full details on:
http://www.kulturaxe.com/siso-e.html

SISONKE means 'togetherness' in zulu language. SISONKE stands for a cross continental exchange in design and contemporary arts between South Africa and Europe. Based on reciprocity and sustainability, SISONKE promotes a collaboration in creative expression between the continents and launches a mobility network aimed at continuity.

SISONKE was developed by KulturAXE Vienna and IMFUNDISO South Africa and realized with partners in South Africa and Europe such as Ntja Pedi Productions, BlackAgeMedia and many more.

The 21st Century is marked by rapid changes of perspectives and the evolvement of new centres on a global level. We experience a constant remapping of the world and a relativisation of the notion periphery. The opening to the "other" has been declared as a principle of action, international attention is more and more directed to art production of the new centres such as South Africa, China, Mexico. However, international representation processes of contemporary art production remain closed circuits branded by inequality of access relating to geographical provenance. Cross-continental exchanges are more often then not still biased by stereotypes, proliferation of myths and prefabricated notions of cultural identity.

It is time to start communication based on something as simple as dialogue. Time not to seek for lack or deficencies in the other, but to detect and tap creative potential and to assemble energies. There are no global issues which stand alone. Its time to break walls. To attempt remapping conditions of action highlighting the power of the fine lines of personal interaction and networking. Embracing the individual as multiplicator, catalyst and activist of communication and social movement.

WE ARE ONE
THE FABRIC OF THAT IS HUMAN
IS US
OUR CREATIVE ENERGY MOVES
WITH THE FORCE OF THE OCEAN
IN MOTION
WE ARE ALL INVOLVED
WE ARE THE CELEBRANTS HERE
WE ARE ONE - WE ARE TOGETHER
SISONKE - REMMOGO
Keorapetse William Kgositsile, 2006

Keorapetse William Kgositsile, legendary South African poet and activist, writes the lyrics for the SISONKE title song!

New Nomadism, Migration and Mobility
by Caroline Fekete-Kaiser
Association KulturAXE, Vienna
E-mail: info@kulturaxe.net
www.kulturaxe.com

Central themes of KulturAXE are the dismantling of mental and real borders, exploring new cartographies and their implementation in art projects. Emphasizing prioritiy issues of the transnational debate of the 21st century, such as mobility, "New Nomadism" and migration.

As a transnational cultural association, KulturAXE attempts to deal with these complex issues by providing information, promoting discourse and initiating action in specific projects.

We live in a world marked by constant renegotiation and shifting processes of borders. In this context KulturAXE proposes to analyze and question the development of today's fortresses focusing on new nomadism, migration and mobility in a global context of boundaries and flows. Do hypermobility, increasing flows, de-localization of lifestyles lead to a decenteredness of our world or does it build new frontiers, concentration processes, sharpen the edges in center-periphery relationships? Are networks an answer or "closed universes"? What is the state-of-the-art in a "state-at-war" in a battle on social space, production of information and knowledge and representation of reality?

In reaction to the movements in this world, KulturAXE has used the following approaches in specific projects to introduce and present thought and practice models of new spatial organisation, acquisition and conversion of space and reflections on personal identity :

-Creating temporary environments for 'living and doing' in a CEE venues, assembling artists, students and participants from European and
non-European nations (in our yearly art symposia),
-Developing grant-programmes primarily for artists and art students from CEE nations and nations with travel restrictions,
-Thus enabling contacts leading to further projects, cooperations, networks and ongoing communication
-Integrating the themes in workshops, focusing on information transmission processes, publishing and media competence,
-Presenting and hosting art projects and concepts dealing with new spatial organization, migration, mobility and border crossing,
- Lectures, Guest-lectures, open discussion forums
- Creation of the transnational nomadic "label of action" LOD,LANDSCAPES OF DESIRE (2002)
-Establishing the platform SISONKE 'togetherness' for a sustainable exchange between Africa and Europe in mutual respect and reciprocal inspiration (2006)
-Launching the web platform Cross Continental Action Platform with Machfeld
http://www.cca-p.net/

New Nomadism, migration and mobility
Today the "new nomadism" is lived and propagated - in work life, in social environments, in housing and dwelling structures and in urban landscapes. While the phenomena of new nomadism manifests itself, on one side, as working necessity, trend, fashion and lived longings, it is on the other side experienced as forced mass migrations and refugee tides.

Globalism, networks, the permanent development of communication and information technologies as triggers and also as instruments of a permanent mobilization, run parallel with the issuance of a multitude of projects and studies - such as Michel Maffesoli ('The Time of the Tribes' - sociality today: the wandering mass-tribes (1) ), Paolo Soleri (Arcosanti, 1970 (2) ) 'Shifting populations will be the norm in the future: the human species is on the move.', Rem Kolhaas (..the generic city is always founded by people on the move), Ron Herron (Instant City: the metropolis would arrive like a circus, operate for a period of time, and then move on (3) ), Hou Hanru & Hans Ulrich Obrist ('Cities on the Move' the new cultural identities are claimed to be open, unstable, ever-changing, hybrid and transgressive of established boundaries (4) ), Costa Vece (The city of dream and hope, 2001): temporary architecture as spaces of encounters' up to the notion of 'movement' as a new category in urban research.

Boundaries and flows
A crucial issue in this context is the development of today's fortresses that span buildings, spaces up to entire areas and nations. Fortresses implicate the notion of frontiers, boundaries, borders, notions intrinsically linked to 'keywords' of culture and society in the transnational debate of the 21st century, such as 'flows' and 'hybrids' ('Flows, Boundaries and Hybrids: keywords in transnational anthropology', Ulf Hannerz, Prof. Of Social Anthropology, University of Stockholm).

The frontier as metaphor for urban growth, as seen by the urban geographer Neil Smith, 'the frontier of today being a frontier of profitability? 'Cultural boundaries' (5), borderlands, frontiers of knowledge (6), invisible power structures? Some of the essential processes to be explored in this context are the strategies and mechanisms leading to the creation and maintenance of boundaries, the effect of exclusion and marginalization in the 'infospace' and today's urban spaces (7) and the correlation of economic concentration processes and hypermobility. "The global city is emblematic here, with its vast concentrations of hypermobile dematerialized financial instruments and the enormous concentrations of material and place-bound resources that it takes to have the former circulating around the globe in a second. (Saskia Sassen, 'the spatialities and temporalities of the global')". The mobility of capital being defined as one of the flows characterizing the late twentieth-century societies (flows of capital, labor, commodities, information and images) (8).

Models of new spatial organisation, creation of environments
Focusing on the interrelation of boundaries and flows in a global context, KulturAXE aims to introduce and present thought and practice models of new spatial organisation, acquisition and conversion of space (public space, social space, production of information, representation of reality) in the field of art and culture. What strategies can be formulated, which alliances engendered for effective counter representations in an monopolizing world?

Infowars, social netwars
"We are at war." claims John Vidal in his article 'The world@war' (The Guardian, 2000) (9), "Not the sort that pits army against army, that sheds blood, destroys economies and bankrupts governments, but what is being called by the US military "social netwars". And Commandante Marcos of the Zapatistas (10) claims that "after the Cold War, the fourth world war has started" (11) referring to new networks of opposition responding with incredible speed of mobilisation on global protest issues. "Netwar refers to information-related conflict at a grand level between nations or societies it may involve diplomacy, propaganda and psychological campaigns, battles for public opinion and for media access and coverage." (John Arquilla) (12). Our civic society being in a state of permanent mobilization, "the fronts not being anymore national borders or juridical systems, but technical standards, a battle on the power of knowledge as profitable monopoly and its dissemination and conveyance." (Gerfried Stocker, Ars Electronica) (13).

What is the state-of-the-art in a state-at-war? Refusal, denial, withdrawal or development of post-utopian visions? Reorganizing of maps, knowledges and information structures or re-adoption of war-strategies in art and culture concepts (14)?

NOTES

(1) Michel Maffesoli , THE TIME OF THE TRIBES, The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society, Sage Publications, 1996, (Le Temps des tribus, Méridiens Klincksieck, Paris, 1988)

(2) Paolo Soleri, creation of Arcosanti in 1970. 'Shifting populations will be the norm in the future: the human species is on the move. When Asia and Africa follow suit, even at the exclusion of forcible shifts (political, economical, cultural and racial) millions of people will expect shelter and services in the most likely and unlikely places.

(3) Ron Herron: "The design for Instant City brought together trailer units, inflatables, lightweight structures, gantries, towers, support systems, scaffolding, audio-visual displays, projection equipment and electronic display systems. The metropolis would arrive like a circus, set up shop, operate for a period of time, and then move on."

(4) Cities on the Move, 1996, Hans Ulrich Obrist und Hou Hanru - künstlerische Projekte in Relation zur Expansion der Städte in Asien, CITIES ON THE MOVE, Ausst.Kat. Secession, 1996

(5) Ulf Hannerz Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, 1997, (FLOWS, BOUNDARIES AND HYBRIDS: KEYWORDS IN TRANSNATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY) :
"We could argue that when the cultural flow has somehow stopped somewhere, where there is a discontinuity in the distribution of meanings and/or meaningful forms among individuals and social relationships, then we have identified a cultural boundary ."

(6) Ulf Hannerz Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, 1997, (FLOWS, BOUNDARIES AND HYBRIDS: KEYWORDS IN TRANSNATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY) :
"When as scholars we face the "frontiers of knowledge", it is also this sense of the frontier as next to wilderness that takes hold of our imagination. On this side, the cultivated fields; on the other, the great unknown. And the sense of wilderness