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Projects                           Project Zone TOURISM                                                                                                                                  Slovene









  

SLOVENIA, A TRANSIT COUNTRY

A MULTIMEDIA PROJECT ON WORKERS IN THE TOURIST INDUSTRY 
AND THEIR CUSTOMERS

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

A series of audio-visual projects under the joint heading of Zone, studies conflicting situations of contemporary social relations. The zones are areas, they are territories and out-of-the-way alleys and they are the roads of separation, lost and found within a larger and seemingly organized, regulated space. These are the constantly changing stories of individuals from the areas of the developing socio-political, cultural and territorial relations, which can lead to both extremely homogeneous cohabitation and self existence, as well as cataclysmic and unsolvable conflicting frictions and situations.

The project Zone TOURISM is the fourth project in the series Zone, a work that analyses conflict situations within the sphere relating to social strata. Zones are undefined, controversial areas within bigger, seemingly, legally regulated environments; "the zones" are foreigners, illegal inhabitants of a settled space, defined by state borders. The Zone TOURISM depicts also those, who facilitate this population of non-inhabitants a clandestine crossing and traversing of this established territory.

The Zone TOURISM is a multimedia project on tour organizers and their customers.

In the project Zone TOURISM, the relationship between a local and a foreigner is reversed – protagonists don't seek the opportunity to communicate, to converse or even to co-exist anymore. Their relashionship is reduced to a basic level; it is a brutal, bare market relationship, where a local due to the financial incentives and due to their good knowledge of his/her home territory, assumes the role of a guide/orginizer, and where a foreigner is forced to pay for the guide's services, is also forced to accept the assistance of an tourist agency, because he/she left his/her home environment and couldn't obtain the legal permits for crossing or living in a country from the relevent authorities.

The project Zone TOURISM portrays the guides of illegal migrants. Through their stories, the guides shed light on the illegal border crossings and relationships, which develop within given situations. On the one hand we have the guides, the organizers of the illegal border crossings; on the other, we have public opinion and the body of persecution, people who speak for the official authorities positioning, who are representatives of the law. Within other wording – the project depicts organizers of the illegal border crossings, who are seen here and now as internationally organized criminals, although some cases from the past displays that an illegal border crossing could be a heroic act (the Berlin Wall) and not only percieved as a criminal offence. This project was made possible by anonymous sources of information and some prisoners from the Maribor prison and the day-release department at Rogoza.

INTRODUCTION

We prepared the ZoneTourism project together with those who are directly involved in the organisation and the realisation of illegal border crossing, i.e. with those who are here and are now treated as criminals, who are part of a local or international criminal organisation and who with different means, enable immigrants without legal permits to cross national borders and travel within a country, outside their country of origin.

We spoke to different anonymous sources and convicts who were sentenced according to Article 311 of the Penal Code of the Republic of Slovenia. The stories and statements are thematically presented in full. The interviews took place between July and October of 2004. All interviewees are anonymous, in compliance with the law in relation to the Personal Data Protection act.

The statements from the police representative were recorded on October 16, 2004 at the border crossing of Obrežje, where a lecture with regards to national border protection policies within through a workshop for journalists entitled "Reporting on Migrations – Welcome to the Fortress", organized by the Peace Institute.

The Zone Tourism is a project, examining workers in the tourist industry and their clients.



  • Authors: Brane Zorman, Irena Pivka
  • Collabolators: Aldo Milohnic , Marjeta Doupna Horvat
  • Catalogue design by : Sonia Pust AJAX
  • Translations: Polona Mertelj in Finbar Barry OMahonay
  • Produced by : MASKA LJUBLJANA 2005, www.maska.si












                                                   Irena Pivka in Brane Zorman sta člana ASOCIACIJE društva nevladnih organizacij in samostojnih ustvarjalcev na področju umetnosti in kulture.

P&C Brane Zorman, Irena Pivka, www.cona.si, 2001-2006