The Peregrini

The Peregrini Cycling Crew are a group of artist-collectors that will travel along a straight line from Koszalin, Poland to Rab, Croatia. The line is a rule, a limitation, it defines the territory the Peregrini can use in their journey, not going from one point of interest to another but exploring and documenting the in between. The journey is a mobile studio; a mode of creative low power travel. Peregrini explore cultural pluralism and socio-regional diversity by traveling, leaving a trace of impressions.

communication

COMMUNICATION ON THE ROAD

We are the Peregrini Cycling Crew, we follow a fold on our map and go straight from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, from Poland to Croatia, through lands, forests, villages, mountains, fields and cities. We are by bike and we are solar powered. We bring stories and creations. When you meet us or see a trace from us it means you are part of that fold, and one of it's inhabitants. This summer the Peregrine Cycling Team will pass by your village to listen to your stories; find local recipes, saints, wildlife, plants, etc. Please join us for dinner and share thoughts and ideas.

what kind of organizations would we like to contact?

  • cultural centres
  • arts organizations
  • arts collectives
  • scouts
  • alternative spaces
  • hobby organizations
  • environmental organizations

COMMUNICATION FOR FOLLOWERS

From North Poland to Croatia a fold has been discovered on the map of Europe. The Peregini Cycling Crew will wonder along this line as closely as possible (during July 2012) with a bicycle-caravan. Each member of the crew will have a specific focus during the journey. Fellow-travellers are encouraged to join the team at any point to make connections with people and places along the line. The Peregini will be collecting experiences and celebrate forgotten modes of intentional travel. Wandering towards meaningful coincidences leaving traces to mark our journey.

For the Peregrini the travel is as important as reaching the goal. They engage with people they meet on the road, capturing their stories, drawing on the disciplines of visual anthropology and storytelling. A series of proof-of-concepts will be produced along the fold to empower cultural practices, pointing towards a new form of cultural entrepreneurship.

Media technologies and created artworks use the renewable power of cultural mobility. Documentation and publication is instant, using mobile networking and printing on demand.

COMMUNICATION FOR PUBLIC

The Peregrini Cycling Crew are a group of artist-collectors that will travel along a straight line from Koszalin, Poland to Rab, Croatia. The line is a rule, a limitation, it defines the territory the Peregrini can use in their journey, not going from one point of interest to another but exploring and documenting the in between. The journey is a mobile studio; a mode of creative low power travel. Peregrini explore cultural pluralism and socio-regional diversity by traveling, leaving a trace of impressions.

notes

28-31/03 - the Peregrini will follow the fold

leaving a trace on the fold possible traces:

language cfr hobo
shrines: what material to bring? little solar panels, electronics = animated objects

– using the environment to leave the objects: in trees, electric poles, …
– embed them in the environment, making people aware to take care of them

symbols that reflect everybody's interests
crafted traces
the falcon leads and leaves the way

documenting the fold

collecting:

* songs

  • sound (of our wheels..)
  • images
  • post on the way
  • smells

» making a deal with a telephone company to get free online access, check out in every country if prepaid internet is possible

the group moves as a caravan/ organic body, with cameras in the front and back, the recording of a breath and a heartbeat (possible live streaming of this)

the route

how will we set out the exact route?

* google maps

  • open street maps
  • stafkaart

» french company makes maps on demand (also digital?)

ca 1300km, possible to bike in 21 days

output

handbook how to follow the line
collection of vegetation, recipes, stories of the fold
exhibiting the physical map of 26 meters

navigation

navigation app: staying as close to the line as possible
communication on the road: walkie-talkie?, bikers communication gear
we need local guides on the road: we'll try to find in every country one or several guides with vehicles (we need to have too much stuff to carry)

followers

open to all disciplines
sound person
cook
artsambulance?

communication strategies

visual and textual presentation
peregrini.cc
what are we?

* mobile studio, creation process, production on the road

  • tour company, caravan, collective, society, alliance, sodality, confraternity, guild, circle, family, brew, blend, circus
  • artists, journeyers, fold-followers, collectors, performers, cyclists, landmeters, planners, environmentalists, line-pilgrims
  • travel, movement, performance
  • share
  • myth, foundation story
  • meeting
  • celebrating, excitement
  • the line is the easiest way to travel on a map and the most difficult to travel on land
  • imagine the line as a future canal, as a road for a plane, as a straight pilgrimage
  • the line is the starting point for a narrative, modernist, reductionism, tool, limitation, rule
  • imaginary project
  • a carrier of stories
  • expressing, messaging
  • concept
  • creating expectations
  • humanscale traveling, investing, intending » don't let future generation pay for our over consumerism
  • projecting a touristic way of traveling on a pilgrimage
  • we're open minded but we don't ask the way
  • 1300km of stories

» how do we let people know they are part of the fold?

  • we'll send all the mayors of the villages on the fold a letter that says the peregrini are passing through in July

devices:

  • iPads (4)
  • phones (6)
  • laptops (1-2)
  • camera 5D nadine
  • pocket cameras (2)
  • zoom recording device nadine
  • speaker

equipment

  • 3 big bikes with 3 solar panels
  • voltmeter
  • small solar panels » see Bart & Alibaba.com
  • everybody is self-sufficient
  • cooking gear?
  • power kit: dynamo, solar, …

powergeneration

packing list

Food and Co:
  • Pots and pans + tripod (bamboo or found on the way?)
  • Foldable grill
  • Water container (foldable)
  • Ground oven & leaves
Tools :
  • Repair kit for bike
  • Repair kit for people
  • Tool box general (electric, bikes, common tools)
  • Extra bike for guest (on the car)
Documentation :
  • Common booklet / scribe
Personal list (mandatory):
  • Passport
  • Bicycle
  • Food plate
  • Fork
  • Spoon
  • Knife
  • Drinking glass
  • Water container
  • Bicycle repair kit
  • Tent/sleeping bag
  • Tooth brush
  • Towel
  • Bio-degradable soap
  • Bio-degradable detergents (dishes&clothes)
  • Cotton t-shirt
  • Trousers without seems on the inside
Rules :

when

July: startdate 1 July, we have until the 3rd to gear up, find a guide and leave Koszalin

tasks

  • digital & printed map (Pacôme)
  • call for participation (PP & nadine)
  • visual identity, logo (Pacôme, Theun)
  • check equipment (Loes, Robert)
  • research of possible partners (Poland PP, CZ-AT-Resilients partners nadine)
preparation

google doc: where we can put down what's necessary, what's must have and what's would like

The Pollinators

green-powered dimensions of pilgrimage

A pilgrim is a kind of performer; the passing through is as important as reaching the sacred goal: all details matter. Whereas tourists and business travellers are solely present once the final destination is reached, the pilgrim takes on the road as a means of his/her expression. Since the vast majority of our world could be described in terms of in-between spaces (between the hotel and the beach, or between the lobby and the conference room), the pilgrim is the one who will connect the dots through forgotten lands and bear witness of untold stories.

In the above described topography of global interest economy most of us are redundant. Transactional traditions and rituals have been replaced by insular postmodern identity politics and fundamentalism. Soft values are replaced by hard values. We listen to the ones who know, not to the ones who believe. It is in such a world that the pilgrim becomes more important then ever. The Pollinators will summon the potential of New Technologies in an Old World. An ever so important human activity such as travelling (connecting ethnicities and social groups, hopefully preventing conflicts, wars) has to become something more then the fast forwardness of airborne transportation with disastrous environmental imprints. The Travel in the version of the Pollinators (re)becomes an endeavour, a sweet one.

Following old pilgrim roads, the Pollinators will travel through Europe in July 2012, on custom-made bikes and tricycles that have been prepared in community workshops in different parts of the continent. These vehicles will embrace the old aspect of muscle-powered transportation with the new means of storing energy and using it for communicative purposes, such as mobile data communication or simply lighting up the darkness of the roads with LED:s and low-power consuming displays. Everything is used and re-used and as little as possible is disposed of; using the generated electricity of travelling pilgrims as well as making road installations out of scrap. The tricyclers act as Documentarists, attempting to establish a new genre of socio-anthropological art and storytelling.

Activities related to Pollinators:

saints_and_venerative_places_workshop

Pro-energy journey

PILGRIMAGE

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

Following a thesis by Hakim Bey travelling 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

The Fold

In the search for the Pollinators route, our guiding principle has been looking for a route which does not have any meaning in itself. We decided to travel about 50 km a day (about 5 hours biking) for 3 weeks, which we like to measure as the distance of 20 cm on the map (scale 1:5000 000). The physical fold of The 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 (Croatia) at the Adriatic Sea.

We will travel through the following countries: Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia.
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
  • pollinators - drifters
  • initiation of the group.
  • temporary adoption.
  • journey; intentional travel - in between.
  • path-karavaan- connections.
  • Baraka: imaginal, infinite, re-enactments, gift, share, attention, veneration, observation, inclusion, tolerance, metanoia, inner theatre
  • Hospitality: how do we want to connect.
  • Communication: What path do we follow?.

We still need to sort out how and where we are spending the nights, and research in which places you are allowed to freely camp outdoors. For example 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

Bike Roles

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

  • Colonial 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, Karen Blixen, connector (Loes)
  • The Narr, Jester, Entertainer, Mirror (Cesar)
  • The Log lady, the brain, reflector (Geska)

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, technical set-up systems; eveloping mesh/sensor network. geo-enabled data collection system
  • Foam; the administrator

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

  • Slovenia: Atol
  • Croatia: Katja or Grenni (daughter)
  • Czech: Guy van Belle

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

Datacollectors

Data collection built into 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 weather data, 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 mouth-opening
  • collect hats from places and stack them on your hat, or skirts and let in this way a costume grow.
  • pollinators is a theatreplay.

* 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, vagabonds, leave notes under 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 announcer, we meet at certain checkpoints ( Hemink Fulton, Bas Jan Ander).

Sending bits of stories to different people.

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)

15/09 Mapping

Asa from - r a k e t a - preprepared 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 want 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 guide. Follow someone.

17/09 FitzCarraldo

Imagine “taking the plane” literally from North Poland to Croatia along the fold. This could be an amazing crowdsourced effort to pull a stripped-down airliner (no fuel, no engines, just the lightweight hull) through Europe. Could be a smash hit on kickstarter! All along the journey people can help pulling the machine by hand by lawnmower, by bike, by tractor. The pollinator team would be the pilots / cabin crew / mechanics team, dressed accordingly. At cities and villages a line of run-way-lights could be set up.

And the job could be to make a future road for a plane on the Fold. A crew is starting up North riding with a wingspan of the aeroplane: a red white striped stick (eg with wingspan 12,3 m) and a red/white flashing LED on each end. Land surveyor equipment is precisely needed to lay out the Fold line. Triangle signs will be chalky marked on the road. The whole group wears air-hostess suits, make specific gestures with signs etc.

Possibly an electric airport wagon with trailer can come along with the bikegroup, charged 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 journey more as an expedition where we need all forces to focus on a job.

Also virtual figures could travel along, possibly St Joseph of Cupertino patron saint of pilots and astronauts.

A list to add any tools, requirements:

  • Solar panels (see notes on Murray trip: Solar Panel Experiences)
  • dynamo fallback system. Using hub dynamos is great, but operate on different volage (6V) to solar (12V upwards). Possibly good to look at the Magnificent Revolution system that takes power for clever management.
  • Drawing equipment, I-pad assembly to bike
  • picoprojector
  • 2 iPads
  • 2 iPhones
  • iPhone- 8 hours 35, ceshvends
  • Canon SD Zoom - battery
  • bbq-cycle-basket
  • fridge?
  • contact Korean food-storage girl via Anna Maria.
  • everybody takes care for charging your own equipment
  • sharing equipment
  • repair kits
  • first aid kit
  • water container
  • waterpurifing tablets

Performing Pictures have two bikes. One is a FF995 from Fietsfabriek.

Wheels are made of rigid aluminium rims with extra thick stainless steel spokes and can take up to 200 kg each Front wheel 20 inch, back wheel 26 inch 7-gear nav Shimano Footbrake (back) och trumbroms (front) It is currently equipped with a plastic coated plywood (Betonplex) box: inside measures of L 66 x W 55 x H 45 cm. Maxload of the box is 100 kg. (However we plan to change the box for something more lightweight.) Total width of the bike: 65 cm Total length of the bike: 230 cm Luggage carrier back (can take up to 80 kg load) Battery lights front and back Frame: Stainless steel, fosfated and varnished.

Film list

  • Wood Car - Joost Conijn
  • The Sacred Made Real - Spanish Painting and sculpture 1600-1700 by the National Gallery
  • Urim and Thummim - an amazing documentary recording the birth of a new religion in the most unexpected circumstances.
  • Nomadic Milk, Esther Polak,http://www.nomadicmilk.net/full/
  • Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog

Reading list

Reading Notes

Davies (1988) has discussed many of the reasons pilgrims give for making their journeys. These include the desire to participate in gatherings, to educate oneself, to ensure safe passage to the afterlife, to ask specific favours including forgiveness and aid, to validate religious beliefs, to give thanks and to gain prestige and power upon return. Bronwen Price; Journeying into different realms, travel pilgrimage and rites of passage at Graig Lwyd

Chapels, churches list


Possible current day patronages:

Digital realm:
  • Patron Saints of the Database
  • Patron Saints of the Cloud
  • Patron Saints of Battery Power
  • Patron Saints of Net Privacy
  • Patron Saints of Signal Strength
  • Patron Saints of the Back-up
  • Patron Saints of Undo
  • Patron Saints of the Hashtag
  • don't forget St IGNUcius
Business:
  • Patron Saints of Supply and Demand
  • Patron Saints of Business-to-Business
  • Patron Saints of Start-ups
"We Are As Gods"

but which gods?

  1. gods of lost sounds
  2. gods of displacement
  3. gods of non
  4. gods of forever
  5. beyond gods
  6. gods of beyond
  7. trans-gods
  8. iso-gods
  9. meta-gods
  10. the gods that jack built

Cathedral bots


jesusautobot by theun

Jesus as a Sungod

Some elements of the monothesism of Neferkheperure-Wa'enre Akhenaten seeped into Christianity via psalm 104, making Jesus in some aspects a solar deity. Imagined quite literally this made me think of the infant Jesus as a small burning boy. Within the context of the Pollinators this would probably mix with photovoltaics. Here's a quick sketch:

part of resilients and/or the pollinators

  • resilients/the_peregrini.txt
  • Last modified: 2013-03-11 13:52
  • by nik