Immigration is constant talk about here, there, border, identity, memory, nostalgia, new society and old society, but what actually makes the Society Old, New or Another? What actually brings the concept of homeland into existence? What if that homeland never existed, ceased to exist or had never been a territorialised entity?
The very concept of migration is based on a fundamentally repressive thought pattern which defines life through the state and commune; through family and friends; through workplace and local bar; and, finally, through personality and identity, which can never be the same.It is the same repressive structure that invented state passports from one side and such an entity as the “artist” with their personality, story, branded and symbolically or really sold name-image...
What makes a situation more “immigrant”? Сhange of country? Сhange of address book and social network account? Or, maybe, change of professional community? Had that community ever existed? Change of hopes? Change of fears? Change of language? To what extent has spoken language actually changed?
“Homeland”, “home”, “memory”—but does the very definition of “home” makes sense—do i—or do you—have any real connection with it? If that connection exists—does geographical distance make it lighter, less intensive, less visible?
Consider memory not as a bunch of layers, not as a linear book, but as a network, permanently reconstructed, rebuilt, reinvented as an image, feeling, narrative—“past” as never the same, past as a land being permanently unexplored.
No migration, immigration, emigration—no process, no force, no beginning and no end... Just a movement of a network, part of which is forced to be called “self”—creation of new connections and territories within it, of losing some others, interactions with new-old agents, here, there and whateverywhere.
* This text is part of Third Space intervention.Grey Violet is an anarchist, text, color, etcetera from the neutral zone. It reveals itself through focusing on sabotage of the most basic socio-cultural hierarchies. It has taken part in various activities including actions of Voina group, curation of Media Impact (Queer section) and different kinds of performances, actions and text throughout radical theory and practice.
*Published in English and Finnish in
uusi nykyisyys | new present // P. 47--48 Mäntän kuvataiteen ys., Suomi, 2015.*
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