Alexander Garcia Duttmann
The fact that one is recognized as this or that, that one recognizes this or that as something, that one recognizes this or that as this or that, means in terms of contemporary politics of recognition that one repeatedly re-cognizes that which is to be recognized and the ways and modes of recognizing. The question of the singularity and the cultural specificity of a form of life, which is often raised in order to object to abstraction in general and above all to philosophical abstraction, is based on such a misrecognition of recognition, on a confusion of the act of recognizing with an act of identification. One wants to know what it really means to lead and existence as X; one is mistrustful of and hostile to the universalization effected by philosophical abstraction. The phrase ‘you as X’ ascribes a particular knowledge or attributes a singular experience to a distinctive and incomparable position, to a position both impregnable and untenable. Having become independent of all content, it functions as a signal to be re-cognized and belongs to the jargon of multiculturalism and difference, which has inherited the legacy of affliction and affection left by the jargon of authenticity. One is no longer affected and afflicted by an existential limit-experience which leads to an overcoming of the singularity of a specific existence and transforms the one who makes it into a singular and special individual; one is now affected and afflicted by the mere experience of existence itself. This experience is already a limit-experience given that existence is supposed to consist of nothing but its corresponding singularity, of nothing but the diversity of identities, which demand to be recognized as such. The demanded confirmation of a recognition as… is the instrument with which one tries to do justice to a singularity and to resist its dissolution into a discriminatory generality or universality whose difference tolerates no other difference.
Leaving room is a three-years project focused on the phenomenon of migration in the Mediterranean Sea. The project has so far been presented in Tangier, Valencia, Venice and Istanbul. Leaving room’s core aspect consists of a data-driven installation by artist Daniele Rugo, elaborating records made available by the n.g.o United Against Racism. The data-driven installation will be presented along with films and short-videos dealing in different, but consistent ways, with the same issue.
The installation aims to work on two levels: on the one hand, it attempts to present from a global perspective the phenomenon of immigration that in the last 15 years counted circa 8800 deaths. The second level reflects on the singular components, the event of each singular death.
Overall Leaving room tries – questioning the position of a politically correct multiculturalism that sees migration in an uncritical way, neutralizing difference – to conceive intrusion as such, starting from the assumption that culture is, by definition, mixture and mêlée.
Framed in this way though the question could take a different shape. We would seek to show that migration is a non-homogenous process, that there’s no theory, no policy one can lightheartedly apply. The attempt is then not to present the logic of migration, rather to conceive of migration as an aspiration, a decision taken on that which one cannot decide upon.
What should emerge then is a fragmented imaginary: an act of witnessing that tries to measure the distance between experiences and political strategies.
Leaving room’s intention is that of creating an interruption, an in between, where conclusions might be reached as long as one leaves every conclusion open.
Rian Lozano
EL PASAJE (6)
Calma, despues mas. Espuma blanca, mansa, contra las rocas bate, sin poseerlas. El mar de noche avisa del luto sin nacer en los cuerpos que duermen sobre el agua en vano. (Falto de golpe el aire. Llego la madrugada.) Desde el negruzco fondo, hacia la costa, donde se escucha a tientas lo no dicho, estan volviendo hasta la superficie. De nuevo estan delante de mis ojos. Antonio Mendez
A boat. A little boat. A small, unseaworthy boat. And so, why for? Just a container. Containing materials. Useful materials; first required, then, wasted. Another crime against hospitality. Un bateaux de peche. No, it is not a fishing boat! A clandestine fishing. Des poisson clandestines. Boat people.
Embarcations de fortune. Mais, c’est où la fortune? La fortune d’hi arriver; d’arriver ici? No, it is not that, it is just the luck of being –still. Maybe alive but invisible. Patera o cayuco. Depende del comienzo del viaje. Barchetta o carretta del mare. Del Mar Mediterrani; un vaixell. These are not the same thing. Yes, I know, everything is mixed in an altogether different sea.
Where do all these lines start? Where do they finish? The horizontality of the map lines is thrown out of balance by the numbers of discouragement and death. L’aigua anonima tampoc no sap del seus secrets.
The journey, as we already should know, is betrayed from the very beginning. The fragility of these containers works as a perfect image. Alors, l’irresponsabilite;. The indifference in front of the other’s death does not make us feel guilty, nor even accessory; not anymore. We are used to it. Just like the formal visuality of any natural catastrophe. The poor material, the wood eaten up with l’inhospitalite;, the exhausted and dead bodies (just the ones we see), they all fit perfectly: a new illustration of something already expected.
Nature. The strength of nature. The awful nature. The fate, the bad luck; enfin, la misfortune. La locura de cruzar el Estrecho. Is this the Dangerous Nature? No, this is we, nosotros, entre nous. Here it is where the betrayal lies. A low intensity Holocaust hidden by the power of (mass) mediated images.
How do they call them there? They, who? The immigrants. No, the emigrants.
There, where? On the other coasts. On the other Mediterranean coasts. I don’t know. It was already said once: l’indifference est estadistiquement dominante.
It must be also related to the process of naming, to the shared names. Lost names without surnames, drowned pronouns without nouns. Moisturizing thinking. L’eau et les rêves (sur l’imagination de la matiere).
The imagination and the matter. The imagination of matter. Just one name shared but two very different structures: a stratified landscape to be experienced, to be survived. The first one is horizontal, fluid, constantly renewed, event transparent. There, the boat (not the treacherous but the heterotypic one) exists by itself; it is closed in and on itself and at the same time is given to the infinity of the sea. It is the greatest reserve of the –civilized- imagination. L’imagination de la matiere, encore.
The other one is vertical, thick as you put it. Impassable: there, the absolute arrival runs around the density of corpses. QUE RUINAS, CUERPOS / para no ver el fondo. Here is when data and codes are required: the tools to record our phantoms. Our own vulnerability. From the dark bottom to the coast, where the non-said is listened, they are returning to the surface. Again, in front of me.
In the former one, the Heraclitean mobility appears as a coherent and complete philosophy. The water, here, dies every single minute; the daily death is the death of the water. In the second one, in the water of phantoms, there is no place for the philosopher, not even for the poet. There, the daily death is the death in the water, the stagnant water.
Hacia afuera se arrojan las olas [...] hacia dentro encontraron su rumbo los ahogados. This might be the movement of a leaving room. A living room already –but not completely- left. El cuarto de estar. Stay still or, perhaps, leave. L’eau et les reves. A dream dreamt by the other, an unknown sleeper
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