Arizona Road
The project Arizona Road examines the informal urban phenomena of the Arizona Market in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, the largest black market in the Balkans at the time. The market emerged along the federal highway called “Arizona Road” during the recent war in the region. The project involves documentation of the market’s emergence, as well as a proposal for its development into a city. Assimilating the market’s existing qualities and informal organization, the project proposes an infrastructural intervention in form of the “Provocative Pole” and sports grounds. This minimal infrastructure is aimed to improve the living and working conditions at the market and provoke its further development. The installation also suggests an architectural mediation between the formal and informal systems of spatial production that I termed Urban Navigation. The artist/architect becomes a guide of a sustainable urban development, whose final appearance is left open-ended.
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Azra Akšamija, Arizona Road, 2001
Double channel-video (7 min 45 sec), “Provocateur-Pole”, sports floor, text-image-plate
Place: Arizona Market, Bosnia and Herzegovina.Produced for the Exhibition Designs for the Real World, Generali Foundation Vienna / Sep.13 -Dec.22, 2002 / Curated by Sabine Breitwieser and Hemma Schmutz. CREDITS: Advisors: Raoul Bunschoten, Andreas Mayer, Joost Meuwissen. Collaborator: Michael Stoiser. Video editor: Martin Heigl. Interview partner: Ilias Chatzis, Ismet Dedeić, Eamonn O`Riordan, Salih Hrnjić, Said Jamaković, Hamed Jerković, Fahrudin Selimović, Britt Tryding. Exhibition Photographs: Werner Kaligofski