r a k e t a Tour 2005 | www.raketa.nu

July 07
How to mount a lamp and a portable power station on the roof of a Toyota Corolla:

July 07 - 11.15 in the night somewhere in Kaliningrad.  

More pics are coming soon.

July 07
 

July 06


We reached Kaliningrad at 5.30 in the afternoon and one of the first thing that we saw was the Dom Sovjetice - and we noticed that it had been renovated since our last visit.

We went straight to the round-table discussion “Heritage in Present-Day Context” at Tower Kronprince organised by NCCA. Unfortunatley we arrived 1 1/2 h to late, but it was ok because the whole schedule had be moved. At the discussion we found some other Swedish participants and a bunch of Russians. Everything was presented in Russian and the English speakers got translated into Russian.

r a k e t a presented a selection of previous projects dealing with interferences in urban space; Right of common, How long do you intend to stay?, Minne från Kungsträdgården among others.

July 06

After driving for two hours on crappy Polish roads we reached the boarder and the customs check. First we had to wait for some hours at the Polish boarder to get all the papers done that we needed to enter the country. Then we spend another two hours at the Russian boarder... The people at the boarder were pretty nice – not as tuff as we expected – but everything just went sooooo slow and it was like 100 degress hot. We went from customs person to customs person to customs person and each person had to sign one specific task and pointed us further in the system. The whole experience was truly a very interesting study of logistics.

If you want to cross the Russia boarder by car – these are the documents you’ll be needing:

July 06

View from the dining room at the ferry. 

July 05

to Karlskrona.

July 05


There she is - the vehicle that is going to take us ALL THE WAY TO Kaliningrad.
Ready to take off!

At 19.10 tonight, the project group will meet at the train station in Karlskrona and go to the ferry to check in. The ferry leaves the harbour at 21 and will reach Gydina early tomorrow morning.

This is the lamp + tripod that we are going to use in Kaliningrad.

 
The workshop...

 
View from an industrial area in Malmö a sunny day.

The new roof rack in the back seat! 

TOMORROW; Helena, Åsa, Magda take the train from Stockholm to Karlskrona and Elisabet drives the car from Malmö to Karlskrona - we'll catch up in front of the ferry that leaves at 21.00 – and the r a k e t a journey will begin!

The Kaliningrad Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in cooperation with the NGO Agency for Support of Cultural Initiatives “Tranzit” (Kaliningrad) present:

INTERNATIONAL FORUM “FROM KOENIGSBERG/KALININGRAD WITH LOVE”

The 5^th, 7^th and 6^th of July, 2005

Tower “KRONPRINCE” (Kaliningrad, Litovsky val 38)

that includes:

- presentation of results of the international project “Art-Guide. Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad now”
- opening of the annual international program “Tower “Kronprince”: The Second Advent”

- round-table discussion “Heritage in Present-Day Context”

plein-air exhibition “Contemporary Art in Nature”

The project is implemented owing to the grant of the President of the Russian Federation, and the support from the Federal Agency for Culture and Film, the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and the Ford Foundation.

Author and director of the project: Elena Tsvetaeva

Curators of the project: Julia Bardoun, Danil Akimov

PR-manager of the project: Anastasia Karpenko

Art-engineer of the project: Eugeny Palamarchuk

Mass media support: ITRC “KASKAD” (Kaliningrad), pro-contemporary art edition рН

Program of the Forum:

July 5

7 p.m.-10 p.m. – presentation of the Art-Guide.

Screening of the DVD version of the Art-Guide, performances and presentation of the artists and writers that made contributions to the Art-Guide on the territory adjacent to the tower “Kronprince”  

10 p.m. – 12 p.m. – multimedia art-show

Audience will participate in a series of multimedia installations “Tower “Kronprince”: The Second Advent” related to interpretation of the fortification, the monument of history and culture of the 19^th century. ARTISTS: Danil AKIMOV, Yury VASILIEV, Dmitry BULATOV, Dmitry DEMIDOV, Anastasia and Ekaterina Karpenko, Eugeny PALAMARCHUK, Eugeny UMANSKY, Vladimir SCHERBAKOV, SKRJU (Kaliningrad); Rostan TAVASIYEV (Moscow); RAKETA group, FA+ (Stockholm, Sweden). SOUND-ARTISTS:  MONOPOLKA (St.Petersburg), START/STOP, ARHANGELIKA, MIGRANTRIBE, PSILOCYBEAT, POCKET ORCHESTRA (Kaliningrad), SCHORSCH KAMERUN (Hamburg, Germany). Art group RTSY (Kaliningrad)

July 6

2 p.m. – 4 p.m. Pilot artistic tour following the route worked out by the authors of the Art-Guide.

(the tour starts from the Southern Station. Participants of the tour gather at 1:40 p.m. at the square near the cinema “Rossiya”)

4 p.m. – 7 p.m. Round-table discussion devoted to the issue “Heritage in Present-day Context” with participation of the local community, authors of installations, Russian and international experts: Wolfgan EICHWEDE (Bremen, Germany), Leonid BAZHANOV (NCCA, Moscow), Patrick VERHOEVEN (Amsterdam, Stockholm), Agnieszka WOLODZKO (CCA “Laznia” Gdansk, Poland), Julia GNIRENKO (NCCA, Moscow), Anna GOR (NCCA, Nizhny Novgorod), Andreas JONASSON (Stockholm, Sweden), Olga LOPUKHOVA (Moscow), Andreas MATTSSON (Stockholm, Sweden), Mikhail MINDLIN (NCCA, Moscow), Alexander POPADIN (Kaliningrad), Alexander SOLOGUBOV (Kaliningrad).

Location: in front of the tower Kronprince

July 7

12.00 a.m. - opening of the plein-air exhibition «Contemporary Art in Nature» in the Curonian Spit Museum. ARTISTS: Yury Vasiliev, Danil Akimov, Oleg Kulik, Eugeny Umansky, Elena Tsvetaeva, Vladimir Scherbakov, Dmitry Bulatov, Pavel Saveliev, Katya and Nastya Karpenko. Curators: Irina Tchesnokova, Dmitry Bulatov. The exhibition will be open from July 7 to September 1, 2005. Location: Museum of the National Park “Curonian Spit”

Special events:

PRESS-CONFERENCE of the forum organizers on July  5, 2005 6 p.m. (Tower Kronprince, Litovsky val 38)
 EXHIBITION OPENING July 5, 2005 from 7 p.m.

ADDRESS: Kaliningrad, Litovsky val 38. Tower Kronprince

CONTACT: tel. (0112) 595109 (Anastasia KARPENKO nkarpenko@ncca.koenig.ru)

Now it's determined! The r a k e t a Tour will stop at the following places:
July 5 - Ferry: Karlskrona to Gdynia (leave at 21.00)
July 6 - We arrive to Gdynia 7.00 in the morning and start our journey to Kaliningrad (cross your fingers that everything works out nice and smoothly at the Russian boarder!). We'll arrive to Kaliningrad in the afternoon and will go directly to the round-table discussion at The Kronprince (see below)
July 7 - Kaliningrad
July 8 – We’ll leave Kaliningrad in the afternoon. We'll stay over at a chinese hotel in Sopot
July 9 - We drive to Jastarnia and spend the night at a hostel
July 10 - Ferry back to Karlskrona
July 11 - Back in Sweden!

Today we have left the car at the workshop to have some checking done; wheel, break, lights... - and we also signed up for some care service assistance J.  Tomorrow we will return to the workshop, put on a nice boiler-suit and tinker with the car like a pro!!! 

Today we have also found out that you can buy a Russian car insurance at the Finnish company IngoNord (www.ingonord.com). Remeber that name if you are planning to visit Russia and cross the boarder with your own car! That will save you a lot of time.

hello! today we have spend most of the day on the phone planning our trip to kaliningrad - the following adventures turned up:

• elisabet's passport was lost and found in the mail (the mail man's holiday substitute manage to deliver the passport to the wrong address!!)
• due to the lost and eventually found delayed passport the visa application was turned in to late and therefore we will not get the visa back in time to catch the ferry from karlshamn to klaipeda as planned 
• so, we decided that we should take the plane to kaliningrad instead, though, there was one little problem, the one-and-only-plane-a-day to kaliningrad leaves at 10.35 and we will not get the visas before 12 so we have to take the next plane the day after and arrive late to the round table discussion - not good...
• also, the portable power engine that we need for our installation can not be transported on the plane - as it might cause an explosion (!), therefore we now have to ask sweet elena i kaliningrad to help us out with that issue - and we also need a car, as we can't bring our own car as planned – extra work for the nice people at NCCA
• however, we found out that there was a plane to gdansk that left at 13.20 that we could catch and then rent a car and drive along the coastline to kaliningrad - though, we found out that there is one problem, you are NOT allowed to cross the boarder to russia with a rented car
• back to the plane tickets to kaliningrad - but now, the price had turned so super high that we could go a weekend to Bangkok for the same price
• back to the gdansk plan tickets and bus planes... maybe we could take bus to kaliningrad
• or maybe we should take the ferry from karlskrona to gdynia and bring our car, or maybe...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Light up Dome Sovjetov

As a first time visitor in Kaliningrad, r a k e t a was overwhelmed by
the sight of the huge Dome Sovjetnicus and the fact how dark and lonely
it seemed to be. We felt an immediate wish to light up the dome - to
fill the enormous building with daylight and transform it into a
lighthouse for a night. The project was never realized but a postcard
visualizing the idea was printed and spread out all over the city. In a
future project, instead of postcards, r a k e t a wishes to spread
projected moving images of Kaliningrad in public spaces in Kaliningrad
but also elsewhere.

Here you can find some more information about “Art-Guide. Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad today”.

The project envisages creation of the first special artistic guide to the city of Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad, which represents both popular tourist, cultural and historical sights as well as new territories and objects of “people’s” cultural topography, which haven’t been revealed in the official and mass culture yet.

r a k e t a is one of the invited participants.

This is our schudule in Kaliningrad (organised by National Centre for Contemporary Arts National Centre for Contemporary Arts, NCCA). 
July 5: from 19.00 - till 00.00 - Art-Guide and artistic performans and installations (KRONPRINCE)
July 6: from 14.00 - 16.00 Art-Guide City excursion
16.00 - 18.30 - workshop (round table - KRONPRINCE)
July 7: Kurshkaja kosa workshop
July 8: Day of departure

r a k e t a will take part in these activities and also screen a moving image... driving around in the city... in a car with a power station on the roof...

NCCA has invited us to take part in the round-table discussion “Heritage in Topical Context” on July 6, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in Tower “Kronprince”, Kaliningrad, Litovsky val 38.

The event is a part of the International Forum “From Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad with Love”.

If you are in this part of the world we hope you can come and listen to the talk :-) ! Welcome! (More info about the event)

 Dome Sovjetico.

In one week and two days we will catch the ferry from Karlshamn in Sweden to Klaipeda and thereafter drive by car to Kaliningrad in Russia!

This blog will work as mind container for our experiences and thoughts before and during our journey... Fragments and links and pictures and words... anything.