Transiencies on Water, Trade and Transport

As in a residency, transiency should offer a concentrated and immersive engagement with the field and environment in which it takes place, without being stuck in one physical location.

Away from the distractions of everyday life, embedded into other everyday lives, the transiency helps to explore the manifold whys and wherefors of cargo, the ocean, biology, ships and the various kinds of weathers that influence these things.

Material, information and knowledge collected during the transiencies will inform a near future scenario, developed and built to allow the imagination of a possible future indicating triggered changes made through alternative models in a global mobility of commodities. The transiencies will collect ideas about how this scenario can grow and emerge.

Time's Up Transiencies focus on the ways in which international trade, with its production, transport and waste processes, is adversely affecting the natural and human world. Water pollution, trade imbalances, price dumping, tax systems and subventions; a host of changes of sociopolitical and geophysical significance.

In this event, the current state, the developments of and hopes for ecologically sustainable transport and in particular, sail cargo, are being discussed.

The journey started on a 3-week Transiency journey in February 2016, where Time's Up crew visited a number of groups and individuals working in the field in Europe, giving a wider perspective. The journey continues on a series of events on the theme Water, Trade and Transport.

This project page will be updated following the routes and documentations of the journey. Project duration: January - August 2016.

 

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'Loose Diary'

 

“Art Anthropology at sea”

Posted on July 14, 2016 by timesuptina

 

Control of the Commons, the title for a project we have been engaged with between 2011 and 2012, was very much focussing on the investigation of the parallels and differences in water transport and waterway usage. Contentwise it is still relevant in some of our current developments – especially for the near future scenario of Turnton as part of Changing Weathers. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

How to start a shipping company II

Posted on July 5, 2016 by timesuptim

 

The legalities are sorted to be a freighter. The next step is to get two things happening: things to transport and something to transport them in. Today we managed to get the second of these processes one step further. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

How to start a Shipping Company I

Posted on May 27, 2016 by timesuptim

 

In the development of the project Changing Weathers, we have looked at length at green shipping, which in specific seems to indicate wind and electric powered shipping. A question arose early about starting a shipping company on the Danube, which we thought was a preposterous idea and forgot about it. But one thing led to another, discussions were had and we found that, at least in principle, a sustainable shipping company on the Danube is not to be regarded as impossible. This blog post documents part of the process of making it happen. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

Fair Transport – Green Cargo glance #1

Posted on April 10, 2016 by timesuptina

 

We didn’t get to see those perfect, polished or heroic images. Neither we heard the thrilling, impressive adventurous stories. All this, according to Stefano, can be found on-line anyway. Instead we got to listen to anecdotes, these nice, sympathetic stories between the lines of the “big stories”. Tales, covering authentically and unagitated all sorts of smaller pleasures, complications, successes, challenges, flaws and treats. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

 

Quetzal

Posted on March 14, 2016 by timesuptim

 

Arriving at the tiny station of Dumfries after four trains taking me across the UK, I was welcomed by a fellow meeting his own description:

“You will recognise me from the bright Red Hat with feathers..
If i am late don’t worry yourself, your arrival is my utmost importance”

Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

It’s a Process!

Posted on March 5, 2016 by timesuptim

 

It was a pleasure to visit a good media arts festival, with good people speaking about things that they have thought about, that they care about, and that they are working with. Our partners in Changing Weathers, Sonic Acts, have been running their festival for over 20 years, with a continual development of their approach and interests. This year they took on the Academy, dealing with questions of academic work and artistic research, what it means to be an institution and what it means to be an activist. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

Some of your friends are already this Fucked

Posted on February 26, 2016 by timesuptim

 

In Bristol, I enjoyed a frenzied series of conversations with Kate Rich, artist/trader and Anton, wine merchant. Both are strongly interested in the way that businesses and trade are built and expand, social connections emerge, individuals and groups create niches, build relationships and carry on doing interesting things. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

By the Book

Posted on February 25, 2016 by timesuptim

 

Chatting with Marcus and Freya from the Grayhound has been inspiring and surprising. Their boat, or probably one should say ship, looks like it fell through a hole in time straight from the 18th century. It is, however, a new build and meets the most stringent requirements for UK registered global passenger travel. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

Here To Go

Posted on February 19, 2016 by timesuptim

 

 

Cornelius Bockermann, the instigator of Timbercoast, is not to be dissuaded. Asked what he thinks needs to happen in order for sail cargo to expand he says “nothing.” We will build it and they will come. The problem with sail cargo is not the lack of demand, but the lack of tonnage. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

 

Science, Stories and Spirits

Posted on February 11, 2016 by timesuptim

 

 

Two conversations stay in my mind for now, the others are scribbled notes and a collection of ideas that will bear fruit down the line.  Exxpeditions have undertaken to look not only at the presence of pollution in ocean waters, especially in the form of plastics, but also to look at the presence of pollutants in their own bodies. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

Points on a Map

Posted on February 5, 2016 by timesuptim

 

 

For Changing Weathers, we will spend the next three weeks visiting specialists and practitioners involved in a myriad of activities that we will bundle into the Storyworld for the exhibition to be premiered in Riga at RIXC in September this year. We have been in contact with many of them, more will arise in conversation and exploration. Working with people, visits and discussions, serendipity and plain good luck will all help us find interesting and compelling story elements. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

Cargo Bosun

Posted on February 9, 2016 by timesuptim

 

 

Day one of the transiency was spent visiting the EZS Zeevaarschool in Enhuizen, one of the few places anywhere to offer professional sailing competency certification. They offer two main courses, running larger and smaller sailing ships, the Grote Zeilvaart and the Kleine Zeilvaart (also in English) which run off season, from October through March. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

Some Travelling Notes

Posted on January 28, 2016 by timesuptim

 

 

Travel Log. January 4th. Arriving in Travemünde Skandenavienkai (Scandinavian Quay) by train, I am one of only four people who disembarks. The exit is onto a road, unlit, unsignposted. Luckily two of the four disembarquees are some locals who send me through the tunnel beneath the railway to wait for a bus outside the harbour. This asking carries on: where to get off the bus, where to go, where to wait. This is not a pathway much trodden, not a well signposted mass tourism system. Continue reading on Loose Diary >

 

Changing Weathers – scenario shaping starts

Posted on November 20, 2015 by timesuptina

 

​Photo: Oil spill in San Fransisco Bay. About 58,000 gallons of oil spilled from a South Korea-bound container ship when it struck a tower supporting the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

 

Within the last few days we started to shape and condense our initial framework of ideas and subjects – strongly connected to mobility of people and goods towards, alternative, already existing or yet to come methods of transport of all sorts of traded commodities. The mobility of goods – a substantial subject in the realm of geopolitical settings of our western world – shall be the center of our investigations within Changing Weathers, shall be the content inspiring our transiencies (nomadic residencies) and shall be the subject informing near-future scenario being developed as a result of our research and the transiencies. Continue reading on Loose Diary >