VIENNA - KUNSTHALLE EXNERGASSE - FIREFLY
THE STONE ROAD (ON TRACK. OFF TRACK. MEMORISING THE MID-WORLD. WALKING THE FIFTH-SPACE)
15.11.2008 > 13.12.2008

Since 2006, a group of artists and an architect (Orla Barry, Wim Cuyvers, Els Dietvorst, Nikolaus Gansterer, Johanna Kirsch) have been working on'The Stone Road'. It concerns a research project on and along the national road N6 (Chausée de Mons) which runs from Brussels to Mons, a town in Wallonia, Belgium. It used to be one of the routes to Santiago de Compostela (Spain). Now it crosses the linguistic borders of Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia. The N6 becomes a global prototype of the national road stretching its urban tentacles from one city to the next out into the landscape and its accelerated lines create inner spaces: transit zones filled with emptiness, gaps and non-places of globalisation. Sometimes the Chaussée de Mons reminds one of an outer-European place and sometimes it is a no man's land. The abandoned churches, the closed stores, the empty beer cans, the feeling of decay, the ugliness, the abundance of traffic, the shipping canals and the dominant history of the coal mines and immigration form the coordinates of this stretch of land.

A project by Orla Barry, Wim Cuyvers, Els Dietvorst, Nikolaus Gansterer, Johanna Kirsch
Produced by Firefly vzw (Brussels), in collaboration with Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht), Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna), argos (Brussels) & kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels)

More information: www.fireflyprojects.be; www.wuk.at/kunsthalle