Nonument Group
mixed media
2019
From Nowhere to Noplace,
Pioneer Railway
From Nowhere to Noplace, Pionner railway, performative soundwalk on the former tracks of the PioneerRailway in Ljubljana, 25 May 2019. Photos: DK
From Nowhere to Noplace, Pionner railway, at the Historical Atrium of Ljubljana Municipality. Exhibition views. Photos: Peter Giodani, 2020
A performative soundwalk on the former tracks of the PioneerRailway in Ljubljana,
25 May 2019
25 May 2019
Performance:
sound scape 22’, series
of objects, light scape,
3 performers
sound scape 22’, series
of objects, light scape,
3 performers
Exhibition:
video essay,archival table,photographs, flags, railroad beams, torch
video essay,archival table,photographs, flags, railroad beams, torch
Nonument Group’s intervention From Nowhere to Noplace, Pioneer Railway, at the site of Ljubljana’s former Pioneer Railway, took place on the 25 May 2019, on the former Tito’s Day of Youth. The intervention joined multidisciplinary research with elements of performance, narration, visual and sound elements. It addressed themes of memory and erasure in relation to infrastructure and ideology and was realised as a performative light and sound walk during the night on the ghostly former tracks of the Pioneer Railway.
From Nowhere to Noplace was a performative sound walk in which walkers were invited to take a collective guided walk, while listening to the sound essay that merges documentary sounds, excerpts of interviews with former pioneers and experts, and a narrated soundscape. Three performers–futuristic pioneers that guided the tour, performed symbolic choreographies to mark the decisive points in the railway’s life: VISION / OPENING / WORK / DECLINE. Each chapter had a different light-scape atmosphere. The procession concluded with the burning of four words: FUTURE, BODOČNOST (what is to come), NOWHERE, NO PLACE.
Read the curatorial text by Nika Grabar:
Will Today really become Yesterday’s Tomorrow?
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From Nowhere to Noplace was a performative sound walk in which walkers were invited to take a collective guided walk, while listening to the sound essay that merges documentary sounds, excerpts of interviews with former pioneers and experts, and a narrated soundscape. Three performers–futuristic pioneers that guided the tour, performed symbolic choreographies to mark the decisive points in the railway’s life: VISION / OPENING / WORK / DECLINE. Each chapter had a different light-scape atmosphere. The procession concluded with the burning of four words: FUTURE, BODOČNOST (what is to come), NOWHERE, NO PLACE.
Read the curatorial text by Nika Grabar:
Will Today really become Yesterday’s Tomorrow?
FROM NOWHERE TO NOPLACE
Video essay, 20’48”
“If you took the railway, you ended up nowhere, you couldn’t do anything there. Well, you could sit in the waiting room, there were benches there, sure. Or you took a walk on the field,” remembers one of the pioneers, unknowingly commenting on trust in technology and the joy of travel in and of itself.
The Pioneer Railway was built for the bright future. Standing in that future, now the present, the Nonument Group’s video essay seamlessly shifts from its past (the actual of the archive), to its present erasure and extends to its possible futures. It is one of the possible attempts to explore the possible future at the intersection between an open archive and an experience of different contemporaneities.
Exhibitions:
Collections for a Soliday Future, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška (KGLU), curators: Nada Baković, Marina Čelebić, Anita Ćulafić, Natalija Vujošević, Katarina Hergold Germ, Andreja Hribernik. Dec - Mar 2023.
The Exhibition is Outdoors, Museum of Architecture, Ljubljana, May - July 2021.
From Nowhere to Noplace, Pioneer Railway and Buzludzha. Dnipro Cultural Center. Construction Festival, Dnipro, June 2021.
Empathy (re)loaded. Curated by Robertina Šebjanič and Alenka Trebušak. Speculum Artium festival, Trbovlje, October 2020.
From Nowhere to Noplace: Pioneer Railway. Exhibition at the Historical Atrium of the Municipality of Ljubljana, May - July 2020.
From Nowhere to Noplace: Pioneer Railway. Performative soundwalk at the former tracks of the Pioneer Railway, Lighting Guerrilla festival, 25 May 2020.
Selected press:
Left to rot: the new global effort to preserve lost monuments, The Guardian (en)
Nonument Group in ETC magazine (en)
A railway run by children, Mladina (si)
Nonumental path to the future, Outsider (si)
Video essay, 20’48”
“If you took the railway, you ended up nowhere, you couldn’t do anything there. Well, you could sit in the waiting room, there were benches there, sure. Or you took a walk on the field,” remembers one of the pioneers, unknowingly commenting on trust in technology and the joy of travel in and of itself.
The Pioneer Railway was built for the bright future. Standing in that future, now the present, the Nonument Group’s video essay seamlessly shifts from its past (the actual of the archive), to its present erasure and extends to its possible futures. It is one of the possible attempts to explore the possible future at the intersection between an open archive and an experience of different contemporaneities.
Exhibitions:
Collections for a Soliday Future, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška (KGLU), curators: Nada Baković, Marina Čelebić, Anita Ćulafić, Natalija Vujošević, Katarina Hergold Germ, Andreja Hribernik. Dec - Mar 2023.
The Exhibition is Outdoors, Museum of Architecture, Ljubljana, May - July 2021.
From Nowhere to Noplace, Pioneer Railway and Buzludzha. Dnipro Cultural Center. Construction Festival, Dnipro, June 2021.
Empathy (re)loaded. Curated by Robertina Šebjanič and Alenka Trebušak. Speculum Artium festival, Trbovlje, October 2020.
From Nowhere to Noplace: Pioneer Railway. Exhibition at the Historical Atrium of the Municipality of Ljubljana, May - July 2020.
From Nowhere to Noplace: Pioneer Railway. Performative soundwalk at the former tracks of the Pioneer Railway, Lighting Guerrilla festival, 25 May 2020.
Selected press:
Left to rot: the new global effort to preserve lost monuments, The Guardian (en)
Nonument Group in ETC magazine (en)
A railway run by children, Mladina (si)
Nonumental path to the future, Outsider (si)