TRANS - Reply from Hold & Freight

In response to Wiebke Gronemeyer's Trans proposal we are traveling by coach to Hamburg and back with three London based artists, Sam Curtis, Justin Gainan and Ana Noble Nava and installing an exhibition of their work in HfbK Gallery in Hamburg

An exchange exhibition project can potentially display a tendency towards its own neutralization by emphasis on the cut and paste structure of swapping. Trans allows us the opportunity to ask, what is produced in an exchange?

Here the focus is not on the deferential other space but the interstitial spaces and how in that space an idea of Trans can stimulate new knowledge, possibilities and discourses. We are suggesting a curatorial strategy that makes discourse and exchange its purpose, aiming to create dialectical spaces for heterogeneous ideas to flourish that simultaneously facilitate an exchange between the disparate geographical spaces of Hold & Freight and Galerie de HFBK. The proposal is to invite artists, who will ideally work across various media (film, photography, video, text, performance, objects etc) to respond to the proposed journey between London and Hamburg. Taking a coach from London to arrive in Hamburg, we intend to begin the journey with three London based artists, developing a discourse on the long trip.

The journey is planned to provide the basic backdrop in terms of subject matter or stimulus from which the artists will be asked to respond. The vehicle takes on an active form of an office, studio, information point and an exhibition space where the development of projects, performances, conversations and screenings take place. The programmatic organisation of the journey will be carefully considered to incorporate, into its geographical trajectory, a series of peripatetic events, showings, mini-exhibitions and screenings (operating between London and Hamburg). These fleeting, fragmentary and ephemeral incidents will be documented and archived. Once in Hamburg we shall spend four days producing work and installing the exhibition in HFBK.