Sitting on the plane from Cairo to Istanbul two weeks ago, Vasif (Kortun) told November (Paynter, who is learning turkish) and me that Yurt in turkish means homeland, and yet also means tent…
This one word suddenly gives a very new (to me… there must be countless people out there who knew that already) dimension to the notion that home is where one pitches one’s tent, which is what somebody said about me in london a few days beforehand (and it wasn’t meant as a compliment). Perhaps there are ways of feeling at home in a state of constant mobility- and i am not being romantic about
overnight a.
some kind of art-nomadism, i do not think that artists on the
move are nomads at all, i do not feel like one, but just often in transit. But this one word is a new hint, a
little help, towards understanding and reclaiming what has been happening with me in the last months, the last years, and what seems to be the case with
many people i cross paths with. I try to make the travelling my own, a part of my
practise, to enjoy it as much as possible for what it offers and allows, but also to contain it, to learn to control it, and perhaps be able to stop and stand still for a while… 
I was reading in an online journal that “… above all, it is today’s artists and intellectuals who are spending most of their time in transit–rushing from one exhibition to the next, from one project to another, from one lecture to the next, or from one local cultural context to another.” (Boris Groys essay The City in the Age of Touristic Reproduction from his book Art Power, 2008) to which Runo Lagomarsino answered: “I think there is a difference in the idea of transfer and travel. There is this quote, don’t know from whom: “its not so strange that the metaphor ‘beautiful as an airport’ is never used.” First of all, it’s the people you meet–friends, colleagues, new friends, new colleagues–that are vital. The moments, the discussions, the walks, the cafés, the bars that I think are the most important part. To move from your own context and see and learn from others, to challenge your view of how things are and should be. Travel as a political space, a space for struggle, is something that I have been interested in for a long time.”
