CAVS staffer finds herself on Lost Highway
MIT affiliates among planners of art experience
Deborah Halber, News Office Correspondent
September 25, 2006

Soon after Meg Rotzel arrived in Ljubljana, Slovenia, this past July, she met up with 25 strangers at an art gallery, and they all set out to spend the next three days together--as fellow travelers on the Lost Highway Expedition.

The expedition, which ran from July 30 to Aug. 24 in the Western Balkans, drew some 300 people to what its organizers called "a massive intelligent swarm" of individuals, groups and institutions from the United States, Europe and elsewhere. The expedition was loosely centered around art, architecture and culture.

Rotzel, curatorial associate for MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), became intrigued by the ambitious project when she worked with some of the event's planners at CAVS.

Life is a highway
‘Lost Highway Expedition Symposium’ at MIT; ‘Inspired by China’ at the Peabody Essex
By: RANDI HOPKINS

10/17/2006 5:03:10 PM

In August 2006, in a spirit of shared purpose that could serve as a brave new model for political activism, more than 200 artists, architects, and assorted citizens of the world traversed the former Yugoslavia’s former Highway of Brotherhood and Unity (lately referred to as the “Highway of Post Brotherhood and Non Unity”), exploring the cultural and urban landscape of nine cities in the Western Balkans as an experimental, temporary society. The trek, called the “Lost Highway Expedition,” was initiated by two international cultural collaboratives, the School of Missing Studies and Centrala, Foundation for Future Cities, that were interested in seeing what new projects, artworks, architecture, and networks could be generated by sending a swarm of thoughtful folks along a road created in the 1960s to unite the many nationalities that once constituted Yugoslavia.

Podgorica's independent daily Vijesti has published two articles on LHE, by Borislav Vukicevic.
To read the articles follow the links or downlad two attached pdf files:
'Nomadska potraga za srecom' ('Nomadic Search for Happiness') / 19/08/2006 / http://www.vijesti.cg.yu/arhiva.php?akcija=vijest&id=209755
'U potrazi za najdebljim hladom' ('In Search for the Deepest Shadow') / 26/08/2006 / http://www.vijesti.cg.yu/arhiva.php?akcija=vijest&id=210462

Podgorice Vijesti objavile su prevod clanka Stephen Zaks-a, objavljenog u New York Times-u!
http://www.vijesti.cg.yu/arhiva.php?akcija=vijest&id=211194 ili dowloadujte pdf file u attachment-u.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/arts/design/29high.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

A Pilgrimage Through the Balkans, Looking for Dots to Connect

By STEPHEN ZACKS

Published: August 29, 2006

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Aug. 25 — A guard approached a vehicle on the border of Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Something was slightly suspicious. He asked the occupants to get out. A Catalan wearing a multicolored beanie, a Korean-American with longish hair and a camera hanging from his neck, a blonde from Finland and a Serbian girl with a yellow towel wrapped around her waist emerged from the small Volkswagen. The occupants of the three cars behind them — four Americans, a Slovenian, two Serbs, a Dutchwoman, a Spaniard and an Australian — started laughing at the improbable sight. Pretty soon the guard was laughing, too.