By the Means at Hand

Our work, Tumbleweed diaspore, has been included in ‘By the Means at Hand’, Vlatka Horvat’s project for the Croatian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

"Engaging with the theme of Adriano Pedrosa’s main exhibition for La Biennale di Venezia, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, the project exists as an accumulative exhibition of artworks by a wide-ranging group of international artists living “as foreigners,” reflecting on questions and urgencies of the diasporic experience."

The package travelled with us for nearly a month – from Belgium via Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy – until we hand-delivered it to the lovely people at Fabbrica 33 in Canareggio at the end of May.

"The title of the project – By the Means at Hand – refers to the improvised transport systems whereby individuals activate informal networks of friends, acquaintances, and even strangers to deliver letters, parcels, documents, money, and other material goods to family members and others who live in cities or countries far away. While such practices are born out of social dispersal, migration, and displacement, the networks they give rise to build effectively on wider principles of solidarity, shared struggle, mutual support, and friendship – factors that the project emphasizes as prerequisites for co-existing with others, and as key elements in the toolkit for those living “in foreign lands.”

By the Means at Hand also points to a wide range of broader themes such as alternative logistics, the spontaneous production of social relations, informal and gift economies, and the idea of trustfulness. On a subtler, yet crucial, infrastructural level, the project takes off from a recognition of the state of emergency when it comes to the climate crisis, and the substantial environmental footprint of institutionalized modes of production, transportation, and presentation of contemporary art. The project’s improvisatory system of delivering artworks to and from Venice forgoes the formal transport system, using instead journeys that are happening anyway."

@vltkhrvt @croatianpavilion2024 @labiennale