In global capitalism, the movement of bodies through borders takes the form of an asymmetrical dualism. One side of the border acts as a retaining wall, a knife that cuts territories, bodies, and genders. It is not driven to block access to the central zones of capital, but to bureaucratically manage the legality of the migratory flow, forking it into being and non-being. The other side of the border adopts a flexible interface, expanding endlessly in the space of the “other”, while preserving the impermeability of knowledge and identities. The border has ceased to be a peripheral space, it becomes centre. Its implosion is expressed in a whole range of institutions, security devices, and parallel agencies that inhabit our cities, forming an expanding inner border. The logic of the border is now spreading to all systems of political and cognitive power. In this sense, we can speak of borders as laboratories for a new totalitarian system. Proclamations that were once the domain of openly racist sectarian groups are now being absorbed into governmental and media discourse. Colonialism is also a state of the soul, based on alterity in constant opposition. Always an “other” to criticise, occupy, conquer... never loving contemplation or dialogue for the transformation of being... being without borders.

This work, the result of a trip to Germany (taken in December of 2000) and of a personal investigation that lasted over two years, tackles the theme of the construction of memory and of the mechanisms of the production of history. Through the narration of my family’s history, it delves into the memory of the recent emigration from the spanish state to Europe, and reflects on the mechanisms of oblivion and remembrance, by recuperating the idea of the construction of memory as a nexus and a dialogue, and the elaboration from personal experience against the idea of an official history and memory, restricted to the institutional and articulated around the aestheticisation and the deactivation of the political subjects.

A video that denounces the situation of more than 300 people who lived in the Nave del Poblenou in Barcelona, and the eviction order that was acted upon at 6am on 23 July 2012.

Otranto, Torre del Serpente, the easternmost part of Italy, the point where, lest we forget, East and West once touched. Today, the memory of that link seems to re-emerge as a consequence of all the illegal immigrants that disembark on its beaches, as their clothes, shoes and personal effects found along the coast remind us. To those among them that did not make it, we dedicate the canto of the polyphonic Albanian chorus of Lapardha that, on August 5, 2002, at dawn, sang one of its passage for the victims of the 1997 “accident”, in which dozens of Albanians died aboard a boat sunk by the Italian navy.  

Chronicles of the journey of refugees through Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia September 2015. Migration flows have been part of human experience throughout history. In 2014, almost 55 million people were forced to leave their homes in the face of war, persecution, and human rights violations: the highest figure since the end of World War II (1). According to the 2015 CEAR Report (2), 22,500 people have lost their lives in the Mediterranean during the migration process over the past fifteen years. These statistics are interpreted through biased and ethno-centric analyses that construct migrants as a potentially dangerous “other”. In The Walls of Europe we talk to different actors involved in the border zone between Serbia and Croatia, in the biggest human exodus that Europe has seen for decades. An exodus that reveals the dark side of the big NGOs and of the security and military forces of receiving countries, and the racism and xenophobia of Europe's governments.