Sttwn

Username

Sttwn

Name

Scott Townsend

Links

http://www.imaginarycountry.org/

Description

Additional information on the work proposed;

Most of the work was developed in and for areas in conflict. There are several examples:

I. (earlier work: http://www.imaginarycountry.org/www_09/research.html
-and "Borderline Series")

An urban neighborhood in the United States with an influx of people from Central and South America in conflict with a traditional European/American population. The pieces were about bringing some kind of reflection and conciliation with both sides when it was exhibited, with other programming from community leaders from both sides.

II. "Your Imaginary Country: the Berlin Wall and the Southwest Border Initiative” 2008 and 2010. Another project tied together two parts of the globe that have a history with a "Wall"-

http://www.imaginarycountry.org/www_09/research.html

The Imaginary Country project was shown in Berlin and in the Southwest US- and linked through the web so that answers from both places could be shown together from the audiences. It developed stories and audience based questions about political and economic exclusion of people from each country at a particular time and place- comparing the German “Wall” with the US "wall:" the Strategic Border Initiative, which literally is an update on the Berlin Wall physically. Audience answers became part of the project- both sides were appalled that a) something like this was happening once again in a "democracy," (the Berlin audience) while the U.S. audience understood the comparison (though it was broken down in terms of what motivates the idea of a "wall") since so much of U.S. ideology is about the iconography of the end of "communism" in Europe.

III. The projects tend to elicit audience responses both in the work (answers from the audience become part of the work electronically) that fall into all of the love/conflict/imagination categories in your proposal call.

see documentation at:
http://www.imaginarycountry.org/www_09/research.html

-and the Visual Communication project (print based - Sage Publishers in the U.K)

In the projects that I develop, people talk about imagining what their new community could be like- they evidence conflict between themselves and the reality- (often about conflicts between not only the new community that they live in, but also conflicts with their family and expectations of being fully from both cultures) The conflicts of course are often induced from governments and economies in conflict- such as the current EU economic situation and smaller countries (see the project "Marriage of Convenience"
done with collaborators in Lithuania in 09-

http://www.imaginarycountry.org/www_09/research.html)

IV. Finally- my most recent work tries to raise issues about how we imagine relationships based on body metaphor- see www.imaginarycountry.org/ch_2011

and the interactive animation "pulse" in particular. This was done in a major corporate city in the United States- which is the second largest banking center in the U.S. (behind NYC).

Please feel free to get back in touch- the memefest project is something if possible I would greatly like to participate in.