Manifesto or Where Will We Live Together? [1]
At the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, curator Hashim Sarkis posed a rhetorical question: "How will we live together?" The question sounded particularly poignant due to the post-pandemic period. Are we ready to come together again, to be a society, to communicate as we did before?
I believe Sarkis's question can be continued by a series of others, among them, the question with the adverbial interrogative "Where."
What has been, is, and will be the place where we live? Is it home, common land, homeland? Or have we all lost everything?
The curator of the 2024 Venice Art Biennale Adriano Pedrosa don't discuss the question, but rather say: "Foreigners are everywhere. There's no way back. The search for home is futile. We've all become foreigners to each other, to the places we inhabit, and this began centuries ago when some countries decided to embark on a colonial march around the world."
What has been, is, and will be the place where we live? Is it home, common land, homeland? Or have we all lost everything?
The curator of the 2024 Venice Art Biennale Adriano Pedrosa don't discuss the question, but rather say: "Foreigners are everywhere. There's no way back. The search for home is futile. We've all become foreigners to each other, to the places we inhabit, and this began centuries ago when some countries decided to embark on a colonial march around the world."
Claire Fontaine, Installation Foreigners Everywhere during 2024 Venice Art Biennale, photo by Elena Karpilova
Home is not only necessarily a place of residence. It is a state, an atmosphere, it is a phenomenon existing in a spatial-temporal [2] continuum. It is to some extent an event of the soul, localized in a certain segment, be it time or space. The causality of the human need for home as a phenomenon can be explored extensively.
Screenshot from "No Home Movie", Chantal Akerman, 2015.
“
Even if I have a home in Paris and sometimes in New York, whenever I was saying I have to go home, it was going to my mother.
Even human behavior models depended on whether a person was at home or away from home [3]. Thus, it turns out that we are completely different people at home and outside of it.
Azin Sultani, Inside and Outside, Brooch No.2, bricks, silver, 2023.
Brooch is made of miniature bricks, faithfully replicating traditional Iranian houses. From the outside, they all look the same, modest. Inside such houses, there are colorful paintings, mirrors, and abundant decorations.
Brooch is made of miniature bricks, faithfully replicating traditional Iranian houses. From the outside, they all look the same, modest. Inside such houses, there are colorful paintings, mirrors, and abundant decorations.
The way we have become after leaving our homes is not our decision but the result of the circumstances in which a person finds themselves. We leave our homelands, countries, lands, and regardless of our desires and capabilities, we inevitably become different people in any case.
Photo Mare Nostrum, by Massimo Sestini, 2014, source. In June 2014 Massimo Sestini was working on the Bergamini Frigate, during the Mare Nostrum Operation (MNO) organized by the Italian government, in response to the drowning of hundreds of migrants off the Island of Lampedusa on the 3rd October 2013. MNO involved the Italian Red Cross, Save the Children and other NGOs in an effort not only to rescue lives, but also to provide medical help, counselling and cultural support to people risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
Surviving, fighting, defending, seeking, learning, fearing — these are the basic set of actions, the infinitives of a new language of an emigrant, that each of us learns when stepping beyond the boundaries of our home, starting from leaving the mother's womb to moving with suitcases to another country. Life becomes a quest: for new jobs, social connections, and, essentially, raison d’être.
Tieke Scheerlink, Precious People, object, silver, 301 recycled brilliant cut stones, 2021
In fears and doubts, how do we save ourselves?
The refuge is the self-model of home, our consciousness, our accumulated experience, reason, returning us to ourselves, to the soul, which, fortunately, is an immutable home for us [4].
Migration is not just leaving home, but in both literal and metaphorical senses, it is crossing a certain line, whether it's a formal border of a state or a line beyond which we already feel ourselves outside of the standard safe and comfortable state.
The refuge is the self-model of home, our consciousness, our accumulated experience, reason, returning us to ourselves, to the soul, which, fortunately, is an immutable home for us [4].
Migration is not just leaving home, but in both literal and metaphorical senses, it is crossing a certain line, whether it's a formal border of a state or a line beyond which we already feel ourselves outside of the standard safe and comfortable state.
Archetypos CASA. Ana Pina, 2024, pin/earrings. Sterling silver, plastic (architectural model miniatures, scale 1:100), 60x60x15mm
However, by crossing the line, limits, boundaries, are we not gaining, in addition to discomfort, the desired freedom as well?
“
Having one foot in one country, and the other in another, I find my situation to be a happy one in that it is free.
The joy of being "rootless" while still maintaining a connection to one's roots largely depends on a person's openness [5]. The most open-minded individuals choose migration not only as a way of life but also as a language of expression. The journey, overcoming distances, kilometers of roads, are poetic and conceptual for artists, creators who consciously choose such a lifestyle and existence, constructing a creative approach around movement in space, creating a whole approach around the phenomenon of mobility, such as walking art, for example, Monique Besten. This migration can be considered existential [6].
Monique Besten, suit & walking cart, from the website
For some, and perhaps still for the majority, long-distance migration is a forced means of survival, in my opinion, largely driven by political reasons. Can migration other than existential be voluntary? Statistics, research tell us sometimes controversial conclusions. For example, labor migration is officially considered voluntary (International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, 1990). Although it's extremely difficult to agree with this.
Bustling, lively, and filled with people, parks and open spaces are not just places for leisurely outings by well-to-do families. If you look closer, they also serve as safe havens for many foreigners and immigrants. Here, they find comfort. There’s no rent to pay, no restrictions, and everyone is equal. Essentially, these are "third places" [7] as defined by Ray Oldenburg, existing between the first place (home) and the second place (work). For those without a home, these third places become crucial. In fact, these third places often become more of a home or workplace than a actual ones.
Bustling, lively, and filled with people, parks and open spaces are not just places for leisurely outings by well-to-do families. If you look closer, they also serve as safe havens for many foreigners and immigrants. Here, they find comfort. There’s no rent to pay, no restrictions, and everyone is equal. Essentially, these are "third places" [7] as defined by Ray Oldenburg, existing between the first place (home) and the second place (work). For those without a home, these third places become crucial. In fact, these third places often become more of a home or workplace than a actual ones.
“
The place for them all, a meeting place for lovers, a club for people of common tastes or interests, an office for the occasional businessman, a resting place for the dreamer, and a home for many a lonely soul.
(E)migration can end tragically. Like the brilliant 20th-century Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, who fled Germany at the very beginning of the Nazi Party's rise to power. He changed addresses 28 times in his life. His journey and search for home ended for him in the Pyrenees, where he could not cross the Spanish border (he wanted to go then to Lisbon and fly to US) because the border guards did not want to let him through with refugee documents, and in desperation and unwillingness to return and endure torture, Benjamin decided to end his life by suicide.
The next day after the incident, the border was opened.
The next day after the incident, the border was opened.
“
It became clear to me that I would have to bid a long, perhaps lasting, farewell to the city of my birth. In this situation … I deliberately called to mind those images which, in exile, are most apt to awaken homesickness: images of childhood. My assumption was that the feeling of longing would no more gain mastery over my spirit than a vaccine does over a healthy body.
Kumonoie Brooch, “Kumonoie” literally means a 'house in the clouds'. This transpired from the idea of creating a heavenly home, a sanctuary for ourselves and loved ones. It is indeed an urn, a vessel where one can put ones ashes, memories and emotions. "In 1991, I bid farewell to my beloved mother while I was still a student of fine arts. For two and a half years, her urn remained close, accompanying me on
occasional journeys. In 1994, upon completing university, I laid my mother
to rest in a church cemetery, yet the profound sense of loss lingered. It
was during this time that I began crafting 'Kumonoie'; envisioning homes
in heaven where loved ones reside, brimming with memories and
emotions."
occasional journeys. In 1994, upon completing university, I laid my mother
to rest in a church cemetery, yet the profound sense of loss lingered. It
was during this time that I began crafting 'Kumonoie'; envisioning homes
in heaven where loved ones reside, brimming with memories and
emotions."
Can we ever completely forget about the place where we were born, spent our childhood, or even more? The concept of the transmigrant [5] suggests that people leave with them connections, contacts with their native country, refusing to live only in the paradigm of a new place of residence, a new system. For decades, such a transmigrant lives amidst a multitude of homes, cultures, traditions, existing in an intermediate state.
Perhaps we are now entering an era where the word "migrant" is becoming obsolete, an era of the end of belonging and global homelessness [9], where home remains only a forgotten symbol of the past.
House (1993), Rachel Whiteread © Rachel Whiteread. Artist casted the interior of an entire house condemned to demolition in London’s East End because of the gentrification. After few months work was demolished because of the controversy among society.
We, (e)migrants, can be called by different names: nomads, expats, refugees, travelers, foreigners. Or perhaps we are all pilgrims, with our strange faith, embarking on a long and vital journey to a holy place we have not yet found.
Bibliography:
[1] Official Biennale page
[2] Adolf Grünbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time, 1973
[3] Watkins C. Studies in Indo-European Legal Language, Institutions and Mythology. Proc. 3-rd Indo-European conf. Indo-European and Indo-Europeans. Philadelphia, 1970. P.321-354.
[4] Gastond Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1964. Bachelard justifies his choice this way: "Our soul is our dwelling. Remembering different homes, different "rooms," we learn to live inside ourselves."
[5] Levitt, Peggy, and Nina Glick Schiller. "Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society." International Migration Review 38.145 (2004): 1002-1039.
[6] Madison, Greg (2006) Existential Migration. Existential Analysis.
[7] Oldenburg, Ray (2000). Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the «Great Good Places» at the Heart of Our Communities. New York: Marlowe & Company
[8] Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, 4: 1938–1940
[9] The End of Belonging: Untold stories of leaving home and the psychology of global relocation, by Greg A Madison PhD, 2009
Bibliography:
[1] Official Biennale page
[2] Adolf Grünbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time, 1973
[3] Watkins C. Studies in Indo-European Legal Language, Institutions and Mythology. Proc. 3-rd Indo-European conf. Indo-European and Indo-Europeans. Philadelphia, 1970. P.321-354.
[4] Gastond Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1964. Bachelard justifies his choice this way: "Our soul is our dwelling. Remembering different homes, different "rooms," we learn to live inside ourselves."
[5] Levitt, Peggy, and Nina Glick Schiller. "Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society." International Migration Review 38.145 (2004): 1002-1039.
[6] Madison, Greg (2006) Existential Migration. Existential Analysis.
[7] Oldenburg, Ray (2000). Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the «Great Good Places» at the Heart of Our Communities. New York: Marlowe & Company
[8] Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, 4: 1938–1940
[9] The End of Belonging: Untold stories of leaving home and the psychology of global relocation, by Greg A Madison PhD, 2009
