Ruta por España

2016
Outsourced diary, pdf file.

Hello, my name is Marion Balac and I'm a french visual artist. I'm writing to you because I'd like to create a fake travel diary about a tour of Spain - using only Fiverr writers. Each writer will be assigned a specific city to write a brief story about. They will also receive some images of the city (postcards I purchased in Madrid) to help come up with ideas. So basically, one city = one writer = one small chapter. The hero would be me, a 31 year old french girl that barely speaks Spanish, traveling alone. The character (me) should not get physical changes (or die) during the story in order to keep the consistency between each chapter of the book. I need your agreement on the fact I'll be using your texts in a book, in exhibitions or in publications. I'll ask you to choose a specific font for your text. If this project interests you, I'd be happy to include you in my fake road trip. Best, Marion.

What we sometimes call the “uberization” of the world (the neologism referring to the adoption of business models in which individuals make resources or services available to customers, via the internet, at any time and without delay) applies to an ever growing number of services, creating unprecedented competition between amateurs and professionals. Offering one’s car for hire on Drivy or a guest room on Airbnb is now a commonplace affair. The services offered on Fiverr.com are highly variable (from logo design to composing a personalized song) and starts at the price of a fiver, the $5 bill.
The site allowed me to take a proxy tour of Spain from my residency at the Casa de Velázquez (Madrid) and to develop a collective logbook. In exchange for $5, every writer contacted was responsible for sending me a text that corresponded to an assigned city. It could be inspired by a particular visual (a postcard I picked up at a Madrid antique shop). Ruta por España is a story written by delegation, a stationary and fragmented voyage whose style and literary qualities vary chapter by chapter. Clichés about Spain come one after the other. The story is chaotic, boring, surprising. This fictitious journey made by multiple authors ended up in a diary with no defined style.
The diary is readable and downloadable here.

The project was reenacted in 2019 on Google Maps for Off Site Project, you can see it here by enabling my residency layers folder.

"Marion Balac uses unusual data, situations or objects as a base to produce fictions that reveal the landscapes and horizons of a globalised world. Her artworks, tender and dark at the same time, show how stories generated by the connected and ultra-contemporary culture fall within physical or online sites.  
In 2015, the artist decided to embark on a tour of Spain vicariously. She wouldn't move from the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, where she was in residency, but she also wouldn't write this story herself, just the protocol needed for the story to emerge under somebody else's keyboard. Indeed, Marion Balac has externalised the writing of the fiction titled Ruta por España (Tour of Spain) using Fiverr, a platform allowing everyone - amateur or professional - to offer services for as low as 5 dollars, that is to say, a fiver. She hired about twenty authors to devise her haul. Paid a fiver, each author was in charge of writing about a city, one stage of her imaginary journey, and was, provided by the artist, as an inspiration source, a postcard she found in a thrift shop in Madrid.
The protocol she sent them is the following: "The hero would be me (Marion), a 31-year-old French girl that barely speaks Spanish, travelling alone. The character (me) should not get physical changes (or die) during the story in order to keep the consistency between each chapter of the book." Also, she asked the authors to give agreement to the fact that she would use the text in books, exhibitions or publications. The authors, coming from the USA, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, United Kingdom, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mexico and the Netherlands, had, without knowing each other, contributed to building a common narration. Putting themselves into a French girl's shoes discovering Spain, they might have travelled to cities they had never been. The story, that is sometimes boring, sometimes enlightening, sometimes romantic gathers numerous clichés: local food or monument descriptions that might have been inspired by Wikipedia pages echo to the touristic images that have remained over the years.
'Once the protocol was settled, I just had to straighten the authors out when they weren't respecting the instructions like writing in a first person narrative. My only challenge was to play the game and to accept the result for what they were, very short, very long, sometimes pretty bad, sometimes definitively pre-written (but what can we expect for so little money?) and that was part of the experience' explains Marion Balac.
Thus this road-trip in Spain turns into a globalised story that tells more about the age we are living in and about the authors than about the artist. Writing in Marion Balac's name and through the mental images they convey, their style and their Fiverr's profile, they tell snippets about their own life. Ruta por España's unsteady construction becomes poetic when the story is re-read, having a thought for those people who contributed to writing it. The laws of the narration revealed the asymmetric collaboration between the artist, becoming an online entrepreneur and under paid service providers.
With this artwork, Marion Balac highlights, with humour, the incongruities, even, the drifts of the new collaborative economy. She also makes us catch a glimpse of work and collaboration modes that artists might have to face in a near future. »
 Caroline Delieutraz and Stephanie Vidal for Making Contact exhibition.

(fr) Marion Balac transforme des étonnements provoqués par des données, des situations ou des objets en dispositifs fictionnels qui révèlent les paysages et horizons d'un monde globalisé. Ses pièces, à la fois tendres et grinçantes, montrent comment des récits issus de la culture ultra-contemporaine et connectée s'inscrivent dans des lieux physiques ou en ligne.
En 2015, l'artiste décide de se lancer dans un tour d’Espagne par procuration. Non seulement elle ne quittera pas la Casa de Velázquez à Madrid où elle est alors en résidence mais elle n'écrira pas elle même cette histoire, seulement le protocole pour qu'elle puisse se constituer sous la plume d'autrui. En effet Marion Balac a externalisé la rédaction de cette fiction intitulée Ruta por España en utilisant Fiverr, une plateforme qui permet à tous, amateur ou professionnel, de proposer ses services à partir d'un 1 fiver, c’est à dire 5 dollars. Pour lui concevoir un périple, elle engagera une vingtaine d'auteurs. Chacun sera responsable d'écrire, pour 1 fiver, un texte à propos d'une ville qui constitue une étape de ce voyage imaginaire et aura, en guise d'inspiration, une carte postale issue d'un lot chiné à Madrid par l'artiste.
Le protocole qui leur est envoyé est le suivant : “Je (Marion) serai le personnage principal de ce récit écrit à la première personne : une française de 31 ans qui parle à peine espagnol et qui voyage seule pendant l'été 2015. Pour conserver la cohérence entre les chapitres, le personnage ne pourra pas changer physiquement ni mourir.” Aussi, les auteurs engagés doivent donner leur accord pour que leur texte puisse être utilisé par l’artiste dans des ouvrages, publications et expositions. Venant des USA, du Canada, d’Australie, du Nigeria, du Royaume-Uni, de Bosnie-Herzégovine, du Mexique ou des Pays-Bas, les auteurs ont, sans se connaître, contribué à l'élaboration d'une narration commune ; tous se mettant à la place d’une touriste française voyageant dans des villes où aucun d’eux n’est peut-être jamais allé. La fiction, tantôt plate, tantôt instructive, tantôt romantique rassemble de nombreux clichés. Des informations sans doute inspirées par Wikipédia, comme les descriptions de monuments ou les spécialités culinaires qui jalonnent le circuit, font écho aux images touristiques qui perdurent.
"Une fois le protocole établi, il s'agissait simplement de recadrer les écrivains quand ils ne respectaient pas les consignes (écrire à la première personne par exemple). Mon seul challenge a été de jouer le jeu, et d'accepter les résultats tels qu'ils étaient, très courts ou très longs, parfois assez mauvais, parfois clairement préécrits (que peut-on espérer pour une somme aussi basse ?) et cela faisait partie de l'expérience."
Ainsi le road-trip en Espagne bascule en un récit globalisé qui en dit plus sur l'époque et sur les auteurs eux-mêmes que sur l'artiste ; en parlant pour Marion Balac et à travers les images mentales qu'ils convoquent, leur style et leur profil Fiverr, ils racontent un peu de leur propre vie. La construction bancale de Ruta por España devient poétique dès lors que l’on re-parcourt l’histoire en pensant aux personnes qui derrière leur écran se sont prêtées au jeu. Les failles de la narration ne font alors que mettre en avant la collaboration dissymétrique entre l’artiste, devenant un entrepreneur 2.0,  et des prestataires sous-payés. À travers cette œuvre, Marion Balac pointe avec humour les incongruités, voire les dérives de la nouvelle économie collaborative. Elle nous fait aussi peut-être entrevoir les modes de travail et de collaboration auxquels les artistes devront eux-mêmes faire face dans un futur proche."
 Caroline Delieutraz et Stephanie Vidal pour l'exposition Making Contact.