Revisiting the 1st m²

Since early 2009 I have been working on a project where I have been renting particular one square meter of land parcels across Europe.

The parcels I have chosen to rent are one hundred kilometres a part from each other, and form a straight line between Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Ljubljana, Slovenia, passing through Germany and Austria.

In order to rent the pre-chosen parcels I have been travelling to the areas in question to find the coincidental owners.

With the owners of the land I have signed free of charge rental contracts that allow me only to mark the designated spots for a mutually agreed period of time.

I see my long-term project, which will conclude with a presentation at the Sebastien Ricou Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, as basically working on two levels.

On the one hand it exists as ‘a horizontal’ travel where I have been travelling from the west Schengen Agreement border to the east Schengen Agreement border through four European Union member states, each with their own real estate law, investigating the history and current socio-political situation of the path interrupting normal rhythm of lives of people owning the land.

On the other hand my project exists as a ‘vertical’ travel where I have been travelling back home to Ljubljana, Slovenia from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where I currently live, and along the way put myself in a patronized position with coincidental owners of the desired parcel.

These two types of travel do not meet each other on the surface but within their structures (example: relationship towards the father and a relationship towards the governing institution).

The primary motive of this project is a research in to how to position oneself geographically, politically, and emotionally through creating familiar relationships within the given circumstances of an odyssey. Trying to answer the question: “Under what circumstances have our paths collided and where are my traces leading me?”

Ištvan Išt Huzjan
Brussels, 2011

In collaboration with

Marktgemeindeamt Bad Bleiberg, Gemeindeamt Bruck a. d. Glocknerstraße, Gemeinde Tuntenhausen, Marktgemeinde Pöttmes, Bürgermeisteramt Rot am See, Marktgemeinde Großostheim, Gemeindevorstand der Gemeinde Waldbrunn / Westerwald, Stadt Solingen, Gemeinde Kranenburg, Ministrstvo za kulturo Republike Slovenije, Veleposlaništvo Republike Slovenije Berlin / Bruselj, Fonds BKVB, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Christophe Heymans / CUP, Marko Štucin, Janwillem Schrofer, Hermann Pitz, Giorgio Andreotta-Calò, Phillipe Van Wolputte, Tania Gönc, Alan Fertil, Grégoire Motte, Aukje Koks, Milojka Žalik-Huzjan, Zdenko Huzjan