Stassi curating (post) migration

Curating (Post) Migration Eleonora Stassi Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Curating 2015 Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

On the back cover: Alphabet of Post Migration, basis for the development of a glossary.

Index Anatomy of Restlessness or the right to travel / Preface

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1. The immigrant image

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1.1 Post Migration / Migration – Multicultural / Transcultural: On terminology

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1.2 The Cosmopolitan City

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1.2.1 About Language and Recognition

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1.3 Picturing the city: geographical knowledge and personal perception 1.3.1 The Agonistic Space (Thinking the world politically) 2. Curating migration and the cosmopolitan city

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2.1 Projekt Migration

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2.2 Displaced visions – Émigré photographers of the 20th Century

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2.3 The artistic practice of Pia Lanziger

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3. „I am a map“ - a project on Post Migration

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3.1 The project

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3.1.1 The map and the photographers

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3.1.2 The map and the city

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3.1.3 Schedule and Budget

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3.2 Perspectives

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3.2.1 The MigrationsMuseum Zürich

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Imaginary geographies / Geographies of change // Conclusion

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Attachments

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Post migrant projects? Artistic practice in discussion / Interview with Pia Lanziger

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Igiaba Scego, At sea, devoured by our Indifference

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Bibliography

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Article 13 (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

To Zelia

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Anatomy of 1 Restlessness or the right to travel / Preface

My nationality is Italian. From the side of my father, I have an Argentinian great-grandmother, a Tunisian grandfather, an Albanian great-grandfather and a Turkish grandmother. My mother comes from Istria, a territory on the border that changed nationality many times during the last century.

I have heard only stories of migration during my growth, instead of belonging. Belonging is something personal and mobile, for me, something we carry with us and that we decide to apply temporary.

I also migrate in Switzerland and my daughter, even if has my surname, have the passport of another colour.

What does it means, then, nationality today? Are we migrating or just travelling? Which are the rights involved in this struggle? And how can art practice translate it?

I started my research last year identifying nomadic attitudes in the digital dimensions (that I have called digital nomadism) and mapping issues. On this paper I oriented the discussion on a more extended thematic that involves a multitude of approaches and perspectives, so called Post Migration. The clarification and establishment of a terminology at the base was the main issue, because both the words “post” and “migration” carry with them a pre-given connotation that it is difficult to confront and to review. What I wanted to demonstrate is, on one hand, that we already live in post migrant context, but also that if we considerate, on the other hand, the situation of populations still migrating because of 1 Chatwin, Bruce, Jan Borm, and Matthew Graves. Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings. 1st Penguin ed. Penguin Books Literature, Travel. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1997.

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survival reasons, Post Migration represents an optimistic scenario of reception. Integration loses its meaning in a transcultural world.

The discussion about the immigration politics in Europe generated by the last tragedies of the Mediterranean and the precarious situation of Lampedusa give to our society another chance to reflect about the right of travel and the current conditions and boundaries of mobility.

Related to my curatorial project I am a map, I combined issues about the perception of the city and the articulation of visual communication trough printed media with the considerations of the sociopolitical theories of Chantal Mouffe and Erol Yildiz about public spaces, antagonism and cosmopolitan context.

In details, the structure of this paper is composed by three main parts. The first chapter is dedicated to the clarification of therms and fundamental elements of discourse. It gives a panoramic of necessary political and sociological theories, that developed during the last ten years, and that support the post-migrant thought from the creation of the concept to its criticism.

The second one presents a selection of exemplar curatorial projects and the related perspectives within the field of migration and the cosmopolitan city, both from a documentary and artistic orientation, from institutional to independent commission (Projekt Migration, Displaced visions – ÉmigrÊ photographers of the 20th Century and the artistic practice of Pia Lanziger).

To my personal curatorial proposal and post-migrant project I am a map is addressed the third part of this work. In these paragraphs I go through the circumstances and the description of participants and results of I am a map to sketch a future possibility for a continuation of such initiatives within the swiss artistic panorama.

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1.

The immigrant image Vergiss d' Bronx, vergiss s' Ghetto stiig us, Mann, mi sind ahchoo S8 Wädischwiil Kanton Züri, i de Agglo das isch de Bahnhof, de Träffpunkt de chlii Platzspitz det gsehsch, wär dezueghört und wer nu abblitzt Hänger, Hip Hopper, Punks und Popper Technochöpf, Rocker und d' Italos det gsehsch die erschte schüche Küss zwüsched hoi und ciao und die erschte chliine Lugge im Läbenslauf2 Banhof, Jurczok 1001

The post migrant perspective involves the reinterpretation of the immigrant image both under the consideration of the passive and the active role in the representation.

How is the immigrant perceived? How the immigrant perceives the city?

The cosmopolitan urban context generated in the last ten years new strategies of recognition, not anymore through processes of ghettoization, but of cultural overlay due to the growth of second or third generation of immigrants that haven't actively migrated. The development of a dress code and of a mixed dialect are examples of the deep fusion of ethnic groups and individuate new parameters for the creation of identity and life drafts. The facilitation of travel and the encouragement of mobility for 2 Forget about the Bronx, forget about the ghetto, climbed down, Man, we are arrived, S8 Train Wädenswil, Zürich canton, in the suburbs / This is the station, the meeting point, the little Platzspitz, where you see who from here belongs and who is not / Wasters, Home boys, Punks and Poppers, Technoravers, Rockers, and “Italos” / there you see the first shy kisses, between “hoi” and “ciao” and the first holes in the CV.” http://www.masterplanet.ch/jurczok/texte/bahnhof

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study or work reasons, both temporary or long-term, has also an important part in this change.

This combination of social and political transformations can be defined as Post Migration. The shift of perspective and the dimension of belonging are translated in the post migrant discourse with the identification of new territory of discussion and agonism through the employment of multidisciplinary instruments, taking care of the digital revolution and the transcultural potentialities of our everyday life.

As Migration has been in the last century and still is a driving force and reason of many artistic practices, Post Migration should also aim to become as a fertile territory of production and reinterpretation of political and social dynamics. Post migrant production can be delineated and can function as innovative understanding method of actuality and fundamental ground for the transcultural turn in the globalisation discourse on culture.

1.1 Post migration / Migration – Multicultural / Transcultural : On terminology What is lacking in this globalization discourse is a cultural concept of the world. We have an economic concept, a political concept, yet, the one that remains the most important in our Global Village, the question of multiple identities without barriers, based on the movement and flow of peoples and of society is absent. 3 Donald Cuccioletta

Post Migration embodies “the voice of migrants”, as Post Colonialism the one of colonized 4. It aims to give new historical interpretations of migrating processes and to make the society aware of marginalized perspectives, stimulating the elaboration of provocative practices and new strategy of communication. The prefix “post” is referred not only to a temporary consecutive dimension, intended as “after”, but in particular to the “new narration and the new interpretation of the phenomenon 'Migration' and its consequences”5. The Migration will never end, but it changes its shape: we should employ the term “mobility” instead of “migration” to go beyond a pre-given political connotation of the word. The recognition of the fundamental role played by “guest workers” in the urban and 3 Donald Cuccioletta, Multiculturalism or Transculturalism: Towards a Cosmopolitan Citizenship in LONDON JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES, 2001/2002 VOLUME 17, p. 9.

4 Yildiz, Erol, Die Weltoffene Stadt: Wie Migration Globalisierung Zum Urbanen Alltag Macht. Kultur Und Soziale Praxis.

Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013, p. 177.

5 Ibidem.

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technological development of Europe has only started in the last years and still not in every nation.

Post Migration is then an irritating and challenging definition that advances the positive perspective of a rereading of Migration, free of preconceptions and wrong understandings of social dynamics.

To deal with this reinterpretation process, a clarification about the difference between the adjectives “Multicultural” and “Transcultural” is needed. If with “multicultural” is intended the coexistence of separated cultural groups and the individuation of “others”, the explanation of “transcultural” exceeds this meaning identifying the mixture of cultures without boundaries and the incarnation of the other, the métissage. The term “Transcultural” was coined by Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to define the innate condition of America as métiz continent.

This difference translated in politics was analysed by Donald Cuccioletta in the Canadian context.

The Canadian policy was one of the first officially “multicultural”, but the result was the start of a ghettoization process, both voluntary as involuntary. The researcher underlined that our global society is open to the integration of trade markets, but still not to a real “globalization of cultures, recognition in the other”6. A multicultural politic can be just at the base of a transcultural turn, anymore avoidable in our cosmopolitan social landscape.

1.2 The Cosmopolitan City Urban development and urbanity are inconceivable without migration. 7 Erol Yildiz

Elke Krasny observed and shows in her curatorial interventions in the Lerchenfelder street of Vienna that “globalization has reached street-level”, street intended as an “in-between space” in our routines of everyday8. The city turns cosmopolitan and, as shown by glocal initiatives and projects, was an active agent of this transformation9. Thanks to the new historical understanding of migratory processes, we can say today that “urban development and urbanity are inconceivable without migration” and that the meaning of Migration has to be matched with the one of potentiality.

6 Donald Cuccioletta, op. cit., p. 9.

7 Erol Yildiz, »Urban Upcycling«: the success story of Cologne Keup Street in Heide, Angela, Elke Krasny, and Lucia Babina (eds.), Aufbruch in die Nähe: Wien Lerchenfelder Strasse : Mikrogeschichten zwischen Lokalidentitäten und Globalisierung : mit 12 Essays zu sozialen Kunstpraxen, kritischer Stadtplanung und Strassenprojekten in Amsterdam, Bremen, Hamburg, Köln, Wien und Zagreb = Other places : Vienna Lerchenfelder Street : micro-histories between local identities and globalization , 2010, p. 102-103.

8 Elke Krasny, A Street is a street is a street is a street or the right of urban difference in Heide, Angela, Elke Krasny, and Lucia Babina (eds.), op. cit., p. 35.

9 Andrej Holm, Effects of Places of Globalization in Heide, Angela, Elke Krasny and Lucia Babina (eds.), op. cit., p. 145.

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The case of Keup Street in Cologne is exemplar. The working-class neighbourhood was slowly abandoned and repopulated by the Turkish immigrants, that opened new stores. The negative critique of the early years was then in the first decade of the 21 st century surpassed. The so called “Oriental staging”, the clear oriental connotation and charm of the shops, is now understood as a great business strategy, that deals with our times. The shops of Keup Street were “precursors of globalization” and represent a successful method “to re-energize urban neighbourhoods through immigration” 10.

“The city is migration”11 and deserves the adjustment of life styles to the renovated context. The “secondos”, in swiss dialect, or third culture kids 12 elaborate new systems of belonging that mostly overtake the national dimension to smaller areas, as districts or schools, or that refuse any kind of fixed point to define their identity, but, if possible, they create the references to new backgrounds. 13 This moment of reprocessing is a post migrant place, defined from Erol Yildiz as Transtopos14: a space of reflection, a virtual space where develop post migrant life drafts and a space for artistic production.

1.2.1 About Language and Recognition Elias Canetti, in The Tongue Set Free, the first book of his autobiography, defines the many languages of his life. As a Sephardic Jew born in Bulgaria, his childhood language was Spanish.

Armenian was the language of refugees, due to a woodcutter who sang exile songs in the garden.

German was the clandestine language of love as his parents had fallen in love in Vienna. Hebrew was the language of the rites and ceremonies, while Turkish was his grandparents' ancestral language.

English was the language of death, because his father died in Manchester.

The languages we have heard in our lifetimes play a greater part in our formation than the places where we have lived or visited. The whole question as regards Identity and Otherness can be found in

language. The etymology of the word barbaros (β ά ρ β α ρ ο ς ) is "babbling". It was applied to foreigner who could not speak Greek. Barbarians were those who spoke another language. Thus, the first criterion for defining a foreigner is not tied to a physical, anthropological or geographical difference, but rather to the use of language. Language is the map of the territory: it is the boundary and the border crossing. Every war of conquest is after all nothing more than a war to impose the conquerors’ own languages on the vanquished. For this reason, the Other or Otherness must be sought in the babbling, 10 Erol Yildiz, »Urban Upcycling«: the success story of Cologne Keup Street in Heide, Angela, Elke Krasny and Lucia Babina (eds.), op. cit., p. 102-103.

11 Yildiz, Erol, Die Weltoffene Stadt: Wie Migration Globalisierung Zum Urbanen Alltag Macht. Kultur Und Soziale Praxis.

Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013, p. 45.

12 Third culture kid is a sociological definition for the children of immigrants, of second or third generation, that develop an additional culture to the one of origin and arrival.

13 Yildiz, Erol, op. cit., p. 182.

14 Ibidem, p. 187.

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in an unsteady voice and in an irregular speech pattern.

The language is the central parameter of recognition and of identification of ethnic groups in the cosmopolitan context: in Zurich “Italos”, “Yugos”, “Tamile” and “Albaner” are first connoted by the accent of their spoken language, in the most of cases not anymore the one of origin, but the swiss dialect. Recognition is not only related to identification strategies of groups of plurals, but it is also an individual tool, that through the understand of a state of alienation from the rest, in many cases, helps to discover an artistic vocation, as for example writing, drawing, rapping or photography.

1.3 Picturing the city: geography, archeology of memory and public media spaces Geography was always connected to the philosophical discussion and different branches of the discipline are related to a specific theory, like human geography and post-structuralism. Geography involves not only the spatial dimension, but also the question of public and the ontological problems.

From the immigrant point of view, the place of origin is pictured trough memory and the place of arrival trough perception. In the condition of the immigrants of second or third generation, that don't have actively migrated, the dimension of memory is “archeological” 15 and it is subordinated by the personal re-elaborated version of cultural heritage and the overlaps within the frame of new life drafts.

The duality of two fixed cultural blocks, one against the other, is passed: there is only the awareness of multiple existing realities 16. The post migrant context needs therefore a new articulation and order that fulfil the requests of everyday life, process that can be carried on with the expedients of artistic practices.

From a sociological perspective, the critic of urban processes and development toward the uses of public spaces and cultural intersection within many fields of studies, as also artistic research, is therefore involved not only in the observation of the strategies of urban representation (picturing the city), but also in its shaping. As pointed by Christa Kamleithner, “artistic practices reconfigurate our ideas of the public with references into the past as well as into the future. By way of re-appropriating these older uses which have now transcended the social constraints of the early modern city and are therefore open to adaptability for mobile urban residents who are committed to localities on a 15 Ivi, p. 179.

16 Ibidem.

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temporary basis only.”17 The street becomes the stage of this transformation as well as of original creations, as rap and graffiti art, that comment and decorate the urban frame. It becomes also an exhibition display out of the museum. The Museum in Progress based its practice from the early '90s on the insertion of artworks in printed media and public spaces in Vienna, defined under the connotation of “media spaces”. Projects like “Billboard” 18(1995-2001) and “Art journal”19 (1997-1998), where billboards became a urban museum space, satisfy the requirements of this new dimension. The curator Robert Fleck commented about this innovative surface: This new exhibition space, with its character as media space, corresponds to a shift and extension of modernist exhibition space into the media sphere which is now becoming a new format for public information. Public media space constitutes a special challenge for many innovative artists as a new exhibition space for the 21st century. The connection between the exhibition in the exemplary 'White Cube', as represented by the Secession, with a media exhibition as a 'shop window' for the exhibition in the gallery and as a challenge to the artist to come to terms with an exhibition medium of the future is being tried for the first time, also in an international context. 20 The “public media space” as informative, accessible and flexible is the appropriate display for artistic practices oriented to Post Migration.

1.3.1 The Agonistic Space (Thinking the world politically)21 “According to Arendt, to think politically is to develop the ability to see things from a multiplicity of perspectives.”

Chantal Mouffe

The definition of Post Migration and the use of the term don't attempt to neutralise the duality of migration/static nature in the sociocultural discourse 22, but, on the other hand, advance the identification of new territories for the political debate, new agonistic spaces.

17 18 19 20 21

Christa Kamleithner, Using Public Space in Heide, Angela, Elke Krasny, and Lucia Babina (eds.), op. cit., p. 110. http://www.mip.at/projects/plakat http://www.mip.at/projects/kunstjournal Ibidem.

Chantal Mouffe, Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces, Art&Research, Volume 1. No. 2, Summer 2007 http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/pdfs/mouffe.pdf 22 See paragraph 1.1, p. 7.

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To curate Post Migration is then necessary the understanding of hegemonic dynamics in our times and to think the world politically. For the belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe, the political is seen under the perspective of antagonism: our society is unable to deal with the current problems “in a political way”, we are forced to think that political questions are just issues for experts without making us aware of the fundamental choice we always would have between “conflicting alternatives”. For the theorist, this represents an “incapacity to think politically, due to the uncontested hegemony of liberalism”, liberalism perceived as a too “individualist approach” to the “pluralistic nature of the social world“. The negation of the political in its antagonistic dimension is hidden under our preconception about pluralism, as a multiplicity of perspectives that we can't consider all, but just put together giving up to compare. In this sense, “liberalism has to negate antagonism since, by bringing to the fore the inescapable moment of decision - in the strong sense of having to decide in an undecidable terrain antagonism reveals the very limit of any rational consensus.” 23 Just if we could repossess this stolen aspect of political antagonism, we could then understand the “hegemonic struggle which characterizes democratic politics, hegemonic struggle in which artistic practices can play a crucial role”.

How can then be artistic practices related to politics? “There is an aesthetic dimension in the political and there is a political dimension in art”, affirmed Chantal Mouffe. The political dimension in art is given by the role played by artistic practices “in the constitution and maintenance of a given symbolic order or in its challenging” and the aesthetic in the political by concerning “the symbolic ordering of social relations, what Claude Lefort calls ‘the mise en scène’, ‘the mise en forme’ of human coexistence”24. The discussion should be oriented mostly to the possible forms of critical art and of which “type of identity”, never pre-given and coming from different “processes of identification”, critical artistic practices should aim to follow.

Curating Post Migration implicates, therefore, the creation of agonistic public spaces. Instead of visualising the public space as terrain of consensus, the agonistic model prefigures a “battleground where different hegemonic projects are confronted, without any possibility of final reconciliation”, because public spaces are always striated and plural and involve a “multiplicity of discursive surfaces”.

The dissensus is instigated by critical art and can never be reconciled rationally. The agonistic public space stands therefore opposite to the theorization of the Habermas “public sphere” as place of consensus and rationality and the Arendtian understanding of ‘agonism’, intended as “agonism without antagonism”25.

Nomadism and migration in their connotation of counter-hegemonic interventions represents trough the occupation of the public space this “agonistic struggle”: projects like SMUR – Self Made 23 Chantal Mouffe, op. cit., p. 2.

24 Ivi, p. 4.

25 Ibidem.

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Urbanism26, the MAAM – Museo dell'altro e dell'altrove 27 in the Metropoliz of Rome and the initiatives of Lerchenfelder Street28 in Vienna exceeded the aesthetic strategies of the counter-culture, that were transfigured as capitalist propaganda of the post-Fordist age. The discussion on the valorisation of the capital is mostly overtaken, but has defined by André Gorz, french theorist of political ecology, “social relations that elude the grasp of value, competitive individualism and market exchange make the latter appear by contrast in their political dimension, as extensions of the power of capital. A front of total resistance to this power is made possible. It necessarily overflows the terrain of production of knowledge towards new practices of living, consuming and collective appropriation of common spaces and everyday culture.”29 Therefore to be investigated are the new practices generated by the circumstances of Post Migration.

26 27 28 29

http://www.smur.eu/ http://www.museomaam.it/ A documentation is given by Heide, Angela, Elke Krasny, and Lucia Babina (eds), op. cit.

Interview with André Gorz, Multitudes, No. 15, 2004, p. 209.

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2.

Curating migration and the cosmopolitan city In the last decade many curatorial projects were developed within the field of migration and attempt to reach a wider comprehension of globa/cal and transcultural settings. A new interpretation of migration was needed and also a reevaluation of the artistic potential of mixed cultures.

This process was articulated through the rediscovery of history and the investigation on the contribution of migration to the development of artistic instruments and vision.

The new social environment was analysed under different point of views and levels, from a personal artist view to documentarist national commission, from photographical archives to social practice or history. The research involved global contexts, but went also in depth with national or street site-specific projects, giving a proof of the increasing attention of the art/socio-disciplines to the cosmopolitan reality.

To face such a huge and stratified topic was necessary to include and employ different field of expertise, from sociology to philosophy, from psychology to history, from media sciences to languages, giving to these projects the current unavoidable attribute of multidisciplinary.

The three proposals presented in the next paragraphs aim to give an insight to this research and represent the multiple nature of recent initiatives oriented to migration issues on different layers. These initiatives are also meant as first base for the studies on post migration.

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2.1 Projekt Migration

Projekt Migration, exhibition view, Köln, 2005

The Projekt Migration, curated by Marion von Osten and Kathrin Rhomberg, took place between 2002 and 2007. It was a national project, that Germany committed to document and reread the contribution and the history of immigration from 1955 to 2005. As also underlined on the cover of the project catalogue, the research was conducted from a cosmopolitan perspective, including a multiplicity of languages and documents. Projekt Migration can be both a final and starting point for new initiatives that want to understand the past and the present of post migration. The project involved different fields of studies: the intent was to demonstrate under multidisciplinary researches and point of views how "without migration Germany and Europe would not exist in their historical and current form.” 30 Homogeneity can't be anymore the purpose of a nation-state, “guest (or contract) workers” were fundamental in the historical development of “western” countries and the process of mixing cultures is irreversible..31 This Post-nation-state is investigated under many approaches in Projekt Migration and represents the terrain of discussion about new models of citizenship and potentiality of the social movement. The public debate on the many aspects involved engaged different audiences.

The project gave also the chance to reflect again of the role of art oriented to social issues.

Marion von Osten defined the position of the artist in relation of Migration as “an overriding 30 Kölnischer Kunstverein. Projekt Migration. Edited by Frank Frangenberg. Köln: DuMont, 2005.

31 Press release of the seminar with Marion von Osten and Kathrin Rhomberg on 02.11.2007 at BAK, Utrecht (NL) http://www.bak-utrecht.nl/en/Research/Itineraries/CitizensAndSubjects/PracticesAndDebates/ProjektMigration? parent=Who%2FMarionVonOsten

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perspective on historical connections” 32: the artists are sensible to social changes and their observation capacity is free from disciplinary processes. Art is more direct: she mentioned the images of Candida Höfer, the early videos of Vito Acconci and the live transmission performances of Morgan O'Hara.

Candida Höfer, Weidengasse Köln, from Turken in Deutschland, 1974

Coming back to the discourse on post migration, the curator thinks that there is a problem on terminology in our discussion. She pointed that “we should speak about mobility instead of migration”33 and that “just when migration will be understood as transnational exchange and social potential, we could start to think about a post national future”.

2.2 Displaced visions – Emigré photographers of the 20th Century Displaced visions - Émigré photographers of the 20th Century, curated by Nissan N. Perez, was an exhibition realised at the Israel Museum during the spring 2013.

The exhibition was defined by the director of the Israel Museum James S. Snyder as “the first to examine in-depth the effect of this displacement on the creative visions of these photographers, how it 32 Ingeborg Wiensowski, Übergeordnete Perspektive, 26.09.2005, Kultur SPIEGEL 10/2005 http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/kulturspiegel/d-41940440.html 33 Ibidem.

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opened the doors to new artistic horizons and gave new meaning to avant-garde practice in the 20th century, and how it ultimately influenced the history of photography itself”. 34

Shmuel Joseph Schweig, "Grandmother and Grandchild on Their Way to the Homeland", 1950

Under the institutional and historical context and motivation, there is the personal issue of the curator, his biography and consciousness of the political circumstances. Nissan N. Perez started this project from the awareness that Israel “is a country of immigrants and a country of immigration. It’s a melting pot. And so we know that every wave of immigration brought something new and something different and the society keeps changing all the time”35.

Displaced vision has to be intended as a study on the 20th century and as reflection on the change of the circumstances of travel, activity not anymore temporary or chosen, but, in the most of cases, due to survival reasons and without return. He also focused the attention on the development of globalisation from the very start of the century, underlying that globalisation started there, “when communication and transportation both became much easier.” 36 The exhibition represented an analysis on the visual environment, on how “when you move from one culture to another, one language to another, and one visual environment to another, you obviously see things differently than the locals. And that’s what happened to most of those, if not all of those, 34 Press release of the exhibition, Israel Museum Presents Major Exhibition Exploring Influence of Immigration on 20th-Century Photography, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem http://www.english.imjnet.org.il/page_16626 35 Debra Kamin, “In his final exhibit, an emigre curator gets personal: Nissan Perez, who came from Turkey at 21, closes his Israel Museum career with an exploration of immigrant photography,, June 9, 2013 http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-his-final-exhibit-an-emigre-curator-gets-personal/ 36 Ibidem.

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photographers at the time”37, that were mostly immigrants. Perez investigated the trigger needs of photography, documentation and self-representation, starting from the reconsideration of migration as artistic productive force. The research and the construction of a new identity in an unfamiliar context give to these photographers the freedom to experiment their medium as any other before. The work of key figures of art history have to be reconsidered under their point of view of strangers, their development of a visual language to report and communicate. They looked trough a personal cultural filter, that characterized their perception and that let also the local inhabitants see their environment differently.

Exhibition view - Israel Museum, 2013

Nissan N. Perez is also an émigré: he came from Turkey when he was 21 years old, but also before he was growing up in an old spanish family and attended a french school. Displaced visions Émigré photographers of the 20th Century is the last exhibition of his career and the necessary reflection on hundred years of history of photography and immigration: in 200 pictures, the visitor could wander from the visions of George Brassaï, Dora Maar and Man Ray to the more recent works of Kimiko Yoshida and Shirin Neshat.

On June 25 - 26, 2013, took also place within the context of the exhibition a multidisciplinary symposium exactly under the title of “In a Strange Land: The Photographic and Artistic Interpretation of Unfamiliar Environments.” The event was chaired by the anthropologist Marc Augé and stimulated the discussion between different field of studies, from anthropology to philosophy, from artistic practice to history.

37 Ibidem.

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Displaced visions - Émigré photographers of the 20th Century marks the results of a closing era of political events, aesthetic and technical development and is the starting point for the interpretation of the post migrant artistic production, from the understanding of new media to the change of the artist role in our society.

2.3 The artistic practice of Pia Lanziger Pia Lanziger lives and works in Berlin. She is a german artist-curator that oriented her practice to social issue within the cosmopolitan context. To give a comprehensive overview of her work, it is important to follow the development of her research in the last ten years, in which not only her personal perspective was improved, but also the entire social environment changed.

In 2001 she realized the project This is the Way We Live38, were she engaged actively the inhabitants of the trade-fair town of Riem, one of the biggest city planning projects in Europe, closed to the Munich-Riem airport. She wanted to research on “how significant an individual’s living quarters is as a mirror of personality, of life style and of the prevailing social conditions”. She organized ”residential walking tours”, that not only “offered an in sight into very different forms of living and concepts of home furnishing”, but also were the chance of “a social and cultural exchange”. Everything was documented with video and by the magazine “Schönes Wohnen in der Messestadt Riem” (“Beautiful Home Living in the Fair town Riem”) that dedicated a number to the project. This magazine, under the classical shape of a usual interior publication, oriented its content to the everyday life of the residents in the trade-fair town. “Their social conditions and the way their residential world is designed are at the centre of interest”, explains Pia Lanziger and continues pointing the results of “This is the Way We Live”, “The publication inevitably upgrades the residents’ way of life; its purpose was to promote their identity with their city region, their taste for gracious living and an exchange of ideas on the subject.”

In 2003-2004, with WorldWideWob. The Game about the Future of a City 39, Pia provoked the city of Wolfsburg, making the citizenship reflect and discuss about the present conditions and possible scenarios, trying “to interfere in the future development of their city” 40. She built a table game, similar to Monopoly, where inhabitants are playing on the real map of the city and, through the conversion from the viewer/citizen into an active player, the project represented, as stated by Annelie Pohlen, a 38 http://www.pialanzinger.de/download/PL_WayWeLive.pdf 39 http://www.pialanzinger.de/download/PL_WorldWideWob.pdf 40 Ibidem.

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symbolic “re-conquest of a space for living now administrated by structures far-removed from the population”. She wrote also that “WorldWideWob” is closely linked to an artistic strategy that is characteristic of Pia Lanzinger’s work, one in which research, emancipation and participation – in a playful, casual way – are interlocked into a rigid, virtual or facultative pattern of action that may be transferred to everyday life.”41 Pia is not only investigating the most superficial surface of the city, but goes deeply into the new nature of the urban structure, with its multiple layers and multicultural stratification.

This is the Way We Live, a project by Pia Lanziger in collaboration with “Schönes Wohnen in der Messestadt Riem”, 2001

The experiment of Wolfburg is an example of the often mixed connotation local/global that mainly characterizes the practice of Pia Lanziger. As she declared, during our interview 42, “I often work about local phenomena in our globalised world and it is very exciting to find out in which way these global connotations/developments have an impact on these living units (urban district, city and village/town).” With this attention and enthusiasm is also animated the project Global Village 4560. A Walk-on Map43 of 2007 where she redesigned an imaginary geography for the little village Kirchdorf on the Krems (ZIP Code 4560) made with the personal links to other countries of the interviewed inhabitants. The result is a banner system, coming from a mix of association processes of “(post-)migrants” and biographical notions “about Austrian-borns travelling or moving to other parts 41 Ibidem.

42 See Attachments, p. 39.

43 http://www.pialanzinger.de/download/PL_GlobalVillage4560.pdf

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of the world”44, that gave to the village the interesting and displacing, but in any case also belonging to the citizenship, fascination of a “global village”.

Her last project, Geraldton goes wajarrri45(2014-2015)have also this “glocal” nature, generating an international attention to the local issue of a disappearing Aboriginal language, Wajarri. She worked first on a local dimension with the residents of the Australian town Geraldton, to sensitise them trough the adoption of a wajarri word and the implementation of it in their daily spoken language. She didn't expected to rise the interest of people from other part of the world, that asked to adopt a Wajarri word, giving her the chance to open the project to an international audience and to let the Wajarri issue reach a global dimension.

Geraldton goes Wajarri, a project by Pia Lanziger, 2014 – 2015

The artistic practice of Pia Lanziger is post migrant and has always been in its global openness and in the believe of human equality 46, essential in every project she realised, of which the city, the urban context, is the symbol.

44 See Attachments, p. 39.

45 http://www.geraldton-goes-wajarri.org/ 46 See Attachments, p. 39.

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3.

I am a map a project on Post Migration What does it means integration nowadays? What kind of initiatives could be developed oriented to integration within the context of a city? How is Zurich perceived by immigrants? Should we speak of “post migrants” instead of “immigrants” in the cosmopolitan context? How many maps and trajectories are contained by the urban space? How can images represent a geographical map? How can they include the action of mapping? Where are you coming from? What do you think of the city in which you live? How would you describe it to foreign people? Where are you going now?

I am a map is a project on Post Migration: it represents the discussion about what migration and integration mean today and on what they transfigured.

I am a map is a project on how the urban space is perceived and how we perceive the urban space.

I am a map is a project about the appropriation of the city through art and especially trough the representation of daily maps and personal geographies, cohabiting the urban space experienced by immigrant/post migrant photographers. I am a map is a project about what is happening when these layers are overlapping and cross each other.

I am a map is a project about Zurich and its cosmopolitan citizenship, developed in twelve months by twelve different artist with their twelve personal point of views.

I am a map is a project in collaboration with the AOZ, the social department of the city of Zurich and is published every month by the MAPS Züri Agenda.

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3.1 The project The AOZ is a Non-Profit organization, politic and confessional neutral, that works for the social department of the city of Zurich providing social support, language and professional education and work placement to asylum seekers and immigrants. The organization realises also many initiatives under the frame of integration practices as the publication and distribution every month of the issue MAPS Züri Agenda. The MAPS Züri Agenda is a monthly event calendar that informs about various lowbudget cultural and recreational activities in the city of Zurich. Every issue and the online Agenda contains the events descriptions in eighteen languages, the ones mostly spoken: Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, English, French, Italian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, and Turkish. From 2015, the calendar also appear in Mandarin, Somali and Tigrinya.

Until last year the linguistic part was combined in every issue with fifteen lifestyle pictures taken by a volunteer photographer, that represented the seasonal cultural opportunities in Zurich for immigrants and not only. The pictures have been oriented to municipal initiatives and buildings (like the GemeinschaftsZentrum, Community centres, present in every district), naturalistic areas and public heritage.

The project “I am a map” started from January 2015 thanks to the positive collaboration with the annual project manager Livia Kerner and consists of a new concept for the visual section of MAPS Züri Agenda, though the involvement of immigrant photographers living in Zurich.

I published last december an open call/short manifesto, “Art Projekt: I am a map – Fotografen gesucht”, on the most popular websites for art announces, both national and municipal (Zurich). I also diffused the call trough friends and within the university context. I received many answers, but just a part accepted deadlines and suited the necessary photographer profile. They must be residents in Zurich, but not Swiss, or at least of “second generation” of immigrants. The could be also born in Switzerland, but coming from an “Ausländer” family. They work with visual arts (photographers, painters, video maker) or use photography as an important instrument of representation and study (theatre, art groups, directors, designers).

As first step of the curatorial work, I select every month one photographer and twenty pictures for the MAPS issue that report their personal public Zurich, places, event and people that they frequent: the maps they bring with from other countries encounter their daily maps in the town.

The MAPS Agenda is a publication oriented mostly to free happenings and social meeting points and aim to give to immigrants just arrived an introduction of activities and the cultural opportunities in the city. It isn't allowed to advertise and in general it doesn't make sense to submit pictures of too 24

expensive places, not accessible to everyone. It was also not recommend to realise pictures with a negative content or message, because the Agenda can't be used as personal politic instrument and is oriented to other immigrants, to disclose Zurich to them and not to scared them in advance.

The magazine turn with the “I am a map� project in an artwork and reach a more extended audience.

The name of every artist appears in the last page of the magazine together with the name of the photo project (I am a map) and of the curator (Eleonora Stassi). The technical instruction about resolution and dimensions of the pictures submitted are the same of all the last issues of MAPS and can't be modified in any part.

File

Jpeg

Resolution

300 dpi

Image orientation

horizontal

Dimensions

163 x 66 mm (inside); 580 x 380 mm (cover image)

The project include two moments of display, one every six months (June, December), where the pictures will be showed in public spaces (as the shop windows of an italian food shop in the Zurich district 4, the old immigrant centre) together with a round table discussion and other activities.

3.1.1

The map and the photographers

Geographical representation of photographers origins – 15. May 2015

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“It’s always a bit hard to describe oneself, but i’ll give it a try. So my parents and I moved from Moscow to Switzerland when I was 9 years old. I couldn’t speak a word of French when I've arrived here, but learned it at school (now nobody would notice that it isn’t my native language). I finished high school in Geneva, then lived a year in Berlin and finally moved to study in Zurich. I don’t really feel as a foreigner in Switzerland anymore, but I still feel pretty new to Zurich.”

With these words, Polina Chizova, the photographer that realized the images for the MAPS Züri Agenda issue of March, describes her personal map and geographical belonging. Every participant of the project brought with the personal geographical experience and mixes this previous layout with his/her daily map in the city of Zurich.

The geographical trait is one of the most important and distinctive detail of a biography and also one of the most decisive in some artistic practices. For example, Steven Anggrek, photographer of the April MAPS issue, writes in his website's bio as first information “born in a remote place, Moluccas, where he developed his appreciation for the mother nature” and ends pointing his position on the globe “Steven is now living in Zurich with an imaginary pet called Blackie.” This happens also with Santiago Pérez Gallardo (issue of February) that describes his life following its mapping elements as “born and grew up in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Now he lives in Zurich, Switzerland, where he is engaged in cinematographic as well as photographic projects.”

Menelaos Liondos (issue of May) doesn't like to speak about his origin, even if it sounds clear from his name. In his website, any geographical indication: omission that underlines a critical relationship with his homeland. Born in Preveza, Greece, he used to travel regularly, but just few years ago moved to Zurich from Athens and works in a greek restaurant, saving money to improve his photographic project and to help the family. “I also needed to come back to hands, to restart with ideas, that I hadn't anymore working professionally in Greece as photographer”, he said.

This national connotation isn't also explicit in the presentation of the artist duo Decocoon (issue of January). Decocoon are Alberto Ruano and Magdalena Ostrokolska: the first is a “second generation” spanish, born in Switzerland from spanish parents, and Magdalena is polish. Both are living in Zurich. Even if it is not clearly exhibited, it is this ample and rich cosmopolitan trait that influences their performative actions, giving them also the freedom and objectivity of an external point of view.

Rita Barracha (issue of June) is portuguese, from a village closed to Faro. She studied in Lisbon and is now working in Zurich, where she enjoys a very active portuguese community.

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3.1.2

The map and the city

“Zurich, known as one of the world's most expensive cities, offers its residents and tourists many things with premium price. Or at least that is what people think. Conversely, as a culture fix for them - especially immigrants, I would like to list major artworks in Zurich that they can observe for free or a little money.”

This is the description that Steven Anggrek (issue of April) submitted with his pictures. He gave to the series the name of Culture fix and decided to orient his mapping action of Zurich to the cultural sites of the city. On the other hand the artists duo Decocoon collected places under the slogan “Zürich is empty”: benches, river and sky views, an abandoned stadium. A new aesthetic of cartography arises and it is in the act of mapping, that the intersection between political critique, personality and memory is held.

Like in the Invisible city47 of Italo Calvino, every photographer is looking for a piece of his city of origin. “Continuous” and “Hidden” cities are enclosed in the Zurich of I am a map and the city is investigated under the perspective of “Desire”, “Signs”, “Memory” and “Eyes”, as Marco Polo did narrating his travels to Kublai Khan. But as for Polo every foreign country brought with a piece of Venice, the Zurich of the I am a map photographers is multiple and embraces in its landscape numerous horizons, encouraging the discussion about the possibilities of the city and its potentiality.

Rita Barracha (issue of June) enjoys the “Züri’s mood”, because, as she said, it “fulfils her longing for Portugal thanks to its nice spots and incredible landscapes to do sports, bbq with friends and go dancing.” In this case is not just an external resemblance, but involves activities and life. If Menelaos Liondos looks for the sea in the lake, Santiago Peréz Gallardo searches for the chaos and the traffic of Buenos Aires in the Banhofplatz.

The most interesting and unexpected connotation of the project is this representational intention: hidden under the attempt to present Zurich to other foreigners, the photographers are finally staging themselves and giving to the city the fascination of a cosmopolitan displacement. Mapping becomes an act of recognition and nostalgia.

47 Calvino, Italo, La città invisibili. Nuovi coralli 182. Torino: Einaudi, 1992.

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The map of the project/Visualization example – 05.2015 / I

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The map of the project/Visualization example – 05.2015 / II

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3.1.3 Schedule and Budget The photographers have to respect the monthly deadlines for the submission of the pictures.

After the process of examination and selection, I forward the pictures to the MAPS-Agenda redactor and staff through the online uploading system MyDrive.ch. The completed issue will be sent to the printer less then a week after the delivery of the pictures.

I present the results of the project in two different moments of the year, exactly in the middle (six + six photographers), organizing two exhibitions, one starting the end of May, one in December, within the context of the MigrationsMuseum ZĂźrich.

Year deadlines for photographers: 08/12/14 DECOCOON 15/01/15 Santiago PĂŠrez Gallardo 15/02/15 Polina Chizova 15/03/15 Steven Anggrek 12/04/15 Menelaos Liondos 15/05/15 Rita Barracha I Exhibition Opening: 30th May 2015 Where: Shop display windows, Cento Passi, Stauffacherstrasse 119, 8004 Zurich 12/06/15 10/07/15 14/08/15 10/09/15 10/10/15 12/11/15 II Exhibition Opening: December 2015 Where: To be defined MAPS Agenda provides to every photographer an expenses support of 30 CHF/month.

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Poster of the first I am a map exhibition, 31.05 – 13.06.2015

31

I am a map, exhibition views, Stauffacherstrasse 119, Zurich, 31.05 – 13.06.2015

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3.2 Perspectives The I am a map project continues until the end of 2015 and will embrace also a final exhibition, together with a round table discussion about results and following steps of this visual investigation.

After this year, the project will be open to collaborations with other magazines, newspaper and online platforms and to the development of other areas involved in the research on post migration, that go beyond the condition of the MAPS Agenda context, purpose and audience.

The material produced this year is going to be archived and available online on the MigrationsMuseum Zürich web platform, museum that was generated by the project, that will work as display and as wider context where I am a map will be related to a long-term discourse and combined with other practices and artistic media oriented to this issue.

3.2.1 The MigrationsMuseum Zürich The theorization and the first steps of the project “Migrationsmuseum Schweiz” started with the foundation of the “Verein MigrationsMuseum”, an association born in 2002 in Winterthur. It involved different institutions, as Landesmuseum Zürich, Forum for Migration Studies in Neuenburg and many other persons working within the art field and media, as the movie director Samir or the curator Tiberio Cardu. In parallel the association developed also some “introductory” interventions, the most important the exhibition “Migration: Baustelle Schweiz” (Migration: work in progress Switzerland), showed in 2005 in Zurich and 2006 in Basel.

In this exhibition fifty photographers and artists, living in Switzerland, investigated the swiss political situation/everyday life towards immigrants and integration, building a very comprehensive and coherent frame, that gave to the art critic Daniele Muscionico the chance to rename the exhibition in his review “Migrationsland Schweiz”48 (Switzerland land of migration).

As the Iraqi director Samir pointed in the catalogue Migration im Bild: Ein Inventar, in a nation where every five inhabitants, one is immigrant, or in a city, as Zürich, were it happens already every two inhabitants, migration is reality and can't be avoided as important theme of discussion and tool of artistic production and research. 49The Migrationsmuseum should have had for him as main task the 48 Daniele Muscionico, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 27./28. August 2005 49 Samir, Das Projekt “Migrationsmuseum Schweiz” in Cardu, Tiberio, and Thomas Bruggisser, eds. Migration Im Bild: Ein Inventar. Baden: hier + jetzt, 2006, p. 9.

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responsibility of juxtapose a positive meaning of the term “migration” to the negative acceptation, too often abused from media and within the swiss society.50 Unfortunately after some institutional disillusions, as the lost chance of a permanent museum in Helvetiaplatz, the hearth of Zurich immigrant district, the association disappeared in 2012. In the same year, started the online project “MIM – Musée imaginaire des migrations” 51, a digital platform that collects migrant stories and was represented physically in some swiss museum in the form of a suitcase display cabinet. Nevertheless the website has been at the moment without updates from January 2013.

To reply nowadays to this lack of platforms in which display the “I am a map” project, I initiated the “MigrationsMuseum Zürich”52, thought as a wanderer exhibition space for migrant artistic production and research that, adapting itself every time on site/project-specific needs, assumes multiple shapes. The museum represents both display and artwork. This open character of MiMu encourages every kind of collaboration within the art field, the public space and the society.

From the start of the year, it already transfigured itself into a temporary exhibition space and the display windows of a shop (first “I am a map” exhibition), into a mobile “Sag es Box” 53 and an online archive and it is going to assume the appearance of a WV bus for the street initiative “Tag der Zürcherinnen” the next 13th June in Zurich. This itinerant structure of the MiMu will be hopefully supported in the next year by a permanent place where develop and improve research and discussion and involve society and artists.

50 51 52 53

Ibidem. http://www.mimsuisse.ch/ http://www.migrationsmuseum.com/ “Hey!” Project of the artists duo Decocoon, 23. - 31. January 2015, https://decocoon.wordpress.com/

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About Imaginary geographies / Geographies of change // Conclusions

“I never liked Jules Verne, believing that the real was always more fantastic than the fantastical.�

Bruce Chatwin

As declared by the italian artist Alfonso Prota, that oriented in the last years his practice to mapping issues related to territorial politic debates and for the environmental safeguard, to work with cartography is not only an occasion to understand where we are or to reach a more comprehensive knowledge about the territory, is mostly a chance, the starting point for the change, for a new imaginary reinterpretation of the map and the building of new meanings. As pointed in the PhD thesis of Diego Sandoval about sustainable resources, one of the best researches of the year at the ETH Zurich, to think globally can be also the solution to energetic problems.

The geographical strategy that could be perceived as no-liquid, conservative or old-school represents, in reality, a flexible device, that can be applied to a combination of multiple areas of expertise and that can therefore approach in a comprehensive way the complexity of our multidisciplinary and multicultural times of post migration.

Post migration is then, for me, the territory of imagination, where there will be as many continent as human beings, no boundaries, just departures and arrival in a same transcultural dimension of freedom and sharing.

The research continues and is open to all the potentialities of the future collaborations and changes.

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36

Attachments

37

38

Post migrant projects?

Artistic practice in discussion / Interview with Pia Lanziger54 Looking at your artistic practice, I would like to know if you would define some of your projects as "post migrant", as, for example, the project Global Village 4560. A Walk-on Map55, where the city is investigated in its multiple layers and geographies and in its cosmopolitan new nature. The city represents a symbol of Post Migration.

PL Yes, the definition of post migrant is correct for projects like WorldWideWob. The Game about the Future of a City56 I have realised in Wolfburg and This is the Way We Live57,, in the Fair town Riem, but not so much for Global Village 4560. A Walk-on Map, because Kirchdorf is something in-between a village and a small town, not a real city. But even a town like Kirchdorf orientates itself more and more on the developments in big cities.

The projects you mentioned, WorldWideWob. The Game about the Future of a City, This is the Way We Live and Global Village 4560. A Walk-on Map have in common the interest to the globalisation discourse and boundaries.

PL Yes, I often work about local phenomena in our globalised world and it is very exciting to find 54 55 56 57

Answers I collected in different moment of discussions between 23.04.2015 and 05.05.2015. http://www.pialanzinger.de/download/PL_GlobalVillage4560.pdf http://www.pialanzinger.de/download/PL_WorldWideWob.pdf http://www.pialanzinger.de/download/PL_WayWeLive.pdf

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out in which way these global connotations/developments have an impact on these living units (urban district, city and village/town).

The investigation of the present conditions of a neighbourhood citizenship includes in your site specific projects both nationals and immigrants considered on the same level of inhabitants.

PL Yes, definitely. I try to approach everybody in the same way – even when (post-)migrants unfortunately often still have another status. And in Kirchdorf I worked not only about (post-)migrants but also about Austrian-borns travelling or moving to other parts of the world.

About your last project Geraldton goes Wajarri58, you wanted to realise a glocal or a pure local project? I can see some international implications.

PL Thanks for your interest in Geraldton goes Wajarri - I put my heart and soul into this project!

And yes, interesting question, because Geraldton goes Wajarri started locally and was intended to be a project for the community of Geraldton/Western Australia – and still is. But interested people from other parts of the world wanted to adopt a Wajarri word and I opened it for them too. It is a way of attracting attention for the language and Wajarri people were very proud that persons not from the Mid-West adopted a word of their language. I also decided not to finish the project when I left because still people want to adopt a word and I also didn’t want to put an end to it.

58 http://www.geraldton-goes-wajarri.org/

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Igiaba Scego

At sea, devoured by our 59 indifference My father and mother came by plane to Italy.

No run-down boat for them, they had the luxury of a regularly scheduled flight.

Last century, back in the seventies, people like my parents who came from the global South still had the possibility of traveling like any other human beings. No rickety boats, no human traffickers, no shipwrecks, no sharks ready to shred you to pieces.

In a day and a half my parents had lost everything they had. In 1969, the Siad Barre regime had taken control of Somalia. Without a second thought, my father and then my mother decided to seek refuge in Italy, in order to save their skins and start a new life there.

My father had been a wealthy man, with a successful political career behind him, but after the coup d’état he didn’t have even a single shilling to his name. They took everything from him. He had become poor.

Today my father would be forced to take a boat from Libya; if you’re not a member of the elite, there’s no other way to get to Europe from Africa. But last century, in the seventies, things were different. I remember my parents and relatives coming and going. I had some cousins that worked on an oil rig in Libya and one of my brothers, Ibrahim, studied in a country that was then called Czechoslovakia. I remember that Ibrahim would sometimes load up with jeans bought in local markets in Italy to sell under the counter in Prague, just to pay for his studies. Then he’d drop back by to see us in Rome. And when the university wasn’t in session, he’d return to Somalia, where some of our family were still living, despite the dictatorship.

If I were to sketch out my brother’s travels on a piece of paper, I’d cover it with scribbling. Lines 59 Igiaba Scego is a Somali Italian writer. Her essay "Riding the Babel on Wheels" was published in Massachusetts Review No. 55.4. This essay was first published in Italian on www.internationale.it, and was translated by Jim Hicks, with Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi and Victoria Poletto. Published online the 4th April 2015. She sent it to me as preview for my research before the publishing. https://www.massreview.org/node/443

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connecting Mogadishu with Prague, passing through Rome, and I’d have to add all sorts of other detours and curves. As it happened, my brother had an Iranian wife and they traveled together. And so Teheran was also within their orbit - along with so many other destinations that today I can’t even remember precisely.

My brother, although Somali, was free to travel. Like any young European man or woman. If I were to sketch the travels of some Marco living in Venice or some Charlotte living in Düsseldorf, I’d have to scribble even more densely than what I did for my brother Ibrahim. For them I’d have to sketch school field trips, or the time their favourite band had a concert in London, or the football matches of Manchester United, and then those Parisian holidays with their boyfriend or girlfriend, and the visits to a big brother who’d left home to work in Norway. And why not go at least once to see New York and the Empire State Building?

For Europeans, traveling is a constellation and the mode of transportation changes as needed: you take the train, planes, the car, or cruise ships, and some even decide to see Holland by bike. The possibilities are infinite. Just as they were for Ibrahim - even with the Iron Curtain - back in 1970. Of course he couldn’t go everywhere. But for him too there was the possibility of traveling under a visa system that didn’t treat a Somali passport like toilet paper.

Today, however, for people who come from the global South, travel is a straight line. A line that forces you to go forward, never back. As in rugby, you have to cross the goal line. There are no visas, and no human corridors, and if in your country there’s a war or a dictatorship, it’s your own damned business. Europe won’t even look you in the face, you’re just a nuisance. And so from Mogadishu, from Kabul, and from Damascus forward is the only possibility, step by step, inexorably, inevitably.

A straight line where - as we know by now - you’ll find the whole lot: smugglers, traffickers, corrupt police, terrorists, rapists. You’re at the mercy of an ominous fate that convicts you for geography, not for something you’ve done.

Travel is a right reserved for the North, for an Occident that is increasingly isolated and deaf. If you’re born on the wrong side of the globe you will be granted nothing. Today I was thinking about the latest slaughter in the Strait of Sicily - in this Mediterranean by now rotting from the surfeit of cadavers it contains - and I asked myself out loud when this nightmare began. Looking up at my friend, the journalist and writer Katia Ippaso, we asked why we hadn’t noticed when it began.

People have been dying like this in the Mediterranean since 1988. From that year on, women and men have been swallowed up by the waters. A year later in Berlin, the wall would fall: we were happy, and we were almost unaware of that other wall, rising up little by little from the waters of our sea.

It wasn’t until 2003 that I myself understood what had been happening. I was working in a record store. Thirteen bodies had been found in the Strait of Sicily. Thirteen young Somali men that

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were escaping from a war that had broken out in 1990 and was eating the country alive. That number suddenly seemed to be a warning. I remember how Rome expressed its solidarity with the Somali community. That, in the piazza of Campidoglio, the mayor at the time, Walter Veltroni, held a secular funeral. On that day, a cloudy October day, a community once divided by clan hatred found itself united around those bodies. The Somalis who had hastened to that piazza were crying and the Roman people cried as well, the pain felt as their own.

Today everything is different.

All around today, there is only indifference.

I could simply leave it at that, but actually I fear something worse has devoured our soul.

I experienced it for myself this past summer in Hargeisa, a city in the north of Somalia.

There a very dignified signora confessed to me, almost ashamed, that her nephew had died while on the tahrib, the journey to Europe.

“The boat gulped him down,” she told me. The signora was inconsolable, continually repeating to me: “When the children leave, they don’t tell you anything. That evening, I’d made dinner for him.

He never even ate it.” Ever since that day, I often dream about boats with teeth grabbing children by the ankles, devouring them, like Kronos eating his children. I dream about that boat, those great teeth, long as elephant tusks. I feel impotent. Worse, really: I feel like a murderer because Europe, the continent where I am a citizen, isn’t lifting a finger to build a unified policy to confront these maritime tragedies in a systematic manner.

Even the word “tragedy” may well be out of place. By now, after twenty-five years, we should speak of reckless homicide, not tragedy - especially now, after the European Union has blocked the implementation of Italy’s Mare Nostrum rescue operations. A calculated measure, taken by our continent in deciding to control borders in total disregard for human lives.

None of us took to the streets to demand that Mare Nostrum be reinstated. We asked for no structural solution to the problem. We are just as guilty as our governments. It’s not by chance that Enrico Calamai, Italy’s former vice consul in Argentina during the years of dictatorship - a man who saved many from the clutches of the Videla regime - has said this about the migrants dying in the Mediterranean: “They are the new desaparecidos. This reference is neither rhetorical nor polemic. The term is technical and factual, because desaparición is a means of mass extermination, managed in such a way that public opinion doesn’t become fully aware of it, or at least is able to say it doesn’t know.”

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A > Agonistic Space B > Boundary C > Colonialism / Cosmopolitan / Counter-culture D > Digital Migration / Documentation / Diaspora / Dialect E > Europa F > Foreign Policy / Fordism G > Gentrification / Geography/ Glob/Glocaization H > Hospitality / Human / Hegemony I > Identity J > Judgment / Justice K > Knowledge L > Language M > Migration / Map N > Nomadic / Nationality O > Ortiz Fernando / Objectivity / Occupation P > Post /Public Sphere / Political Q > Quality of Life R > Recognition / Representation / Rights S > Subjectivity / Society T > Transcultural / Third culture kid (TCK) U > Urbanization V > Value / Valorisation W > West / Work X > Xenophobia Y > Yildiz Erol Z > Zoning