80+1: A Journey Around the World

Ars Electronica (AEC) www.aec.at, voestalpine www.voestalpine.com and Linz09 www.linz09.at have embarked on a round the-world journey from June 17 until September 5 titled: 80+1 – A Journey Around the World. This globe-spanning expedition won’t entail any physical travel; the mode of transportation will be satellite hook-up and fiber optic cable, and the stops along the way will be 20 locations, each one of which stands for a theme of crucial importance to our future.
Responding to the theme of Civil Society during the Johannesburg period of the 80+1 project, Hobbs/Neustetter aims to alert the European audience ‘looking’ at Johannesburg, to the harsh, unusual and often abrasive social and economic conditions that produce a contradictory experience of the city and its varying suburban realities.

As a backdrop to their presentation, the polarities of apartheid and democratic change in South Africa vie for recognition. In other words many conditions within the city today either perpetuate the previous order of the apartheid city or challenge to transform it in a new and confrontational way. This condition is presented by the artists generally as ‘other’ to that of the experience of a European audience. Hence the notion of standing in a European town like Linz and exchanging information with a very different city like Johannesburg is in and of itself extreme and contradictory. And it is in this light that the artists aim to convey a message of stark urban contrasts, ironies and juxtapositions to an audience in Linz, whose frames of reference may or may not exist for a reading of such an urban context as Johannesburg, South Africa.

With the aim of accentuating the psychological and physical difference and distance between Linz and Johannesburg, Hobbs/Neustetter’s intervention for the 80+1 programme in Linz is taking the form of an interactive camera and video screen concealed on the Hauptplatz. Visitors to 80+1 are encouraged to seek out the ‘surveillance’ installation in order to have a one on one interaction with a strategic display of visual concepts. This mediation of place through technology and distance or separation is intended to motivate the viewer to make connections or question difference. In the spirit of the contradictions inherent in this project, the architecture of the Hauptplatz in Linz serves as a somewhat ironic window onto Johannesburg.

For a select period of time (when AEC is presenting the topic Civil Society during 80+1 A Journey around the World) a ‘live’ phone will give viewers in Linz access to an inhabitant in Johannesburg to converse about what they see over the screen.

http://www.80plus1.org/