For this occasion this exhibition installation is composed of a devised card game of Open Ports – a game of invocation and the accompanying visual and textual materials with the help of which ports, connectivity and collaboration are spoken about.
This installation by the Global Ports Authority group made up of Max Haiven (CA), Cassie Thornton (US) and Oliver Lerone Schultz (DE), places ports, port cities and nations throughout the world at the centre of attention. For this occasion the exhibition installation is composed of a designed card game of Open Ports – a game of invocation and the accompanying visual and textual material.
With a series of events and public interventions, the Global Ports Authority presents these cards as a means of discovery, celebration, acceleration, beautifying and the telling of stories about the connectivity which have always characterised ports such as Rijeka.
In this sense the port here is considered in the broader meaning – not only within the standard frameworks of maritime ports and airports, but more generally, in the sense of transitional, mutually connected and temporary zones, architecture and institutions which include the migration of people and the transportation of goods, and areas between import and export, the internal and external, the local and the foreign.
Games such as chess, checkers, go or backgammon are taken seriously, like a portal into a different reality, through which for thousands of years – via ports – the culture of connectivity and sociability, illicit forms of solidarity and hidden messages or meanings have spread throughout the world. The Global Ports Authority has developed a game which emphasises the importance of openness and offers solutions for a world which has flown off the path.