Dragana Kojicic storyTAILORING and restauraTERRA as part of #newcheapnature Magic Carpets “Artist in Residency” #2, Innsbruck

If we care about the world, then in many ways it might equate to the feeling described by being grounded. In this respect, looking down, what “grounds” and gives “down-to-earthness”

NEW CHEAP NATURE Is a project started by Austrian artist Richard Schwarz during his online residency with Novo Kulturno Naselje in Novi Sad (Serbia). The project asks several important questions regarding the relationship humans have with with each other and their surrounding non-human world. In its first phase, the project started out as an interactive digital campaign on social media. As such, #newcheapnature aimed to provoke people to question their everyday actions as consumers and the consequences those actions have on the environment. The campaign entailed a series of subtle visuals and fun questionnaires with the intention of generating interaction and discourse. As part of this campaign, users were invited to share images of the oldest t-shirts in their wardrobe online and calculate the amount of water they had been saving over the course of time.
Following the invitation of openspace.innsbruck, Serbian architect/artist Dragana Kojičić will develop the second phase of #newcheapnature as part of her “Magic Carpets” residency in Innsbruck. Doing so, she will translate the project from its former presence in digital space to the city’s built environment. In consultation with curator Danijela Oberhofer Tonković, Kojičić has chosen to work with local residents of the neighbourhood surrounding openspace.innsbruck and the many parents, children and elders passing by the gallery’s front yard every day.

During her stay, Kojičić will open a “storyTAILORING” shop in front of openspace.innsbruck, inviting people to bring their oldest t-shirts (or other pieces of clothing) and share their stories with the architect. Together with the participants, Kojičić will then create visual representations of their encounters and exhibit them on the facade of the gallery. That way, an accessible archive of stories will grow over the course of several days in public space. In return for their stories, Kojičić will offer participants tailor-made stories of her own. In her “restauraTERRA”, the architect will cook up a daily changing menu of narratives that explore the various meanings of “land” and connected questions of value and usership. Kojičić’s stories thereby challenge common conceptions of the term and offer new perspectives to the local public.

Dragana Kojičić is an independent architect with a specialisation in earth architecture and a doctoral student at “Scene Architecture, Technique and Design” in Novi Sad. Since 2010, she has been organising numerous theoretical trainings and practical workshops for earth construction in cooperation with many individuals, institutions and organisations in Serbia and the region. She runs the Centre for Earth Architecture in Mošorin (Serbia), and is the creator of the first “Balkan Earth Conference” and the “LALA Earthland Festival”. She is particularly interested in the role of women in building crafts.

#newcheapnature contributors:
Dragana Kojičić
Richard Schwarz
Melanie Gandyra

In partnership with: FH Kufstein (Kufstein University of Applied Sciences)

Organisation: openspace.innsbruck with support of Novo Kulturno Naselje
Co-curated by Danijela Oberhofer Tonkovic ( openspace) & Sara Agic (Novo Kulturno Naselje)

“Magic Carpets” is a “Creative Europe Platform” that brings together up to 20 European cultural organisations and provides emerging artists with opportunities for international mobility. Whilst traveling through unknown countries, these artists develop new, site-specific works together with local actors and communities. This makes cultural activism visible, strengthens participation and co-creation, and opens up new publics.

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