Performance Installation, Materic.org L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, ph Paco Justicia Cazorla
2017-2019
Performance and concept Marta Lodola
Events SynAthina, CASA Contemporary Art Showcase Athens- OKK Organ kritischer Kunst, Berlin – B#S Gallery, IoDeposito, Treviso – 22Cubic Art Residency at Materic.org, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat – Barcelona.
This project was initially supported by personal fundings, donations through GoFoundMe and volunteers that offered their time and effort to make it happen. In 2019 the project was supported by European Cultural Fundation and Compagnia San Paolo.
ACTIONS AGAINST BORDERS #1 BREAKING POINT is a long-term project conceived, organised and developed by Marta Lodola. Throughout this project, Lodola has also worked in collaboration with various organizations, collectives and individuals, all of whom are addressing “border dynamics”. The increasing creation of physical borders- as governmental responses to influxes of mass migration- are producing invisible borders between peoples and nations. The presence of any kind of border affects the life of every single human being; both their sense of community and their conception of sharing. Through a combination of research periods and multidisciplinary performative actions, this project aims to continuously investigate the present-day meaning of borders within our societies, considering these borders as both physical and psychological limits.
ACTIONS AGAINST BORDERS #1 BREAKING POINT aims to reveal the complex construction of borders existing within our society by inciting moments of both confrontation and exchange amongst its participants. In this project, research functions as an artistic practice which gathers and spreads information in order to activate an awareness process in its participants. It aims to give birth to a dialogue amongst individuals, associations, groups and collectives, all of whom are supporting critical situations related to immigration. Its process aims to stimulate a mutual introduction and act as a bridge between communities; ones which already reside in a specific place and others which have just arrived in these places to start a new lives. The research collected by this project gives an opportunity to those who are rarely heard to express their view on the meaning of “borders”. It furthermore looks to reunite the thoughts and experiences of those who may have otherwise never crossed paths.
The opportunity to listen to the stories, memories and narratives of people who live around us is an extremely precious resource. Their words are a demonstration of what is currently happening and have the ability to describe reality better than any other media. The main goal of this research is to give voice to every single being.
The Practice of ACTIONS AGAINST BORDERS #1 BREAKING POINT begins with a series of walks through selected public places which have unique sociopolitical contexts. I walk between 2 and 4 hours per day following a planned path for a selected number of days. During each journey, I use an audio recorder to collect answers and experiences from every person I encounter without distinction. I ask them to answer the following three questions:
_What does”border” mean to you?_
_Which effects are you experiencing in your life because of the construction of borders?_
_Do you have any solutions?_
DAY 1 Berlin Nekölln, ph Marta Lodola
PERFORMANCE*Installation
The entire collection of audio material recorded during the interviews became part of an audio archive which was open to the public during the performance installation. This took place in each city that the project was developed. The recorded voices of the current place were used as the sonic backdrop of the performance, and the exhibition shows previous cities’ archives through translated texts, video, an on line archive and the paper maps used during the exploration of the city.
The public has freedom of choice in this exhibition space, to choose where to start and if they want to enter the last section dedicated to the performance. Here, the audience was invited to enter a dark space using a laser pointer in which they explore and investigate the surrounding space and my body. The number of people simultaneously admitted was five.
Inside, I lay down naked on a dark bed in the center of the room. Just who is lighting up the lampAs with each individual meeting, every interaction in the dark room remained both personal and unique.
When the public enter the performance space, they are give the chance to listen to the multiple views of the interviewed participants discussing their definitions of borders.
When walking through these public spaces, I am also enacting a process to map the city to my individual experiences within my body. Therefore, every journey I make becomes a path which I memorise with my whole self. During the final phase of the project, the project takes the form of a participatory installation and performance. Here, an audience can directly take part in the project by both consulting an archive
which presents the various interactions and by participating in a series of conferences and the performances.
On entrance to the final installation, an arrangement of tablets present the archive in the form of the collected audio recordings and their translated transcriptions alongside maps of the routes taken within the chosen spaces. This archive will also later be published online for a public consultation.
The aim of this archive is to gather and contain people’s experiences from within the urban space
Here, a site-specific exploration of geographical and social fabric comes to life; the body forms a mapping process of physical, experience-based space.
Berlin Athens 2017, camera Pablo Hermann, James Simbouras, Marta Lodola
## BERLIN
May – October 2017
Curator: Pablo Hermann /OKK Raum29
In Berlin, the practice of walking, interviewing and recoding took place for 32 days and from between 2 to 4 hours per day. I decided to walk through both the West and the East sides of the former Berlin Wall (more
specifically the districts of Neukölln, Mitte and Pankow) in order to incorporate the map of the previously divided city into my conceptual framework.
Berlin, ph Marta Lodola and Gabriel Schwalke
(photo 6 in collaboration with Katinka Schlette)
I chose Berlin as the starting point for this project because it struck me as a place that still holds an old scar of Europe’s past divisions i.e. The Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall, built in 1961 during the Cold War, still stands as symbol of separation. It furthermore represents the fact that physical boarders are still a part of our social memory.
The period of liberation following the fall of the Berlin Wall has been remembered as a time synonymous with values of hospitality and freedom. These values have continued into the presentday city and Berlin since has been fertile ground for initiatives of self-organisation and houseprojects. It is still today the place of destination for many newcomers looking to start a new life. However, despite the developments of the past 20 years and the reformation of the city, the old borders between East and West still endure. In many previous border areas communities are still divided.
While Berlin’s City Centre is a well known tourist destination, as soon as we move to more peripheral areas of Berlin we discover something more obscure. Here we find a multiplicity of invisible borders and unrecorded living situations formed during the Cold War and the years following the reunification. Many undeclared zones still exist within this enormous urban fabric and around every corner lies something undiscovered.
Whilst working in the Berlin’s Neukölln district, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Katinka Schlette. Schlette is a German anthropologist and human geographer who’s research focuses on borders within Berlin’s urban space and how Berlin’s surrounding artistic contexts provide potentials for the deconstruction of these borders. Her research project takes place within the framework of the Master’s program of Human Geography (with a specialization on ‘Europe: Borders, Identity and Governance’). She completed this program at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Schlette’s research was realised in the project “Pictures and Research Presentation” which was featured as part of the project exhibition in OKK-Organ Kritischer Kunst.
While this exhibition exhibited, one weekend was dedicated to a series of presentations, screenings and a panel discussion from various artists and researchers, all of whom are currently working on border dynamics. This weekend event featured: “The Wrong Side Of The Fence” a talk from Simona Bonardi (IT/CH), “Flüchtlingsgespräche” Berlin 2016, HD, 25 Min, screening the work of and discussion from Nicole
König und Wolfgang Thies (DE), “The voice from Gaza” presentation by Rami Majed Balawi (Gaza Strip), “Present Borders in Border-Memoryland Berlin, Contemporary in/visible b/ordering dynamics and creative border deconstruction in an urban space” presentation by Katinka Schlette (NL).
Performance Installation and Conferences at OKK, ph Pablo Hermann
## ATHENS
August 2017
Curators: Pablo Herman /OKK Organ kritischer Kunst – James Washington Simbouras / C.A.S.A
Contemporary Art Showcase Athens – Francesco Kiais / GAP Gathering Around Performance
Athens, ph Pablo Hermann
In Athens, the practice of walking, interviewing and recoding took place over 3 days and in various parts of the city: Viktoria Square, Archeological Museum, Varvakios Market, Syntagma Square, and Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space City Plaza Hotel City Plaza. As the birth place of democracy, Athens symbolises a precious and fragile political and social system. However, since the economic crash of of 2010 and with consequential rise of the far-right, Greece has faced challenges to it’s own democratic systems. It’s furthermore one of the most forced destinations for those who have left their countries due to war, persecution and a poor quality of life. Sadly- for multiple reasons- many of these people get stuck in Athens and are deprived of the possibility to find their desired better future. Many of these people are living homeless on the streets of Athens and this project put us directly in contact with one-another. In our meetings, I discovered the functional power of the interview as it became a method to provide concrete support to these people. Our interaction became an expedient to putting people in contact with public and private associations which help those in need. I had the chance to develop and present the project in a building called SynAthina, which operates as informative and supportive centre for people in need living in the streets of Athens.
Furthermore, I got contact with Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space City Plaza in which I Interviewed both voluntary workers and residents of the house. City Plaza provides a home to those in need: migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. It’s also a recreational place for adults, families and many children.
Performance Installation at SinAthina, ph Pablo Hermann
## TREVISO
January 2019
Curator: Chiara Isadora Artico / IoDeposito B#S Gallery
I developed the project ACTIONS AGAINST BORDERS #1 BREAKING POINT for the first time in Italy in the city of Treviso in January 2019. The project was selected by B#side War Project – International Art Festival on War’s
DAY 1 Treviso, ph Karsten Hein
The practice of walking, interviewing and recording took place over 3 days in different parts of the city.
Treviso is an ancient city where many civilisations, as the celtics and the romans, crossed each other’s paths. After a long period under Austrian domination, the city became officially part of the newly born italian territory in 1886. During World War I and World War II the cities of Treviso and Trieste were representing the first defensive border of Italy, hence both directly involved in the conflicts. The city suffered several bombings especially during World War II forcing the local population to migrate both to other parts of the region and to other countries.
The city walls surrounding the old city center were built during the 14th Century. During WWII, one of several Italian concentration camps was established for Slovene and Croatian civilians from the Province of Ljubljana in Monigo, near Treviso. Housed inside a compound of shacks, the camp went into operation in July 1942. The prisoners were divided in two distinctive groups: the “repressivi” (to monitor) and “protettivi” (to protect) all the slavic prisoners who feared retaliation coming from the partisans). In November 1942, there were 3,122 prisoners in Monigo: 1058 men, 1085 women and 466 children including 42 infants. With the arrival of winter, food supplies dwindles and disease decimated the weakest.
The camp ceased to exist in September 1943, although a few dozen of prisoners remained hosted in the facility. However, after the end of the war, from May to August 1945, Monigo’s camp was reactivated as a refugee camp controlled by the Allied Military Government.
The historical memory of the concentration camp remained a secret until 1970, when a delegation from the Slovenian government came to Treviso to commemorate fellow citizens at the Municipal Cemetery of the city. Still nowadays many people are not aware of what really happened behind those walls.
During my visit to the city I’ve had the opportunity to develop my research, to interview people with different background and to understand how regularisation and integration of migrants works in the City of Treviso and consequentially in the surrounding territories. I’ve had the great chance to visit Arte Migrante Treviso, a non-party and a non-denominational group. It organizes weekly meetings that are open to everybody , aiming at promoting inclusion through art, creating connections between groups and associations providing concrete support to migrants… It welcomes students, migrants, workers, unemployed, young people and elders.
On the other hand I’ve also met few asylum seekers and migrants living a more difficult situation on the streets. The strong presence of veiled racism is preventing these people from finding a house and a regular job. What comes out from the research is a recollection of migrations experiences, divisions and separation. The opinions of the interviewees are conflicting but revealing how today’s power dynamics do not differentiate from our past history of deportation, imprisonment and abandonment. The present social situation shows that “to the old right to kill or to let live was substituted by the power to make someone live or refuse him/her on the death”(Michel Foucault, La Volonté de savoir, 1978).
Aiming to identify the “breaking point” between good and bad, I approached a new modus operandi of awareness and truth of facts, instead of listening to institutionalised talks or media. Treviso reveals its deep and historical connections with borders. The main subject of this part of the research is connected to the past and the present memory of borders reconstructed by the several locations I’ve visited: Old City Center, Arte Migrante Treviso, Monigo’s Concentration Camp, Station’s Square and ISTRESCO Istituto per la Storia della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea della Marca Trevigiana.
Performance Installation at B#Side Gallery, ph Karsten Hein
## BARCELONA – L’HOSPITALET DE LLOBREGAT
September 2019
Curator: Marina Barsy Janer & Isil Sol Vil, Materic.org, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat
Es un proyecto que fusiona el espacio urbano y la práctica performativa como una investigación sobre el significado real de las fronteras de nuestra sociedad. El proceso genera una creación lenta y continua de un archivo de audio, que recopila experiencias, historias y condiciones sociales en un viaje itinerante. El proyecto está en curso desde el 2017 y se ha desarrollado en Berlín (DE), Atenas (GR) y Treviso (IT).
Barcelona – L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, ph Marta Lodola, Isil Sol Vil
For the first time this project was developed between two different cities. It works as a bridge to cross the border that divide this two neghbouring communities. The border is present, but could be unconsciously crossed on the street, but at the same time this border is absolutely evident in terms of jurisdiction. The practice of walking and interviewing people on the street, collectives and individuals working closely about borders dynamics was during 7 days. The starting point for the research was Hospitalet de Llobregat from Collblanc to Torrassa and Santa Eulalia, place where Materic.org is based,. Then the investigation proceeded in Barcelona in Raval, Barceloneta, Born, Gracia and Horta. The last visited place is the center of Hospitalet de Llobregat.
The recorded conversations with collectives and individuals gave to the project a wide vision of those two unique and particular social structures, that are facing up with an nonexistent government and regulations that are forcing foreigners to live as ratialized persons in different aspect of their life. Houses, jobs, documents, social rights are just a part of the difficulties that most of the people are finding here. Thank to organizations and individuals the help to cross this invisible borders is concrete and real. Thank to Natalia, Mercé – Tanquem el CIE, Mujeres pa lante, Musta and Sufian – Can Migra, Guerra a la guerra – Casal Popular Tres Voltes Revel, Barcelona, Ingrid Léon #ingridsequeda, Marilò – La Fundaciò, Florencia Brizuela González.
In this installation/performance you will be the activator of the project itself, you as the people that answered to the question will be part of the entire process of knowing the others. You are already in.
Performance Installation at Materic.org L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, ph Paco Justicia Cazorla