Simple unedited by Rosina Ivanova

ROSINA IVANOVA OUTLANDIA

Outlandia is the idea of going to a place you don’t know anything about. It implies spontaneity, movement, childish curiosity and relationship to space. Outlandia is the ephemeral state I carry within my body somewhere between land and the Rafti island in the Aegean sea- it combines performative elements that create imagined geographies of visited places as situations. It tests the human body’ limits of writing, walking and canoeing and combines short stories of wanderings, encounters with strangers and physical explorations, together with photography and video, to forge the space of Outlandia. Outlandia consists of a journey to The Elephant Rock to the Lovers’ Cave

beach, to The Garden and to the Rafti island. My entanglement with Outlandia was such that provides questions of its linkages to spaces that is comprised of and its leaks to other places. It creates, without a destination, text geographies of bodily experimentations of these places- to experiment with how we make sense of the experiences of the body in these physical spaces -as chance circumstances of places? Walking to nowhere and endlessly rowing with my paddle is the idea to depart from the initial site- to have found permanence in the immediate impermanence. Outlandia re- tells the same story over and over again from my journey to the real place, but the entire story can never be fully told

Outlandia: from Lovers’ Cave beach to The Elephant Rock to the Raftis Island and the space in between 2013-2014

My journey to the Raftis island Unfinished paper card-left blank on the back, digital print, 2013 13x10 cm Cards, pieces of the journeys

to Outlandia I keep on printing possible cards, writing letters to people, and assembling a small book with postal addresses but I never send the letters-cards. The cards contain visual from videos, walks, objects I find during the walks, of performances, drawings and the texts are relationships to the found objects and places, stories or my current daily thoughts on paper, like this

The canoe in the bell, unfinished paper card, digital print 2013

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Left and right hand while walking, 2013 240x160mm

Diptych drawings recording left and right foot movement and steps while walking. Drawn while moving, simultaneously with the left and the right hand while having attached a board perpendicular to my chest. My right hand moves to draw simultaneously with the right leg movement.

Walking in circles, arranging brunches, action 2014 Duration: 6 hours I continued my weed- huts experiment during which I use the brunches Ivan cuts in the garden that will be later on disposed in the trash. What I do is that I create hut like, pyramid like, island like, tree-house formations by simply only placing the brunches one on top of the other without any other joining materials (e.g. glue, or ropes etc.) and let them stand in the air simply on gravity. I observed after that how the feeling of wind and rain and tiny storms is way more pronounced in me- I start thinking Â

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about the weather. I am aware of and feel the wind in relation to its possible destructive and natural powers may have on my free standing formations. I am curious to go and check on them the next day- if they are still standing or they have fallen due to the wind or some animals that may have been there.

What I’ ve noticed is that a small feminine body can get inside without destroying the hut, but not a male. I called it ‘walking in circles’ because I walked in circles to make them. Doing this was never with the intention to make “work” but with the intention to rest in nature, and if I walk in this paradise garden full of possibilities, to keep it open on what might happen in my journey.

Clown head and found objects in Outlandia, post- card, digital print on paper, 2014 17x15cm

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Yellow flowers with bells, documentation of going to the island, 2013 Post-card on photo paper 17x15 cm credits: photo by Ivan Ivanov

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My first coming back from the island, documentation of going to the island, 2013 Post-card on photo paper 17x15 cm credits: photo by Ivan Ivanov

Lazarka, from one place to another: elsewhere within here, performance 2013 Duration: 7 days The metamorphosis of girl into woman adorned with flowers and endured in walking is central theme of traditional pagan rituals common to Bulgaria-GreeceRomania-Serbia. Walking, adorations on the body, ritual, presence and audiences ‘becoming’ in spaces are central themes in performance. For this piece, I will connect bougainvillea flowers into straights lines or garland rings for 7 days at Lovers’ Cave beach, at Rafti Island, at The Elephant rock formation (in the city of Porto Rafti) and at the Michanourgeiou building at Technopolis museum (Athens) fluidly coming and going from one place to another. I offer flower garlands to passers by as a gift to wear on their neck, and as a commitment to meet at Love Cave beach on Nov 11 at 17:00 to celebrate life and learn about where we strangers come from artistically, spiritually, and creatively.

Photo credit: Dimitris Priftis 15

An installation view of lazarka hand made book and the text excerpt ‘When I walk’, 2013

An excerpts from the lazarka hand made book, 2013

Lazarka, 43 km walking performance, photo documentation. Credits: Ivan Ivanov 2013 Duration 13 hours There, in between the Rafti island and the beach we (few) will connect the garland pieces into a common line in the water watching it fluidly extend to the island into an unknown shape. In return to adoring you with flower rings, I also invite you to commit to a 43km/ 9h+ walk the same day. The walk starts on Nov 11, at 8 am from the central door of Technopolis Museum, continues through the city of Athens and reaches the Lovers’ Cave beach around 17:00(or later) to connect the garland pieces into a common line in the water with the people. Celebratory walkers can join in the walk at various points within the route followed. Maybe this way we could create for one another a situation for contact, a celebration, a ritual of adoration, a walk-in real life in-between performance and the spaces we create and cross.

Documentation of Lazarka performance, 2013

The Lazarka ritual (associated with walking and flowers) and other forgotten rituals, not so practiced in everyday life, decent altered in the new transient spaces we inhabit. Nowadays, the Lazarka is in between the galleries, in the artist studios, in between the balconies and the streets, the doors and the stairs, in between lands and islands, challenging the personas we impersonate in our everyday lives. Who and how many selves are we becoming in a life time? Â

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Sisyphean events of place, snapshots from video Performance, duration 2 hours, photo credit Mikkel Niemann 2014

An attempt to ‘transfer the site: the duration, the childhood element, the bell sound and the fragility of Outlandia events of place’ at Linder Project Space, Berlin

Photo credit and text: Stephanie Reid 2014

‘remnants from a performance installation by Rosina Ivanova. The artist practiced a feat of strength and endurance by holding up weights, with both arms outstretched to her sides, for a long period of time. Occasionally, she rings an encouraging bell. She likens the experience to the efforts of travel and immigration. All the while, a boat travels through the water on the screen behind her to emphasize the connection’

Outlandia album with open window, hardcopy installation view, 2014

Outlandia album, cover page Digital print, 198 diptych pages, 2014

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featured pages from the album following:

Page from the Outlandia album, photography from performance with text by Julia Hyde Â

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Page from Outlandia album, photography of notes with text by Jean-Marie Casbarian

Page from Outlandia album, photography of ‘pockets maps’ with ‘Canoe’ text by Rosina Ivanova

Page from Outlandia album, 2014

The rolling snail is a sample of my rolling snails archive; I walk in the night with my rolling snail toy (object give to me- like all the objects I use in Outlandia- given or found) every time I walk to the Lovers’ Cave beach in the night. This is now becoming more of a sound piece with moving image and just about the right quality. The snail is from wood and does not have a magnet to collect objects as it rolls. The walks last 8-15 minutes: from my door step to the Lovers’ cave beach. The archive is of 87 days rolling snails walks. Rolling Snail, Video documentation of walking and rolling a snail toy, 2014 Duration: 0:05:54 Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLt3fHVuRbE

Sand Pile is an unedited video material of the instance when Ivan and I went to the beach with the initial aim to play with sand, and record 4 hands doing so. After driving around to find a beach with sand (most beaches here are with stones) we set up under a tree and attached the camera via spider web like strings that pull its both sides tied up to the tree brunches, with the lens looking down towards the surface of the beach. location,

Sand Pile, video documentation, outdoors installation view 2014 Duration: 0:29:32 Link to video : https://vimeo.com/121127581

We ended up moving sand from one place to another – from the shore to the tree, carrying the sand with buckets and a flowerpot. The strings, pots and all are objects of opportunity we found on us or in the car; the sand, the beach, the camera and our bodies were the only planned materials to work from.

Ivan and I had a very specific visual image about the 4 hands in the range of the camera (without leaving) and the unspecified conversation. During the making, the conversation about what are we doing. The absurdity in caring water and sand with a pot that has holes, the very fact that we would cross paths while carrying the sand, the fact that we walk away from the camera to go get sand (the camera records partial moments of our conversation), and the perfect natural sound background of the beach, became elements of our interest. These rather surfacing (not intended) happenstances- circumstances of the situation, were way more precious than editing a very specific imageAfter that we decided to “leave” the material untouched as it happened instead of picking best parts, let the viewer experience a part of the real time, through the eye of the camera and added some of the conversation as English subtitles. With time and as I sit on what we did and what happened, everything becomes clearer and easier to explain somehow

Ivan: Making Sand Pile is the idea of spending time with another person. We had different arguments about life, points of life – like who wants to do gardening […]My flower pot had holes so until I was getting to that spot, the sand was almost gone. I remember you moving sand with the yogurt bucket and mumbling something all the time […]