Impossible Escapes – Evasive Strategies, Elusive Procedures, and Evacuation Plans

Abstract

Impossible Escapes is an escape and evasion map publication developed and distributed in collaboration with Neural magazine and transmediale festival Berlin. The project addresses illusive tendencies to escape – be it from technology, society, or earth – and gathers various strategies of how to handle this most modern impetus of escaping.

Technoculture promises many ways out of our problematic modernity and we keep running away from ourselves in iteration. But it is more than doubtful, that escape is truly possible – or desirable. How can we nevertheless value the benefits of escape as a temporary gesture, movement or process? What might be forms of effective everyday micro-escapes? And what could be alternative notions and attitudes to confront our problems?

The map publication was exclusively distributed through special editions of Neural magazine’s issue 56 (which also features an essay about the project) as well as throughout the 2017 anniversary edition of transmediale festival “ever elusive” in Berlin. As part of the festival program, three parallel workshop sessions took place at different exits of Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the festival’s venue. The workshop was concluded by a field trip around the building, led by invited artist Leanne Wijnsma, who has made digging tunnels an essential part of her artistic practice.