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Everybody for Safari
wood, plastic, neon, sound
site specific installation, Momiano, Croatia
2005
Festival Visura Aperta
Curators: Davorka Vu_i_ _neperger, Nicolle Hewitt
"Everybody for Safari", proposes a revision of the Karl May approach - a possibility of site-specific experience even without the understanding of geographical characteristics of a designated site/place/region, which not only invites the spectators to immerse into a fantastical journey, but above all invites them to challenge the notions of the experience factor of the artifact itself. This operation of space hybridization calls upon two analogical concepts - the time coordinates and the mode of departure. The point of departure presents itself as The last Duty Free stop, which doesn't question the packaged exotic based on geo-political reality of a territory, but the Exotic (non)defined in terms of its spatial/temporal factuality. _Its time frame lies within the recent modification of the West's perception of Eastern Europe, where the political past is being disregarded and is substituted by notions of re-invented myths and (faux) ethnic chic."Everybody for Safari" takes on the concept of Airport Art, which initially relates to third-world countries and the dubious status of objects found in airports, not necessarily souvenirs, for they are produced in limited editions, as not necessarily art objects, for they are produced by local artists/craftsmen. At the same time it is a notion specific of a condition where the emphasis lies more on the acknowledgement of ethnic distinction of difference (tribal organizations within a broader political construct, which is to a high degree disregarded) then on the national one (as with the second world). The project was realized in Momiano, Croatia where it functioned as a site-specific proposal for the festival “Visura Aperta Momiano 2005”. The village of Momjan can be seen as the paramount case study of an in-between-place, a site which speaks of shifting borders of Otherness as well as of tourism of a recently altered Exotic.
“Everybody for Safari” took on the architectonical model of a hybrid between a tropical tourist tree house and a hunting lodge, positioned in a location within the Mediterranean surrounding of Momiano, it still evoked places of the stereotypical tropic Exotic. The installation proposed a functional bed and breakfast hotel, alongside which a sound system was installed within the village, looping jungle bird sounds collected from various internet sources.