We always refer to objectivity and subjectivity, but never to trajectivity. The anthropological discussion of the nomadic life and of sedentariness explains how the city emerged as the most important political form in history; but there is no understanding of the vectorial aspects of our species and its progress to and fro across the earth.
Between the subjective and the objective there is obviously no room for the 'trajective', that is, for the fact that movement takes place from here to there, a movement from one to the other, without which we will never really understand the different rules for the perception of the world. (Virilio)

At the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties, political events have led to a disintegration of the previously valid world order, according to which the world was separated into two antagonistic blocks. This formerly prevailing order is now being replaced by globalization tendencies with world-wide effect, causing new mental cartographies to emerge and so demanding radically different systems of coordinates. Two strategies of reaction are now becoming visible: on the one hand, there is reversion to a static, defensive understanding of one's own location, which is meant to provide some kind of stability (space of regression, ethnospace), and on the other hand, the possibility of what might be referred to as a more situational or flexible location of the self, which is intended to guarantee a means of orientation within the emerging meta-spaces of global mobility (world spaces / transit spaces).

Space of Regression / Ethno Space

In present day Europe, the concepts of national-cultural identity find expression in a tendency towards increasing subnationalisation. Although it appeared to have been overcome, in political practice both an increasing tendency towards the hermetism of the external boundaries of the territories they enclose is emerging, and a simultaneous increase in their ideological overloading, inasmuch as the territory is becoming a significant point of reference with regard to separation from and the segregation from the other / the others (1). (I just would like to remind you of what has been going on in a European country formerly called Yugoslavia since 1991 and gently point to the discussions about the 'Fortress Europe'.)

In the nineties, artists are investigating the mechanisms which constitute the political, territorial status quo. In this process, they create subversive orders which function parallel to the status quo, and which are always aimed at a transformation of the territory, that is, at breaking through the established territorial boundaries. On the one hand, artistic concepts attempt to create alternative counter-ideas to the newly underlined political fixation or preoccupation with territory, ethnic groups and borders; on the other hand, they question the sense of a territory defined in national-cultural terms and - to cite Fredric Jameson - attempt to develop new productive categories for the definition of social space:

The new political art - if it is at all possible - will have to deal with the 'truth' of postmodernism, that is, it will have to hold onto the most important fact, onto the new kind of world space created by multinational capital. In this, a breakthrough ought to be possible, a breakthrough to new, as yet inconceivable means of representing this space, means with which we can again begin to determine our position as individual and collective subjects. [...] If there is anything which may be referred to as a political manifestation of the postmodern age, then this would be called upon to design a global cartography of our perception and cognition, and to project this into a social space open to precise evaluation. (2)

World Spaces / Transit Spaces

At the present time, it is becoming obvious that the previously valid rules for the perception of the world are not the only valid ones, and that besides or below the former systems of world order, new and alternative forms and rules for the perception of the world are possible. Our cognitive process towards the perception of the world is a process which has, with the use of analogue media and the increased extension of transport routes, undergone fundamental changes since the 19th century. Since WWII, a process of increasing dislocation (that is, of increasing removal from any spatial ties) has been accelerating with the employment of digital media and global (at the same time globalizing) computer networks, a process which makes the development of new regulative criteria necessary. According to Virilio, the world is shrinking due to the acceleration of information and transport routes, and the most recent aspect of this process is the "disappearance of distance". Whilst the past was determined by spatial order, temporal order will be the key to the future.

Shrinking physical, territorial space is set off by digital territories, from whence emerges, according to Timothy Druckrey, "[...] a neuro-geography of cognition, an utopos of networks, forms of electronic reception, and of post-territorial community [...] whose hold on matter is ephemeral, whose position in space is tenuous, and whose presence is measured in acts of participation rather than coincidences of location." (3)
The French urban planner and dromologist Paul Virilio also points to the alternative possibilities of perception when he refers to trajectivity and the vectorial as two constants neglected by our perception:

We always refer to objectivity and subjectivity, but never to trajectivity. The anthropological discussion of the nomadic life and of sedentariness explains how the city emerged as the most important political form in history; but there is no understanding of the vectorial aspects of our species and its progress to and fro across the earth. Between the subjective and the objective there is obviously no room for the 'trajective', that is, for the fact that movement takes place from here to there, a movement from one to the other, without which we will never really understand the different rules for the perception of the world. (4)

Examples of Artistic Strategies

The spectrum of the four artists' or art groups' strategies I now would like to present you briefly, ranges from experiments in physically crossing real territories, to the simulation of political, territorial structures and mechanisms, and finally to fundamental forms of conquest of uncontrolled territories, which approach strivings for expansion.

Some of you may have see the World Flag Ant Farm at the 1993 Aperto of the Biennale di Venezia, an installation by the Japanese artist Yukinori Yanagi. For the World Flag Ant Farm - a live-ant farm - Yanagi made replicas of the flags of all the 170 members of the United Nations out of transparent plexiglas boxes filled with colored sand. The boxes were placed in a grid formation, with plastic tubes connecting each flag to its neighbours. Thousands of live harvester ants were released into this static environment. The ants travel throughout this piece, establishing a subterranean tunnel system, gradually destroying the visible surface, unwittingly dismantling national symbols and indifferently blending allied and enemy territories as they busily transport sand grains from one place to another. It confronts us with a metaphor for the fragility of national identities as the individual, self-contained flags disintegrate before our eyes. Says Yanagi: "My intention is to dissolve the symbolic signs of stasis into an organic form that changes with time and circumstance." (1990) Motion and movement, transportation and transformation have proven to be among Yanagi's most effective interventions.

While in the eighties Ljubljana's radical multimedia art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (consisting of the painters' collective Irwin, the theater collective Noordung and fronted by the rock group Laibach), relentlessly "overidentified" with the socialist ideology of Yugoslavia, publicly and loudly, stirring the audience and the state into a rage, NSK's strategies have changed in the 90s: Parallel to the declaration of independence of the Republic of Slovenia in 1991, NSK, previously an 'organisation', declared their transformation into a 'State'. The artistic concept of the NSK State in Time comments on concrete political developments in ex- Yugoslavia in a specific way: As an artistic state concept, the NSK State in Time defines itself neither through a concrete geographical territory, nor through an ethnically fixed Staatsnation. For the definition of a proper 'spiritual' territory the concept of NSK emphasizes the notion of time. Time is understood as a new productive category for the definition of space. Within this terminology, 'time' is equated with the accumulation of individual 'experiences'.
The artistic concept defines the NSK State as an "abstract organism, a suprematist body" and "confers the status of a state not upon territory but upon the mind", whose borders are in a state of constant flux, "in accordance with the movements and changes of its 'symbolic' and 'physical' collective body." (5)
By putting an emphasis on the factor of movement, another productive category for the definition of 'space' is given. It is through movement, i.e. a physical change of location, from one place to another, and through the ensuing intellectual preoccupation with the 'other spiritual territory', that new experiences become possible, leading again to the creation of 'time'. Says Irwin: "The relation between place and time is the key relation. Movement implies temporality, i.e. produces time." (6) Within Irwin's terminology, this specific form of movement can be equated with a 'transplantation of knowledge':

There are basic differences between the perception and interpretation of the sign language of Irwin's paintings. This is one of our main concerns, because signs change with time and place. A sign may have one meaning in Russia, and yet another meaning in the West. Recognition of signs and symbols functions in such a way that their meanings differ with places; but nevertheless they have certain elements in common. Differences and similarities provide logic to our research. Irwin's starting point is to proceed from the specificity of the place of its origin, and to transfer experience [to the West]. This is transplantation of knowledge. (7)

The 'immaterial' NSK State in Time performs this movement by materializing in different time intervals under the form of an 'embassy' or a 'consulate' in various places (8). This means that the members of the different NSK groups, as performed for the first time in 1992 during the "NSK Embassy Moscow" (9) in Russia, travel to a certain place together (in Moscow, a private appartment), and then through lectures of NSK members and participants from Slovenia or ex- Yugoslavia as well as local theoreticians and artists, and discussions with the audience, stimulate an exchange of experiences. For the duration of the 'embassy' or the 'consulate' the place of the event is declared to be state territory of the NSK State in Time. As of today, the NSK State in Time has been installed temporarily, as well as permanently, in various European cities, and, in the summer of 1996, in the United States of America.

In the 80s NSK could be described as static, bound to place, analyzing the flux of aesthetic- ideological signs through territories. In the 90s the artists' collective, through its transformation from an organisation into a state body, itself becomes an immaterial 'organism', fluctuating through real territories. As such, the NSK State in Time becomes a trajective vehicle of a 'pure exterior', a core without interiority, a border without territory. The only form of existence of the NSK State are its embassies, ephemeral temporary materialisations serving to make visible symbolic differences. The aim of the transposition of NSK, of movement, of travelling and the ensuing changes of location of the entire NSK organism can be seen in communication and exchange with this other (different) place, or, using the words of Irwin, in the creation of time.

The Cologne-based group Knowbotic Research (KR+cF) develops complex interfaces between the data spaces of computers and the human world. For their project "Dialogue with the Knowbotic South" (DWTKS), so-called knowbots or computer agents collect scientific data of the Antarctica that is publicly available on the Internet. Says Knowbotic Research: "Antarctica is surveyed by a formidable array of automatic measuring instruments which, installed and maintained by scientists, observe and record natural phenomena as an extension of perceptual organs. These measuring instruments divide the entirety of nature into processable information units." In Knowbotic Research's installation, the collected scientific data is translated into a series of abstract and intuitive interfaces that can be experienced by human observers: cold zones, fields of light, and pixel formations.
Our knowledge about Antarctica does not rely on direct experience of this territory, but is digitally staged with the help of knowbots, as non-human observers of mathematically established facts. Knowbotic Research is developing a cartography for the imaginative mapping of the Antarctica, and, at the same time, pointing to the contingency of scientific world images. Working with the same scientific data, applying the same scientific process of digitally reconstructing nature, the result of Knowbotic Research's work differs greatly from what is generally accepted as the scientific image of Antarctica. This process of "Computer Aided Nature" points towards a future form of territories; those organized data specifically.

Today, according to official statistics, refugees and 'displaced persons' make up almost 1 % of the world's population (47 Mill / USCommitte for Refugees, 1990). Ingo Günther's conception of the Refugee Republic is based on the realization that "refugees are the involuntary, and as yet unrecognized avant-garde of the future." The territory that could be occupied by the world's refugees (37 people per square kilometer) would equal the territory of France, Germany, England and Italy taken together. Of course the Refugee Republic is not about creating a territorial state; rather Günther projects the republic of refugees as an "experimental and experimenting, supra-territorial state, which anticipates the socio-ideological and economic demands of the present and the future multiculturally and multilingually, both demanding and facilitating solutions." The supra-territorial Refugee Republic will use the internet as a communication infrastructure, linking refugee camps all over the world. In 1996 it has declared "tele-territorial sovereignty" on the Internet (http://www.refugee.net). The Refugee Republic has applied for a representation in the UN as well as in other international organisations. Although some have criticized Günther's project to be cynical (especially when in 1995 the Refugee Republic Corporation was founded and the distribution of 50 million shares was announced), the Refugee Republic still points to alternative ways of approaching developments that are generally interpreted very negatively: "Refugees and migrants are by no means only a problem; rather they are also a solution, and in this sense they equal capital".

Maps of the Trajective

Today, as I have pointed out, two radically opposed notions of territory can be perceived: first, there is the persistence of, or the recourse to - what Timothy Druckrey has called - the 'old' "geo-spaces of modernity", and second, there are the new global spaces which I have characterized as transit spaces. Certainly, these two are interconnected phenomena: the production of locality - or, in other words, the production of 'stability' - (retribalisation, regionalization, nationalism) can be understood as a reaction to the emerging meta-spaces of global mobility, which are perceived as destabilizing any kind of prevailing order of perception of the world.

The four artistic approaches I have briefly presented here are examples for how artists attempt to provide a new sense of orientation in these new transit spaces, how they re-articulate and re-formulate places which the subject may put on his / her map and create new itineraries, how they deal with the transition from stasis to movement, e.g. by pointing to the fluxes underlying 'real' territories (movements of migrants etc.); -- in short: how they provide us with an understanding of what Virilio calls 'the trajective' or 'the vectorial aspects', with an understanding of "the fact that movement takes place from here to there (...), without which we will never really understand the different rules for the perception of the world."

An aesthetics of cognitive mapping, as drafted by Fredric Jameson, could make possible the situational representation of an individual within what I have called transit spaces. It is in here, within these transit spaces, that different trajectories are crossing and overlapping. It is about making these trajectories visible.

URLs:

NSK
Transnacionala. A Journey from the East to the West (June 28 - July 28, 1996)
NSK State in Time / The Official NSK Electronic Embassy
Documents / Reviews on "Predictions of Fire" (USA / SLO 1995) by Michael Benson

KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH
Their projects
Dialogue with the Knowbotic South

REFUGEE REPUBLIC
http://www.refugee.net --> for USA
http://www.t0.or.at/~RR/ --> for Europe

Footnotes:
(1) see Rainer Ansén, 'Die Ethnisierung Europas. Zur Philosophie der Neuen Rechten' ['Ethnicizing Europe: On the philosophy of the New Right'], in: Lettre international, Heft 24 / 1994, pp. 89 - 90; Boris Groys, 'Sammeln, gesammelt werden. Die Rolle des Museums, wenn der Nationalstaat zusammenbricht' ['Collecting and being collected. The role of the museum when the national state collapses'], in: Lettre international, Heft 33 / 1996, pp. 32 - 36
(2) Fredric Jameson, 'Postmoderne: Zur Logik der Kultur im Spaetkapitalismus', in: Andreas Huyssen / Klaus Scherpe (eds.), Postmoderne. Zeichen eines kulturellen Wandels, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989, p. 99 f.
(3) Timothy Druckrey, 'The Fate of Reason in the Global Network: Teleology, Telegraphy, Telephony, Television, Telesthetics', in: ars electronica (ed.), Mythos Information: Welcome to the Wired World, Wien / New York: Springer, 1995, p. 152
(4) Paul Virilio, Revolutionen der Geschwindigkeit [Revolutions of Velocity], Berlin: Merve, 1993, p. 62
(5) Eda Cufer & Irwin, "NSK State in Time"(1993), in: Irwin, "Zemljopis Vremena / Geography of Time", (http://www.ljudmila.org/embassy/3b/time.html). Note: NSK makes a distinction between its 'citizens' and its 'members'. 'Citizens' in practice are anyone who can scrape together the money for a passport, while 'members' are specially fifteen people. (M. Benson)
(6) 'Irwin', in: "Transcentrala (Neue Slowenische Kunst Drzava v casu)", video by Marina Grzinic & Aina Smid, 20.05 min, Ljubljana 1993
(7) Op. cit.
(8) As an addition to the embassies and consulates, the NSK Drzava v casu issues passports, which are understood as a "confirmation of temporal space" (NSK) and which can be obtained by any person irrespective of citizenship or nationality.
(9) Neue Slowenische Kunst, "NSK Embassy Moscow. How the East sees the East" (Irwin in Collaboration with Apt-Art International and Ridzina Gallery, Moscow May 10 - June 10, 1992), Obalne Galerije Piran / Loza Gallery Koper (eds.), Koper [1992]