[-empyre-] Welcome to February 2016: Across borders and networks: migrants, asylum seekers, or refugee?

[Ana Valdés]

I start my participation in this month discussing with myself and my own
draft. I wanted to correct the concept "Islamic terrorism" and take the
word Islamic. Yes that's true terrorism and wars are the mothers of
refugees and displaced. But they are not Islamic. The Nazi party and
government were composed by solid Christian Germans exterminating Jews
Gypsies homosexuels and dissidents because they were different.
And the authoritarian regimes don't tolerate the Others the différents.
Israel made millions of Palestines refugees occupying their land arguing it
was their land thousands of years ago given to them by God. A fairy tale in
our postmodern times.
Marocco made the Saharaui refugees imprisoned in their own land separates
by the largest wall in the world the wall of Shame.
And my grandparents became economical refugees when poverty in Europe
shattered families and countries.
I was a political refugee in Sweden 32 years almost my whole adult life.
But the Swedes almost halved their population in the at the 19th century
and more than a million Swedes emigrated to the US.
The refugees we see today in the no man lands between borders are expelled
from their homelands by wars paid and organized by multinational companies
Haliburton Blackwater Dupont Shell Texaco they are the puppeteers.
Ana Valdes
Den 7 feb 2016 02:40 skrev "Renate Terese Ferro" <rferro at cornell.edu>:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> Welcome to February, 2016 on –empyre soft-skinned space:
>
> Across borders and networks: migrants, asylum seekers, or refugee?
>
> Moderated by Ana Valdes, Ricardo Dominguez, and Renate Ferro with invited
> discussants
>
> Week 1:  Irina Contreras, Babak Fakhamzadeh, Huub Dijstelbloem
> Week 2: Grupo
> Week 3: Tanja Ostojić, Alan Paul, Robert McKee Irwin, Paula Delgado
> Week 4: Laila Shereen Sakr, Dr Maurice Stierl
>
>
> Welcome to the February discussion, “Across borders and networks:
> migrants, asylum seekers, or refugee?”
>
>
> Historically ravaged Barbarians went into Rome and sought shelter because
> their villages had been burned and their crops wasted. The Romans
> recognized them as valuable allies.  Given land and tools they became the
> limitanae Rome shield against other barbarian tribes.
>
> Today we see new migrations and people in distress leave their countries
> to seek a future for their children. Flows of men, women and children
> stream into Europe from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. While
> Islamic terrorism looms internationally tensions between national
> securities or protecting the rights of those displaced exists. Other
> international borders such as Mexico and Cuba in North America and
> Palestine and Israel are affected by this phenomenon. Particularly at stake
> is how networked lives define their existence between their home country
> and the paths they take to achieving safety and prosperity for their
> families. Media reports muddy the clarity between the definition of migrant
> to asylum seeker to refugee.  National and International law complicate
> create further layers of innuendo.
>
>
> This month of February, 2016 we invite the –empyre subscriber list to
> discuss these issues in our soft-skinned space with our distinguished group
> of weekly guests.  Looking forward
> to it.
>
>
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> Guest Biographies:
>
> Irina Contreras is an interdisciplinary artist and writer, whose
> individual and collaborative projects examine personal reflections of
> collective experiences. Her writing has appeared in the anthology Beyond
> Walls and Cages, which received the Association of Borderlands President
> Gold Award for 2014. Past texts include the Lambda award winning anthology,
> Nobody Passes as well as being a regular contributor to make/shift
> Magazine. She has held residency in Mexico City and Kala in Berkeley, CA.
> Past performances include Rethinking Power and Resistance in University of
> Texas in Austin, Chicana Feminisms at Cal State Long Beach and the 2013
> Ghetto Biennial in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Irina completed a Dual
> Degree MA in Visual and Critical Studies and MFA in Social Practice at CCA
> in 2015. Current projects explore the (im)possibilities of white race
> traitors as a multi voiced and web based project entitled "It's Firm Ground
> Here..." for the Organize Your Own Exhibition in Philadelphia and ongoing
> web explorations involving public safety, women of color futures andTwitter.
>
>
> Paula Delgado I was born and lived most of my life in Montevideo, Uruguay,
> now a 'mature student' doing an MA inLondon since last September. I am a
> bit of a weirdo: a visual artist and a
> feminist, with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Diploma in Gender
> and public policies. I got a Chevening scholarship to do an MA Culture
> Industry in Goldsmiths University.
> As an artist I work mainly with photography, video and performance, I am
> interested in the construction of identities-national, personal and gender
> based. I developed a long term video and photo project about masculinities
> (Cómo sos tan lindo 2005-2010 <tel:2005-2010>), and I am now working with
> born blind people. Within the academy I teach 'creative
> economics' and 'gender and cultural projects' in CLAEH University, in
> Uruguay. As part of my MA, I will start working with Angela McRobbie as a
> research assistant, which at the moment is the most exciting aspect of
> being in London, besides the music concerts.
>
>
> Huub Dijstelbloem is Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at the University
> of Amsterdam and Researcher and Project Leader at the Scientific Council
> for Government Policy in The Hague (WRR). He was Editor of the
> International Journal Krisis and is member of several Advisory Boards of
> Academic Schools (including WTMC and IIS). He was Program Coordinator
> Technology Assessment at the Rathenau Institute and evaluated Science and
> Technology projects at Sci-Quest. He studied Philosophy (MA) and Science,
> Technology and Culture
> (MSc) at the University of Amsterdam and in Paris at the Ecole des Mines,
> supervised by Professor Bruno Latour. He wrote his PhD on the democratic
> deficits in the political and the scientific decision-making processes at
> the beginnings of the AIDS-epidemic, environmental problems and BSE. Next
> to academic and professional publications, Huub is involved as a speaker
> and opinion maker in public debates about science, technology and society.
> Some of his recent publications in English are Migration and the New
> Technological Borders of Europe (Palgrave, 2011) and Rethinking the Human
> Condition. Exploring Human Enhancement (Rathenau, 2008). In Dutch his most
> recent books and co-edited volumes are Bestemming gewijzigd. Moderniteit en
> stedelijke transformaties (2013), Onzekerheid troef. Het betwiste gezag van
> de wetenschap (2011), De Migratiemachine (2009) and Politiek vernieuwen. Op
> zoek naar publiek
> in de technologische samenleving (2008) and Het gezicht van de publieke
> zaak. Openbaar bestuur onder ogen (2010) published by Amsterdam University
> Press.
>
>
> Babak Fakhamzadeh builds  web and mobile applications, mostly for clients
> in the ‘global south', and mostly for media and NGOs. Personal (non
> commissioned work) mostly involves
> projects around city discovery.  He will soon be releasing 'Kompl'
> http://komplapp.com <http://komplapp.com/>. Other  similar applications
> include Dérive app, http://deriveapp.com <http://deriveapp.com/> and
> Soweto Uprisings, http://sowetouprisings.com <http://sowetouprisings.com/>.
> http://babakfakhamzadeh.com/cv/
>
>
> Grupo< > creates spaces where different voices, bound together under a
> broad geopolitical classification, meet to explore questions of identity
> through art. Our collective efforts include talks, exhibitions,
> publications, performances and gatherings.
>
> The questions we ask are informed by our liminal condition and the
> consciousness of cultural and geographic migration. What brings us together
> is the need to open a context that while defined < > is undefinable and
> irreducible. Grupo < > generates dialogue and community, grounded by but
> not limited to the concerns and needs of artists whose practices are
> interwoven
> with the history of Latin America and the Caribbean.
>
>
> Robert McKee Irwin is Chair of the Graduate Group in Cultural Studies and
> Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of
> California, Davis. He is also co-Principal Investigator, with Sunaina
> Maira, of the UC Davis's Mellon Initiative in Comparative Border Studies:
> Rights, Containment, Protest (http://borderstudies.ucdavis.edu/). His
> current work focuses on migration as a long process characterized by
> confrontations with many diverse borders, some of which can be crossed and
> others of which cannot; it focuses on the particular context of migration
> from Mexico to the United States, and cases of migrants who do not, as
> George Sánchez articulates it,  "become Mexican American"; more
> specifically, he is currently working on an article that draws from this
> project titled "Undocumented Literature."
>
> Tanja Ostojić is a feminist <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist>
> performance artist <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art>.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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Courbet>’s 1866 painting
> L'Origine du monde <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Origine_du_monde>,
> was first displayed on billboards at the public exhibition EuroPart held
> inVienna <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna> in December 2005-January
> 2006.Ostojić's version displayed her own crotch, clothed in blue underwear
> complete with EU stars <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_European_Union>. 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 <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-eastern_Europe> into the union. For
> south-east Europeans, and particularly women, becoming resident in the EU
> is often only possible through marriage, which Ostojić depicts as a form of
> prostitution <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 marriage to an artist from Cologne <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne>, from whom she then separated in
> 2005, again as an online performance.
> http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/crossing-borders-development-of-diverse-artistic-strategies/
>
>
> Ian Alan Paul is a transdisciplinary artist, curator and theorist living
> between Oakland, Barcelona, and Cairo. His projects and writing have
> approached a large variety of topics including the Guantanamo Bay Prison,
> Fortress Europe, the Zapatista communities, Drone Warfare, and most
> recently with the military regime in post-coup Egypt. Using diverse media
> to produce documentary, critical fiction, hacktivism, performance, and
> simulation, Ian’s work aims to both complicate and defamiliarize our shared
> sense of politics, ethics, and
> aesthetics. Ian has lectured, taught, and exhibited internationally, and
> has had his work featured in The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, Art
> Threat, Mada Masr, Jadaliyya, Art Info, and C Magazine. He received his MFA
> and MA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2011 and is currently
> finishing his PhD in UC Santa Cruz.
>
>
>
> 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 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 shown in solo and group
> exhibitions and performances at galleries and museums across the Americas,
> Europe, and the Middle East, and has published extensively.
> http://vjumamel.com <http://vjumamel.com/>
>
> 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.
>
> Moderator Biographies:
> Ricardo Dominguez is a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater
> (EDT), a group who developed virtual sit-in technologies in solidarity with
> the Zapatistas communities in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1998. His recent
> Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab project (
> http://bang.transreal.org/) with Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cardenas, Amy Sara
> Carroll, and Elle
> Mehrmand, the Transborder Immigrant Tool (a GPS cell phone safety net tool
> for crossing the Mexico/US border) was the winner of “Transnational
> Communities Award” (2008), an award funded by Cultural Contact, Endowment
> for Culture Mexico–US and handed out by the US Embassy in Mexico. It also
> was funded by CALIT2 and the UCSD Center for the Humanities. The
> Transborder Immigrant Tool has been exhibited at the 2010 California
> Biennial (OCMA), Toronto Free Gallery, Canada (2011), The Van Abbemuseum,
> Netherlands (2013), ZKM, Germany
> (2013), as well as a number of other national and international venues.
> The project was also under investigation by the US Congress in 2009-2010
> and was reviewed by Glenn Beck in 2010 as a gesture that potentially
> “dissolved” the U.S. border with its poetry. Dominguez is an associate
> professor at the University of California, San Diego, in the Visual Arts
> Department, a Hellman Fellow, Director of the MFA program, and
> Principal/Principle Investigator atCALIT2, Chair of Gallery at CALIT2 (
> http://gallery.calit2.net <http://gallery.calit2.net/>) and the Immersive
> Lab at SME, UCSD. He also is co-founder of *particle group*, with artists
> Diane Ludin, Nina Waisman, Amy Sara Carroll, whose art project about
> nano-toxicology entitled *Particles of
> Interest: Tales of the Matter Market* has been presented at the House of
> World Cultures, Berlin (2007), the San Diego Museum of Art (2008), Oi
> Futuro, Brazil
> (2008), CAL NanoSystems Institute, UCLA (2009), Medialab-Prado, Madrid
> (2009), E-Poetry Festival, Barcelona, Spain (2009), Nanosférica, NYU
> (2010), and SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico (2012):
> http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/particle-group-intro.
>
> Ana Valdes was born in Uruguay, South America, in a family of Spanish and
> Italian emigrants, raised by German nuns. She studied Geography with German
> maps from 1942 and she
> believed firmly that Belgium, Netherlands, France, Norway and Denmark were
> a part of the Germany. In the maps the nuns used Germany was almost the
> whole Europe. She was put in prison when she was 19 years old for her
> political views. Ana belonged to a guerilla group called Tupamaros, at that
> time she believed in the weapons as a way to change things. She has changed
> her views, radically, and has been a member of the pacifist group Women in
> Black for years.
>
> After 4 years in prison she was deported to Sweden where she came of age.
> In 1982 she published her first book with short stories, awarded by
> Sorbonne University. She has written and published more than ten books and
> some of her short stories have been translated into English, French, Greek
> and Italian, Faber and Faber and Serpent's Tail has published several
> collections with her work, “The Garden of the Alphabet” and “Columbus's
> Egg.”She is a bilingual writer and writes both in Swedish and in Spanish.
> Ana has also been an independent curator and worked with Swedish visual
> artist Cecilia Parsberg in Palestine, they created the network “Equator”
> http://www.ceciliaparsberg.se/equator
> She has participated in several debates about violence and representation
> with Jordan Crandall, “Under fire” (
> http://www.wdw.nl/wdw_publications/jordan-crandall-under-fire-2/)
>
> Renate Ferro is a trans-media, cross-disciplinary artist who toggles
> between the creative skins of old and new technologies. Her hybrid artistic
> projects embrace both socialmand theoretical paradigms of the body. Most
> recently her work has been featured at The Freud Museum (London), Brief
> Histories (the United Arab Emerites), The Dorksy Gallery (NY), The
> Hemispheric Institute and FOMMA (Mexico), and The Janus Pannonius Museum
> (Hungary), Free University of Berlin (Berlin), Chicago City Arts (Chicago),
> Tsing Hua University(Beijing China), Hang Zhou Museum of Fine Arts (China),
> LACDA (Los Angeles), AWOL Gallery (Toronto), and numerous galleries and
> museums across North America.
> Ferro has taught at Cornell University since 2004 in the Collage of
> Architecture, Art and Planning in the Department of Art. She is the
> founding director of the collaborative research lab, The
> Tinker Factory Lab and is managing moderator of –empyre soft-skinned space.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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