by tobias c. van Veen (carried out by Anik & Sophie, Tino, Maja, Sasha, Luis, Tegan, Roch…)

+ on a piece of paper, write a love letter to someone you miss, have not seen in many years, and would like to be here with you, where you are now. include your email address.
+ once all letters are ready, fold into paper airplanes.
+ scale the highest possible structure in Skopje, by whatever means available.
+ throw the letter in the direction of where you currently believe the person to be.

Berlin-based artist Farida Heuck collaborates with the Imaginary Border Academy, which was initiated during the last Artivistic meeting in Montreal. Sophie and Annik, who have been sharing the CK cultural center with the Mobicase workshop, were presenting their project Accustoming Canadians to Sublimation throughout the Upgrade! meeting in Skopje:

Accustoming Canadians to Sublimation consists of the creation of a ‘special embassy’ based on a workshop series, which adressed questions like diplomatic immunity, representation, international relations as performance, and the virtual and actual facets of national borders, within a context of transnational movement and constructions of the ‘collective’. The workshop served to discuss what sort of services this particular ‘special embassy’ would offer.

Sophie and Annik in their workshop space.

Farida Heuck, who is a member of the Imaginary Border Academy, sended her contribution to the workshop in the form of a video message from Berlin…here it is:

Thanks everybody for sitting still

RYBN PARIS

Cool beyond cool - thanks again for the tunes and visual effects, magical…

During Upgrade International event artist Petko Dourmana is inviting the passers by at Macedonia Square in Skopje to sing and record MacDermott’s song “By Jingo” on Edison-style Cup Phonograph Kit (produced by Gakken Japan) in a military tent.
Everybody who decides to participate will be helped with professional karaoke equipment and will get his record on a plastic cup with free beer.

With this performance project Petko Dourmana combines a British imperial propaganda song with the American technical invention of mass media device exactly 130 years after they were created.
He is presenting this project in the very heart of a region that in every sense can be seen as a victim of the so called Anglo-American jingoism.

(source: http://petko.tosmi.org/?q=node/46)

I was really excited about the video works. Some of the short movies had a genuinely political dimension. Adressing topics such as war, genocide and exclusion, many works have been an eye opener towards the fact that most countries these days are in a state of conflict or war. Personally, I am glad that there seems to be more and more political statements in contemporary video art.

Rakia, hidden in a Cola bottle - but nevertheless very effective…

Horst Konietzny and Tamiko Thiel, both with local guests, enacted in a live performance between Munich and Skopje. The audience was invited to participate via webcam.