Dani Ploeger
A New Middle of Nowhere
With GPS, your phone can determine your precise geographical location anywhere in the world. As a consequence, the wilderness and the desert, spaces traditionally associated with experiences of placelessness and remoteness, have lost a substantial part of their mystique. The feeling of being ‘in the middle of nowhere’ is becoming obsolete. The Bialowieza primeval forest is often promoted as the ‘last untouched wilderness of Europe’ where you can experience the ‘world untouched by civilization,’ but also here, the possibility to let your phone tell you exactly where you are will always be in the back of your mind.
Dani Ploeger’s A New Middle of Nowhere, realized during his residency at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporry Art, reinstates the possibility for a true feeling of remoteness, using technological means. The artist commissioned a mathematician to calculate the precise geographical centre of the Bialowieza National Park on the basis of UNESCO boundary data. Subsequently, he created an object that emits a GPS signal with these coordinates. As a result, regardless of their true location, all GPS devices in the area indicated the middle of the park: a middle of nowhere 2.0.
- Residency Curator
- Julia Harasimowicz
- Coordinators
- Anka Kobierska, Katarzyna Sztarbała
