Next Meeting: The foyer of the Hagens Hotel, Måløy, Sogn og Fjordane, on the island of Vågsøy…     (2007)

Next Meeting: The foyer of the Hagens Hotel, Måløy, Sogn og Fjordane, on the island of Vågsøy…     (2007)

Image: Mexico City, 1973, by unknown tourist.
Text: Let’s Visit Norway! 1975
Flyposted along Balbutcher Lane, Ballymun, Dublin 11.
Lithographic posters
58.8 x 79.8 cm

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For the Next Meeting… series Chodzko uses tourists’ ‘amateur’ photographic images taken on their travels in the 1950’s – early 1980’s and recorded on 35mm slide film, from a large archive that he has collated. These images were originally partly taken to show proof of the photographer/tourist’s proximity to a place, a presence to then be shared through a deferred performance to their friends and family, once home.  35mm positive film could also be seen as being more materially present in the camera (as opposed to a negative used to then make a print) at that exact moment in time and space as the existence of the image. It was there!  They were there!  Chodzko selects the images according to their capacity to show a particular place in the world whilst demonstrating some evidence of ‘amateurism’  – a wonky angle or a strange composition etc.  He also chooses images that indicate evidence of their specific historical moment (eg: through clothes fashions or a car design etc) and even evidence of political changes*. There is also a sense of transition, or loss, in the film’s image quality in terms of colour, grain, scratches and degradation.  
Chodzko then juxtaposes these images with a text; travel directions to particular locations (that might exist as a ‘convenient meeting place’), extracted from out-of-date tourist guides published during this same period. Although the details of these directions were accurate at the time of their publishing, Chodzko now chooses them because at least some of their elements have become obsolete; names have changed, businesses have altered etc. They seem to no longer exist in the present, at least through any internet search.
So, the Next Meeting… series is a return to two particular places, two moments in time, documented through picture and text, but now ‘fading’ materially, spatially, temporarily.  Brought together as an edition of lithographic posters each work in the series has just one location in the world where it is exhibited (by flyposting), in a remote but public place. There’s the place of the image, the place of the text, and the place of the flyposting with the dialogue – a migration – between them catalysed by the disparity of their associations;  A series of folds, loops, a collage, a hyperstition, a form of poem creating a vibration between three sites and moments that were definitely there, and yet somehow manage to partially and precariously remain suspended in a state of there/here. The works are made from a drawing together that elicits a sense of loss, melancholia, absurdity, and surreality. Who will attend this meeting in the future? Is it open to all of us?  As with so much of Chodzko’s practice the work explores the space that opens up with an event that is ‘next’, existing in a state of imminence, yet can also be in relation to specific time and places that are now long gone?
It is about being suspended between these places which are other, and yet whose words and imagery combine to make a new space (and time) that feels somehow, but impossibly, familiar: I know this place!

Adam Chodzko, in an email correspondence with gallery director, Mark Dickenson (Neue Alte Brucke, 2011).
Next Meeting: The foyer of the Hagens Hotel, Måløy, Sogn og Fjordane, on the island of Vågsøy…   : The image came from a series of slides taken by an american tourist’s trip to mexico in 1973. There’s no trace of the name of the photographer or whether they travelled alone or with family etc.  The only markings on the 35mm slide say “mexico city” in biro. I tried to google search the name of the restaurant/café on the corner but couldn’t find anything. So I don’t know where it was taken.  The book it came from, Let’s Visit Norway! 1975, I found in a charity shop. The route is one described by the writer, David Gascoyne, and I’m pretty sure the hotel no longer exists under that name. But I’ve followed the route on Googlearth. It’s pretty remote!  I liked the idea of Norway and Mexico…you can find many connections of course but it seems initially like an unlikely pairing. I liked the sound of the Norwegian place names with the Mexico city image. If you look in my ‘Then’ catalogue (it has the poster as the cover) you’ll see how it was installed on the plywood hoardings for a new social housing block in Ballymun Dublin. The estate, from being one of the ‘worst in Europe’ in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, has had lots of redevelopment funding…all the high rise blocks have been demolished. New low level housing is in place. The people there are now really used to the process of relentless ‘improvement’ of their environment through lavish spending on the infrastructure. When we were doing the flyposting local residents would come up and look at this poster and say…‘so, is this what is being built here’?  I’d say…‘look at the cars; when do you think this photo might have been taken’?  And they’d answer..’oh yes, a long time ago!  So,…is this what is going to be built here?’  It seemed as though that loop in time was a real possibility for them.

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Next Meeting: Opposite the main entrance to the Ordzhonikidze Health Centre, the Sochi-Matzesta resort…   2007. [Image: Pakistan, 1978.  Text: Russia, 1958. Flyposted around Toronto, 2007]
Next Meeting: The foyer of the Hagens Hotel, Måløy, Sogn og Fjordane, on the island of Vågsøy…     2007.  [Image: Mexico City, 1973. Text: Norway, 1975.  Flyposted onto a hoarding, Balbutcher Lane, Ballymun, Dublin 11, Ireland.]
Next Meeting: The car park of the plywood factory, just north of the town of Tolhóin … 2008   [Image: Tashkent, 1967.  Text: Tierra Del Fuego, 1991.   Flyposted onto a single billboard on the coastal path between St Ives and Zennor, Cornwall.]
Next meeting: Beside the TV transmitter on the highest part of Szechenyi Hill…2010  [Image: Haiti, 1971. Text: Budapest, 1967. Flyposted around Esperidon Square, Glyfada, Athens, 2010.]
Next meeting: In the entrance to the Golf-Club restaurant, past the Konak, in the Košutnjak Park… 2011. [Image: Ecuador,1968. Text: Yugoslavia, 1966. Flyposted on the ground floor windows of Hafenstrasse 23, 60327 Frankfurt am Main,
Germany, 2011.]

A direct precursor to the series is: Looper  (2003)  [Image: Stockholm. Text: Haiti. Flyposted onto a single billboard hoarding in Turin]
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The Next meeting… series intersects with many elements of Chodzko’s practice involving assembling, signalling, announcing and transmitting forms of ‘loops’ into public space, ranging from Reunion; Salò (1998), Meetings of people with stammers to describe a fire (1999-), Better Scenery (2000 – ), We love you here, even though you are there (2012),  Runners (2013) etc.  As with Better Scenery (2000 – ),  Ants Choose Position for Sequins – 2 Seconds Interval  (2003),  White Magic (2005), Pattern for a Procession with Two Masks (2007) Because… (2013) and   O, you happy roots, branch and mediatrix  (2020) etc,  Next meeting…operates in the vibrating space between two apparently disconnected sites apparently communicating with each other.