Eisendorf – Traces of Life
Along the border between Austria and the Czech Republic in the middle of the so-called “no man’s land” lies the abandoned and dilapidated village called Pohori na _umave. The FABRIKANTEN invited 25 Czech, German and Austrian artists and social scientists and one former inhabitant to move into the ghost-village in August 1993 in order to jointly examine life strategies. The participants stayed in tents for ten days and worked on personal manifestations on the topic “Future in the Hand Luggage - Survival in No Man’s Land”. The maximum weight allowed for luggage and material used for the artistic or scientific exams was 30kg. Fragments of the works were archived in over-dimensional metal cases. On the basis of history. The people who were displaced from the village in 1945 were only allowed to carry one suitcase or rather 30kg hand luggage. The FABRIKANTEN hand over the cases which were archived since 1993 to the participants in the summer of 2004, who then opened them again as closure for the project.
The 2004 short film “Scattered Borders” documents the project.
Traces of Life
When man abandons a room, a house or a village, nature inevitably takes over.
14 days in a room searching for traces of animals or plants.
Cadavers, bones, feathers, excrements, leafs, petals, seeds.......
Organizing means interfering. Culture versus nature. Civilization and wilderness.
A mobile medicine case as a result.
