Mapping the Unseen

Mapping the Unseen The project Mapping the Unseen will be realised in four countries: Croatia, Iran, Bangladesh and Austria. It constitutes of artistic inter- ventions on unseen, hidden topics - topics that are not discussed in public by the mainstream society. These interventions will be shown in the respective cities for several days during the space of one week. The project strives for a programmatic visual and discursive treat- ment of a chosen topic, which would have been identified and selected by participating art groups. Following this, parts of the project will be invited to Austria to enable an intercultural dialogue. Cen- tral to this is the confrontation with the Austrian field of discourse on the topic, as local artists, NGOs, and researchers from Austria offer their contribution from an Austrian point of view. In the last step, a virtual web-based room will be developed. Through this virtual mapping, an artistic artefact that relates directly to the chosen topic is created. Moreover, it is a cartography of all assembled artwork from all countries. This virtual equivalent aspires to be a Mapping of the real rooms, that now would be accessible for all interested people from anywhere in the world via the Internet. The collection invites visitors interactively to explore the different topics and sites. The virtual visitor is invited to comment the topics with her or his individual back- ground. At the end, the Mapping will be a collection of a variety of topics, art works, and opinions as well as academic publications, creating a new discourse leading to a transcultural space. The release of the interactive web platform Mapping the Unseen will be in September 2019 in Kla- genfurt including a panel discussion on the chosen topics and realisation. Mapping the Unseen tries to answer the questions, how it is possible to create a dialogue of and make visible both the unspoken and unseen through artistic research. Contact: Katrin Ackerl Konstantin Institute: IFF (AAU Klagenfurt) office@konstantin.cc

Mapping the Unseen investigated unseen, undiscussed topics - topics that are absent from public discourse, because of their implicit social taboo potential. The artistic research was carried out by means of mapping, encompassing performative interventions and an interactive archive. It was realised with artists and art groups in four countries: Croatia, Iran, Bangladesh and Austria. The research method was interwoven with transdisciplinary methods. Enabling a visualisation of the respective topics and generating dialogue through participatory processes were at the core of this project. All intervention and dialogue events were conceptually developed to offer a programme that invited many stakeholders connected to the chosen topic. The venues, which were designed to intervene in public space or in empty shops or offices, brought artists, NGOs, organisations, institutions, associations, community members and interested people together and followed the idea of overcoming the separation between audience and lecturer/performer by focusing on relational aesthetic practices. In total, 500 persons participated in the project. The topics, selected by the artists/art groups - "LGBTIQ", "The devoid of the subjecthood of the invisible Rohingya refugees" and "Discrimination and artistic freedom" - offered insights into regional and supraregional situations in a sociocultural field according to the possibility or impossibility of being recognised or represented. The project findings established that investigating the seen and unseen with a phenomenological approach can be understood as a constructive process, a construction of reality. It underlies value patterns, normative premises and has political implications. The impacts they induce are connected in a strong sense with medial representation. Crucial to this representation are power relations and hegemonic constellations. The unseen and the unutterable can also be recognised as unconscious dimensions, which are subject to unspoken rules of cultural neglect. The investigations pointed out that processes of activism and micro activism are connected to the emphasis on changing normative conditions mostly affected by psychological strain or motives of resistance and solidarity. The apparent need for constructing binaries creating permanent dimensions, which seem to recreate its conditions by categorising polarised dichotomous poles, appeared not only in the dichotomy of seen and unseen itself but also as an obstacle to achieving diversity in a representational context. After the interventions in public space, a virtual web-based room was developed and programmed. Through this virtual mapping, an artistic artefact that relates directly to the chosen topics was created: it is a unique collection of the variety of chosen topics, artworks, interviews and publications, creating a new discourse leading to a transcultural space. Because of its interactive design, it offers an invitation to view the artistic research project as an ongoing dialogical process and not as a fixed product or result. www.mappingtheunseen.com