New Territories
/1
- New Territories
- 2005
- business card, photocopy on paper
- 5 x 9 cm
This work consists of two found photos and a business card of Ondak’s bearing a made-up address. The artist does not actually reside at “Sibirska 1” (1 Siberian Street) in Bratislava. A further element of the work is the following line of text: “100 business cards were distributed to members of the local populace who boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway on the Moscow-Beijing route between 12 and 19 September 2005.” Business cards, photos and text set the imagination in motion, although the question of whether or not the event actually took place remains entirely open. Ondak’s title “New Territories” is a reference to the political changes following 1989, the year that saw the so-called Eastern Bloc—and with it the hegemony of the Soviet Union—fall apart. The reference to his supposed residential address in Bratislava implies this, as does his title’s reference to the “New Territories” in Siberia, which have since become subject to new formations of political and economic power. S.E.