant importance, what is really important here, are the connections among people they foster. And the experience, that even in the very heart of Western European society it is possible to create a world of its own that while being not far from the “normal” is literally and metaphorically off grid. For some people this is merely an interesting venture, for others such an experience might form a direction in which they want their life to go. I think I can use myself as a brilliant example of such occurrence, as described in Chapter 3. The importance of the community - social fibres- and contacts can be illustrated by the following story: During November 2015, I met Nani Bengel who just returned from a mission with Sea Watch. Sea Watch is a non-governmental organisation that rescues refugees fleeing their countries by sea.

Very spontaneously, we arranged to make a short presentation about Nani’s experience. That happened on very short notice,as Nani was leaving in three days from the time we met. Perhaps due to that, or due to extremely cold and rainy weather that day, no more then four people made the way to the harbour to actually attend the presentation. But it all made sense, as, literally minutes after I sent an invitation for the event, Natalie Halla, a documentary film-maker from Linz , who used to be among regular audience of The Film Boudoir, had written back and asked me for a contact to Nani. They then met and their meeting started a new – and I believe significant – film project for director Halla. In February 2016, Halla is embarking aboard the Sea Watch vessel operating in Lesbos. Sea Watch ships always have an external journalist as a crew member, to ensure documentation and transparency of their actions. They also always have a doctor aboard. And for the mission Natalie is going to document, the doctor will be her adoptive brother, who him self fled by sea from Vietnam as a child.

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I consider this story to illustrate my point - these events foster connections and collaborations of people from different walks of life who, most likely, wouldn’t cross paths otherwise. The “social fibres”, the community are the essence of these events that I organise. It’s is the experience shared together with others, social contacts and new relationships (of any kind)

that really matter to me. As such, they are of course related to other “Social Sculptures” projects. It is, for example, well described in the words of Miss Rockaway Armada talking about the reasons behind their project – a fleet of extravagant rafts build from salvaged materials that travelled down the Missisipi river in 2007:

“We remember the bookmobile and the punk rock band that seeded little pieces of something else. And now, even though we moved to big cities and found people like us, we still live in a country that fights wars so it can consume more. We are taking the urge to flee and heading for the center. We want to meet people who aren’t like us. We want to meet ourselves at age 16. We want to be a living, kicking model of an entirely different world — one that in this case happens to float.”

The picturesque constructions of the rafts, their artistic value, the performances they share with the audience, these all matter. But what matters even more is to share “the model of an entirely different world”- rather social than an artistic endeavour.

Adventure Performance

The following two projects I will describe belong into the Adventure Performance category. As described above, adventure performances are based upon interactivity with the environment and the audiences. Both of these projects I was involved in, were site-specific and the process of their creation was already a very immersive experience, as in both cases, we lived together with the project team in rather restricted spaces during the creation period. The individual personal experiences and the challenge of being closely connected with a group of people was an important element in the creative process. This remind us of other adventurous expeditions on waters, land or even into extraterrestrial locations.

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The expedition members are subjects of close proximity with one another and their social life outside of the expedition is limited or non existent.The ability of team members to deal with such conditions (i.e. lack of privacy) and their ability to collaborate with other team members, might define the success or event the survival of the expedition. Anyone who ever watched the reality TV shows “Big Brother”, where a group of participants inhabits together in a villa, cut away from connections with outside world or Survivor, where contestants are isolated in the wilderness, is aware that such conditions pose a remarkable challenge onto the participants. Of course these involve other stress factors– such as the constant surveillance – that are not present during the action performance creation process. But the elemental factors of close proximity and lack of “outside” social connections are similar.

On the account of my personal experiences with Afloat a Boundary and Cogo Ahoi projects, as well as those of sailing and mountain hiking, I would claim that such experiences are challenging, difficult, yet exhilarating. Although being hard (at times)while they happen, they remained as intense and exciting memories. Sometimes it seems that the hardest adventures form the best stories. Or, perhaps, the best performances.

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Afloat a Boundary Collaboration with Nanouche Oriano and Miriam Vellacott

‘Floating Bodies and Spaces’ Artist Residency

Eleonore, Linz

2013

We proposed this collaborative project for Floating Bodies and Spaces residency aboard Eleonore. This residency program was concerned with performing arts. The process of the residency was adventurous experiment alone, with large degrees of unpredictable events and the situation aboard differing largely from what we had imagined when writing the proposal. Without a previous experience of working aboard a ship such as Eleonore, it is near to impossible to concoct a realistic plan and to imagine a work flow that will be manageable in such environment. As mentioned, Afloat a Boundary was a collaboration, where three of us worked together for the first time. The stay was intense, personal as well as collectively an often challenging experience. Each of us came from a different background, Nanouche Oriano being an animator and puppeteer, Miriam Vellacott a mime performer and myself coming from a (new) media art background.

Observing the process we went through during the residency from a distance of two years, made me realise that the intense personal experiences as well as struggle of working in a group were a profound part of the creative process and shaped the event that happened at the end. I observed a similar pattern in the Cogo Ahoi performance which is described as the second case study in this chapter. I nearly struggle to define what was more important – the process of the creation or the final event. Perhaps both of these were important inseparable parts and did not involve only our group, but also a wider community around the Eleonore ship.

The following paragraph describes the abstract of our proposal and in the text further below, I will describe how this proposal evolved during our stay.

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Abstract

We start from the boundary between animate and inanimate beings. Ships float on such boundaries. They can be construed as mythical whales that swallow us and then spit us out at the next harbour... or across the ocean. What do such creatures dream of?

What are their memories? How do they interact with us human beings? During the residency we will collaborate on board the ship Eleonore. We are three artists from different nationalities, with mixed backgrounds in performing arts, visual arts and media arts. In the research/exploration, we will have recourse to experimental dance, Butoh philosophy, mime and puppets. This will be further supported by drawings, written texts, photographs, video and sound recordings, media art experiments.

The relationship between the passengers, the ship and its environment is the main focus of our exploration. We intend to surround the boat as if it were a living creature, so we consider the collaboration to be between four persons (one ship and three women). We will work all together for the first time. So throughout the early stages of the residency, we will connect to one another.

Certain dynamics will evolve and the whole experience shall lead to a presentation taking the form of a site-specific performance on and around the Eleonore. The outcome ought to be a “diary” of visual, sound, kinetic and written recordings together with improvisation and semi-choreographed bodywork. This diary reflects our distant past and that of the ship, as well as shared experiences during the residency. In the final part-improvised performance, we aim to blend the diary with the present moment. We will create a juxtaposition of previously recorded material (visual and audio) and the present moment by using an interactive system triggered by body movements (such as Kinect, together with a custom made software). The performance is an interaction with our past selves (ours and the ship’s) and maybe a foreshadowing of our future selves.

Environment

Differently from our imagination, Eleonore (during summer) is far from a remote island or isolated whale deserted in a middle of nowhere. harbours are, historically, places of reunions and meetings, community spots with vibrant social life. And Eleonore fits into the image of harbour better than to the one of a remote island. We were equipped with a red flag to signalise the visitors that they should not enter the ship and disturb us, but we found using it rather awkward. Therefore, our vision of somehow very intimate Butoh exploration was disturbed

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Fig.Shadow Projections

Fig.Lanterns

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by daily visits appearing at any times and luring us for boat trips, cups of coffee and conversations. We decided not to fight against it, but rather to embrace it. We used part of our productions budget for buying coffee and so called “visitor biscuits” and involved people in activities. Some of them were Exquisite Corpse – game made up by French surrealists in 1920’. We conducted drawn as well as written form of it and the text below is one of these collectively written poems that emerged during our stay:

Balance!Otherwise happened a misfortune, is when you suddenly forget what you wanted to do and instead of that she pulled, as strong as she could, the rope. The rope, the rope...This morning, I still knew what I wanted to do.This morning. Today..Tomorrow.Maybe I will remember tomorrow.Nobody said it, but it was clear to everyone, that one would not take to Sea so soon again.

Another significant difference and unforeseen element that largely affected my work was the lack of a continuous supply of electricity. My original vision of interactive visuals accompanying the performance went overboard. The noisy gasoline generator that had to be started every time a projector was used, made my original plan rather unappealing. I decided, again, to embrace the moment and started to practice, what I called half joking, Media Art Unplugged.

As a visual artist, light is the key element of my work. I was restrained from the use of projector or even strong electrical light – but I felt that light still has to be present. I decided to create lanterns from recycled beer cans, which cast shadow patterns since their cylinders were perforated.

Making one of these lights took me around one and half hours. I decided to make one each day of the residency, forming some strangely regular rhythm of hammer strokes and simple daily repetitive routine action. Each of the lamps so became an entry of a diary, an object that physically documented the passing time. The simple rhythm and regularity of this work also served as a counter balance for otherwise rather unstable process we were all going through during the residency. As noted in our log book: “Here we don’t live by the clock but mark each day with the making of a lantern. The knocking of the hammer, an anchor through watery time, we swim to it.”

The further media art unplugged projects were part of the happening and are described below.

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Fig.Madame Fish in the Lower Deck of Eleonore

Fig.Mermaid and Lady Bridge Character

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The Happening

The final happening can perhaps be described as a gathering with elements of performance and audience participation. When developing the concept of the event, we assumed that most of our audience will be people who are already familiar with the ship. And we decided that this time their visit shall be something very different. It needed to be clear from the first moment they stepped aboard that this is not the usual Eleonore they know. Other aim was to use as much recycled materials and objects we can find around as possible.

In the summer people often spend afternoons and evenings sitting around the tables at the top/sun deck of the ship. We preserved this usual pattern, but dressed the tables with white table cloths, chandeliers and somehow posh refreshments of cheeses and grapes. The table was further decorated by jars containing “pickled” treasures – peculiar objects we discovered around the ship and in the harbour. The table served (as it would usually be) as some kind of central point for the event. The other interventions were happening sometimes simultaneously with audience choosing their focus point, while another times there was a dominant event that took the attention of the whole group.

We, as performers, had created three characters: Lady Bridge, my character, was a person in between the daily world of the people and that mysterious world of Eleonore and her ancestors. Lady Bridge was in a way connecting the two and translating between them. Nanouche created a watery creature - perhaps a mermaid who welcomed the visitors once they entered the ship. Miriam’s character was Madame Fish, inhabiting the lower decks of the ship. Visitors were invited to peak through the windows and observe her somehow absurd life. Miriam’s and Nanouche’s characters had altered through the event, while mine reminded the same.

Audience participation

Upon entering, each visitor was given a little piece of paper attached to a peg and was requested to write their wish on that paper. At the end of the evening the audience was invited to come at the lower walkways where they witnessed a white dressed female character (Miriam) standing at the roof of a smaller boat, next to a strange looking (yet very simple) mechanism – a pulley wheel connected with a rope to another wheel attached on Eleonore. The ropes were passing over another floating object – a whale, approximately 3 x 1,2 m large puppet created by Nanouche Orianno. Nanouche her self was hidden inside the whale, invisible to the audience. I prompted the audience – one by one - to attach their wish paper peg to the rope, which was then pulled by the woman in white. Once the little wish paper passed over the whale – Nanouche stretched her hand out, grabbed it and replaced it for another peg, this time with LED light attached to it. This was based upon the simple yet genius design of LED Throwies, created by Graffiti Research Lab. The audience member was then given this light and next wish followed.

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Fig.Interactive Installation

Fig.Whale by nanouche Orianno Sailing Into the Harbour

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After all wishes were given and replaced by lights, the white dressed woman jumped from the roof of the boat into the water of the harbour. The whale then set a sail and both slowly disappeared into the distance of the harbour. The smaller interventions that happened through the event were for example shadow theatre, the puppet Lyon Laon representing another mysterious Eleonore ancestor inhabiting the lower deck and one last lantern I finished making during the evening

According to the feedback I received the audience enjoyed the event. Their experience of “strangeness”, was part of our artistic intention - close to all of our individual works and shared fascination by Butoh, Art Brut and Surrealism, work of Czech Surrealist filmmaker Jan Svankamayer, to be mentioned among others.

“One of the things that I am really liking about the Eleonore is her residency program, which has been interesting as well as peculiar. Check out the ship’s log of notes from various residents. In particular I enjoyed the strangeness of the closing “happening” from the last residency [Afloat a Boundary]” (Boykett, 2013)

From a perspective, we concluded that the audience needed more guidance at some parts of the event. For example some people didn’t think that they are allowed to eat the food at the table. Others left earlier before seeing the whale sailing, as they did not know there is actually “an end” of the event. Things would have been better if we had it all prepared more in advance and had a time to rehearse it, which would avoid some unnecessary technical hiccups.

Eleonore TV#14 broadcast an interview about the residency and our project, that can be accesses online.

To close the description of this project, I would like to include the text of the original concept that guided the creation process as well as images from the residency and the final happening.

Afloat a Boundary : Concept

A moored ship is a strange dormant creature, a curious stranded whale, lingering on the boundary between land, water and air. She holds all the promise of travel and adventure, yet lies still, in contemplation, deserted, waiting for someone to wake her from hibernation. We set foot on this floating boundary and feel her quiver in anticipation of the unexpected. With age, she has become weary, tinged by life – perhaps we find her in the middle of a dream or reminiscing upon the past – the ship is an ambivalent being, hesitant to share, like us. Fuelled by our presence, the empty decks seem to look out on inner landscapes. Afloat the ship we are somewhere in-between arriving and leaving. Swallowed by her, we burrow into her body and are marked by traces of an ancient symbiosis, whilst she imprints us deep inside her being only to spit us out at the next destination. Ship and human unable to exist without the other on this floating boundary, our existence relies upon fragile surfaces between land and water, life and death.

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Cogo Ahoi PerformanceAdventure Performance Directed by Julia Blawert

2015

Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt , Germany

Cogo Ahoi was a Master project of Julia Blawert, student of Applied Theater Science “Angewandte Theaerwissenschaft” at Justus-Liebig Universität in Gießen (Germany). Her work started as a 7-month-long boat journey from Frankfurt to the Black Sea.

The same summer there was another artistic project – Cargo by Rainer Prohaska travelling downstream the Danube, but although they shared the same river, these two haven’t met. While Cogo Ahoi was more directly related to performance, Cargo is described by its author as “A travelling sculpture and mobile communication medium that brought the artists into a lot of unexpected situations.” and I consider it to be an Experimental Adventurism project. That is not to say that Blawert’s journey on the Danube was not experimental, even though Cogo is rather classic river boat. But Blawert had a clear focus at performance art, which defined the focus of and activities taken during the journey.

The journey started by performance in Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, at the end of which Julia Blawert departed with her boat. The project ended with a performance at the same place, in which I participated. For the final Cogo Ahoi performance that Julia Blawert co-directed together with her partner Jascha Riesselmann, five artists who they met and collaborated with during the journey were invited. These invited artists were Victoria Macra from Hungary, Karkatag Collective from Serbia and myself. We arrived two weeks prior the public show to develop and rehearse the performance. It was then shown over two evenings for a limited audience of 50 people at each show.

Creative Process

The skeleton of the performance was developed by Julia and Jasha, inspired by their experience of long boat travel. The challenge was how to convey such an experience, how to recreate it in the performance context, without being too illustrative and hence losing the essence of the adventure – of the real travel. The performance should make the audience feel as if they travelled themselves, not only been told a story about travelling. Upon a return from a journey, the stories are told in a rather non-linear way. Fragments, episodes triggered by something that happened in the present moment. We would rarely tell a travel

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story descriptively, starting with departure and ending with arrival back home. This way of natural, non-linear communication formed the basic structure of the performance. Another element was the individuality of travelling experiences. As even if a group of people travel together – even literally on the same boat – they still have each experienced their own journey. Some parts of the experience were in common with others, other remain individual. With these elements in hand, the challenge was to transform them into a performance that was an adventure alone, that is unique for every visitor as well as holding together as a theatre piece.

“The idea […] is that many things will happen at the same time so the different audience members will have different experiences and also different perceptions on the whole journey.” (Blawert J.)

The creation process started around two months prior the show, where we all were asked to send a story, meant in a widest sense possible, related to travelling. And to share 30 words that we personally associate with the Cogo boat travel. The story I contributed was The £200 Millionaire written by Weston Martyr. This story of a doctor who upon his retirement moved aboard a boat and lived travelling through the waterways of Europe, leading very simple yet very fulfilling life, appeared to me as a good contribution for the performance.

Fig.The Fantastical

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Fig.Trampolines Scene

Fig.Fendering

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“ ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, when we stopped at last for breath. ‘you understand boats and this sort of life, I think, so you’ll understand me. I’ve been living aboard this boat for ten years now, and I hope I shall never have to live anywhere else as long as I’m alive. It’s a good life. It’s the best kind of life a man can lead or a woman either. It really is life, you see. Yes. And I think I ought to know. I shan’t see sixty again, and I’ve seen a good deal of life of different kinds. “ (Martyr, 1932)

The words I contributed were the following:

1. Dreams2. New friends3. New friendship with an old friend4. Hope5. Structure6. Boat family7. Harbour stories8. Excitement9. Dinner10. Villa boat11. Plans12.performance13. EBCH - Eleonore Boat Communication Headquarters14. Stress where there is no reason15. and calm where there is objective reason for stress16. Summer mood tv17. Fascination18. Bit hopeless steps19. Acceptance20. Attention21. Visitors22. Money23. MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!24. Mermaid & captain25. Head in the sky, feet on the ground26. End but not the end27. Broken gear box28. Three lights in the dark29. Missing “tons”30. “Buhnen”

The work prior the show, done by Julia and Jascha alone, was to create a basic structure of the performance. The stories and words we contributed, were used as inspiration and building blocks, as is discused below.

This process is well described by Jascha R in the following text:

“After a few try and errors we have a structure for the piece. We will have five scenes (although Julia does not like the word) in four different rooms. The first thing will be a Fender-session outside[...] It will be about 30 minutes outside. In the theatre we will start in the entrance area of with a slide-show. We will do it

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Fig.Intensive being

Fig.guided tour In the landry room

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with an old school projector, for nostalgias sake. One by one we will take each a certain amount of people to the first floor.There we will have the longest part of the show. Here the 30 words that you sent become important. We found some overall words that structure this part. The words are:

1. Everyday life on the boat2. River time (some kind of neologism)3. Adventure4. Driving different ways5. Cogo6. The fantastical7. Uncertainty8. Intense being9. Loneliness10. Stress

[...]This second part is based on the presence of bodies and contains variations of solos, duets, trios etc. and actions from all of us. It sounds abstract, but it is in fact not. Here we will have certain segments that we want to fill with you. So there will be just the basic structure and then we have to do it together. Well, actually there will be a few parts to fill with your ideas and your skills. I am really excited about that part.The third part takes place in Studio 2, the room next to the Foyer. Here we will jump on trampolines for quite a while. The fourth part takes us back to the foyer. Here we will have a live reading of a fictional story that is based on Julia’s log. I started writing it and It could be nice. And we will read on a wooden toilet with a bucket toilet. Yeah. The persons who are not reading will do something that we do not know yet. Some kind of illustration without an actual illustration.The last part will take place on the little stage of the theatre. Probably we will be in a paper boat. And in the end we will play some instruments. So far. “(Riesselmann)

That was the start.

I would say that the adventure part of our performance started to happen immediately upon our arrival to Frankfurt. We were accommodated in three one bedroom artist’s apartments on the top floors of Mousonturm theatre building. Seven people who never all met before. We all knew Julia and Jascha from some parts of their trip, but we did not know each other. And here we were, sharing a small living space and training, rehearsing and building a performance together. Some days we wouldn’t leave the theatre building at all. Similarly to the Afloat A Boundary residency, this “life” experience was an essential part of the performances. I would claim that this applies to Adventure Performances in general. As they – same to other adventures - require full immersion of the participants. Full presence in the moment. This time our life in the theatre version of Cogo, same as before during the days we spend on the boat. Both exciting as well as very challenging.

The first scenes we started to work on were based upon the words Julia and Jascha had selected from 210 words we all contributed. I received the words: “Fantastical”, “River time” and “Intense Being” and created three scenes for the performance.

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THE FANTASTICAL

Together with Ana Dimitrijevic from Karkatag Collective.

The river Danube has its fascinating beauty. Every moment, no matter the season or the weather. Sometimes, and this might as well depend on the inner state of the observer, this beauty is more mesmerising than other moments. This beauty is however rather humble. We conveyed this, by creating very atmospheric scene for the foyer space. The scene involved the whole crew. Apart from Marko Dimitrijevic, who was making the sound – based on the samples of the boat engine sound recordings and moving fingers alongside a glass filled with water – each of us would have wine glass of water and a theatre spot light. The light cast through the water prism, once the main light is dimmed, projects dynamic patterns onto the walls and the floor. The choreography we designed made this rather dreamy moment to appear suddenly from an ordinary “daytime” situation when the crew raised their glasses for a toast. And ended again seamlessly merging to a completion of the toast and us drinking of the water. This scene was one of the image scenes, described in the words of Julia Blawert as : “.. showing , having atmosphere, creating images that people can connect from their own experience related to boats or to water...” (Dreampunk TV3, 2015)

INTENSE BEING

The scene that we created together with Aleksandar Popovic fell into the other category, which Blawert described as: “..the idea to make them [audience]experience different things ...” (Dreampunk TV, 2015) We approached individual members of the audience with a small box containing disconnected bolts and nuts of different sizes, asking them to connect these into pairs in a time of 30 seconds. The time measured on stopwatch and pressure heard in our voice was creating an experience of fulfilling an important and very intense task. This scene was based upon my experience of real boat travelling on the Danube, when a screw of our engine shaft had broken and the boat become uncontrollable. Dealing with 3 tons of steel floating towards the lock without possibility to be manoeuvred, made us to experience every second of time in a very intense way. We had to anchor immediately and try to find the problem and fix it as soon was possible, which the boat’s captain luckily managed. This scene aimed to convey such experience of “intense being”.

RIVER TIME

One of the words we each received was decided to become a story, that each of us written and find a way how to perform it. My story, based on the word “River Time” was something like a children’s adventure book. And therefore I read it, with candle light only, creating an ambiance of reading somewhere in a summer camp, where you are snuggling in the dark, maybe a bit scared but also very comfortable. The story contained no description of particular adventure, however. It is rather abstract, composed of moments from real travels and fragments of my experiences with travelling on the Danube. But the way I performed it was very classical way of reading, creating perhaps a contrary experience to the story.

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Its 12km. But that means nothing. On the river the distances are measured by the direction of the current and that of your journey, such as going up or down stream. By the horse powers of your engine and by the amount of foreseeable obstacles- such as locks- ahead.So these 12km, shall, with our 16hp engine take us about 3h.But there are of course the unpredictable obstacles, such as logs of wood stacked in the propeller or sudden encounters with a friend’s boat that of course requires anchoring & sharing a beer, in most cases followed by one of the boats not being able to start.But here we go. Its a perfect day for a boat trip!Start the engine. Lines still tight to the shore. Always do it in this order, otherwise you might end with a boat helplessly drifting with the current. And believe me(because I tried), once you do it the wrong way, your engine will certainly NOT start.Then check.: the river charts, just to know where you are going.Watch ahead astern port starboard That means front, back, left and right side of the boat in the nautical English.WATCH. As a small power boat you have to give a way to almost anything. From big cargo ships which feels natural. To small rowing boats that in some cases makes you experience sudden and normally completely suppressed tendency to kill.ECHO SOUNDER - watch the depth. As it might change suddenly and you don wanna run aground.GPS- watch the speed as sudden increase of it might mean underwater obstacle ahead. Usually something you really don’t want to meat -such as a rock.RIVER TRAFFIC SIGNS - “Crap I don’t remember what the black dot in a middle of red rectangle means, if it means something for me at all”Logs of wood in the water.Fisherman rods.Radio.Listen to the sound of the engine. Is it humming quite right?Check the temperature reading as the overheating alarm stopped working awhile ago.And always watch the river, as the ripples of water will tell you the most, if you know how to read them. Somebody aboard is asking you for coffee he wants to make and can not find. And of course he doesn’t know how to light the alcohol stove either. ahead astern port starboard DEPTH SPEED SIGNS RADIO ENGINE“And what are you saying? That she just have a new lover?? Another one???”

CONCENTRATE12km? Just forget this. River is a different way.

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The Performance

To describe the performance, images excerpted from the video recordings done during the two shows will be used.

While the audience was approaching the theatre or looking through the big glass windows of the theatre café they could witness fendering – a physical performance for bodies and fenders choreographed and performed numerous times during the Cogo Ahoi journey by Julia Blawert. (Fenders are inflated plastic cylinders or balls that are used to prevprotectent boats from damage when coming in contact with other boats, walls of the lock, mooring pier and so on.) Although there is a great degree of improvisation the performance had its rules that apply to each performer as well as to the group.

Upon entering the theatre each visitor was asked to write down their name. This was important, as with this system the audience could be called individually. We also used it to separate audience members who arrived together, so each of them will than have individual experience they could share with one another.

Seated comfortably in the theatre café, Julia Blawert made a short introduction about the project, followed by an old fashioned slide show. The rest of the crew, seated on various spots between the audience, then started to talk about the images shown. Each of us contributed two images related to the river Danube and life upon ships and had a story to tell along with it. The presentation, even looking somehow serious, was however a blur between reality and fiction, leaving the audience slightly insecure about which parts are real and which aren’t.

At this point I would note that there was a significant difference between the audiences of these two shows, which become apparent already during these presentations. While the first day the audience was slightly distant and seemed rather uninterested, the second day they were really immersed in the stories we were telling. This dynamic then carried on through the whole performance. This is another factor of the adventure performance – as it is being based on direct interaction and involvement of the audience, sometimes the dynamic will be better and sometimes less good and there is not much to be done about it. The next scene, where the audience was taken in two groups, with each group experiencing a slightly different “journey” happen in the large studio room, next to the theatre foyer on the first floor of the Mousonturm building. Here, seven trampolines were placed. We, seven performers dressed all in black, started to jump on them. The choreography part of jumping also involved us changing from black clothes to rather summery boat outfits. All while still jumping. The intense physical activity – jumping for 20 minutes on a trampoline is surprisingly exhausting – the repetition, the sound and the end when we all of jumped down struggling to find balance on the still ground, created an intense experience. And applause at the end suggested so at least. Some people from the audience told us later, that there was a very strong impression of us being on boats and

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Fig.Large video and life performer “still-life by Anna Dimitrijevic

struggling with activities on rough waters. And then struggling again to gain balance on the solid earth.

In the foyer, once the trampoline scene was completed, happen a sequence of shorter solos and collective scenes, mix of physical theatre, monologues, group scenes and parts where the audience was intensively involved. This part involved the performances of our stories, the scene from the selected words such as The Fantastical and Intense Being scenes I mentioned above and collective choreography of various boat tasks among others.

From the foyer the audience members started to be called with their names announced on the radio. These small groups were then taken out for adventures the rest of the audience did not seen. They, for example, climbed up the fire escape stairs outside of the building being ushered to one of the artists apartments, where they get served a small Balkan dinner. Another group went outside for a tour, with a guide (Marco Dimitrijevic) who, speaking only in Serbian, took them into the local laundrette and back. As reported to us later, this “tour” was particularly fascinating and provided the locals with an experience of being a tourist (of a rather strange kind) in their own town. We also had a small harbour bar, build out of scrap wood where we took two or three people at a time to have a drink and share some boat tales. There was a water installation, conveying the experience of rather thick and dirty water on the lower Danube,placed at the entrance space of the theatre. And a large video and life performer “still-life” in the main auditorium among other experiences. The last scene, where everyone involved in the performance was again united, guided the audience to the small theatre auditorium. On the stage, lit theatrically was a 4m long paper boat. Construction of this boat – folded in the same way as small paper boat, but at much larger scale, was also an interesting experience.

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Fig.Testing Of The paper Boat

Fig.Schleusen Song

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Let me note, that the need to learn new skills you wouldn’t imagine you might ever need – such as folding 4m large paper boats - is another important element of adventure performances.

We all step into the boat and performed a “Schleusen Song”. This song was directly derived from other Schleusen – river locks performances Julia, Jascha and others who travel with them, performed and recorded while waiting on the trip from Frankfurt to the Black Sea in the locks. On the way from Frankfurt to Danube Delta are 59 locks and since a small boat normally has to wait for entry and then the process of filling the lock and opening its gates takes a minimum of 30min, they offer lot of time for creativity!

The evening then continued in the theatre (and our small harbour) bars when conversations about the journey we just all went trough, other journeys, adventures and boats naturally completed the event.

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DownriverDanube River, Summer 2016

Note: The costs of this project are partially covered by Forderungsverein grant of The University of Arts and Design Linz and even (due to a natural circumstances) it will happen on in the summer 2016 it is technically part of my master studies.

A three-month-long artistic research voyage down the Danube to gather information about the artistic and cultural life upon the river. As well as to gain an intense and immersive personal experience that will resonate into a new artwork.

The research part of the journey will result in presentations, website and TV broadcasts and collection of videos, photographs, sketches and texts that I aim to let grow into a new artwork. Hopefully my journey will also result in the establishment of new international artistic collaborations.

Project Proposal

The Danube – an international waterway connecting Europe from the East to the West, a large river which, in metaphorical and physical sense, runs as a thread between different countries and cultures. A world of its own, a fluid home to its peculiar inhabitants - a diverse group of people, yet closely joined by the river: Dutch captains’ families living aboard their cargo vessels, fishermen, workers of heavy industrial ships, city dwellers with their yachts and leisure “weekend” craft, adventurers travelling across Europe to sail the seas and also artists who have permanently or temporarily chose the river to be their studio, their home and their gallery or stage. Many people are not aware that the Danube river hosts a lively cultural and artistic scene, directly upon the river and on its riverbanks and in its harbours. For example, Linz alone is home to two art groups working in close connection with the Danube river environment: Time’s Up and the Eleonore Ship managed by Stadtwerkstatt Kulturverein and the Donautic.

But what lies downriver? Do the formal borders of countries also form a border between the river people or does the Danube form an “Other Space” as Michael Foucault calls it, somewhat independent on of the countries which surround it? What artistic and cultural activities do these collectives perform? How can they benefit from mutual collaboration once an easy-to-use communication channel is established between them? Similarly to other subcultures and communities, its impossible to meaningfully explore such environments from an external point of view.

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It is not always feasible to find information online or in libraries. Even today there are blank spaces on the maps, at least metaphorically speaking. Sometimes, reading the map is not enough and one needs to step into the territory. Or, as in this case, rather to sail into it. To travel for several months at a speed close to that of walking. A speed that allows enough

time for observation, coincidental encounters and for asking questions. Enough time for building a network of contacts, where one person encountered shows the way to another. Enough time to reflect upon one’s experience and, of course, to document it.

I made shorter journeys on the Danube river, yet, a long, continuous journey that would allow me to research the water based art scene in a more direct way, as well as to gather material for my further artistic work, is still missing. What would such journey resonate into? How would it change me? How would this change reflect on my artistic practice?

The journey will be documented on a website hosted by Servus.at and a part of Stadtwerkstatt Projects websites that document the artistic activities of this organisation. Material filmed during the journey will be edited into a series of short broadcasts for Dreampunk TV. I will also share my experience in public presentations – the first one is so far arranged at Novy Sad (Serbia) and Belgrade (Serbia), next will be upon arrival back to Linz aboard the Eleonore.The videos, photographs, texts, sketches, and, most importantly, the experience alone will serve as base material of my new artwork. Due to the nature of such experience I do not wish to make any plans and ideas ahead, as it it could easily happen I’d try to fit the experience of this journey into a predefined art concept, rather than letting the experience to shape the concept.

The Journey

The boat which will takes me for this journey will be kindly lent to me by Pippa Buchanann & Tim Boykett. Sarcelle is 5.39m LOA sailing boat, but I will travel without sail, using an outboard engine for propulsion.

I will embark on the journey in summer 2016. The trip down to Romania is 2136 river kilometres. I think that realistically – due to time and financial restrictions my journey will end up in Belgrade (Serbia), 965 river kilometers from Linz. I would like to allow one and half to two months, which means travelling an average distance of 20 km a day, a pace slow enough for observations – encounters and spontaneous collaborations.

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Fig. Illutron

Notes

1. ART’s BIRTHDAY [Online] Available from: http://projects.stwst.at/dork-boat/2015/12/30/arts-birthday/

2. Eleonore TV# 29.(2015)Interview. Directed by Marie Polakova. [Online] Avail-able from:https://www.dorftv.at/video/21878

3 HALLA, N. [Online] Available from: http://www.nataliehalla.com/

4 MISS ROCKAWAY(2007)Miss Rockaway Armada Project Info. [Online] Avail-able from:http://www.missrockaway.org/wordpress/project-info/

5 BOYKETT, T. (2013) Eleonore Again. [Online]Available from:https://timesupboatingassociation.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/eleonore-again/

6 Eleonore TV#14. (2013) Reportage. Directed by Dorf TV. [Online] Available from:https://www.dorftv.at/video/7484

7 PROHASKA, R. (2014) Cargo. [Online]Available from:http://www.rainer-prohaska.net/cargo

8 http://www.mousonturm.de/web/de/veranstaltung/cogo-ahoi

9 Dreampunk TV #3(2015)Interview. Directed by Marie Polakova. [Online] Available from:https://www.dorftv.at/video/22374

This chapter described the author's personal experience with artistic and cultural activities around the water environment. This report can be perceived as “field notes” or an expedition logbook, which have given the reader direct impressions of the environment. In order to gain wider perspective and to put authors' experience and work in context, the following chapter will discuss other examples of artistic and cultural practice that happen in this environment worldwide.

Fig . Residency Aboard Avalon Illustration by Marie Polakova

Chapter 5Art and Cultural Practice

Around the Water

Environment: Summary

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As mentioned before, coherent research and documentation of artistic and cultural practices around the water environment does not so far exist. Even though individual project often have their presentation online, the information about this

scene is scattered. Therefore rather social methods of research were used. This included the ancient information spreading and research method, colloquially called “word of mouth” or viva voce, which was one of the most fruitful methods in this case. It meant also, that the people from my social network become aware of my research and started to inform me about projects they came across. Such as Leo Schatzl, who he kindly shared with me his knowledge of this scene.

Further I actively approached communities around the world of harbours, ships and seas, whenever I was travelling to suitable locations. That stated chains of contacts - when one person would introduce me to another one and led to discoveries I would not be able to make otherwise. Coincidental encounters also played their part in this research.

To illustrate this, let me share one example: My Linz based friend Pippa met Johan at a conference that had nothing to do with ships and was related to technology rather than to art. But Johan told Pippa about Illutron – a ship based art collective in Copenhagen that he is part of. Pippa visited them and several years later she told me about Illutron, as she considered it to be interesting for my work. I had contacted them via their official contact email and got an immediate response by Christian Liljedahl. Sometimes afterwards, he visited us at Eleonore, conducting a presentation and two workshops.

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Then I went to visit Illutron and during the few days in Copenhagen I was introduced to three other projects : Flydende By, Fredens Havn and Hawila (that are all described bellow). Samuel Faucherre, the captain of Hawila told me about Alternative Sailing Community,

another interesting project that happens on the oceans and fits perfectly into my category of Social Sculptures. When get in contact this community - which has not happened so far as they are currently sailing somewhere between new Zealand and Fiji, the chain will surely continue.

The following text of this chapter summarises my research of art and cultural practice around the water environment as of January 2016. The projects are sorted according to the categories that were described in chapter four. In case of projects I had direct contact with, I share my impressions of these projects, apart of the information from they provide publicly. The other project are described based on the information they share on their websites or other resources.

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5.1. Landscape Theatre Netherlands

Since 1996

Bruno Doedens, Andras Hamelberg, Veronique Vetjens, Frits Vo-gels

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SLeM collective creates projects that are part of the landscape, crossing the borders of land art, sculpture and happening. Landscape Theatre as they call it.

“Culture is part of nature” says Bruno as we drift into discussion over their works, occasionally gazing through the large windows of the EYE (Film Institute Netherlands), an impressive building opened in 2012 directly above the waters of IJ-Buurtveer in Amsterdam.

“The Landscape Theatre is to reveal the essence of a landscape through art. By transforming it, by letting events take place that have either a lasting or temporary effect on it. SLeM has set itself the goal to make the ordinary extraordinary, to amaze and alienate. Landscape theatre forces the visitor to experience the landscape with other eyes and other hands. New mental landscapes.”(SLeM)

SleM sometimes use traditional methods developed by the past generations to claim land from the sea. A method that, inevitably, had to invite nature to collaborate, rather than fighting against it. Perhaps the Dutch tradition of collective work - for example the dikes were build collaboratively by the villages in the area - makes it possible to involve big groups - hundreds of people from local communities - to join their projects.

“Do you know other artists here, who also work with water, with the sea and ships?” I ask and Bruno struggles to answer. It seems that in a country where geography is formed by water to such an extent, with a large number of the population permanently dwelling aboard ships and houseboats; there is no need to make a statement about it. One also wouldn’t define oneself as an artist of Alpine “Hütte” for that matter. Culture is part of nature.

SLeMNetherlands

Since 1996

Bruno Doedens, Andras Hamelberg, Veronique Vetjens, Frits Vogels

http://www.slem.org/en/introduction/

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Floating maze was created on Elisabethsee. A temporary floating construction build from wood, tension belts, plastic containers and pallets invited audience to walk carefully through a spiral maze of wobbly platforms floating directly on water. Such an experience altered the visitors’ perception and experience of the landscape around them.

Floating MazeAustria

2007

Peter Sandbichleberg

http://www.petersandbichler.com

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The cliff with a lighthouse is an elementary image of Coastal Britain and perhaps a coast anywhere. Even these maritime constructions are man-made, they became already “natural”, inseparable from the nature-made part of the landscape. The Foghorn Requiem project explores this layer of man-made nature and sadly its disappearance. As some of these constructions, for example foghorns are no longer in use due to modern navigation technologies. Even though they remain a landmark they are becoming obsolete and might vanish. This project made the audience experience culture, including its history, as well as a natural layer of the landscape that surround them.

“More than 50 ships gathered on the North Sea to perform an ambitious musical score, marking the disappearance of the sound of the foghorn from the UK’s coastal landscape. Foghorn Requiem was performed by three brass bands, ships at sea and the Southern Lighthouse Foghorn. Conducted and controlled from afar, ships sounded their horns to a score taking into account landscape and the physical distance of sound. The composition, performed live to audiences on the coastal cliffs, was played across a space of several miles around Souter lighthouse.”

Foghorn Re-quiemUnited Kingdom

2013

Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway

http://foghornrequiem.org/

Spectrogram of the dying note of the foghorn ©Autogena & Portway 2013

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5.2. Adventure Performance Performance Netherlands

Since 1996

Bruno Doedens, Andras Hamelberg, Veronique Vetjens, Frits Vo-gels

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Cogo Ahoi started as an 8-month journey from Frankfurt to the Black Sea, sailing on the Main and Danube rivers. It could be equally placed in the section of “Experimental Adventurism”, but since its author considered her journey to be part of an experimental theatre project, the Performance category is the most accurate.

During the journey, performances were conducted aboard the boat Cogo and other locations on land and water. The term “adventure performance” was coined in Belgrade (Serbia) where Julia Blawert together with Karkatag Collective took audiences for strange exploration of abandoned barges anchored in a middle of the river.

The project Cogo Ahoi was finished by a performance in Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt (DE) that was basef upon the experience of the journey and described in Chapter 4.

Cogo AhoiGermany / Rivers Main & Danube: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hun-gary, Croatia, Serbia,

Romania & Bulgaria

2014 / 2015

Julia Blawert

http://www.cogoahoi.de/

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“...Waterhouse Theatre, is theatre on a wide beam barge. We’ve been running it now for a month. We got the barge about 7 months ago. And this currently is our 1st ever theatrical run on a boat. And the idea of the Waterhouse theatre is that is not only a theatre on a boat, but that it’s a moving theatre. So it is currently in one place for this run, but the idea is that it will go put on shows across London and beyond hopefully….”(Eleonore TV# 29, 2015)

I visited Waterhouse Theatre in December 2014. To reach the theatre, we walked for half an hour alongside the Regents Canal, which that time, was a winter mooring for many London boats. The barge is spacious and nicely renovated in a simple designed way. Unfortunately, the tickets for the Christmas show were completely sold out and it was not possible for me to witness it.

The Waterhouse Theatre was described in detail in Chapter 4.

Waterhouse TheatreUnited Kingdom

Since 2014

Kit Redstone

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Lod Tajemstvi (“The Ship Mystery”)was founded 16 years ago, by Divadlo bratri Formanu(Theater of Forman Brothers) who described them selves as:

“ ...lively fellowship without permanent stage and coherent group, united by their visions of work and life style. It is a fellowship of theatre nomads, who admire the magic of the road and wandering. Movement, play, encounters and independence bring them often to non-theatre environments, that provoke and inspire them by their ambience, history and their inner power. New team is formed for every project, which creates somehow different, unique energy. Unique mood that’s necessary in order to find the right dramatic form.To wander through Europe is beautiful, but the water in the sink is sometimes frozen, it’s raining during the construction and the truck gets broken. It’s not enough to concoct and to play, it’s necessary to manufacture, to construct, to reconstruct and to manage to live with the others.Not everyone can cope, so people are coming and leaving, while the caravan moves on.”(Translated by the author from Divadlo bratri Formanu, 2007)

Beside performances of her Theatre of Forman Brothers, the ship hosts performances of others, functions as a venue for concerts and dance evenings (there is a nice bar aboard) and recently started to host activities, such as workshops, for children during the summer days.

Lod Tajem-stviPrague/Czech Republic

Since 2000

Divadlo bratri Formanu

Lod Tajemstvi http://www.divadlobratriformanu.cz

Divadlo Aqualung http://www.divadloaqualung.cz

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I have seen a performance of Divadlo Aqualung, one of the companies associated with the ship, who create site-specific performances for the environment. The choice of their titles and themes is influenced by the aesthetic of steampunk – naively positive vision of technical world that

looks back at the idyllic past, to the visionary turn of 19 century, when it was believed that nothing is impossible.

The show used the simple interior of the ship as a blank canvas on which fantastical imagery of the scenes, inspired perhaps by Karel Zeman’s aesthetic was painted. As an audience I left mesmerised and feeling as if I have travelled a long way since I stepped through the ships door.

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Bas Jan Ader, who will be mentioned again in the section on Experimental Adventurism, created two works Fall II, And Broken Fall(Organic) that, even being commonly considered conceptual art pieces, can also be included in the Adventure Performance group.

To describe the work: Fall II. : Artist drives on his bike into a water canal, falling together with the bike into the water from the canal key. Broken Fall(Organic) : Artist is holding onto a branch of a tree, hanging above a stream of water. He holds for as long he can keep the grip (or until the branch brakes) ad then fall into the water. The reason I included this work here is their literally immersive contact with water the artist experiences. And of course the element of risk, certain danger and lack of control over the circumstances, that makes this performances to be adventures alone.The works have been recorded and can be seen on the artists website.

Broken Fall(Organic)

Fall I.1970/1971

Bas Jan Ader (1942 1975)

http://www.basjanader.com/

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5.3.

Experimental Adventurism Netherlands

Since 1996

Bruno Doedens, Andras Hamelberg, Veronique Vetjens, Frits Vo-gels

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At first look we would hardly see any parallels between “geek activities” (and the Open Source community for example) and sailing. Within the computer environment, the one who has the knowledge and experience, has near to absolute degree of control. Within the digital realm, nearly any step can be taken back. Not so while sailing. The environment is not controllable at all. The mistake done is done and one can only deal with the consequences that can be harsh. The experienced sailor knows how to respond to the environmental conditions and gain safe sailing, but he/she has no control over these conditions. Same as coding, sailing is a very immersive activity, but requires the physical as well as mental self to be involved.

“You don’t reboot a sailing boat like you reboot a computer”, says the headline of the S4G project and perhaps that explains. But both – the Open Source movement and sailing - have a strong element of community that provides support when their members need so and both are(often) about passion rather then reason.

The project description reads: “S4G isn’t a travel agency, nor an artist’s residence, but a crew on a sailing boat, acute to the boat and other crew members needs, desires, necessity, know how, ability, who sails in the spirit of free software towards a collective project and for whom all production on board is under creative commons, that goes without saying. “(S4G, 2004)

Sailing for Geeks (S4G) France / Oceans

2004 / 2005

Skipper& coordinator of the project: Nathalie Magnan2014

http://volt.lautre.net/sail/

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The project started in the framework of ISEA 2004, that happen upon Baltic Sea. It continued by other journeys across the Straight of Gibraltar. A short statement about the 1st journey: “We--geeks and sailors from the Seychelles and Marseille, from the

Atlantic and from the Northern Sea--proposed to ISEA 2004 a sailing-research experience that combined meteorological weather ballooning with sailing, navigation and communication. S4G (Sailing for Geeks) brought together mobility, networking, free software, wireless and the Baltic sea: the very essence of ISEA2004. The archipelago of Marienhamn was a perfect setting. Navigation was a challenge, yet sailing itself was fairly safe in a sea that has a long history and culture of the sport.”(S4G, 2004)

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Adventure has always an element of danger to it. Danger of getting lost. Danger of being hurt. Danger of death. Within the adrenalin sports, the close proximity of death and recognition of one’s limits, therefore intensified experience of the present moment, are essential and an important reason why some individuals are drawn to such activities. In the art world, however, such high degree of risk is not usual. The work of Bas Jan Ader is exceptional is this sense. And even the exact reasons of his disappearance remain unknown, he died during this art work.

“In 1975 Ader embarked on what he called “a very long sailing trip.” The voyage was to be the middle part of a triptych called “In Search of the Miraculous,” a daring attempt to cross the Atlantic in a 12½ foot(3.81m) sail boat. He claimed it would take him 60 days to make the trip, or 90 if he chose not to use the sail. Six months after his departure, his boat was found, half-submerged off the coast of Ireland, but Bas Jan had vanished. “(Bas Jan Ader)

Documentary film about the artist entitled Here is Always Somewhere Else was made in 2009 by Rene Daalder.

Search for the

MiraculousUnited States / Atlantic Ocean

1975

Bas Jan Ader

http://www.basjanader.com/

Bas Jan Ader: In Search Of The Miraculous by Jan Verwoert, Afterall Books, 2006

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“Cargo was a two months journey from Melk (Austria) to Sulina (Romania) aboard a self constructed trimaran MS Cargo. The hulls of the trimaran were made of “zille” traditional Austrian Danube boats. Such a design allowed the vessel to reach even very shallow shores, which wouldn’t be possible with larger ship. Rather than a typical Danube boat tour Cargo was a travelling sculpture and mobile communication medium that brought the artists into a lot of unexpected situations.”

Cargo Austria / River Danube Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania & Bulgaria

2014

Rainer Prohaska

http://www.rainer-prohaska.net/cargo

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Laitinen’s works are adventures spiced with large amounts of – sometimes rather absurd – humour.

His Self-Portrait on the Swamp (2002), where the artist submerged himself (including his head) into a swamp in order to take a self portrait; an image of his hand sticking out of the mud holding the remote control of the camera shutter– might illustrate his approach.

Antii LaitinenFinland

Artist: Born 1975

Various Projects.

http://www.anttilaitinen.com/index.html

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Boat journey through Viennese sewage system.

The act of exploring the sewage system by sail is itself an experiment and surely an adventure many of us would not dare to undertake.

WesternAustria

2002

Hans Schabus

http://www.proholz.at/zuschnitt/

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Vintage caravan converted to diving bell. Diving under the surface of water is an adventure and doing so in converted camping caravan can not be described other than experimental. The project was made at the Time’s Up (Linz harbour based art collective) premises.

Camping GlockeDavid Moises

Austria

2010

http://timesup.org/content/camping glocke-david moises

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Nomade des Mers started with one sailing boat, modified in order to maximise its sustainability. There were for example edible plants growing on board and alternative energy harvesting and water making systems. The project, which is currently launching an innovative, sustainable catamaran is based upon a principle of Low-Tech and during the expeditions, the catamaran aims to become an exemplary self-sustaining ecosystem, a flagship of the low-tech innovation.

The concept of Low Tech has two important points:

1.To be Useful and Accessible

By definition, a low-tech is a simple system that meets the basic needs (access to water and food, energy and materials, etc). It must therefore be accessible, inexpensive and achievable with local resources.

2. To Respect the environment

Low-tech system requires fewer resources during manufacture and use. It also favors renewable and local resources and reduces its environmental impact to a minimum.The aim of Nomede Des Mers project is to create a platform for experimentation and dissemination of these useful and sustainable technologies.

(Rewritten after the original French text by the Autor)

Nomade des Mers France / Oceans

Since 2013

Corentin Chatelperron

http://nomadedesmers.org/expe

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Kayle Brandon and Heath Bunting coined the title of this category. Although they did not explain much about what experimental adventurism means to them, I adopted it, as it greatly described those art projects that are into great degree based upon an adventurous experience.Brandon and Bunting used the canoe as a vehicle to explore the mouth area of the river Avon. It allowed them to venture into the areas where it is not possible to access otherwise and provided and alternative angle of view at know places.

“Avon canoe pilot is a meditative sport-art project. It is only itself. Making no associations or allusions to things greater or more established than itself. It exists within the realms of sport/ adventure and exploration. All activities were performed in a beginner’s state of mind, which is aspired to by many, but is also highly provocative. Imagine buying a Canoe from e-bay, or some such greed infrastructure and then taking it, without experience, to the waters’ edge. Fear and courage combined with presence of mind, delicate physical touches working together to produce one, of many, first steps to something new. During this project, I have been surprised many times, mostly due to laziness of memory, of how provocative and powerful a confident new-comers entrance can be.“(Bunting, 2007)

Avon Canoe PilotUnited Kingdom

2007

Kayle Brandon & Heath Bunting

http://duo.irational.org/avon_canoe_pilot/

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After participating at the Miss Rockaway Armada, described under Social Sculptures, the street artist Swoon decided to embark upon her individual floating project.In her own words:

“I just thought I wanted a chance to take some of the same kinds of language of the ‘Rockaway’ and make it more of a guided artistic experience rather then a collective living experiment. I wanted to make something which really had the freedom of artistic expression, sculptural and aesthetic and all that stuff.”

A decision upon which the artist designed the exteriors of the seven vessels, built from salvaged materials. Each boat could hold 9 to 13 people – crew and passengers. The first journey took place on the Hudson River, stopping for performance shows that were written especially for this journey and crew by Ms. D’Amour.

The second project happen on the Adriatic Sea, where Swoon set sail with three intricately hand-crafted vessels built from recycled materials and crewed by 35 fellow artists.

The rafts were developed as the journey progresses and once in Venice, these unique vessels were on display during the Venice Biennial and the public invited to enjoy live music, puppetry, storytelling and other unique performances.

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea & Serrenissima Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea (2008) Swimming Cities of Serrenis-sima (2009) Swoon

http://caledoniacurry.com/switchback.phphttp://caledoniacurry.com/serenissima.php

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The Control of The Commons project is composed of three journeys and two boats built of junk material, named Subak I and II. The first journey sailed on the Murray River in South Australia. The second, intended to travel down the Danube, was finished after approximately 40km, when a lock keeper notified the river authorities of the strange vessel that was sailing the Danube without an engine and a registration number. Hence Subak II had to be taken out of water, equipped with an engine and the permissions sought. Even with that successfully awarded, the time was running short and since participation at the Belgian festival “Burning Ice” was arranged, the Danube journey could not continue. Subak II travelled through the canals of Belgium and found a new home in Belgium where it was adopted by a theatre company who used it as a stage.

“By making a series of trips along several watercourses in Europe and Australia, Control of the Commons (CoC) aims to undertake an artistic exploration of the relationship of people to water and the way that effects travel along watercourses. Mapping friendship networks along the watercourses, water quality and water usage, the architecture of the banks and the neighbouring buildings, we envisage that an image of the communities’ relationship to water as a common resource will become clear. The project process is designed to be as low impact/sustainable as possible. The vessels are powered by humans and nature, rowing, sculling, poling and sailing, avoiding the need to walk into town and search for fuel. The “

C.O.C. Austria / Australia

2012

Pippa Buchanan & Tim Boykett (Time’s Up)

http://timesup.org/coc

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Three Rs” are integrated into the core process of CoC:

Reduce our need for oil products and other expendables; Reuse technologies to avoid waste; Recycle the vessels at journey’s end.

These goals are not contradictory. By slowing down the speed of movement we become more open to the distinctions along the way, able to observe and interact with the community along the riverbanks, study the flood control mechanisms and the levee banks. Our movement produces few waves, so is less damaging to the river banks and quieter, disturbing less wildlife. “(Time’s Up, 2012)

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5.4. Maritime Media Art Netherlands

Since 1996

Bruno Doedens, Andras Hamelberg, Veronique Vetjens, Frits Vo-gels

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“Illutron is a collaborative interactive arts studio, who creates large scale interactive art, intriguing explorations into the realm where art and technology meet, experiments in the water and is a place for individual or collaborative work.”(Illutron)

Illutron is based aboard a rusty industrial ship from 1962, currently moored in Refshalevej in Copenhagen. The collective has approximately 20 members who collaborate in various constellations depending on a project. The ship is accommodating a large event venue, metal workshop, wood workshop, electronic workshop as well as common space, kitchen and private cabins, which functions as small studio spaces and occasional dormitories.

Illutron can easily fall into the “Social Sculptures” category, as the community of people from various professions and walks of life form an essential element of this project. But differently from many of the Social Sculptures projects, Illutron’s primary focus is to create artworks. They – and especially Christian Liljedahl who is one of the collectives members – produce interactive and new media art pieces that are closely associated with the watery environment.

Their works are (mostly) displayed in public space, and as such they aim at interaction with the general public – a passing by audience. In contrary to gallery environments, where the audience who is interested chooses to come, the art in public space is perceived by very mixed group of people of whom some have no interest and understanding of art at all.

IllutronDenmark

Established 2007

http://www.illutron.dk/Frontpage

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This poses a challenge to the artist, who then walk on a thin line of creating art work with which the general audience can engage, yet it doesn’t fall into a trap of populism or kitsch. Illutron, with a use of DIY and low budget approach, seems to be managing this well.

Their works combine engineering, marine knowledge and building skills with performance, music and poetry and the collective has established position on Copenhagen cultural scene. Occasionally, they engage public in the creative process and they are open for collaborations and welcome others, who wish to use the ship for experimental creative activities.“

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“Commissioned to coincide with the Tall Ships Race, 2005, Ghost Ship involved the construction and development of a crew-less, self-navigating sailing boat, which undertook its maiden voyage between Fair Isle, Scotland and Newcastle upon Tyne. Audiences were able to track the boats progress via a live, daily updated website.”(Locus, 2005)

This can be perceived as a great achievement of engineering rather than art. Its author was, however, a recognised American artist, who conducted numerous rather extreme performances and created large scale sculptural works, some of which were kinetic. He also worked in the medium of film and television broadcast.

Ghost ShipUnited Kingdom / Fair Isle, Scotland to Newcastle upon Tyne

2005

Chris Burden

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/14/chris burden

http://www.locusplus.org.uk/projects/68~Ghost+Ship

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Life Boat was a project conducted by the Australian bio-rt institution Symbiotica. The project is an art and science collaboration that reflect upon important questions of sustainability and cultural as well as biological survival.

“LifeBoat” is a prosaic title indicating both the physical reality (the project is contained within a fully weatherproofed ship’s lifeboat) and somewhat more conceptually, as the lifeboat has become home to a Biotechnology lab; a home to the processes of life itself. On a metaphorical level, this project is designed to deal with concepts of sustainability, survival and notions of biological, cultural and ideological re-generation, and naturally its obverse, the degradation of life and all its manifestations.

When the Maori people, of New Zealand first encountered Cook’s ship (the Endeavour) they thought it to be a floating island. Although at first this may seem a ‘quaint’ reaction, the Maori were perfectly accurate. As an instrument, of European colonial expansion and exploitation (and as a scientific voyage) the Endeavour was in fact a highly compressed version of English culture. This was no simple floating transport, but a microcosm of language, mathematics, philosophy, foodstuffs, social and political structures, religion, not to mention sexual appetites and exotic diseases.

If England itself had somehow drifted into the South Pacific, the effect would have not really been any different! “(Sonic Objects,2004)

Life Boat Australia

2004

Symbiotica

http://www.sonicobjects.com/life boat/http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/

projects/more/lifeboat/

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“Syren is a shipboard open speaker augmented audio environment that uses geo-spatial information and GPS for rendering 3D sound corresponding to proximate physical features. The work places a strong emphasis on a highly imaginative and creative approach to sound composition and sound design in order to highlight the potential of this emergent field of geo-spatially located virtual audio.” (Morro, 2004)

This is another work that was created for ISEA 2004 and I find the element of geo-spatialy related art works very intriguing and extremely relevant to maritime media art. As it refers to the techniques of nautical navigation, that had been and it is one of the essential skills required in order to sail the seas.

Syren Baltic Sea

2004

Nigel Helyer, Daniel Woo, Chris Rizos

http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/projects/more/audionomad_syren/

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“River Studies is an ongoing long-term artistic research project about exploring the relationship of rivers and its people, rivers and its transforming cultural landscape, rivers and their function as carrier of cultural landscapes and identities. It utilizes custom, combined and unique methods in digital photography, data visualization, cartography and cultural mapping.

As main imaginary tool River Studies utilizes a line-scan camera to sample riverscapes from a moving vessel: Custom-build machine’s eyes that render into unique representations of precious waterlines.“

River StudiesMichael Aschauer

Since 2006

http://www.riverstudies.org/views/

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5.5. Social Sculptures gels

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Since I have described Eleonore extensively in chapters three and four of this thesis, the description used here is written by Armin Medosh, and forms a part of an essay on Non-Utopias.

“My first real insight is that the Eleonore is, if I may say so, and for lack of better words, a Gesamtkunstwerk. While originally maybe notions such as “artistic measurements” stood in the foreground of the conception, I now realize that the strength of the project is how it functions as a whole, on different layers: there is the boat as such, a floating structure, which needs to function within its environment; Franz Xaver has taken care to make it an autonomous unit, independent from electricity and water coming from the land; electricity is provided by a number of solar panels and a generator as backup; water is provided by a rain water tank, collected via the roof of the Eleonore; this water is not for drinking but for all other purposes; there are a number of ongoing research projects relating to water and acidity, more about that hopefully later.

There is also the social side, the way this structure is embedded in the social fabric of the river and the port. Through years of research and creating a rapport with the relevant people, Eleonore is allowed to exist without costing anything; and with regard to the running ‘residency’ programme, this is rather different from other residencies, where artists often use an institution as a kind of hotel. Here, participants are not just supposed to go along their own artistic-narcissistic pursuits but contribute something to the whole; and, with all of those aspects taken together, the Eleonore project is a real non-utopia” (Medosh, 2010)

EleonoreAustria / Linz

Since 2009

Franz Xaver & Donautics

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FLOAV is a model of a temporary, alternative spatial construction. An alliance of artistic interactions and collaborations of artists and collectives from the independent cultural scene. For a period of 2 weeks, a composite of boats, rafts and different home-made floats forms social, floating sculpture that looks as an archetype image of Floating Village – inhabitation upon waters.

Its form is based on the diversity of its individual floating objects and their simple, open and flexible design. The formal diversity reflects different, interlocking functions as well as their technically and artistically interdisciplinary usage.FLOAV is neither “Künstlerzoo“ (Artist -Zoo) or an amusement park. Rather, it forms a volatile reservation for artistic undertakings, reflecting the increasing disappearance of open spaces. In line with the concept, life shifted to a floating unit where simple activities of daily living and community concerns flow into one another with creative constructive processes.Translated by the author from (Schatzl, 2015)

In 2014, a few times I visited the Floating Village that was located on the river Traun, a strange place where somehow wild nature merges with heavily industrial waste land - the outskirts of Linz belonging to Voestalpine steel factories.

Floating VillageAustria

Since 2011

Initiated by Leo Schatzl

http://www.floatingvillage.at/index.php/about/

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From an impression I gain during my visits, I would claim that due to a lack of infrastructure prepared beforehand and due to cold rainy and generally very unsupportive weather (which included a flood) during the FLOAV time, the task of surviving “simple activities of daily

living“ became dominant over the artistic „creative constructive processes“. But never less, the unforeseen results are part of an experimental process of any kind. The event resulted in an exhibition in Kunstraum Goethestrasse gallery in Linz, which was accompanied by cultural program running for a period of one month.

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Frederic Mistral is a steam ship, build in 1914 that has a significant place in the Austrian history. The ship is equipped with a secret cabin that can be accessed through a mirrored door of toilet cupboard. It was used by Emperor Franz Josef I to travel incognito through his empire. Followed by no less adventures history of smuggling Jewish refugees from the repression of World War II Austria. The stories are numerous and no less fascinating. Capt. Scheriau – himself reminiscent of a character from adventure books - is perhaps the best person to hear them from and since the ship is a museum, it is possible.

In the 90s the ship was discovered in Romania as a wreck and perhaps due to falling in love with her – something that seems to happen to many ship owners – Capt. Scheriau together with his friend Karl Schmid managed to bring the ship back to Austria. Apparently spending larger amounts of money on bribing the authorities than for the ship alone.

Frederic Mistral is now moored in Vienna and accompanied by other ships with their own fascinating histories. For example the ship Ana, build in 1894 as a tugboat that towed special barges for VIP guests travelling to the Exposition Universelle (World Exhibition) in Paris in 1900, among others.

Museumschiff

Frederic MistralAustria / Vienna

Established 1998

Kpt. Franz Scheriau

http://www.donaufaehre wien.at/

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The place functions as museum as well as a home of their captain, his wife Roswita Gansterer and two large dogs named Max and Moritz. The reason this museum is placed in a Social Sculptures category instead of Venuesand Events is that this is not a

museum institution in a standard sense – it is private (and privately funded) activity of Capt. Sheriau and his wife, supported by a voluntary work of a community of friends.

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Fredens Havn “Peace harbour”, colloquially called Pirates’ harbour in Copenhagen, lays near the famous alternative neighbourhood of Christiania. The area is one of the green, natural “pockets” of the city.

The harbour was established 5 years ago by Eksben Banke and small group of friends, in order to collect garbage that is carried by the currents and accumulates here and to create a model of harmonious living between people and wild life. Over the years other people joined. Some following the original vision of the Fredens Havn. Others having different focus and interests.

I visited Fredens Havn by boat, sailing with a friend of Illutron, who is a member of Fredens Havn community and has his boat moored there. Although I am only judging upon one visit, it reminded me of a situations I encountered before at several squat houses – social/cultural centres around Europe. Situation, where the core group keeps the integrity and follows certain activist goals, while other members of these communities seem to be immersed in the problems of their own life, sadly often struggling with (over)consumption of alcohol and various other intoxicating substances and so on.

Fredens

HavnDenmark / Copenhagen

Interview I conducted with Eksben Banke is available from : https://dorftv.at/video/23305

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Samuel Faucherre and a community of friends who joined this project are working on three visions:

First is to save eighty-year-old Swedish sailing cargo ship Hawila from degradation and to restore her back to seaworthy shape. Or, in their own words: “to participate in the rebirth of Scandinavian heritage and sailing culture”.

The second goal is to create a platform for alternative cultural and knowledge exchange. Performances, concerts, workshops - that range from yoga to nautical skills courses - are some of these initiatives.

The third goal is to bring Hawila back to her original purpose – shipping cargo. Fair end sustainable shipping is becoming an important trend. “Fair transport is the buzzword, slowly becoming more relevant as climate change gets closer to our everyday life, the destruction of the oceans becomes more obvious and the facade that “business as usual” can continue crumbles. ”(Transiencies :Time’s Up). Additionally, Hawila crew is looking for further solutions to maximize their on-board sustainability.

Hawila’s aim is to foster cultural exchange as well as to provide alternative options for shipping ecological goods across different coastal communities.

HawilaCopenhagen/ Denmark

Since 2014

http://www.hawilaproject.org/

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“The goal of Flydende By is to build up a sustainable society from below. We develop methods to create decentralized sustainable solutions out of reused and organic resources. We want to find ways of organizing work, economy and decision processes in a fair and socially sustainable way. We want to find ways of using the ocean in a senseful and constructive way, as part of the future sustainable society.” , reads the project website.

Flydende By created floating structures, built according to their own principles of sustainable and organic-complex architecture. They are currently (as for February 2016) running a fund raising campaign in order to convert an old industrial building into an open workshop: “The goal is to give to much more people access to our abundance of recycled materials, and generate knowledge about how this materials can become useful again.

Flydende

ByCopenhagen/ Denmark

Since 2012

http://flydendeby.org/projects

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“The Miss Rockaway Armada is both a collection of individuals and an idea”

The crew of artists, musicians, builders, travellers, organizers and dreamers that float down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans aboard rafts they built themselves, hosting musical performances and vaudeville variety-theater in the evenings, along with workshops and skill-shares centered around arts and environmental issues during the day.

The visions of the project were: “to create: to invent a new sustainable way to travel, to demonstrate different ways of living and moving that are friendlier to the environment and to each other, to indulge in that essential urge to make something out of nothing. (...) to meet people: to learn from new folks along the way, to teach what we know, to share our art, our music and our performance, and to make new friends. (...) adventure: to reclaim and reinvent the old American urge to strike out and discover the vast, mysterious land we inhabit and see it for ourselves.”

Miss Rockaway Armada is as well a project of Experimental Adventurism, but the element of community aboard and interaction with communities ashore were very basic part of it. The project was formed by a group of approximately 30 performers and artists, and was even described as “collective living experiment” by some of them. Hence the decision to add Miss Rockaway into the Social Sculpture category.

Miss Rockaway ArmadaThe Mississippi River: Minneapolis – St. Louis

2007

http://www.missrockaway.org/wordpress/project info/

http://caledoniacurry.com/rockaway.php

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A project and - most importantly in this case – life of Poppa Neutrino (aka David Pearlman, died in 2011), his wife Betsy Terrell (aka Capt. Betsy), their 5 children and friends, who spend significant part of their life aboard rafts they built of recycled junk materials. Further they developed their own relatively complex system of life philosophy and self development. In their own words:

“Though the Floating Neutrinos are most famous for high profile adventures such as the Atlantic Crossing by Scrap Raft, behind all these outward efforts was something much deeper. On one level, we were creating and demonstrating viable alternatives to modern tendencies toward imitation, factory made consumerism, and loss of individual creativity. At the same time, our outer projects were merely foils for our inner work: an ongoing experiment in human psychology, searching for answers to what makes us function and malfunction, and how to increase our own and others’ abilities to create meaningful and fulfilling lives.” (Floating Neutrinos)

Floating

NeutrinosUS / Oceans

Since 1997

http://www.floatingneutrinos.com/

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E Mare Libertas “From the Sea, Freedom”

Sealand is one of the world’s micronations – a self-declared independent state that hasn’t been recognised by other countries. Sealand was founded as a sovereign Principality in 1967 in international waters, six miles off the eastern shores of Britain. Sealand’s territory is the Roughs Tower, an island fortress created in World War II and subsequently abandoned. Being positioned in international waters, Roughs Tower was not claimed to be under the jurisdiction of another sovereign entity and therefore could be legally claimed as sovereign territory.

“The independence of Sealand was upheld in a 1968 British court decision where the judge held that Roughs Tower stood in international waters and did not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. The official language of Sealand is English and the Sealand Dollar has a fixed exchange rate of one U.S. dollar. Passports and stamps have been in circulation since 1969”.(Sealand)

The Principality

of Sealand Independent State

Established 1967

http://www.sealandgov.org/

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Our community is much more than just one caravan of sailing boats. We are a vision, an idea, about how a group of conscious travellers can move about this earth differently. We want to change the world by changing the bubble that surrounds us, by living our dream.

Alternative Sailing Community is a community of eco-conscious travellers sailing around the world. Started by the flagship “Starseeker “ and her captain Tony only two years ago, but it has gained lot of attention and currently consists of a “core” fleet of five boats, sailing and performing on the Pacific Ocean (as for January 2016) and other people and boats around the world are joining the community vision. In their own words, the mission of the project is:

“... teach sailing to as many people as possible, including backpackers, travellers, schoolchildren and locals spread smiles through circus performance and music share what we know about sustainable living methods learn what we can about the cultures around the world, how they interact with the planet and each other recycle whenever possible. Boat parts, food, clothing, and anything else we can to move away from a consumerist society live as a community of travellers, a world family of sailors and sea gypsies connect alternative land based communities around the world by moving goods and people from place to place provide an alternative means of travel by harnessing the wind and moving away from our dependance on fossil fuels and limited resources.

Alternative

Sailing CommunityOceans

Since 2014

Captain Tony

http://alternativesailing.org/

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RaminKrause, one of the community members, also started cross-media storytelling platform Voiiage that aims to tell the stories of their journey together, the cultures they encounter, and living in a travelling community.

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Breakwater is the world’s first nautical themed Makerspace. Breakwater is a membership-driven shared workshop for building art boats, amphibious bikes, boat repair, and anything and everything else on or in the water. Supported by membership fees, the Breakwater offers shared tools, space, expertise, and a community to help turn your and other’s nautical projects into reality.

Break Water

Maker Space California/ United States

http://www.breakwater.rocks/wiki

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“Waterpod™ was a floating, sculptural, eco-habitat designed for the rising tides. The Waterpod demonstrated future pathways for water -based innovations. As a sustainable, navigable living space, the Waterpod showcased the critical importance of the environment and art, serving as a model for new living, d.i.y. technologies, art, and dialogue. It illustrated positive interactions between communities: public and private; artistic and social; aquatic and terrestrial while exploring the cultural richness of New York’s five boroughs and beyond. By visualizing the future, the Waterpod embodied self-sufficiency and resourcefulness, learning and curiosity, human expression and creative exploration. Through its dilatory, watery peregrinations, the Waterpod’s intent is to prepare, inform, inspire, provoke, and fortify humanity for tomorrow’s exterior explorations. The Waterpod structure was built on a deck barge where systems were installed to generate food, water and energy. Four cabins were built for a group of resident artists and communal areas were built for the artists and visitors. The Waterpod was to be a free and participatory public space in the waterways of New York City, and represents an intervention and a gift from a team of artists, designers, builders, engineers, activists working with various groups, as well as companies participating “pro bono publico” or “for the public good”. These contributors were brought together to create an environment that included both public resources and a private experiment, an aquatic and terrestrial, interior and exterior mobile hybrid.”

Waterpod ProjectUnited States

2009

Mary Mattingly

http://www.thewaterpod.org/

Mary Mattingly .The Waterpod Project at Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 5, 2009. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Mike Nagle

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5.6. Events & Venues Netherlands

Since 1996

Bruno Doedens, Andras Hamelberg, Veronique Vetjens, Frits Vo-gels

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Moving platform for cultural research and exchange. Stubnitz, founded in 1992 is sometimes recognised as the flag ship of Artistic activities happening aboard or around the marine environment.

“Originally built in 1964 in the former East German city of Stralsund and weighing in at over two and half thousand tons the Stubnitz “roving neutral venue” travels from its homeport Rostock around the Baltic and North Sea, physically networking with cities such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Newcastle, Hamburg, St. Petersburg, London and (currently) Hamburg. Including the outside deck there are four fully-equipped event areas transformed out of the old cargo holds catering for audience(s) of up to seven hundred people. The last twenty years have seen several thousand artists on board, from diverse cultural disciplines including performance, theatre, dance, spoken word, music and parties. This huge variety of diverse content is documented, edited and preserved in an on board media archive. Operating on a predominantly voluntary basis, the Stubnitz crew, like the project itself, is in a constant state of flux, and ranges from weekend helpers to year-round live in residents. Those entering into the cultural side can engage in maritime roles and vice versa resulting in a unique working dynamic, a blend of traditionally hierarchical shipping structures and arts-based collectivism. Stubnitz has always remained outside of any scene or genre, open to any and all.”(Stubnitz)

StubnitzGermany

Established 1992

http://ms.stubnitz.com/

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To my knowledge, this is the first exhibition dedicated especially to artistic practice around the water environment. I consider it as a very important event that supports the argument of rising importance of this art practice. The exhibition is accompanied by a book, which is again the first publication focused solely at this mode of artistic practice.

“Radical Seafaring is a multidisciplinary exhibition, publication, and program initiative that will include two-dimensional works, sculptural objects, vessels, models, film and video, off-site commissions, and boat trips around East End waterways. Under the direction of Andrea Grover, Century Arts Foundation Curator of Special Projects, the exhibition features twenty-five artists with works that range from artist-made vessels, to documentation of creative expeditions, to speculative designs for alternative communities on the water. The exhibition begins with conceptual and performance art of the 1960s and 70s and extends to recent phenomenological research and site-specific works that involve relocating the studio, the laboratory, or the performance space to the water. The phenomenological works in Radical Seafaring represent a new form of expression that is especially powerful and timely as climatologists anticipate the effects of rising sea levels, changes in weather patterns, and the impact on coastal zones—especially when one considers that half the world’s population lives within 200 miles of a sea coast. “

Radical SeafaringParrish Art Museum, Long Island, US

2016

Curator: Andrea Grover

http://parrishart.org/RadicalSeafaring

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“In December 2014, Access Gallery—in partnership with Burrard Arts Foundation—issued a call for submissions for a highly unconventional artist residency, offering selected emergent and experimental artists passage aboard cargo ships sailing from Vancouver to Shanghai. Crossing the Pacific Ocean takes approximately twenty-three days, during which time artists will be considered “in residence” aboard the vessel. As stated on the residency announcement, our intention was to select two candidates who would inaugurate this multi-year project by setting sail in late summer 2015. The response to this call was overwhelming. By deadline we had received over 800 proposals submitted by artists hailing from sites as far afield as Sevastopol, Lahore, Sao Paolo, and St. Petersburg. The calibre and strength of the submissions was striking, their ingenuity breathtaking. It was immediately clear that what we had initiated was not simply an artist residency, but a powerful framework through which to address the complexity of our contemporary condition. The cargo ship—sailing across a vast and “empty” space of the sea, nearly always invisible to those on shore and yet inextricably threaded through all our lives—seemed to offer a near bottomless container for the imagination, for narrative and for cultural critique. “(23 Days at Sea)

http://accessgallery.ca/23daysatsea/

23 Days at SeaPacific Ocean

Since 2015

Organised by Access Gal-lery, Vancouver, Canada

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Fordham gallery is a privately owned gallery, artistic residency space and lecture room aboard a 16.28m x 3.65m canal barge. The gallery owner Man Somerlinck had the barge built especially for this purpose and it also serves him as a home. The interior of the barge is designed in away that private living space is separated from the public area that can however used as a living room when no public activities are present.

Fordham GalleryUK Waterways

Since 2012

Man Somerlinck

http://fordhamgallery.co.uk

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Art UnAnchored, a travelling art and culture festival on the S.S. Stadt Wien, an old-time steam ship from the 1930s that is transformed to a dynamic platform for around four hundred participants and 60 interdisciplinary artists from around the world. The ship travels the route : Tulln - Vienna - Bratislava and back again to Vienna.During the one day trip the festival offers an 11-hour program of cinema, exhibition,live music, workshops, theatre, performances and lectures on board.

http://www.artunanchored.com/

Art UnAnchored FestivalDanube River / Austria

Since 2014

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LILAC is a 1933 lighthouse tender that once carried supplies to lighthouses and maintained buoys. Decommissioned in 1972, USCGC LILAC is now a museum ship owned by the non-profit Lilac Preservation Project. The ship is organizing various events and activities, such as artists talks, performances, concerts, drawing classes and meditation classes among others.

LilacNew York/United States

Since 2003

http://www.lilacpreservationproject.org/

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The 12th International Symposium on Electronic Art gathered 1500 artists and researchers, representing 54 nationalities, to a travelling symposium including a sonic Baltic cruise and conferences, exhibitions and workshops in Tallinn and Helsinki. Amanda McDonald Crowley , executive producer for ISEA 2004, told me during her visit aboard Eleonore, that a ship was the most suitable venue for ISEA 2004 due to issues the festival was dealing with.

“When I first imagined this event almost five years ago, I wanted to create a “floating platform” that would enable people to come together, talk, party, and exchange ideas – while being grounded in critical debate through a thematic approach.“ says Tapio Makela, Programme chair of ISEA2004.

http://www.m cult.org/projects/isea 2004

ISEA

2004Helsinki, Tallinn and Baltic Sea

2004

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Do- It -Together meetup of boat punks and DIY sailing community in the Caribbeans.

“What: Salt Assault Fest is an event for merfolk, boat punks, nomads, DIY sailors, anarchists, and any landlubber who dreams of a salty life to come together for a week of skill-sharing, networking, celebrating, and helping each other actualize our dreams for a life by sail-power.

Why: As industry industrializes, capitalism capitalizes, and police-states police; the timeless ocean and a sail full of wind has never before been a more alluring symbol of freedom, and community has never been so important. Actualizing a dream of a different life, outside the Status-quo, takes work and no one can do it on their own, but together we can make it happen. To dream of a nation without borders, governments, or segregations is to be a citizen of the Ocean.”

Salt Assault FestUnited States

http://saltassaultfest.org/

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This list of art and cultural projects around the water environment is by no means exhaustive. It summarises the most

relevant works that I am aware of, by the competition date of this thesis.

The goal of this summary is to share the basic information about these projects with other researchers, artist, and cultural workers interested in this topic. It provides them with a quick overview and hopefully helps to form a ground for further exploration, upon which new projects and collaborations might emerge.

Fig. Dorkboat at Eleonore

Fig. Sailing Stories Illustration by marie Polakova

Fig . Eleonore In The Fog(2015)by Marie

Polakova

Conclusion

“In civilization without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of ad-venture, and the police take the place of pirates.”(Foucault, 1984)

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The global issues related to water have become an increasingly important topic. Rising sea levels threatening the coastal areas of the world, melting icebergs in the polar regions and shifting climate of the whole planet… polluted oceans

and disappearing resources of drinking water, not any more sufficient for the amount of population currently inhabiting the Earth… Water conflicts that emerge as a consequence.

The Biblical image of Noah’s Arch, preserving all life forms and being able to float on the surface of flooded Earth is becoming again relevant. The oceans and the areas of International Waters are also the last territories, which although also controlled, still have large degree of freedom in comparison to anywhere on land.

Refugees escaping horrors of their war struck homelands, seeking a rescue on these waters. The ancient laws of the sea, where any ship is obliged to help once they receive an S.O.S. call from another ship. Dreams of a better future there, on the other shore, as it has been for centuries. And pirates that without the old times romantic notion still rob ships. Boats as “the greatest reserve of the Imagination” (Foucault, 1984) upon the oceans that are one of the last places where a person can feel the power of uncontrolled natural elements. Where one can be near to the pristine intensity of life. To the real life that also includes death.

Oceans as spaces where one can dream, openly and widely. And boats are carriers of such dreams. Young people from western societies, becoming nowadays sea gypsies out of choice. People around the world tackling the issues of sustainability, recycling and fair environmentally sound transport of goods they wish to consume. Dreams of change. Dreams of changing the world from below on a small scale that feels possible within one sailboat or a fleet of them.

It shall not be a surprise that artists feel the need to respond to these topics. It will be seen, if art and cultural practices related to water environment will become more widely spread as the issues mentioned above become increasingly present, to the extent that it will be not possible to ignore them any longer.

Art has the power to shift focus, to move the perception and hence to initiate the process of change. And perhaps this is, what is right now taking place.

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CANAL & RIVER TRUST – BOATING TEAM (2015),Boating Numbers in London Fact Sheet Sept.2014 (Based on National Boat Check, Mar.2015). London UK : Canal & River Trust : Internal Report

CANAL & RIVER TRUST (2012)CRT guidance for boaters without a home mooring. London UK : Canal & River Trust [Online] Available from: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/library/633.pdf

DOEDENS B., HAGE G. and VOGELS F. (2009) Temporary Landscapes. Essays. Thieme Art, Deventer & SLeM – Stichting Landschapstheater en Meer

DORMENT R. (2006) The artist who sailed to oblivion. The Telegraph 9th May 2006 [Online] Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3652223/The-artist-who-sailed-to-oblivion.html

EBRAHIM G. J. (2002) 14. Qualitative Field Research. Journal of Tropical Pediatrics [Online]Oxford Journals. 48 (2). p.196-211 Available from: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/tropej/online/ce_ch14.pdf

FOUCAULT M. (1984)“Des Espaces Autres” (Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias).Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, no. 5 (October 1984) GOMBRICH E.H. (1950) The Story of Art. London: Phaidon Press

HANNULA. M. , SUORANTA J., VADEN T. (2005) Artistic Research – Theories, Methods and Practices. Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland and University of Gothenburg / ArtMonitor, Gothenburg, Sweden

HOWELL. J. T. (1972) Hard Living on Clay Street: Portraits of Blue Collar Families. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubledayhttp://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/tsrc/documents/tsrc/working-papers/working-paper-68.pdf

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IPCC (2014) ‘Summary for Policymakers’, in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Secotral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–32. Available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/ar5_wgII_spm_en.pdf

KAWULICH. B. (2005) Participant Observation as a Data Collection Method. Forum : Qualitative Social Reserch Sozialforschung. [Online] Vol6, No.2, Art.43 Available from:http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/466/996L

KUHN G. (2010) Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy. Oakland, CA : PM Press

MAKELA M. & NIMKULRAT N. (2011). Reflection and documentation in practice-led design research. Paper presented at the Making Design Matter conference, Helsinki, Finland, May 29-31. Available from: http://ocs.sfu.ca/nordes/index.php/nordes/2011/paper/view/375

MARTYR, W. (1932) 200£ Millionaire (The Mariners Library).Essential Books

MEDOSH A. (2010) Floating Structure. [Online] Available from:http://www.thenextlayer.org/floating_structureNORRO N.(2004)ISEA 2004 Magazine. Helsinki : M-Cult

RAMSDEN H., MILLING J., PHILLIMORE J., MC CABE A., FYFE H. and SIMPSON R. (2011) The role of grassroots arts activities in communities : A scoping study. Third Sector Research Centre. Working Paper 68 [Online] Available from:

TATE, Social Sculpture. [Online]Available from:http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/social-sculpture

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• La Cité des enfants perdus (The City of Lost Children), 1995, Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet

• Das Boot, 1981, Wolfgang Petersen • The Wild Blue Yonder, 2005, Werner Herzog • Lifeboat, 1944, Alfred Hitchcock • Empire Me - Der Staat bin ich!, 2011, Paul Poet• The Deep ( Djúpið ), 2012, Baltasar Kormakur • he African Queen, 1951, John Huston • Rum Runners, Boulevard du Rhum, 1971, Robert Enrico • Cast Away On The Moon, 2009, Hey-jun Lee • Pirates of the Caribbean , 2003, Gore Verbinski • The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2004, Wes Anderson • L’Atalante, 1934, Jean Vigo • The Old Man and The Sea, 1st Short animated film by Aleksandr Petrov (1999) 2nd Feature Film by John Sturges (1958) • Jamaica Inn, 1939, Alfred Hitchcock • Battleship Potemkin, 1925, Sergei Eisenstein.Live music by

Alberto Boem • Anne of the Indies, 1951, Jacques Tourneur • Whisky Galore, 1949, Alexander Mackendrick • Le Quai Des Brumes (Port of Shadows), 1938, Marcel Carné • Moby Dick, 1956, John Huston • Vynalez Zkazy (Deadly Invention), 1958, Karel Zeman

Appendix ASchone Eleonore’s Film Boudoir 2013 – 2014Netherlands

Since 1996

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Appendix B

DorkboatNetherlands

Since 1996

Bruno Doedens, Andras Hamelberg, Veronique Vetjens, Frits Vo-Christian Liljedahl (DK): Illutron Presentation & Workshop of Underwater Lights / Resurrecting & Submerging Sculptures Suncica Pasuljevitz (SR): NAPON NAPON – INSTITUTE FOR FLEXIBLE CULTURES & TECHNOLOGIES AND ART SCENE ON DANUBE RIVER IN THE CITY OF NOVI SAD In her presentation Suncica introduced us the new media art scene in Novy Sad and discussed the presence (or rather absence) of art projects based on the Danube river.

Annabel Hesselink (NL) Artist Visit & Presentation Annabel stayed as a guest artist for a week aboard the Eleonore ship and let the water environment inspire the next steps in her ongoing project related to the moon.

Bioni Samp (UK) Presentation Resident artists of NFO DETOX residency Programme. Bioni Samp creates experimental electronic music, live and on recordings. He also seasonally works with bees. When not beekeeping, he makes custom audio software and hardware, which he uses in creating his music.

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Marie Polakova: LIFE, ART, CULTURE & PUNK ON SHIPS OF KøBENHAVN Presentation Presentation where I shared my experience from a visit of Illutron and other water based projects in Copenhagen.

Atxe & La Pelos(ES)< FILE FOUND>>> Presentation Resident artists of NFO DETOX residency Programme. Their project is to design a tattooing machine as an artefact, a bio-machine, a deconstructive virus that creates new files from the borders.

Fanch Dodeur & Barth Péron (FR): GEOCYCLAB Presentation Two French artists, travelling around the world by bike for almost three years now, exploring the network of Open Source culture around the world. After crossing western Africa, Mexico, California, south-east Asia, India, Georgia, Turkey and Balkans, they were in Linz for a few days and shared their experience before following their way back to France.

Agnieszka Pokrywka (PL/FI): FERMENT LAB Presentation Resident artists of NFO DETOX residency Programme. By careful research on fermented local food and situation of the given community. Ferment Lab aims to induct a gentle and long-lasting social change by taking an inspiration from bacterial transformations.

Pippa Buchanan (AU/AT): Stacking Functions: Permaculture, Transition and Linz Pippa will provide a short introduction to permaculture and its ethics and principles along with some examples of permaculture in action.

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Appendix CNetherlands

Dreampunk TV 2015Since 1996

DREAMPUNK TV #1 : Interview with Captain Franz Scheriau – Steam Ship Museum (Vienna) DREAMPUNK TV #2: Interview with Franz Xav – Boat Punk Culture (Linz)

DREAMPUNK TV #3: Interview about Cogo Ahoi journey and performance (Frankfurt/ Germany)

DREAMPUNK TV # 4: Interview with Captain Uwe Linke & Greenpeace Austria spokesperson Melanie Aldrian talking of Greenpeace sailing ship Beluga II.

DREAMPUNK TV # 5: Interview with the founders of RAUMSHIFF (Linz) Raumshiff is a community meeting place, exhibition and event space, young designers store & café created by students from University of Arts & Design in Linz.

DREAMPUNK TV # 6: Interview with Eksben Banke – FREDENS HAVN (Copenhagen/ Dannemark)Fredens Havn is placed near the famous alternative neighbourhood of Christiania. The area is one of the green – nature “pockets” of the city. The harbour was established 5 years ago by mall group of friends, in order to collect garbage that is carried by the currents and accumulates here and to create a model of harmonious living between people and wild life.

DREAMPUNK TV #7: Visit to The Refugee Camp in OttensheimInterviews with: Uli Böker – Mayor of Ottensheim; Ali (from Irak) and Aola A. (from Syria) - Refugees; Dodo Dorothea Schuster – Worker at The Refugee Camp

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DREAMPUNK TV #8: Reportage about Historical Ship Festival – Korneuburger Hafenfest

DREAMPUNK TV #9 : Interview with Captain Samuel Faucherre and others from Hawila – sailing cargo & performance ship Copenhagen/Denmark

DREAMPUNK TV #10 Reportage about independent art collectives in Istanbul

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V_20140623

Erklärung zur Abgabe einer Diplomarbeit /Masterarbeit/Dissertation: Name u. Matrikelnummer: …………….………………………………………………………………………………….............……

Titel der Diplomarbeit / Masterarbeit / Dissertation (nicht Zutreffende bitte streichen):

……………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………………...……..…

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……

Studienrichtung und Studienkennzahl: ………………………………………………………………………………………….……

BetreuerIn(nen) und Approbationsdatum: ….………………………………………………………………………………………...

1. Ich erkläre hiermit eidesstattlich, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig und ohne fremde Hilfe verfasst, andere als die angegebenen Quellen nicht benutzt und die den benutzten Quellen wörtlich oder inhaltlich entnommenen Stellen als solche kenntlich gemacht habe. 2. Ich bestätige hiermit, dass die Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation von den Begutachtern und Begutachterinnen approbiert ist. Die abgelieferten analogen Exemplare und das digitale Exemplar stimmen in Form und Inhalt vollständig mit der benoteten und approbierten Fassung überein. 3. Die Kunstuniversität Linz ist berechtigt, aber nicht verpflichtet, die digitalen Daten der Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation und alle damit verbundenen Begleitmaterialien in ihr digitales Repositorium hochzuladen und zum Zweck der dauerhaften Archivierung und Zurverfügungstellung in andere Formate oder auf andere Speichersysteme zu migrieren. Es ist mir bewusst, dass bei einer Datenmigration eine Änderung von Form, Umfang oder Darstellung der Publikation aus technischen Gründen nicht ausgeschlossen werden kann. Ich bin als (Zutreffendes bitte ankreuzen)

O alleinige/r InhaberIn der Nutzungsrechte an der Publikation O Bevollmächtigte/r der Inhaberin/des Inhabers der Nutzungsrechte

zur Einräumung einer Nutzungsbewilligung befugt. Ich räume hiermit der Kunstuniversität Linz das zeitlich unbefristete, nicht ausschließliche Recht ein, die abgegebene digitale Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation sowie alle damit verbundenen Begleitmaterialien im weltweiten Internet zu veröffentlichen und damit einem unbestimmten Personenkreis unentgeltlich zur Verfügung zu stellen. (Zutreffendes bitte ankreuzen):

O ja O nein

Soweit das für die Realisierung der von mir oben gewählten Zugriffsoption und zur damit einhergehenden Realisierung der Verfügbarmachung meiner Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation erforderlich ist, räume ich der Kunstuniversität Linz das unentgeltliche, nicht ausschließliche, zeitlich und örtlich unbegrenzte Recht ein, meine Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation ganz oder teilweise zu nutzen, insbesondere zu vervielfältigen, zu veröffentlichen, zu verbreiten, zu senden, zu archivieren, der Öffentlichkeit drahtgebunden oder drahtlos zur Verfügung zu stellen, zu bearbeiten, etwa an der digitalen Version der Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation Veränderungen vorzunehmen, die aus technischen Gründen oder mit Rücksicht auf die Erfordernisse der Langzeitarchivierung geboten sind. Ebenso räume ich diejenigen Rechte ein, die durch künftige technische Entwicklung oder durch Änderung der Gesetzgebung entstehen. Die digitalen Medienobjekte unterliegen dem Schutz des Urheberrechts und, soweit nicht anders angegeben, dem folgenden Creative Commons Lizenzmodell: Namensnennung – Keine kommerzielle Nutzung – Keine Bearbeitung (BY-NC-ND): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/at/ Ist die Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation mit einem bewilligten Sperrantrag von der Benutzung ausgeschlossen, wird sie erst nach Ablauf der Sperre angezeigt. 4. Ich verpflichte mich, die Kunstuniversität Linz schad- und klaglos zu halten, wenn Dritte in Bezug auf die von mir eingereichte Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation, insbesondere in Bezug auf die hier erfolgende Rechteeinräumung und internet-basierte Verfügbarmachung Ansprüche wegen Rechtsverletzung gegen die Kunstuniversität Linz geltend machen. 5. Ich wurde davon in Kenntnis gesetzt und erkläre mich damit einverstanden, dass die Kunstuniversität Linz keine Haftung für aus technischen Gründen auftretende Fehler irgendwelcher Art übernimmt. Des Weiteren wird von der Kunstuniversität Linz keinerlei Haftung dafür übernommen, dass die Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation oder Teile davon von dritter Seite unrechtmäßig heruntergeladen und verbreitet, verändert oder an anderer Stelle ohne Einwilligung aufgelegt werden. Ich räume der Kunstuniversität Linz das Recht ein, etwaige Rechtsverletzungen meines Urheberrechts an meiner Arbeit zu verfolgen. 6. Ich habe das Merkblatt zur Abgabe von Diplom-/Masterarbeiten/Dissertationen der Universitätsbibliothek gelesen und zur Kenntnis genommen. Linz, ……………………………………………………………………………………………… Datum Unterschrift