Debatable Land(s)
In collaboration with Grammar of Urgencies (Maren Richter & Klaus Schafler), Greta Muscat Azzopardi, and Unfinished Art Space
Debatable Land(s)« is conceived as an experimental spatialised research-project in the framework of the Fleeting Territories series by Grammar of Urgencies. By forming temporary collectives and performative fora, Fleeting Territories identifies materialities and regimes of spatial concepts, and searches for the artistic tools that can be employed to measure and experience them.
The research carried out is not presented as a chronological narrative, or as a logical chain of arguments towards one perfect or imperfect state. Rather, it can be seen as a reflection on the sporadic, random, and sometimes oblique nature of human action and global events, and on the shifting nature of power, historical narrative, and collective memory.
With its land, sea, underwater, and aerial borders, the island state of Malta serves »Debatable Land(s)« as a mirror of the many chronicles of power-plays, migration, exploitation, and the instinct for self-preservation. The borders around the archipelago of Malta seem well defined, whereas the aerial, sea, and virtual borders remain blurred. Borderlines as such can be seen as places of risk, symbols of a step into the unknown, or a ›nothing place‹ that is simultaneously a place on a map, a black line, or a void (Stonor Saunders, 2020). Under the lens of a microstate like Malta, events become magnified – nevertheless, they are not exclusive to this archipelago, and our viewpoint shifts from the minutiae to the global spectacle. While archival material, newspaper reports, and historical research are presented and referred to, the exhibited materials and artefacts recognise that information does not equate with knowledge, and historical record is just that – a record – not the event itself (Mantel, 2017). Similarly, we take facts, current events, and behaviours – like border controls, coercive behaviours, or populist rhetoric – as symbolic tokens of the ideologies they represent.
The »Debatable Land(s)« research is structured as a series of questions, but – as in a plebiscitary democracy – we know that power lies with those who design the questions (Ali, 2020). We sift through an abundance of information and data, not to accumulate more knowledge, but to construct alternative meanings – an act, event, law enacted can ultimately mean less than a memory, smell, a flash of insight. These questions form the basis of the Debatable Land(s) performative debates which will take place in Malta in 2021.
October 2021| Kalkara
Contributors: Mohamed Ali ‘Dali’ Aguerbi & Chakib Zidi | Maria Attard | Fatima Amn | Keit Bonnici | Kristina Borg obo Batman Gżirjan | Johannes Buch | Josephine Burden | Florinda Camilleri | Tina Camilleri | Simone Cutajar | REA (Rachelle Deguara) | Charlene Galea | Justin Galea | Adrian Grima | Helen Horgan | Magna Żmien | Tom van Malderen & Charlie Cauchi | Caldon Mercieca | Greta Muscat Azzopardi | Niels Plotard | Margerita Pulè | Maren Richter | Klaus Schafler | Raphael Vella
The final Debtable Land(s) presentation took the form of a 3-day-long visual-performative-exhibition-festival, and was the culmination of the project’s 12 months of research and conversations, exploring how territories, lands and spaces are formed, and what conflicting interests influence these delineations.
The venue is one of the oldest houses in Kalkara. It was built around 1802, and is said to have been a type of infirmary. The cellars below this block also date back to the time of the Knights. The first and second floors were built in the early days of the British in Malta. Later, the house belonged to a Mariano Stivala - Marjanu, a freight-handler, who added a third floor to the building. During the war, he was well-off enough to be able to distribute food to the poor. He died under rubble in World War II during an air raid.
2020 | Kunsthalle Exnergasse (KEX), Vienna
Participating artists: Keit Bonnici | Charlie Cauchi | Charlene Galea | Jimmy Grima and the rubberbodies collective | Bettina Hutschek | Magna Żmien | Letta Shtohryn | Guy Woueté | Tobias Zielony
The exhibition at Kunsthalle Exnergasse (KEX) in Vienna in 2020 was conceived as an experimental spatialised research-project in the framework of the Fleeting Territories series.
The exhibition »Debatable Land(s)« is conceived as an experimental spatialised research-project in the framework of the Fleeting Territories series by Grammar of Urgencies. By forming temporary collectives and performative fora, Fleeting Territories identifies materialities and regimes of spatial concepts, and searches for the artistic tools that can be employed to measure and experience them.
This installation at Kunsthalle Exnergasse (KEX) is the first phase of a year-long process, which proposes a body of research contributing to the emergence of dialectic debating and decision-making. The term ›debatable land‹, which we borrow for our project, originally referred to a piece of land where sovereignty was in question; this land and its borders were intangible for centuries, until a map of the territory was drawn, and it became a ›knowable place‹. Lines-on-a-map as a result of claims of belonging – which have tended to escape the rigorous theorisation of other key concepts of space – are themselves not free of ambiguities. In our search for generative concepts of belonging - which reflect on the texture of how it is felt, used, and practised - we take Malta as a case study. In particular, we consider the emotional aspects of belonging and how it is enacted by myriad humans and ›more-than-humans‹. Belonging is understood as emergent co-becoming, which may allow for new, emotional geographies that are simultaneously caring and careful.
