This publication presents the results of a research project which
explored the transformation of informal structures within the road transport
corridors connecting Eastern and Western Europe following the fall of the
Iron Curtain.
Stop and Go: Nodes of Transformation and Transition is a
research project by architect and artist Michael Hieslmair and cultural
historian Michael Zinganel that focuses on the transformation of the
informal hubs, terminals, and nodes along Pan-European transport corridors
in Eastern Europe and Vienna. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the
expansion of the EU, and the need to improve infrastructure and develop
faster connections between places, the public realm at the margins and even
in the center of the cities were and continue to be affected.
"What a joy to read a text that focuses on rich descriptions of the often
hidden lives of people in motion along the routes, corridors, and places
that underpin the contemporary world. Stop and Go exemplifies
wonderfully what Doreen Massey called the geographies of responsibility …
the need to understand the underlying infrastructures and extended relations
in which we are embedded. The book is beautifully produced and offers the
reader wonderfully sensitive descriptions, artistically rendered images and
maps, and a sensitivity to subjects in motion."
––John Pickles (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
"Stop and Go contributes to a re-centering of the cultural geography
of the continent in identifying, charting, and conceptualizing the actors
and agents in a fascinating network of the trans-national exchange of
people, goods, and ideas. The volume challenges our understanding of these
arteries as primarily resulting from governing bodies and instead uncovers a
vibrant net of interaction among often marginalized agents of mobility and
exchange in the sense of a vernacular cosmopolitanism. By investigating
sites on marginality it both complicates and politicizes simple notions
mobility and trans-national migration."
––Martino Stierli (The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and
Design, MoMA)
Michael Hieslmair (born 1974 in Vienna) studied architecture at the Graz
University of Technology and Delft University of Technology. He was fellow
at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen Innsbruck and architect in residence at the
MAK Center for Art and Architecture Los Angeles, taught at various
universities, e.g. University for Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein Halle
an der Saale, Innsbruck University, Graz and Vienna Technical University. He
collaborated on the research project "Crossing Munich, Places,
Representations and Debates on Migration in Munich" (with Sabine Hess) which
culminated in an exhibition at the Rathausgalerie. In 2012 he co-founded the
independent research institute Tracing Spaces, also producing and curating
the art in public space project "City on the Move—a Farewell to a Logistic
Area" (with Michael Zinganel). From 2014 to 2016 he was research associate
at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and co-head of research of "Stop and Go:
Nodes of Transformation and Transition" investigating the production of
space along pan-European Traffic Corridors in East Europe.
Michael Zinganel (born 1960 in Radkersburg, Austria, lives and works in
Vienna) graduated at the faculty of Architecture at Graz University of
Technology, studied art at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and
obtained a PhD in contemporary history at the University of Vienna. He had
been board member and curator at Forum Stadtpark in Graz, a research fellow
at the IFK (International Centre for Cultural Studies) in Vienna, and taught
at various universities and academies, e.g. at TU Graz, Kunst-Uni Linz, AAU
Klagenfurt, currently at the postgraduate academy of Bauhaus Dessau
Foundation and TU Vienna. In 2012 he co-founded the independent research
institute Tracing Spaces, also producing and co-editing the travelling
exhibition and publication Holiday after the Fall – Seaside
Architecture and Urbanism in Bulgaria and Croatia (with Elke Beyer
and Anke Hagemann). From 2014 to 2016 he was research associate at the
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and head of research of "Stop and Go: Nodes of
Transformation and Transition" investigating the production and
appropriation of spaces alongside pan-European Traffic Corridors between the
East and West of Europe. He is also editorial board member of the journal Transfers.
