Introduction

transit station is an ongoing mixed disciplinary art event featuring live art and performance, music, dance, theatre, fashion, film and video. Organized by Dagmar Glausnitzer-Smith, transit station brings together young emerging artists as well as established practitioners in changing international contexts. Preparation requires five days, followed by the two-day art event, with three subsequent days allotted for de-installation, post-production and workshops.

transit station is on tour as it transports artists and their work from previous transit station events in different countries. Metaphorically it is a tour de force, inviting regional and local artists to work alongside visiting artists with varying cultural backgrounds. The character of transit station can be understood in the image of a train journey: at each station people and artists get on board while others disembark. Personal experience becomes transitional, fluid, and to some extent, indeterminate.

At a transit station event, we enter this world in an art context, where the work exists at the intersection of artist and audience, performance and space. At the centre of the journey is a scaffolding system which serves as an armature - or foil - for performers, audience, and ideas. As transit station travels from country to country, the context changes, but the scaffolding system is static, the station in transit.

The event brings with it a successful track record since 2003 and a loyal following. Scottish artists will join transit station artists from Berlin, London, Paris, performing together in Edinburgh and gathering for future international events. The production team in Edinburgh was led by transit station organisers Dagmar Glausnitzer-Smith and Charles Ryder with the active and collaborative involvement of TotalKunst (part of The Forest organisation), represented by Rose Strang and Aaron McCloskey, who will act as co-curators for transit station Edinburgh.

The idea of a transit station event is based on the changing artistic and social dynamics during the performance weekend. Visitors can be passive, albeit contemplative, or be actively involved in the dynamics of the event.

transit station has established its own motif change through experience, creativity and perception.

transit station on tour extends this idea through the sense perceptions during the actual experience where the stage is absolutely absent. In the realm of performing arts the actor visualizes an imaginary stage and the parameters expand beyond the conventional limitations. This unforeseeable set-up becomes a situation, in which the meaning of private and imagined reaction of the viewer is being challenged.

The method attracts an attention span and the possibility to be in the ‘now’, Glausnitzer-Smith says:

“ It is the task to find a level of orientation for the unknowable in Mind and Action and to develop confidence for that which supercedes pre-conception.”

The concept becomes a “live experience” between the participating artists, who in part share the same inter-active space with the viewer, au milieu the complexity of the scaffolding system.

The principle artwork, in the conventional sense, is the scaffolding system, a three-dimensional and separate object, three to five meters in height. The nature of the scaffold is transitive, and it exists in each setting with the full implications of its temporary nature. It represents a state of in-between, denoting the absence of beginnings and endings.

At a transit station event, we enter this world in an art context, where the work exists at the intersection of artist and audience, performance and space. The journey is expressed by a scaffolding structure, designed to serve as an armature - or foil - for performers, audience, and ideas. As transit station travels from country to country, the context changes, but the scaffolding system is always there, the station in transit.

© 2002 - 2008 transit station
glausnitzer@transitstation.de

transit station website
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