Boundaries-to Bridges-Tour 2003/2004

Almeria/Spain (October 2003) –
St. Louis/Senegal (March 2004)



Synopsis

The Wind has not just risen up around us like a hurricane, and taken away our villages, it has also risen up tremendously inside us: to a degree, that we learned to understand it as the principle of the world itself and our lives. The world around us became an uninhabitable desert, where the wind of chances necessarily builds up dunes. We ourselves want these chances and we build up dunes to take ourselves away with them. We have become nomads.? (Vilem Flusser – Godfather of Nomadology: On the Freedom of the Migrant).

For over 15 years sound-systems have constantly been moving through all parts of the world. Music festivals at different places have brought together people and their sounds, their art and their curiosity in order to celebrate together without commercial interests. It has become an unsteady, strange and multicultural ?Circus of Madness?. Inspired from these experiences we were looking for a medium able to take up well known principles and develop them further.

This is how the idea for the Caravan got started.

The Caravan is a melting pot of artists, media workers, scientists and technicians of different genres, that want to send the ?Circus of Madness? on tour and bring their different forms of communication together to form a joint program and understanding.



Project Description

The Caravan is aiming for co-operations with different groups from all countries that it will be moving through. These co-operations are built around three core topics:

1.Cultural exchange

The Caravan will function as a sound system, a circus, a mobile cinema and a stage for theatre and performance. It is constantly open for everyone who wants to participate, no matter if only for a brief time or the whole tour.

-The Circus of Madness: The circus is understood as a culture bridging form of communication, where in simple ways without the need of language not just entertainment can be offered, but also important questions be raised. The circus tent will be the circle roof and the central meeting point of the Caravan. Elements will be theatre, acrobatics, music, pantomime etc.
-Mobile Cinema: The aim of the mobile cinema is the constant producing and screening of the cultures where the caravan is moving through: impressions, interviews, documentaries and entertainment will be collected at one point and presented at the next. Those interested can learn to use video and film technology.
-Free Parties: In the tradition of mobile sound systems there will be free parties at the different stops of the caravan, that will give especially local artists and musicians an opportunity to perform.

2.Development Co-operations

Besides the cultural exchange aspect the Caravan aims for co-operations with interested groups and initiatives from the Maghreb in order to organize a limited transfer of hardware and know-how in the areas of alternative energy, mobility and media-/information technology. It is planned to collect materials as donations like vehicles and generators, that are running on vegetable oil, solar technology, computers, radio stations and the like in Europe and offer them to some groups and initiatives that are working and participating in the context of the Caravan.
The co-operation with the Berlin based development aid initiative SONED e.V. plays an important role herein. Further partner organizations with already existing ties to groups in the Maghreb and West-Africa are encouraged to participate. Any form of donation is more than welcome.

3.The Institute of Nomadology

To cover the reflective needs of such a project, a number of scientific congresses and gatherings are in planning. This is organized by the Institute of Nomadology, a co-operation of free scientists, that are working on the topics of nomadology, migration and futurology.

Within the congresses following topics will be discussed:
-North-African Migrants in Europe (transnational spaces, de-integration)
-European Interests and Politics towards the Maghreb (Euro-Mediterranean-Free-Trade-Zone, Schengen)
-Developmental Politics and Cultural Exchange (questions and answers on economical disparities and the ?Clash of Cultures?)
-Modern Politics in the Maghreb States (post colonial situations, civil society, democratic movements)
-Alternative means of Energy use and Transportation
-Futurology
-Mutual Learning and Teaching

It is planned to start the Caravan with an opening congress from September 19th to 21st 2003 in Berlin. Co-operation partner will probably be the Cultural Science Institute of Humboldt University, Berlin. Further partners are asked for, the forum is open in content and form, participants and contributions from a variety of backgrounds are welcome (This is a Call for ?Papers? !!).

Similar happenings are planned for Tangier (December 1st to 10th 2003), the south of Marocco (January 25th to February 5th 2004) and St. Louis, Senegal (March 21st to 29th 2004). Local partners are urgently needed!

The aim of the congresses will be to work with local and international experts and those concerned on general questions and actual problems, to support mutual exchange and give impulses for new ways of thinking and acting for those participating.



Who is the Caravan?

?The Caravan are all participating groups and individuals?

So far participating groups:

Memenet: A Berlin based initiative of event organizers, film makers and performance artists (www.memenet.de)

SONED e.V.: Southern Network for Environment and Development. A Berlin based initiative for development aid and co-operation, that has for over 10 years supported projects in Kenia, Nigeria, Gambia and others with solar technology, vehicles, mechanical sawing machines etc. and distributed products from these projects in Berlin. (www.soned.de)

Filmbrigade Nord: A mobile cinema equipped with 35mm projectors, that had planned a similar tour already a few years ago and will now participate within the Caravan.

Further co-operations with different groups in the areas of media-technology (Radiokamagne Berlin, Indimedia, CCC...), development aid (Berliner Entwicklungspolitischer Ratschlag e.V.,...) migration issues (No Border, Attac,...) and environmental technology are in planning.


All projects, that can identify with the aims and the content of the Boundaries-to-Bridges-Tour are more than welcome and encouraged to participate with this constantly evolving and non-hierarchical-co-operatively organized project in which form ever they like.



The current state of development:

The Caravan will form in the beginning of October in the south of Spain, move through Marocco from mid November to mid of February and move from there through Mauretania and Senegal until end of March.

A preliminary start of the Caravan will already take place within the culture and music festival ?U-Site Fusion? in the end of June between Berlin and Hamburg (www.fusion-festival.de). A plane hangar will be transformed into an interplanetary space-clown-ship (events) that will then take off and land with its circus tent at various spots in and around Berlin throughout late summer (e.g. www.camp-tipsy.de). After the gathering of the Institute of Nomadology from September 19th to 21st in Berlin, the departure for Spain will take place.



Contact:

www.memenet.de
info@memenet.de
c/o Mark Butler
Gubenerstr. 29
10 245 Berlin
fon: +49 30 29 36 57 40