Recently I have launched with Raluca Cirstoc a new initiative, Derailed Research Lab – a vehicle for a new kind of nomadic school. We launched a few months ago with a planned trip on the Trans-Siberian Express this summer… and I’m happy to say that we have had hundreds sign up to our newsletter and we have an interesting group joining us for the trip itself. Due to a couple having to withdraw we have a couple of places available – but contact us asap if you are interested! info@derailedlab.org
We will meet in St Petersburg on 17th July, and will visit the Baltic docks, Hermitage and other sites, before travelling to Moscow for a couple of days, where we will tour the revolutionary constructivist classics with the Strelka Institute and other contacts. We then join the Trans-Siberian railway proper, for a 24hr train ride to our first stop, Perm, the most eastern European city at the foothills of the Ural mountains. We spend a couple of days in Perm before re-boarding the express, this time for a three day train ride… this will be interesting ;).. much vodka, cards, chess and regional food bought from locals en route awaits 🙂 before our second stop at Irkutsk, next to the world’s largest body of fresh water – Lake Bakal. We will spend a four or five days in this region (including Ulan Ude). There is some great hiking around the lake, and a number of Buddhist sites and the like to explore. We the rejoin the train for the final epic three day leg. While some trains head south from Ulan Ude to Beijing, we keep going east along the Russian-Chinese border to Vladivostok, a city just north of Korea which, as home to the Russian Pacific fleet had been off limits to westerners until recently. The militarisation of Vladivostok means that the historic city is well preserved, for now at least, and co-exists with massive docks and a new emerging casino city. We have a few days to explore this city which relatively few have visited, before flying back to Moscow for a presentation of our expedition at the Strelka Institute on 6th August.
Previous memorable study trips included the Polytechnic Studio at Uni Westminster taking in a number of US road trips and Moscow, and more recently the Department of Ontological Theatre at the RCA, to Istanbul, Beijing, Cuba, and the Pearl River Delta of China earlier this year. This will be up there with the best of those….
check out www.derailedlab.org
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