| | | 10 aprile – 5 giugno 2015 / april 10 – june 5 2015 L’ultimo progetto di Giuseppe Stampone ‘Emigration Made Pavilion 148’ prende vita dalla richiesta di ospitalità e dall’intricata questione dello “sconosciuto” o dello “straniero”. Le opere in mostra spaziano dai disegni alle sculture ed esplorano il concetto di un confine sociopolitico e delle molteplici forme di controllo che questo presuppone. La tempestiva pianificazione di questo solo show fa si che esso coincida con Expo Milano 2015, l’esposizione mondiale interamente dettata dallo stato-nazione e dai suoi partner aziendali. Concepito come un 148° padiglione dell’esposizione, il progetto concettuale di Stampone affronta la questione della migrazione in modo cinico eppure giocoso e poetico, relazionandola a vari mezzi di trasporto (treni, navi, camion) che diventano veicoli radiocomandati all’intero dello spazio espositivo. Oltre a ciò, vengono messi in mostra diversi disegni a penna bic, facendosi beffa dell’idea delle etichette di merchandising protezionistiche. Testo curato da Pieter Viermeulen On Emigration Made Pavilion by Giuseppe Stampone The essence of language is friendship and hospitality. Emmanuel Levinas Giuseppe Stampone’s latest project ‘Emigration Made Pavilion’ starts off from the demand of hospitality and the intricate question of the ‘foreigner’. Migration is a highly contested and sensitive issue within the current sociopolitical, economic and geographical borders of the European Union. War, terrorism, poverty, unemployment and other social and political turmoil cause people to promptly abandon their homes and try their luck elsewhere, how obscure and uncertain their destiny may seem. On the continent, it lures many politicians into a kind of military, disciplinary rhetoric, as if the wave of migration could simply be dealt with by solidifying the walls of the European fortress or by stiffening its regulations. The widespread rise of xenophobia, islamophobia, populism, racism and other conservative convulsions bear witness of this alarming evolution. Just like terrorism is often compared to a virus that needs to be eradicated, the issue of migration is being framed as a threatening invasion of ‘our’ homeland, that needs to be stopped before it’s far too late. Combined with an austerity climate and a tenacious safety-first politics of fear, the state of emergency seems to have become the rule. Our social and political landscapeis increasingly becoming “campanized” (Gielen), in the sense of an ever-growing presence of space in which, as Agamben observed, “the normal order is de facto suspended” (Agamben 1997). We’ve seen many of these camp-like structures appear in our contemporary, media-saturated amphitheatre of cruelty. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Islamic State, or the refugee camps on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, located between the North-African and European coast, where large numbers of refugee vessels keep on capsizing every year. All these human catastrophes are taking place in a state of exception, outside of the societal order, where the control and power over physical bodies becomes maximised. Intermezzo: Coca-Cola
On May 7, 2014, Coca-Cola released a new promo video on YouTube titled Coca-Cola Hello Happiness. It shows the everyday life of grossly underpaid South-Asian labourers working in Dubai “for a better future” (exactly whose future remains unclear) and to support their families back home. And “with an average income of $ 6 per day, they have to pay up to $ 0,91/min to call home”. After that the soundtrack changes, from sentimental piano tunes into the typical upbeat Coca-Cola feel-good mood, with the following question highlighted in white on a red background: “What if every Coke came with a few minutes of extra happiness?” Next we see a Coca-Cola truck driving through the slums of Dubai, as a kind of Arab Santa Claus, delivering a peculiar kind or presents: red, tube-shaped phone booths with the company logo and “Hello Happiness” written on it. This new campaign enables the slave labourers to use Coca-Cola bottle caps as currency, giving them three minutes of calling time to their families. The video clip ends with nothing but smiling faces and the message “Because happiness is a Coca-Cola, and a phone call home.” The tragedy of destiny What does it to “bring the war home”, to paraphrase Martha Rosler? For it is not only the ‘far’ other who becomes demonised, criminalised and stigmatised (such as the foreign enemy that needs to be fought) but also the other ‘at home’, as it is the case with refugees and sans-papiers. This inevitably brings up the fundamental question of hospitality. How do we face the question of this ‘other’ that is yet unknown to us, this nameless and unidentified stranger (xenos)? How are we, for the sake of hospitality, able to foresee or anticipate the unexpected arrival of a yet unknown guest? Who is to be welcomed and who isn’t, and on what basis? How long does a guest remain a guest before becoming a resident? And to make general laws out of this singular event? In his seminal essay, Derrida analysed the question of hospitality as caught between two fires. On the one hand, the imperative of hospitality is unconditional, unlimited, i.e. without borders, to the extent that it stands for the ability to invite and receive guests, regardless of their identity, nationality or background. On the other hand, every act of hospitality is conditional, and thus implies certain demarcations in time and space imposed by the host upon the guest(s). In his ability to invite and receive, the host literally exerts a certain power over the body of his guests. Much against its unconditional, ethical nature, forms of sociopolitical power and control start seeping into the very idea of hospitality. The “tragedy of destiny”, as Derrida calls it, is that both contradictory forms of hospitality require each other. Intermezzo: Reality TV
In June 2011, the Australian network SBS aired a new three-part reality TV show titled Go Back to Where You Came From. Six prominent figures from Australian politics and media, with a strong, conservative view about immigration policy, are invited to experience the same miserable, hazardous and exhausting journey that many asylum seekers and refugees have been through, in order to reach Australia. Deprived of their identity papers and financial means, they find themselves on leaking refugee boats, in packed refugee camps or violent immigration raids. In no time, the controversial reality TV series reached an extraordinary high number of viewers, and the format has been sold in several European countries ever since. Despised by its critics as cynical and unethical, proponents consider the format to be a game changer, disclosing an otherwise hidden reality and shuffling the cards in the complicated and politically charged debate around immigration policy. The ambiguity of the title Go Back to Where You Came From is in this respect quite telling, suggesting both an often-heard utterance in right-wing circles, as a supposed return to the basic roots of human existence. Cynical games Cynicism seems to have become a symptom of the times we live in, and almost impossible to do without. Initially, the word had a very different meaning from the one we are now familiar with. Founded as a philosophical school in Ancient Greece (4th century BC) by Diogenes of Sinope, cynicism stands for an utterly indifferent attitude towards all worldly desires and material possessions (money, power, sex, fame and so forth), defending a simple, ordinary lifestyle instead. Cynics would despise and ridicule the dominant values in society, which they saw as futile and corrupt. This form of behavior is termed kynical by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, as far as it is counteracting or subverting the ruling political culture.Sloterdijk, however, also addresses a different kind of cynicism, to be found in the way in which the ‘system’ (hegemonic power) reacts to this kynical provocation. Instead of being affected by it and thereby acknowledging its critical potential, it ‘absorbs’ cynicism and turns it into a kind of ideology. Italian philosopher Paolo Virno has written on the inevitability of cynicism in our current society, as a survival strategy. It is worth quoting him at length here: At the base of contemporary cynicism lies the fact that men and women first of all experience rules, far more often than “facts,” and far earlier than they experience concrete events. But to experience rules directly means also to recognize their conventionality and groundlessness. Thus, one is no longer immersed in a predefined “game,” participating therein with true allegiance. Instead, one catches a glimpse of oneself in individual “games” which are destitute of all seriousness and obviousness (…) A cynical attitude grows out of the sheer contingency we experience in our “individual games”, by constantly being aware of their rules and the distance that separates them from everyday reality. Nonetheless we persevere in this schizophrenic behavior. In this respect, cynicism seems to have lost its subversive power and has turned into a form of ideology (Žižek). It has become part of contemporary lifestyle, tuning in with the mood of the multitude. The imaginary pavilion of migration
So how does the artist fit in the whole story? Giuseppe Stampone’s solo show at Prometeogallery titled Emigration Made Pavilion is conceived as an imaginary 148th pavilion to be added to Expo Milano 2015, that is opening around the same time. The world’s fair is the typical representation of a world order structured by the nation-state and its corporate allies. It purports to carry out the idea of universality and a shared belief in progress, but is actually founded on mechanisms of exclusion and economic privilege. A gated community on a grander scale, so to say. Stampone’s conceptual project tackles the issue of migration in a cynical yet playful and poetic way, relating it to various modes of transport used by refugees (trains, ships, trucks) that are turned into remote-controlled vehicles within the gallery space. Yet the miniature replicas are bound to a confined space deprived of any playfulness, echoing the very idea of a camp. We see a railroad track bent back upon itself or a boat floating in a “finite sea”, as the artist calls it. Imitating the world fair’s fixation on consumption and entertainment, the show becomes the cynical double of what a pavilion should look like. In addition to that, several bic pen drawings are put on show, mocking the idea of protectionist merchandising labels marked by the “made in” tag. Once again, hospitality proves to lie at the core of Giuseppe Stampone’s practice. References
Agamben, Giorgio: Homo Sacer Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998. Derrida, Jacques: Of Hospitality. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000. Gielen, Pascal, Cools, Guy (eds.): The Ethics of Art. Ecological Turns in the Performing Arts. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2014. Gielen, Pascal: ‘The Biennial: A Post-Institution for Immaterial Labor’, in: The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon. Strategies in Neo-Political Times, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2009, pp. 8 – 17. Virno, Paolo: A Grammar of the Multitude. For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life. MIT Press, 2004. Žižek, Slavoj: The Sublime Object of Ideology. London/New York: Verso, 1989. Giuseppe Stampone Emigration Made Pavilion 148 prossima mostra / upcoming exhibition 10 aprile – 5 giugno 2015 / april 10 – june 5, 2015 Via Ventura, 3 Milan 20134 Italy |