One Belt. Many Roads (2021-2023)

Agung Kurniawan / Indonesia, Almagul Menlibayeva / Kazakhstan, Behzad Khosravi Noori / Iran, Pakistan, Berhanu Ashagrie Deribew / Ethiopia, Hatem Bourial / Tunesia, transparadiso (Paul Rajakovics, Barbara Holub) / Italy, Yara Mekawei / Egypt.
A project by Grammar of Urgencies (Maren Richter, Klaus Schafler, with Niels Plotard) / Austria.
In a collaborative experimental setting, One Belt. Many Roads investigates eight sites along China’s “New Silk Road” global infrastructure initiative, examining the effects of neo-colonialism on these places, what new types of dependencies or geographies this entails, and which long-standing mechanisms of dependency are being replicated. The “Belt and Road Initiative”, formerly “One Belt, One Road”, is arguably the most comprehensive global project to accelerate the transport of goods between Asia and Europe (including Austria), by which China aims to declare itself the world’s leading economic power. Various transportation corridors will be built for this purpose to achieve the necessary logistics, both on land (with a gigantic high-speed rail network) and on water.

In the VERSUCHSANSTALT of today’s WUK, originally built as a locomotive and machine factory, eleven collaborators from nine countries, who have been working together since 2021, explore how toxic entanglements and their narratives have local and geopolitical impacts.