A Resilients' workshop on Otok Rab, Croatia September 9-16.

The Pollinators are a part of a growing network of cultural practitioners, with their core in the Resilients project. 'Resilients' are people of all ages preparing for uncertain futures, by experimenting with resilient forms living & working as a form of artistic practice.

In order to prepare for their 2012 green-powered pilgrimage tour, the Pollinators are gathering for the MAKING AND REMAKING OF SAINTS AND VENERATIVE PLACES workshop on Rab. The workshop includes a public program, and we invite students, cultural workers and the interested public to take part in the open program.

With the emergence of modern archaeology and anthropology providing new kinds of interpretation for the meanings and origins of saintly places on the one hand, and the projects of modernity and religious reform aiming the purification and reinterpretation of rites and sites on the other hand, saintly places and their origins have become subjects of conflicting interpretations and contested practices.

Modernity here enters the place as disciplinary and exclusionary force in service of a civilising project aiming to either eradicate or to marginalise popular communal and religious traditions that do not seem to fit the project of authoritarian top-down progress. Rather than erasing the sites and landscapes of saint veneration and religious imagination, however, the projects of modernity and reform have initiated a process of profound changes in the ways in which locality in its different levels is being perceived and enacted. In a way, the policing of the modern meaning of local attainments also leads to a re-strengthening, re-structuring and re-inventing of venerative practices.

Performing Pictures has spent the last two years working with issues of venerative practices and new forms of venerative artifacts, and as a final aim of the pilgrim route, we wish to examine issues relating to the historical continuity and transformation of sacred places, the changing configurations of the sacred and social order in the structures of villages, cities and pilgrimage sites and saintly places and their histories as sites of contestation over cultural and national identity.  

During the weeklong workshop, we are building a kinetic chapel – a chapel featuring an animated saint. The chapel will probably be the first of its kind running on solar-energy. The animation is a specially developed stop-motion technique using sequences of film negatives exposed through a large-format pinhole camera. Anyone interested in taking part in the chapel building workshop is welcome to join in between 10 am and 2 pm during the period of 10-15 September. (Palit, iznad skladišta Rab-komerc). The workshop is held in Croatian and English.

INAUGURATION AND OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE KINETIC CHAPEL Palit, Thursday 15th of September at 18.00 (iznad skladišta Rab-komerc)

Kampor, Monday 12th of September 16.00

Ivo Barić, historian, professor and author on several books about the history of Rab, will make a guided tour and lecture on the Italian concentration camp on Rab. The camp was established in July 1942 and it soon became known for its appalling conditions, which caused the deaths of numerous inmates. The tour is held in Croatian with English translation.

Kino Rab, Saturday 10th of September 16.00-18.00

What is a map? What is a journey? What is a sacred place? What is a pilgrim? These are some of the initial questions the Pollinators are asking while preparing their 2012 green-powered bike odyssé through Europe. In a 2 hour long open film program we seek inspiration in relation to these questions.

The Pollinators workshop is initiated by Performing Pictures, with the kind support of Stockholms Stads Kulturförvaltning, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and the EU Culture Programme 2007-2013.

FOR MORE DETAILS AND UPDATES TO THE PROGRAM PLEASE CHECK http://www.performingpictures.se _

PILGRIMAGE

Pollinators is the rejuvenation of old practices combined with new transdisciplinary art practices transported to pilgrimage.

Following a thesis by Hakim Bey traveling was a tool for three practices: war, trade and pilgrimage. Within pilgrimage the mode of the journey is what is important and in the end the point.

Pilgrimage is about sharing or giving and rituals. What does giving mean? Creating products on the road? Or more immaterial: paying or better giving attention.

Pilgrimage is going from goal to goal, moving towards an end point. Is it searching for an in existing ideal?

TRAVEL

Travel can be seen as a moving studio in time space and in between.

Traveling is connecting the nodes, like a pilgrim does and it's the in between space that is important. The nodes are sacred places.

POLLINATORS

Their travel is a pro-energy journey. It has a comfort aspect to it.

Will the journey itself be the goal for the pollinators? Can the target be movable? Will everybody have their own purpose or goal?

What about communication? Communication is meeting people, is documenting. It's not about live blogging, saying 'here I am'.

What's important?

• documentarist
• different languages
• multisensoral
• digital and physical
• collecting data
• contact
• ethnographical research
• dry information

veneration: early 15c., “reverence,” from venerari “to worship, revere,” from venus (gen. veneris) “beauty, love, desire” (see Venus).

veneration:   noun 1. the act of venerating. 2. the state of being venerated. 3. the feeling of a person who venerates; a feeling of awe, respect, etc.; reverence: They were filled with veneration for their priests. 4. an expression of this feeling: A memorial was erected in veneration of the dead of both world wars.

Looking for a route; which does not have many meaning in itself. We decided to travel about 50 km a day (about 5 hours biking) for 3 weeks , so that's a distance of 20 cm om the map (scale 1:5000 000). The physical fold of Railmap of Europe unfolded our route: ~Let's follow the fold of the map. The route will start in Koszalin (Poland)on the Baltic Sea and will end close to Rab (Kroatie) at the Adriatic Sea.

Countries we will meet in order: Poland, Tschech, Austrie, Slovenia, Kroatia.
Places we will meet on the way:

• Koszalin's city borders on Chełmska hill, is a site of pagan worship in prehistory, and upon which is now built the tower “sanctuary of the covenant”, which was consecrated by Pope John Paul II in 1991, and is currently a pilgrimage site.
• Zoomable map on the Fold

• polllinators - drifters
• inintiation of the group.
• temporary adoption.
• journey; intentional travel - in between.
• path-karavaan- connections.
• Baraka: imaginal, infinite, re-enactments,gift, share, attention, veneration, obseravation, inclusion, tolerance, metanoia, inner theatre
• Hospitality: how do we want to connect.
• Communication: What path do we follow?.

Where do we stay over: in Sweden there are wooden huts, often situated on the extreme conditions of life.

Rules along the route:

• Follow the fold of the Map
• Never go Back
• Don't stress the route
• Make a new rule every day
• Aren't Rules to break
• Don't speak on certain days
• …

Traditional Pilgramige in the dragon lines, laylines. Everybody documents in there own way and speed. Every bikers plays a role; we distinquesed so far:

• Collonial sketcher (Theun)
• Various artists, Captain, (instant logbook Trudo)
• Collector of samples, old scientist (Cocky)
• Ethnographer
• Cinematographer, camera Shackleton, always thinking about Light (Rob)
• Storyteller, marker, communicator, Karim Blyhken, connector (Loes)
• Nar, Jester, entertainer, mirror (Ceser)
• Log lady, the brain, reflector (Geska)
• The oracle, Deus at machino, sender of rules (Asa)

possible role of our partners;

• Times up: the carrier, to lift the bikers over the hills close to Linz
• Atol: St Bernards Dog, problem solver
• Foam; the administrator

In each country there will be a host: Poland: Anna Maria

• Slovenia: Atol
• Kroatie: Katja or Grenni (daughter)
• Czechia: Guy van Belle

other possible bikers: Yann, panorama Mr 360, Bruno Tede

Data collection build in the bikes: contact Tapio concerning his workshop bicycle data collecting.

• for instance sensor sensing how far we are of the fold line in time. This data can be translated (arduino) in a soundtrack along the Fold. * constant visualization of energylevel harvesting (ask Tapio) * collection weatherdata, angle of topology * record the word “Yes” or “Beer” along the Fold and make it in one soundtrack. * travels through words,smell, sounds, colours (of blooming flowers, or skincolours, avarage headsize or mouthopening * collect hats from places and stack them on your hat, or skirts and let in this way a costum grow. * pollinators is a theatreplay.

What is the next question. Utopia whatever.

* Energy harvesting; via dynamo? (bring along external kit for bike guests) * sample stuff to collect: stickers, publication on the road * mechanical bike decoration, (e.g. flex sticks on bike), A kite windtunnel yellow/black striped as a symbol. * amount of cyclers; about 12. * small transp. plastic bags or tubes for sample collections, sound recording, stamps, vegabounds, leave notes onder stones.

Food and cooking: gather food on the way, interaction on the road, trade, travel without money. presenting datacollection as a tool for trading
having a back up car with a cook annex announcemaker, we meet at certain checkpoints ( Hemink Fulton, Bas Jan Ander).

Sending bits of storys to different people.

specs:

• Solar panels
• dynamo fallback system
• Drawing equipment, I-pad assembly to bike
• picoprojector
• 2 I-pads
• 2I-phones
• I-phone- 8 hours 35, ceshvends
• Canon SD Zoom - battery
• bbq-mandje
• fridge?
• contact Korean foodstore girl via Anna Maria.
• everybody has a personal tool
• everybody takes care for charging your own equipment
• sharing equipment
• repair kits
• first aid kit
• water container
• waterpurifing tablets

Left over energy goes to a public event: a party, light projector, music.
Keep connected to the bigger picture; “one can have the all the gear but no idea”
Connecting each ones collected data into one output (daily public event)

Asa from - r a k e t a - prepapared a workshop around mapping so the bicyclers act as documentarists, attempting to establish a new genre of socio-anthropological skill. Question Asa asked were eg: Choose a location you would like to look the same in 50 years from now. What is it you like about the site? Why do you wnat it to be preserved. How do you enter if you are shy? when are we coming home? What keeps a society together? How does it sound when you are on an excursion? Can we ever enter the past or the future? eg a Task: Anyone can be quide. Follow someone.

thinking of an electric airport wagon with trailer so come along with the bikegroup. The wagon chargers itself by solarpanels, it will have a break when run dead, all its panels will be laid out around the wagon, when charged it can run to its next dead.etc.

Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo purchases a steamboat and drives it against the current, eventually, when faced with an impassable stretch of water, he uses the help of natives to take the boat across a stretch of land. Lets make the journery more as an expedition where we need all forces to focus on a job.

And the job acn be to make a future road for an airplane on the Fold. A crew is starting up North riding with a spanwith of the airoplane: a red white striped stick (eg with spanwidt 12,3 m) and a red/white flashing LED on each end. Land surveyor equipment is precicely needed to lay out the Fold line. Triangle signs will be chalky marked on the road. The whole group wearrs airhosting suits, make specific gestures with signs etc.

Also virtual figures are travelling along.