This is a joint publication of Framework: The Finnish Art Review and ephemera: theory & politics in organization that has emerged out of the first ephemera conference 'Capturing the Moving Mind' on the Trans-Siberian train, 7-20 September 2005 (Helsinki-Moscow-Beijing)
As way of an introduction to our conference location and theme, see Helen Grace's video 'Train' (1.5MB; video by Helen Grace; Creative Commons licence applies; to see this video, you will need the free Quicktime software).
In their introductory paper 'The Structure of Change' Akseli Virtanen and Jussi Vähämäki write: "In the organizational experiment Capturing the Moving Mind everybody was 'alone together', each one taking care of her/himself at the same time participating in the band, sometimes in the centre, again finding her/himself at its edge, like a pack of wolves around a fire with neighbours to the left and to the right, holding on by just a hand or a foot, but with nobody behind them, their backs naked and exposed to the Gobi desert."
Virtanen and Böhm add in their introductory comments: "On the train, it was as if we could see in the dim windows a reflection of our existence which had lost both its visible ends and clear origins, as if all that was left was its purposeless movement. It was as if we could look directly into the eye of our existence as potential beings which do not have any particular surrounding, any particular tasks or functions, that is, as beings which can do anything and from which anything may be expected. It was as if we experienced what it means to be a 'human being'. We experienced at the same time the abundance of our possibilities and the trivialness and vanity of all the reasons. In such a condition, we paradoxically had no other ground, no other resources, no other shelter to turn to - except ourselves."
Photos on this page by Bodó Balázs (Creative Commons licence applies).
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