Stop and Go

‘Stop and Go: Nodes of Transformation and Transition’ is the result of an eponymous research project by architect and artist Michael Hieslmair and cultural historian Michael Zinganel, in collaboration with the geographer Tarmo Pikner the historian and anthropologist Emiliya Karaboeva. The immersive, mobile, and multi-local project focused on the transformation of important road-traffic corridors connecting the former East and West of Europe, which are now used frequently by lorry drivers, commuters, migrants, and tourists. A number of case studies and contributions in this book examine locations (such as terminals, service stations, and distribution centers) that are situated between Vienna, Tallinn and Helsinki, and the Bulgarian-Turkish border as well as the changing networks and temporary habitats of mobile figures who frequent these points of connection. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the expansion of the EU, and the need to improve infrastructure and develop faster connections between places, the public realm at the margins and even in the center of the cities were and continue to be affected.