<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">Dear all,</span><span style="color:black;font-family:'Courier New';font-size:10pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">It has been a pleasure following the
discussions here, though I must admit that I probably have missed several
contributions. So, nearly at the end of this month, I want to add a few
thoughts to points that were made earlier and please forgive me if I re-state
issues that were already debated. What follows relates to different threads, in
particular to the Transborder Immigrant Tool introduced by Ricardo and some of
the really intriguing points that Huub provided. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">First of all, as a way of introduction,
I am currently at UC Davis and part of a Mellon initiative on Comparative
Border Studies. I just moved over from Europe where I had spent most of my life
and where my research focus remains to be. I consider myself both a researcher
and activist and see these as entangled, difficult and to an extent unnecessary
to disentangle. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">I am part of an activist project called
the “Watch The Med Alarm Phone” – which functions as a “hotline” to support
travellers in distress at sea. We launched the project in October 2014 to
protest border deaths at sea and to create practical tools that would support ‘disobedient’
and ‘unauthorized’ movement. This project emerged out of many many years of
no-border struggles in and beyond Europe and our collective really
transcends/collapses the signifiers ‘migrant’ and ‘activist’, with some of us
having survived dangerous sea journeys, others being ‘citizens from the Global
North’ and again others who would situated themselves in ‘migrant communities’
that support those on the move. You can find two websites here that we have
built: one onto which we upload our Alarm Phone reports and that also contains
a map that seeks to display the violence of the European border regime which,
especially in the sea, usually remains invisible (<a href="http://watchthemed.net/">http://watchthemed.net/</a>) and a second one
specifically dedicated to the Alarm Phone project, our public campaigns,
statements and so on (<a href="http://alarmphone.org/en/">http://alarmphone.org/en/</a>).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">So far, we have engaged in about 1400
emergency situations in all parts of the Mediterranean (between Morocco-Spain,
Libya-Italy/Malta, Turkey-Greece). In a complex way we cooperate with
coastguards in distress cases but see ourselves also as ‘controllers of border
controllers’ as Balibar had called for. We have a very ambivalent relationship
with them and, as you can imagine, they are often not very happy about the fact
that non-state actors have so many insights into real-time border struggles but
at the same time they are quite often dependent on the information we have. We
also cooperate with some humanitarian actors at sea (e.g. Doctors without
Borders, MOAS, Sea-Watch) so that we even have a sort of ‘physical’ presence in
maritime spaces. There is so much I could tell you about our experiences in the
past year but in order to keep this email somewhat readable, I will just point
you to our Anniversary Brochure which we published a few weeks ago: <a href="http://alarmphone.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2016/01/AP-1year-Doku-Screen-04-DS.pdf">http://alarmphone.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2016/01/AP-1year-Doku-Screen-04-DS.pdf</a>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">In one of your contributions, Huub, you
talked about how the ‘hotspotting’ approach “is a denial of history and a
denial of transactions and exchanges</span> <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">that have been going on culturally, socially,
economically and religiously</span> <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">between different regions for centuries.” I think this is a really
valuable point and one of the reasons why our collective always refers to
alternative imaginaries of the Mediterranean, as a (potential) space of
exchange, movement, and solidarity, not as some sort of ‘naturally defined’
border/divide. I completely agree with your point that “by defining an area as
a high voltage border and putting it under permanent control [it] demolishes
the visual manifestations of solidarity and voluntary support.” At the same
time, our network in some ways shows that the European border regime is also
quite helpless at times, despite increasing border externalisations and
militarisations. The historic year of 2015 has really shown how people
disobediently move despite all these border-obstacles and what I find
personally incredible are these ‘under the surface’ networks and solidarities. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">I consider the Alarm Phone part of it.
Ricardo mentioned the book ‘Escape Routes’. I think the ‘Autonomy of Migration’
approach more generally (while sometimes rightly criticised – I am currently
editing a special issue on this which will appear in Citizenship Studies in
August) is a good way to think about these ‘mobile commons’, the (digital) networks/knowledges
that exist beyond the sovereign gaze. Many in our network regard ourselves as
part of a sort-of ‘underground railroad’ that facilitates unauthorised
mobilities and acts of escape. We currently work with migrant communities,
solidarity activists, future border-crossers, past travellers throughout the
globe and I would just point you to a WhatsApp exchange between one of our
members and a Syrian woman that we reprinted in our Anniversary Brochure (as of
page 71). They encountered one another in a moment of panic and severe distress
and after survival/arrival the exchanges continued. I think, while hopefully
not being overly romanticising, this in many way showcases migration’s ‘excessive’
capacity and creativity, as well as the novel solidarities that are being
formed despite all the border reinforcements, militarisations, and atrocities
that we see all around us. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Courier New';color:black">Best wishes, Maurice</span></p></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Renate Terese Ferro <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rferro@cornell.edu" target="_blank">rferro@cornell.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
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Dear -empyreans,<br>
Thanks to this past weeks guests Pau Delgado, Alba Moses, Robert McKee Irwin, and Ian Alan Paul. The week was an evocative one with many -empyre subscribers also posting. Hoping you will all stay part of the discussion if your schedules permit. This month seems to be flying by and I am looking forward to this last week in particular to wrap up loose ends but also introduce some new ones. For those of you who might want a synopsis of the entire month’s discussion you can visit our archive <a href="http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/</a><br>
<br>
We warmly welcome and introduce: Laila Shereen Sakr, Dr Maurice Stierl, Tanja Ostojić, Horit Herman Peled for Weel 4 on -empyre soft-skinned space. Their biographies are below.<br>
Best to all of you. Renate Ferro<br>
<br>
Horit Herman-Peled is Professor of Media Art and Culture at Pollack Art College and Talpiyot college in Tel Aviv and at the Art Institute of Oranim College in Kiryat Tivon, Israel.<br>
Current work includes<br>
Yoav Peled, Horit Herman Peled, ” The Religionization of Israeli Society, London: Routledge, (2017).<br>
Horit Herman Peled, Yoav Peled, “The Way Forward in the Middle East,” in John Eherenberg and Yoav Peled, eds., Israel/Palestine: Alternative Perspectives on Statehood, Rowman and Littlefield, (2016).<br>
Other work can be accessed at her website at<br>
<a href="http://www.horit.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.horit.com</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Tanja Ostojić is a feminist performance artist. Her work draws inspiration from her own experience as a non-European Union citizen, a traveler and female artist. Ostojić has lived in Serbia, Slovenia, France, and Germany, but refuses to claim any particular nationality. In December 2005, Ostojić became well known in Europe as a result of her poster After Courbet, L´origine du Monde, also referred to informally as "EU Panties" The work, a satire of French Realist Gustave Courbet's 1866 painting L'Origine du monde, was first displayed<br>
on billboards at the public exhibition EuroPart held inVienna in December 2005-January 2006.Ostojić's version displayed her own crotch, clothed in blue underwear complete with EU<br>
stars. The image was meant as an ironic suggestion that foreign women are only welcome in Europe when they drop their underwear. Ostojić's grand theme is the "arrogance of the EU" with regards to the integration of south-eastern Europe into the union. For south-east Europeans, and particularly women, becoming resident in the EU is<br>
often only possible through marriage, which Ostojić depicts as a form of prostitution. From 2000 to 2003, she publicly addressed this issue in an online performance piece, Looking for a husband with a EU passport, in which she presented herself naked and with a shaven head, possibly reminiscent of a prisoner from socialist times.This led to an actual<br>
marriage to an artist from Cologne, from whom she then separated in 2005, again as an online performance. <a href="http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/crossing-borders-development-of-diverse-artistic-strategies/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/crossing-borders-development-of-diverse-artistic-strategies/</a><br>
<br>
Laila Shereen Sakr is a digital media theorist, artist, and activist working in social media, digital archives, computer analytics, data visualization, glitch art, live cinema, video installation, and<br>
Middle East film and new media. She is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Her work uses digital logic and technique to map how participation in virtual worlds and networked publics has influenced the formation of a virtual body politic. This research led her to design the R-Shief media system for archiving and analyzing content from social networking sites, and the cyborg representation of VJ Um Amel. Professor Sakr has been a leading voice in the open source movement in Egypt and the Arab world. Sakr has<br>
shown in solo and group exhibitions and performances at galleries and museums across the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, and has published extensively. <a href="http://vjumamel.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://vjumamel.com</a><br>
<br>
Dr Maurice Stierl is Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on migration and border struggles in contemporary Europe and is broadly situated in the disciplines of International Relations, International Political Sociology, and Migration & Border Studies. He concluded his doctoral research in 2014 at the University of Warwick and is the author of the journal article ‘‘No One is Illegal!’ – Resistance and the Politics of Discomfort’ (2012), published in Globalizations. His forthcoming publications will appear in the journals Citizenship Studies, Political Geography, Global Society, and Antipode, as well as in a volume edited by Dr Nicholas De Genova. Dr Stierl is a member of the activist project WatchTheMed Alarm Phone and the research collectives Kritnet, MobLab, Authority & Political Technologies and a co-editor of Movements.<br>
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empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">Dr Maurice Stierl</font></div><div><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">Visiting Assistant Professor</font></div><div><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">University of California, Davis</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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