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

[Christina McPhee]

Re: wanting to be thinking on these topologies, freedom *and* survival, repression *and* production,

I did, again last summer, during the first wave of the Syrian refugees, and came upon a figure like this: 

“Asylum”   http://www.christinamcphee.net/asylum/

2015  oil, graphite, paper collage and ink on muslin 165.7 x 99 x 6.3 cm 

She is leaving, freedom from, freedom to, and her dress is caught in the maelstrom.  Or/and this is not a silhouette,  is this a navigation?

-cm


Ian wrote,

> On Feb 16, 2016, at 9:27 AM, Ian Paul <ianalanpaul at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I think the challenge in many ways for us is in understanding borders and migrations (and their networks) in their historical specificity, while also understanding how those specificities are (re)produced in much more expansive processes that both exceed and precede them. And so, how can we think of borders and migrations as being both cause and effect? Both agent and object? Things that both separate and tie together? We should be able to think of borders as being both productive and repressive, enabling certain forms of life while seeking to eradicate others. We should be able to think of migrations as being an expression of freedom and perhaps even poetry, while also being able to think of them as also at times being driven by necessity and survival. I want to be thinking on these topologies: freedom *and* survival, repression *and* production.