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I know you all have seen this text here a couple of time but I place it here because it is the place where all that follows happens

ROSINA IVANOVA OUTLANDIA

Outlandia is the idea of going to a place you don’t know anything about. It implies spontaneity, movement, childish curiosity and relationship to space. Outlandia is the ephemeral state I carry within my body somewhere between land and the Rafti island in the Aegean sea- it combines performative elements that create imagined geographies of visited places as situations. It tests the human body’ limits of writing, walking and canoeing and combines short stories of wanderings, encounters with strangers and physical explorations, together with photography and video, to forge the space of Outlandia. Outlandia consists of a journey to The Elephant Rock to the Lovers’ Cave beach, to The

Garden and to the Rafti island. My entanglement with Outlandia was such that provides questions of its linkages to spaces that is comprised of and its leaks to other places. It creates, without a destination, text geographies of bodily experimentations of these places- to experiment with how we make sense of the experiences of the body in these physical spaces -as chance circumstances of places? Walking to nowhere and endlessly rowing with my paddle is the idea to depart from the initial site- to have found permanence in the immediate impermanence. Outlandia re- tells the same story over and over again from my journey to the real place, but the entire story can never be fully told

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Outlandia: from Lovers’ Cave beach to The Elephant Rock to the Raftis Island and the space in between  

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May 2014, parts of my journey to the Lovers’ Cave beach and the coast around the island

Sand Pile, video documentation, outdoors installation view 2014 Duration: 0:29:32 Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLt3fHVuRbE

Sand Pile is an unedited video material of the instance when Ivan and I went to the beach with the initial aim to play with sand, and record 4 hands doing so. After driving around to find a beach with sand (most beaches here are with stones) we set up under a tree and attached the camera via spider web like strings that pull its both sides tied up to the tree branches, with the lens looking down towards the surface of the beach.  We ended up moving sand from one place to another – from the shore to the tree, carrying the sand with buckets and a flowerpot. The strings, pots and all are objects of opportunity we found on us or in the car; the sand, the beach, the camera and our bodies were the only planned materials to work from.  

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Ivan: Making Sand Pile is the idea of spending time with another person. We had different arguments about life, points of life –like who wants to do gardening […]My flower pot had holes so until I was getting to that spot, the sand was almost gone. I remember you moving sand with the yogurt bucket and mumbling something all the time […]

  Ivan and I had a very specific visual image about the 4 hands in the range of the camera (without leaving) and the unspecified conversation. During the making, the conversation about what are we doing began, and not before that. The playful absurdity in caring water and sand with a flower pot that has holes, the very fact that we would cross paths while carrying the sand, the fact that we walk away from the camera to go get sand (the camera records partial moments of our conversation), and the perfect natural background sound of the beach, became elements of our interest. These rather surfacing (not intended) happenstances, or else- circumstances of the situation, were way more precarious than editing a very specific image. After that we decided to “leave” the material untouched as it happened instead of picking best parts or creating a time lapse of sand shape shifts, and this way to (possibly) let the viewer experience a part of the real time, through the eye of the camera together with the wind blows, but added some of the conversation as English subtitles; this is tricky because inserting these could mold a controlled nature (you have to trust me for the translation) . With time, and as I sit on what we did, and what happened, everything becomes clearer and easier to explain somehow  

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The Rolling Snail is a sample of my rolling snails archive; I walk in the night with my rolling snail toy (object given to me- like all the objects I use in Outlandia- given or found-like the green boat, the rabbit ears, the island, the flowers, etc.) every time I walk to the Lovers’ Cave beach in the night to visit Usman. This is now becoming more of a sound piece with moving image and just about the right quality. The snail is from wood and does not have a magnet to collect objects as it rolls but any ideas of yours on interventions and additions to the snail body are most and very welcome The walks last 8-15 minutes: from my doorstep to the Lovers’ cave beach. The archive is of 87 days rolling snails walks. I wonder what happens to the snail in the big city? Would you be up to seeing something like that?

Rolling Snail, Video documentation of walking and rolling a snail toy, 2014 Duration: 0:05:54 Link to video : https://vimeo.com/121127581    

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October 2014, part of my journey to the Garden

Walking in circles, arranging branches, action Duration: 6 hours The tallest is 1.9m, most are my life seize I continued my weed- experiment during which I use the branches Ivan cuts in the garden that will be later on disposed in the trash. What I do is that I create hut- like, pyramid like, island like, tree-house, anything-like formations by simply only placing the brunches one on top of the other without any other joining materials (e.g. glue, or ropes etc.) and let them stand in the air simply on gravity. I observed after that how the feelings of wind and rain and tiny storms are way more pronounced in me- I start thinking  

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about the weather (when I was small ‘talking about the weather was done by grown ups and was easily disposed by me, for being banal and for lacking any creativity- maybe because it cant be changed). I am aware of and feel the wind in relation to its possible destructive and natural powers may have on my freestanding formations. I am curious to go and check on them the next day- if they are still standing or have they fallen due to the wind or some animals that may have been there.

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What I’ ve noticed is that a small feminine body can get inside without “destroying” the hut, but not a male. I called this experiment ‘walking in circles’ because I walked in circles to make them. Doing this was never with the intention to make “work” but with the intention to rest in nature, and if I walk in this paradise- garden full of possibilities, to keep it open on what might happen in my journey. And lest be honest- these are way too permanent for me (art joke).

Here  are  some  flying  thoughts  for  the  back  of  a  card:  The  appropriation  of  found  objects  that  staple  elements  of  still  life  into  forms  that  merely  insinuate  sculpture  (another  person  may  call  that  extremely  sculptural  or  performative,  but  I  want  to  make  a  note  on  the  relationship  between  site-­‐  specificity  and  x  ).  This  thought  could  have  the  potential  to  approach  the  discourse  surrounding-­‐  contemporary  three-­‐dimensional  objects,-­‐  what  one  may  call  a  pre-­‐  or  post-­‐  sculptural  thought,  and  their  place  of  making  and  viewing  as  to  weather  something  will  constitute  a  work  of  art,  or  will  sink  in  the  condition  of  fragile,  unattainable,  and  disappear  in  its  own  impermanence;  or  is  it  that  disappearance  moment  is  a  key,  and  what  could  be  the  conditions  in  which  such  (if  called)  work  is  transferable  (or  not)  to  another  site.  How?  How  do  we  transfer  that  work  (do  we)  since  arriving  with  “ready”  work  and  just  copy  pasting  it  in  the  ‘new  site’  -­‐  we  “inform  of  our  work,  so  we  expect  others  to  ‘take  in’  and  this  would  show  a  great  deal  of  a  gap.  Is  it  then  that  the  work  is  entirely  site-­‐specific  and  is  created  in  collaboration  with  the  surrounding  (including  the  staff)  of  the  new  place  for  which  work  is  made?  So  are  we  talking  here  about  some  sort  of  impossibility  or  possibility  to  transfer  the    

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work?  (of  course  it  could  be  not  that  ‘either  or’,  as  Julia  makes  a  note  of  that  often,  it  could  be  some  sort  of  negotiation,  of  the  two  And  which  parts  are  kept  “transferred”  and  which  parts  are  adapted  to  the  new  conditions?  what  is  the  condition  of  contemptemporary  curating  making  spaces  and  the  nodes  for  site-­‐specific  work,  when  I  have  heard  from  curators:  ‘your  work  needs  to  be  a  document  for  this  exhibition’,  or,  ‘I  am  played  (paid)  only  that  many  hours  to  listen  to  your  work’,  or  complete  lack  of  communication  with  the  people  taking  care  of  the  place.  Do  we  expect  that  the  site  and  those  living  there  would  be  open  to  negotiate  a  work  with  us?  How  do  we  create  those  nodes  and  channels  to  begin  a  conversation?  in  this  pleasing  culture,  we  constantly  adapt  to  who  is  addressing  us-­‐  this  is  referred  to  as  respecting  the  reader.  We  answer  in  the  different  languages,  in  the  different  logics  of  our  counterparts.  We  adapt  our  answer  to  something,  someone....  keep  their  right  to  change  and  initiate  a  new  way  of  doing  things  as  ways  to  adapt  to  someone-­‐something,  how  can  we  make  a  space  that  is  constantly  adapting  to  new  circumstances  and  is  changeable  by  those  participating?  What  do  we  give  the  others  by  changing?    Must  we  constantly  adapt  to  the  needs  of  others?  Have  we  become  pleasing  the  audience  oriented?  Does  art  need  to  be  likeable?  It  all  went  some  place  else  

No need to read the blue text, just an example of a dispersed text for a card, or..

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My journey to the Raftis island (the paradox with the) unfinished paper card-left blank on the back, digital print, 2013 13x10 cm Cards- pieces of the journeys to Outlandia I keep on printing possible cards, writing letters to people and art, and assembling a small book with postal addresses, including yours but I never send the letters-cards. The cards contain visual from videos, walks, objects I find during the walks, of performances, drawings and texts creating relationships to places, and the stories or my current daily thoughts on paper, like these texts here and alike the texts I wrote in the Outlandia album – some more freely written than others    

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   The canoe in the bell, unfinished paper card, digital print 2013  14x8cm            

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I know you ve seen that one too many times, but I was never sure if I manage to communicate how it was made

Left and right hand while walking, 2013 240x160mm Diptych drawing recording left and right foot movement and steps while walking outdoors. Drawn while moving, simultaneously with the left and the right hand while having attached a board perpendicular to my chest. My right hand moves to draw simultaneously with the right leg movement. Same for the left  

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Found Objects while walking

Clown head and found objects in Outlandia, post- card, digital print on paper, 2014 17x15cm you ve seen that one too, but Sonia hasn’t, we never talked about it but would like to continue assembling found stuff

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So this is what a card looks like; the text is from another card- Letter to A- you ve seen, however, it is different when the space on the back is filled in with text – sometimes I even wonder, shall I just leave the cards with just a record of the daily temperature….the thing is I do write texts – a lot of them daily- anywhere I get the chance – in the bus, on the station, while walking, but I am having a great difficulty organizing the texts as they are dispersed everywhere on various flying pages and digital files I cant even find, so I am having trouble with disciplining my self to actually write- in on the back of the cards- to meet the card with text so they are always in progress but I just make more cards and more texts separately, even though they refer to one another, and sometimes to the person they are addressed to; maybe I could divide some way in which I do so, but also be a way to organize my written and research files, as I have now more than 1TB of docx, and pdfs., and confusing duplicates of the same files with new changes at different places in the texts, in two or more different files. I am lost, I need to find a way to make it work without loosing texts, any ideas? Turn my computer into paper…

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Sisyphean events of place, snapshot from video Performance, duration 2 hours, photo credit Mikkel Niemann An attempt to ‘transfer the site: the duration, the childhood element, the bell sound and the fragility of Outlandia events of place’ to the Linder Project Space, Berlin How did that go for those that saw/see it now?

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Photo credit and text: Stephanie Reid ‘remnants from a performance installation by Rosina Ivanova. The artist practiced a feat of strength and endurance by holding up weights, with both arms outstretched to her sides, for a long period of time. Occasionally, she rings an encouraging bell. She likens the experience to the efforts of travel and immigration. All the while, a boat travels through the water on the screen behind her to emphasize the connection’

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Outlandia album with open window, hard-copy view, 2014      

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Page from the Outlandia album, photography from performance with the legendary text by Julia Hyde

  25  Page from Outlandia album, photography of notes with text by Jean-Marie Casbarian

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December- January 2015, Parts of inter-city walks- maps to walk on from indoor objects

I started drawing objects from indoor and applying them onto real maps and called them ‘maps to walk on’. This is a way too predetermined walk, in comparison to my previous walks that were without destination. I thought I would go the other way …This could be seen as ‘going back to the “beginning” Oct 2013 when i walked 1st time to Lovers’ Cave beach on the sentence of Tino Segal, ‘leave the house’ but also as some sort of mental preparation to walk, and as an announcement of my walk. I draw in a sitting- immobilized position from the “real object in the room” or human body parts 10 min-2 hours and hope that I will have the chance to resume my ‘maps to walk on’ or the found objects gathering next month- May.

The duration of the walks themselves are a question since I can place the image of the objects onto the maps, in various spatial relations, scales; they were meant to be daily maps to walk on, but that does not mean that I cannot draw a champagne glass on a map that requires a month of walking to be completed. I tried walking in the city, and not in outlandia, and the experience is completely different of course.  

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This one also has some lines to be made with the boat

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To  become  a  city  map-­‐  there  will  be  confusion  with  buildings,  walking  through  and  around  them  and  so  u  think  of  Gordon  Matta  Clarke,  and  the  removal  of  architecture  on  the  way  

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my gold fish Marco Polo

overall  These are all s t ra ins, nodes of the same work but I do not feel ready or patient enough to devote to any Single one of them at the moment (e.g. only map walks, or only walks in circles, only cards). I am having difficulty concentrating on one. I know I don’t have to but this never-finished never final is starting to freak me out- as I can have some temporary carrying work vessels. Can understand how tackling all these at the same time with me makes my life and works more scattered and when I do the one, it puts the other one on pause, but in any case I am right now (since mid December) in the midst of applications, and barely have time to devote to any work. Mostly writing applications, motivations and prepping documents, certifications (nasty bureaucracy stuff and beautiful certificates) for various programs and all and in the midst of making up a new collaborative group (we see how that goes), I wish if I could stay in outlandia forever….  

However, I understand how the cards (or documentation of everything turned into cards) could possibly wrap up and be the documentation of all that happens, no matter if these are sent or not, but without the others (vids, found, walks) would the cards have content?  

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