The Turn Club organised a trip to Green Culture World in Cetinje, Montenegro. We joined seven other artists and designers. The train trip became a journey on how to make temporary social contacts more sustainable.
The choice of traveling by train instead of plane forced us to slow down. We wondered if, by avoiding efficiency, we could also approach casual social contacts in a more sustainable way. During the trip we were guided by a lot of professionals: the staff on the train, waiters, cleaning personnel, concierges and store employees at the train stations for example. These interactions immediately suggests a form of hierarchy, an unequal power relationship, based on status and money.
We wanted to change the dynamics of these relationships by reversing the roles. Could we also help the employees who are serving us? Maybe something that gives instant satisfaction, maybe something that will benefit in a few years. How can we help you? By asking that question we hope to make contact and do short interventions. We imagined doing small repairs, helping with the dishes, teaching a new language, solving arguments or making connections between people.
To accompany this we made a brooch from a toilet stall latch. The red and white colours shows our availability to help. A beautiful moment in making of this piece of jewelry was during the purchase of the closure in a store called Weijntjes. Gert-Jan, who worked there, was so enthusiastic that he helped us in the process of making this hardware a fashion piece.
You can read more about the initial ideas here (English) or here (Dutch).
During the trip we noticed we couldn’t accomplish our ideas as planned. We, as a group, behaved like consumers. To break this pattern we took on a role as cleaner. We wiped the balcony of the train carriage with a scouring pad and cloth. We cleaned every nook and cranny. That was a way of taking care of our environment and not only just taking it for granted. But traveling is intense, and we couldn’t bring up the energy to maintain this role.
Also Green Culture World turned out to be less of a conference as we expected, but an educational project for kids between 12 and 18 years old. This asked for a different approach, since we suddenly found ourselves in front of a school class. It made us rebellious. Malou stood on a table and that probably was the most radical act we could do.
The students were in shock. In Montenegro, the status of a school teacher is seen with lots of respect. An adult breaking the rules and inviting them to stand on the tables as well, made a big impact. It started a conversation about fixed patterns and behavior. How can you change your own attitude towards that?
In the end, 8 professionals sat 5 days in a train to give 2 workshops to 60 childeren. We were welcomed by the Ministry of Culture, but contact with locals or teachers were minimal. We felt very lonely in our search to more sustainable social contacts.
Would you call the trip a deception or a failure? Maybe. But it also solidified the idea to put care and responsibility more central in our practise. We developed a performative conversation with the Turn Club at In Our Nature Festival in Boxtel around this topic and shared this search with Academie voor Beeldvorming, where we continued to work on a sustainable ground for our artistic practises.
Read more about the process over here (Dutch).