NOORDUNG, critical distance DIY

Exploration of the Phenomenology of Storytelling

SUMMER 2016
AA VISITING SCHOOL NANOTOURISM
MENTORS ALJOŠA DEKLEVA, CHRISTIAN POTTGIESSER
COLLABORATORS SARA ŠKARICA, AJDIN VUKOVIĆ, JAN ŽUŽEK
PHOTOGRAPHERS ROK DEŽELAK, AJDA SCHMIDT
REALIZATION JULY 2016
HONORS PIRANESI STUDENT HONORABLE MENTION NOMINATION

KSEVT, Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies, was built on one singularity, Potočnik’s book, and a series of loose facts. This project looked at the whole story of Potočnik and the correlated history to ultimately have a different view in the form of our own, more entertaining, version of the legend. Parallel to the creation process of the new Potočnik story we held the topic of “re-questioning” upright by doing various guerrilla actions.

Eventually, the project illustrates itself physically, as a critical manifesto of mass tourism: a pilgrimage to various sites in Vitanje, which will dissolve KSEVT’s compressed history of Potočnik. At this point all local businesses that do not benefit from their own direct proximity to KSEVT, can revive. After a series of proposed locations the visitor ultimately arrives at an installation that gives him a distant vision towards Vitanje and KSEVT.

KSEVT, a building initiated to promote the culturalization of space, inspired by the work of Herman Potočnik. As such, it has a clear connection with him.

Herman Potočnik Noordung was a pioneer in cosmonautics of Slovenian ancestry.

There is no clear connection between Noordung and the town Vitanje. This is where storytelling comes in place.

The timeline seeks to collect all types of facts related to the work of Herman Potočnik Noordung.

The multitude of unreliable “legends” from the life of Potočnik could be understood as potočnikation (marked in yellow). Displayed here is only a small part of the chronology, depicting events both real and fake.

In the beginning of every tour, a visitor of KSEVT gets a folder containing the exhibition map and a timeline detailing Noordung’s life.
The guided tour serves as a provocation that criticizes the current environmental, social and economic downsides of conventional tourism. It presents the life story of Herman Potočnik Noordung using different sources, both reliable and unreliable, facts, assumptions and complete fabrications.
The visitor becomes a participant, who can get involved in this particular story and fill in the rest of the timeline with his own facts and interpretations, take a photo and send it to info@ksevt.eu.
To continue the tour, the visitor now uses the folder as a guide for a pilgrimage of Herman Potočnik Noordung’s life. The pilgrimage takes the visitor to various sites of Vitanje which unveil Noordung’s presence in the town and dissolve KSEVT’s compressed history of Potočnik. At each point the visitor considers the relation with his own surroundings and the relation to the next destination.
The visitor ultimately arrives at the fifth and final station of the pilgrimage. What awaits him there is an existing bench where locals and visitors come to enjoy a nice view of Vitanje. The bench is accompanied by a sign post in 1:1 scale, made of high polish stainless steel.
The post functions as a ‘cartel’ - French for a description of an object providing the basic information. It serves both as a critical reflection as well as an invitation to contribute to the project.

The critical distance is materialized as a brass ruler that presents the real distance of 300 meters between KSEVT and the last station of Potočnik’s pilgrimage scaled to a 30 centimeters long souvenir.

The project illustrates itself physically, as a critical manifesto of mass tourism: as a souvenir that every visitor can choose to buy as a memento.