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Escaping from one condition or another, under attack from all sides by cancerous threats as we approach a hypostasis state, a state that is mentored by hyper-greed and oblivion following the slogan "I want the world and I want it now". (1) The intensity of our needs is a ruse in the context of our perspectives. Histories are reduced to costume dramas. Every place and every event is stalked by a refuge/e seeking freedom from the exalted nation-states of hyper-reality that we have learned to call "Heimat".
To take refuge is an act of solidarity, nesting, a search for warmth and compassionate belonging. The refuge is the result of opposition. The refugee's foundation is to garner strength in numbers, to re-organize life so that it starts to make sense out of nonsense. Re-rooting, making this shredded identity whole, regaining control of life, tracing and working through entanglement, collating the past towards a secure future, stabilizing a heritage in the form of language or resources.
These swelling pedestrian places of refuge, safe houses away from the gaze of extreme forces are viewed as ghettos. The Gay ghetto, the working class ghetto, the Black ghetto, the Jewish ghetto. Or better still as "quarters" of Europe - the Latin quarter, the Arab quarter, the Turkish quarter. And lastly as "towns" as Chinatown or Banglatown. Popular for their exotic cuisine, foodstuffs and textiles, they remain absolute testaments and monuments to the turbulent ebb and flow of both post-colonial geographies as well as the shifting tides of capital in late twentieth century economies. The migration of the refugee is ultimately bound to the creation of wealth pools and braindrains. Their fragility is exploited by social policies. Their hardship operates as a binding loophole that guarantees economic regeneration.
In many ways, the refugee is the lifeline for the host, not a burden. This is so obviously evident in the rejuvenated urban centers of Central Europe and the northern parts of the States. The modus operandi of migrant communities have helped boost otherwise stagnant economies. Their will to live and survive beyond the reproach of the host is evident in the restored confidence of cities such as Bradford, Düsseldorf, Lyon, Detroit or Toronto. This success, in part, can be viewed as a partnership in a displacing world of super technology. Here, we are all foreigners. The refugee possibly helps us to mitigate the prejudice and privilege of race, gender and culture.
"All frontiers, including the frontier of nations, are, at the same time as they are barriers, places of communication and exchange". (2)
HOPE OF A YET UNKNOWN ART
Art which facilitates bringing "home" many truths and readings.
Art that helps to turn the mechanisms of "othering" into counter-strategies for representation of the unacknowledged.
Art that aids emergence of truly radical thought and decision making.
Art that helps to make all places and spaces as transient as possible.
Art that pushes its audience towards becoming self / governing citizens.
Art that makes national belonging a problematic ontology.
Art that makes the "affect" of displacement common property - the condition of world citizenship.
Art that continually negotiates space and disturbs the process of cultural sedimentation.
Art that helps to re-imagine the world.
Art with an emergence of diasporic alliances.
Art that makes expedient the dismantling of the last frontiers of imperialism.
Art that facilitates and shows how differences are/can be settled.
Art that contributes to the understanding of the self, history and global ethical responsibility.
Art that states formation - critically to destabilize and towards re-invention.
Art that examines contemporary shifts and fatalities.
Art as terror, here and now.
Art that aids letting go off the notion of innocent modernity.
Art that considers the strange, dangerous formations of the right.
Art as a critical assessment of divergent works, positions and materials.
Artculture as continuous and not as dilution of knowledge.
Shaheen Merali
London 2002
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(1) Simon Thorne and Shaheen Merali, collaborative performance
text, unpublished, 1997
(2) Madan Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern world, chap. 1, p. 6, Edinburgh University Press 1996
© Shaheen Merali
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