(Photo: Luchezar Boyadjiev, Super Super!, 2003)

by Emanuele Guidi, curator of the video program of Polis-21

The video screening presented within the context of the Polis 21 project, was conceived not as a parallel event to the conferences taking place in Belgrade and Zagreb but as an active contribution to them. In this sense, each artists work operated as a sort of visual ‘intervallo’ in-between the speakers’ interventions and allowed for further debate by bringing into the discussion a more narrative and evocative point of view. The video selection presented several artistic positions and methodologies that unfold around the issues proposed by European Alternatives for Polis 21: physical and invisible borders within the city, borders within Europe and beyond it, migration fluxes and the subject of labour as a form of inclusion/exclusion, the critical concept of the nation-state and cultural identity within the Europe’s territory.
Leopold Kessler (Neighbours, 2008), Aldo Giannotti & Stefano Giuriati (Carabinieri, Stazione Mobile, 2006), through the simple gestures of manipulating imaginaries and clichés are able to raise critical questions about the very concept of border, both in its geographical and psychological connotations.

(Photo: Aldo Giannotti e Stefano Giuriati, Carabinieri, Stazione Mobile, 2006)

Till Roeskens is able to materialize these borders in front of the viewer in the form of drawings and voices by Palestinian refugee camp inhabitants, through six personal stories which express the trauma of displacement and the different perception of what everyday life is (Videomappings: Aïda, Palestine , 2008).
The migrant emerges as a very critical figure within the boundaries of the nation-state but is actually very controversial due to its contribution to the urban landscape. Luchezar Boyadjiev (Super Super!, 2003 ) directs the gaze towards the informal and invisible economical activities of the city, by acting on the visual level of the urban space. In fact through a strategy of irony he promotes the small business of a Roma family with a huge billboard placed in the centre of a town and a video-commercial, as if they were an international corporation. The issue of labour is very central also in the work of Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson who narrate, in the form of an opera, the everyday life of the Ukrainian women community in Italy and their un-substitutable role as caregivers which produces an economical impact both on the Italian territory and on the Ukrainian one. This is a story of integration that still carries the contradiction of a contemporary drama (The Caregivers, 2008). The Kurdish community is at the very centre of the research of the Osservatorio Nomade’s project ( Kurds on the Map, 2004) which traces the path of several groups of Kurds, who annually meet in Germany for a one-day festivity. Through interviews and the active participation of the interviewed people, the diasporas of the community is sketched and represented as a sort of spontaneous network on a symbolic white map of a borderless Europe.

(Photo: neighbours, 2008, Leopold-Kessler)

The artist Bouchra Khalili gives a human dimension to the undocumented migrants and invites a young Iraqi woman to tell her never-ending story to obtain the status of political refugee. By mixing it with the images of a made-up geography the artist is able to translate visually the suspended condition that characterize the time spent waiting and travelling (Straight Stories Part 2: Anya, 2008). Eventually Hito Steyerl documents the history of the Universal Embassy in Brussels that has been established by the artist Tristan Wibault in the former Somali Embassy. An activist project that hosts and helps sans-papiers fighting for regularization and that tries to operate in a very narrow juridical space but also works on the strengthening of those everyday social bonds that the condition of clandestine tend to deteriorate. A utopian embassy that represents those who are not represented (Universal Embassy, 2004).