From Bergen to Vinland – and back (2015 version)

USF Verftet with my studio on the 3rd floor

USF Verftet with the two AiR studios on the 3rd floor

I am in Bergen, Norway for three weeks, following an invitation by USF Kulturhuset to live and work at the place where I had spent a three month residency in 2012. It was during that residency that I first read about Vinland, the legendary land Leif Eriksson – a Greenlander of Norwegian descent – had discovered and explored in North America from his base camp at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland around the year 1000. Continue reading …

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Two months of driving, looking, collecting

I have driven almost 10.000 km with the rental car over the last two months. Fortunately I had a contract that wouldn’t charge for mileage. I am now in the St. John’s area from where I will board a plane to go back home on August 16th.

Viking Trail: Route 430 N

Route 430 N: 'Viking Trail' to L'Anse aux Meadows

The 10.000 km mirror the character of this trip that was so different from all my working stays abroad before. So far, I had done classical residencies where you are based somewhere even if you travel from there. This time Continue reading …

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From Vinland directly to Valhalla

When I approached St. Anthony and L’Anse aux Meadows coming from Gros Morne Park yesterday, a large sign welcomed me to the area.

Welcome to Vinland - sign on route 430 approaching St. Anthony

Sign on route 430 approaching St. Anthony

I was stunned: The sign hadn’t been there three years ago, and it looked as if the world knew about my project and that I was coming… And at the same time it felt completely wrong, as it seems to put an end to all the ongoing discussions about the location(s) of Vinland – or at least attempts to do so. And the fact that it is not a local advertisement but a sign put up by the Province, shows clearly that they have no intention of pursuing the quest about where else the Norsemen may have travelled than L’Anse aux Meadows any further, not even within Labrador and Newfoundland. They want to reserve that monopoly of the one and only place of a Norse presence for L’Anse aux Meadows.

Shortly after the sign I got to the Wildberry Country Lodge where I had booked for the week. The guy at the counter – smelling heavily of alcohol – told me that he didn’t know what they had done to him, but they had overbooked him for the night. He then found me a room in his mother’s B&B which was about 20 km onwards towards L’Anse aux Meadows, and carries the colourful name Valhalla. So Arriving in Vinland, I spent the first night in Valhalla. My friend just wrote me: I hope there’s a way back out of there…!

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Vinland all over…

iceberg aground at King's Point

Iceberg aground at King's Point / Notre Dame Bay

The four weeks on Fogo have passed very quickly, and I have just spent another week in Corner Brook on the west coast; the photo above was taken on the way here. I have been staying in one of the Grenfell Campus Summer Accommodations, which are student homes during the semester – a real plain and functional place indeed. Continue reading …

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Misplaced Women? on train station in Marseille, France

La Grand Escalier de la Gare du Saint Charles a Marseille, September 20, 2013
“Misplaced Women?” performance by Tanja Ostojic
With the participation of:
Jane Kay Park,
Emma-Edvige Ungaro,
Alix Denambride,
Kim Mc Cafferty,
Robyn Hambrook,
Helen Averley
Patricia Verity
and Tanja Ostojic

Production: Préavis de Désordre Urbain and Red Plexus, Marseille 2013

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Misplaced Women? on international airports

In the past years I´ve done several performances on arrival terminals of international airports in Europe in the frame of my “Misplaced Women?” ongoing delegated performance series. I would like to share some of the related notes and images with you:

Aberdeen International Airport, United Kingdom, March 31, 2015

Misplaced Women? sign held by Amy Bryzgel at the domestic arrivals halls, Aberdeen International Airport, UK:

Continue reading …

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Newfoundland found again

Sun deck of the night ferry from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland

Sun deck of the night ferry from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland

The first 15 days in Canada have passed like nothing – and yet my head is spinning from all the things we (my partner Robert is with me for the first 5 weeks) have seen so far… Meeting Dr. Birgitta Wallace and her husband Rob Ferguson who is also an archeologist in Halifax was a beautiful and extremely enriching experience. Talking to Birgitta has actually inspired new perspectives onto my current project. We have then taken a 6,5 hour bus ride to North Sidney to catch the ferry to Newfoundland. Continue reading …

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The Vinland Phenomenon

In four days I will leave for Canada for a new project called The Vinland Phenomenon. It can be considered a follow up to an earlier work about the transatlantic voyages of the Norsemen pre-dating Columbus about 500 years.

My destination will again be Newfoundland Continue reading …

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Hello from Saving Ray Village

Happy New Year scene in Saving Ray Village, West-Papua

Hello from Guangzhou, China. Preparing a participatory project and an exhibition with Chrstine Falk at Sabaki Art Space. The photo above is from my new website:
www.crossing-the-line.de –  A Traveling Life Guide by Alfred Banze – Texts, drawings, photos and videos. About exoticism, escapism, beachcombers and me.

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Finland: Complex thoughts in a basic daily life style

Half of the residency time here at Saari is over now. And it is like always: it feels short and long at the same time. Apart from our island hopping trip in the first week and our weekly shopping trip to the nearby village, I haven’t left our island in 4 weeks now – or only to walk or bike on the frozen bay. I want to go to Turku, Finland’s old capital and only about 30 km away at some point but until now, I have much appreciated the opportunity to do not much more than sleep, eat and work (maybe not in that order…) – and chat with the others over coffee or dinner and have sauna occasionally of course.click here to stand on the frozen bay… (then click and drag to turn)

Work is going at a slow pace, and I sometimes wish it would go faster. But then I think that at any other place, less quiet than here, I might not make any real progress at all. It is all still a lot of research and I am into complexity and complex adatptive systems right now – a complex subject indeed. It applies to many fields like our society and economics but of course I came to be interested in it because biological cells are considered to be such complex systems as well. Trying to grasp complexity and related phenomena as self-oranization or emergence isn’t easy; and even when I get an idea of their nature I wonder how to visualize them in a non-trivial way. I started incorporationg text and simple black and white graphical elements as I somehow think inherent complexity should be met with visual simplicity that could then maybe start complex processes in our mind… Well, we’ll see.

my workspace in the farmhand cottage

 

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