Raphael Cuomo/Maria Iorio, Sudeuropa, video, 2006. The ongoing project focuses on the situation of the Italian island Lampedusa, located between Africa and Europe where the southbound movement of large numbers of tourists enjoying their beach vacation cross the northbound movement of migrants leaving the Africa shores in the attempts to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean. The video examines the ways in which European and Italian politics materialize on location by reconfiguring space, time and the daily life on the island, by evoking the presence of the migrants on the island, excluded from social life and made invisible in their detention in asylum camps ; and by showing the places of their departure, enclosure and deportation. |
From the Outside, the Other Side of the Roman Lake |
Raphael Cuomo/Maria Iorio, Sudeuropa, video, 2006.
Charles Heller, Crossroads at the Edge of Worlds, video-essay, 2006. The video Crossroads at the End of the Worlds by Charles Heller is based on a research trip in Morocco in July 2005, in collaboration with Ursula Biemann, where they documented the illegal migrations circulating through Morocco, as well as the methods of controlling them. This project focuses on the four main transit migration axes in Morocco: Oujda, Tangier, Rabat, Laayoune. It engages in the dialectic mobility/segregation, which marks the major spatial transformations today and questions the political meaning and the ambivalence of these ex-territorial zones, both formal and informal, that dot Morocco's territory.
Yto Barrada, Sleepers 1-3, photograph, 2006. Yto Barrada is a Moroccan-French artist from Tangier presently involved in the dynamic of the Strait. Her ongoing photo project A Life Full of Holes seeks to expose the metonymic character of the Strait through a series of images that reveal the tension — that relentlessly animates the streets of her hometown — between its allegorical nature and immediate, harsh reality. Before 1991 any Moroccan with a passport could travel freely to Europe. But since the EU Schengen Agreement, visiting rights have become unilateral across what is now legally a one-way strait. Today the Strait is the main gateway for illegal immigrants, bound north with their own vocabulary, legends, songs, rites, and language. |
Centre D'Art Contemporain Geneve The Maghreb Connection focuses on systems and modalities of migratory movements which constitute the Maghreb and Mediterranean area. From a range of aesthetic positions, the project seeks to develop discursive and visual representations of the growing complexity of North African mobility in relation with the development of the European Union. The Maghreb Connection, Movements of Life Across North Africa is an international project of art and research directed by Swiss artist Ursula Biemann featuring work by Doa Aly (Cairo), Yto Barrada (Tangier), RaphaelL Cuomo/Maria Iorio (Geneva), Hala Elkoussy (Cairo), Charles Heller (Geneva) and Camille Poncet/Mouhamed Coulibaly-Massassi (Geneva), in collaboration with media/design activists Observatorio Tecnollogico (Malaga) and the photographer Armin Linke (Milan). In parallel to the agreements about “free movement” inside the European Union, its external borders are becoming increasingly sealed. The migrant Maghrebin populations and those sub-Saharans who use the Maghreb as transit zone are now likened to a threat. While this notion of an invasion — largely spread by the European media — seems to legitimate the restrictive political measures concerning immigration, European economy is extending further into the Maghreb to establish giant transnational logistic centres and to find cheap labour for outsourced production. At this point, one can assume that the relations between Europe and Africa have entered a new post-colonial phase. In the Maghreb, migration flows rely on — and intersect with — other forms of organized mobility such as existing nomadic movements, tourism, roaming martial formations including rebel groups, and migration related humanitarian personnel. The junction of these movements generates synergies, conflicts, and sometimes surprising alliances. The Maghreb Connection aims to develop a visual representation of these different movements. This geographic approach (geography being understood as a signifying system that allows us to understand the relation between subject, movement and space) focuses on specific zones of transit migration, such as Agadez in Niger, Lampedusa in Tunisia, Oujda and Tanger in Morocco or Laayoune in occidental Sahara. After in depth research and investigation, the artists present in the exhibition a series of works under various forms, such as cartography, video, photography, text or animation. A fully illustrated catalogue, bilingual English/Arabic, is published by Ursula Biemann and Brian Holmes and supported by the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève to document the exhibition. It includes texts by Medhi Alioua, Ali Bensaad and Achille Mbembe, Keller Easterling, as well as research documentation on the artists’ projects. The exhibition was presented at Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, from December 11, 2006 to January 13, 2007, before traveling to Geneva. |
Charles Heller, Crossroads at the Edge of Worlds, video-essay, 2006. |
