Project suitcases

Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines:

Founded and intervened suitcases (using different materials such as cloth, thread, wool, plaster, plastic, etc.) will be displaced in a dark room. Separate lights (one for each suitcase) will be hanging from the top; this should be the only illumination for the room.
The aim is to create a “theatrical space” that could lead to an immersive sensibility.

On the inside of each suitcase is placed an original pass photo of a refugee or an immigrant.

The suitcases should be isolated from one another, as if marginal or displaced; however they demand being viewed in close proximity, not from afar as detail becomes essential to the viewing of the work, the proximity that results should expose us to a terrible intimacy.

We are aware of the fact that new frontiers are being built or that the concept of frontier -which in the one hand is being denied (globalization) and in the other hand is being reaffirmed (localization)-should be re-signified.
What we normally not consider is that a frontier describes also a space.
In this way, this project intends also to show that space can play an active role in the construction of consciousness.
Marc Auge writes that if a site or space can be defined as a place of identity, relational and historical where one can recognize itself; a space which cannot be defined as a place of identity, not relational, not historical, defines a “non-site”
The suitcase´s project assembles a “non-site”, one which can not only be felt but which actually can be seen: the “non-site” delineated by the frontier, the border; a space that remains invisible, the terrain of the dispossessed and displaced, of the forgotten, of those who cannot lay claim to the physical and social territory of their existence.

However, reality (as well as art) cannot be viewed on a single level, it always occurs on multiple levels. This propels me to construct the artwork in a parallel way:
the project intends not only to revolve around the denunciation or recrimination of what happens in the nowadays world, for its aim is to go beyond this subjects, intending to produce an integral knowledge not reducible to a category of sociology, nor to individual psychology,

What kind of communication approach do you use?

The suitcases must be closed and the spectator is the one who has to make the decision whether to open them or not. The objective of the work that I am proposing, is that the potential should fall on the spectator in order to achieve an uncommon engagement between the artwork and the viewer; encouraging an action and within it, a dialogue.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

Art is regained to one part of the society; it has a limited access to a part of the society that, above all its huge lack of resources, does not has the right to a capable education and consequently cannot think or discover beyond literal aspects of art. This huge socially excluded underclass is not able to understand or reflect about artworks. In Art, the forgotten, remain forgotten.

I believe that for art to be politically effective, it must be effective aesthetically. In this sense, the work I am proposing is both:
-a work that is accessible and interpretable on every level; an incentive to All because active experience is presented undisguised to the spectator or user and he or she is asked to dialogue with the work.
-a work that tries to charge us with responsibility a work that unifies, that creates directly a difference, that could transform people from indifference to difference; a work which allow us to see.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

I learnt that when we are able to see where the things are coming from, we necessarily reach something much more complex and in this process we are always going to be involved. It is about understanding where we come from, but only in order to know better where we are going, to know who we are, in order to know what we are here for. When we understand we see that the other is not so bad and I am not so good. Should I have to be blamed for this? Yes, yes, yes, you should, we All should, All, also the ones who are forgotten. Then the question changes: how can I become responsible? How can I take my responsibility seriously enough? What can I do? Without responsibility an idea of community is impossible.
In ‘The Brother Karamazov” Dostoyevsky wrote: “we are all responsible for everyone, but I am more responsible than all the others.” A proposition that we should all make to our own.

Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK?

Because as I said, the potential should fall on the spectator in order to achieve an uncommon engagement between the artwork and the viewer; encouraging an action and within it, a dialogue.

Where and how do you intent do implement your work?

Where the project is exhibited.
In order to create a further interaction between this installation and the users, I also propose to work together with the groups that will be able to experience it which can take place in any place where there is a space for pedagogical strategies.
Sharing our singular impressions in this
way we come into a “being in common” or being with”, into a community of individuals simply by a co-presence in a constructed situation; as opposed to
“being in solitude”.

Did your intervention had an effect on other Media. If yes, describe the effect? (Has other media reported on it- how? Were you able to change other media with your work- how?)

Not particularly with this project.
However, I also displaced the suitcases in the streets from Berlin and It was very interesting to see the reaction of people while they unexpectedly encountered the suitcases. A friend of mine and film director had this documented in a short film.