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

Wed Feb 17 10:11:22 AEDT 2016

I wrote about it in my Facebook poetry page about a week ago in reaction to
an article about it in Hyperallergic. Here is the link:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/255509864471609/

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Babak Fakhamzadeh <
babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> An excellent question! (Also, it was a boy, not a girl, but that's not
> too important.)
>
> Here's an article with the image:
>
>
> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-artist-ai-weiwei-syrian-boy-aylan-kurdi-drowned-turkish-beach/
>
> To me, it seems Weiwei is looking for attention by trying to appear
> relevant. And, because those who have a high profile are profiled
> highly, because it was Weiwei who released this image, we know about
> this.
>
> As someone (on Facebook? Twitter?) asked (paraphrasing): "Am I
> supposed to be offended by this, or is this supposed to be high art?"
> --
> Babak Fakhamzadeh | babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com |
> http://BabakFakhamzadeh.com
>
> Ask me for my PGP public key to send me encrypted email.
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 7:23 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> > What do you guys think of Ai Weiwei's photo reenacting in his own body
> the death of the three-year old Syrian girl washed on the Anatolian shore?
> >
> > Ciao,
> > Murat
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 12:27 PM, Ian Paul <ianalanpaul at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> >> While it's perhaps not so productive for us to say that borders and
> migrations are simply symptomatic of larger systems/histories, it's also
> insufficient to treat borders and migrations as discrete or autonomous
> objects of study. What is a border, after all, if not a particular way of
> articulating a relationship between territories, between bodies, between
> economies, etc.? This relationality, and all of the complexity it entails,
> should be what we're after.
> >>
> >> Ricardo cited "Escape Routes" in an earlier thread, and I think that
> text in particular could be useful for us in the sense that the authors
> approach borders and migrations in this multitudinous fashion: as material
> realities in the present that are also structured by epistemological,
> geological, political, ethical, and economic bordering(s) that seamlessly
> function alongside/within/through the border practices of nation states.
> >>
> >> 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.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>       ~i
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 1:27 AM, Babak Fakhamzadeh <
> babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> >>> Hi Johannes,
> >>>
> >>> I like your musings, but you're putting up quite a list of potential
> >>> discussion points. :)
> >>>
> >>> Should we discuss the wars? Perhaps. But, what, then is in need of
> >>> discussion? That is, to what extent is the current Syrian/Iraqi
> >>> conflict open to interpretation? I doubt few of us on this list are
> >>> fooled by western/American propaganda in relation to the sources of
> >>> the conflict and most of us probably have a decent understanding of
> >>> the actual players in the conflict. But, also, we're focussing on
> >>> migration and refugees, not on the war, no?
> >>> --
> >>> Babak Fakhamzadeh | babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com |
> http://BabakFakhamzadeh.com
> >>>
> >>> Ask me for my PGP public key to send me encrypted email.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 2:41 AM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> >>> > Johannes I was deliberately in the use of the words callosity
> because my question is: do we really change a thing in the lives of the
> refugees or the migrants discussing the concept but not the roots? As Ian
> wrote we should maybe discuss the war itself or the inequalities. A
> discussion hands on is maybe the thing related in the first weeks travel to
> Calais and teach refugees English or computer skills or make theatre or
> dance with them write down their stories record their flight.
> >>> > Ana
> >>> >
> >>> > Skickat från min iPhone
> >>> >
> >>> >> 15 feb 2016 kl. 20:56 skrev Johannes Birringer <
> Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk>:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> >>> >> Dear all,
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Header:  it actually would make sense to track back to opening
> statement for this month. For me, it raised many questions, for example
> what the 'networked existence' of a refugee or migrant or asylum seeker is
> meant to denote, in the question/ proposition? And Babak, Huub, Ricardo -
> do you not eloquently evoke a crisis of the from, not the to, the issue of
> why people are fleeing?   Have we discussed the wars?
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Well, Ana, what would hands on discussion be for you?
> >>> >>
> >>> >> I really appreciated all posts, and I found Christina's painting
> very powerful, maybe because I saw it on the  same day that someone,
> accidentally (and yes I despise superbowls and police Kettling/enclosures,
> and huge movies that strive  to awe us, like The Revenant), sent me a
> mapping of the US in the 18th and 19th centuries of annexation and theft of
> millions of acres of native American lands, the map was created by Claudio
> Saunt, more about that mapping tomorrow. (and i hate the mumbling of native
> american languages in The Revenant).
> >>> >> Today, I marvel at what Ana means by the callosity of poetry, is it
> callous or cynical to draw, to make dance, to write, to sing? and what
> exactly is political activism in the era of post democracy? What are border
> tools and apps that won't be available to the  migrant from Bolivia or
> Honduras making her way up to Mexico and then Texas? How long do your
> phones and laptop batteries last for the poetry to kick in? Would she are
> what you call her and definebher as, would we a voice here from the ones
> talked about?  And then, writers and researchers, at the limits of language
> (as Christina and Irina pointed out), artists, scholars and activists -
> what do we chat about here, then?
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Regards
> >>> >> Johannes Birringer
> >>> >>
> >>> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >>
> >>
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> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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