10 Apr 2008

No Place - Like Home: Perspectives on Migration in Europe

Migration is a thing of all ages. Where Europeans once colonized various continents and emigrated en masse to other lands both in and beyond their own continent, movement from the opposite direction has now taken hold. Capital, goods and information circulate freely in the late-capitalist, globalized world economy. For people, however, mobility is arranged somewhat differently. Borders and territories are still the primary expression of national sovereignty, however multi ethnic populations may have become. For Europe – which permanently shifts between regulating, even attracting, and then repelling strangers – these are the outer borders, the so-called Schengenland regions. No Place - Like Home (note the hyphen) investigates how inner and outer space, how 'we' and 'they' maintain complex relations with one another and the frictions this generates.

The media, like tourism – a phenomenon that on the Italian island of Lampedusa vacillates with the refugee issue – have little to do with transparency. By way of the varying perceptions of 15 artists whose work focuses on the illegal refugees who are today's modern nomads, this exhibition hopes to help visualize an issue that cannot be summarized in black-and-white contrasts: an interwoven, variegated tale of migration networks and refugee trafficking, cartography and geographical military data, migration management and border infiltrations, international rights, lack of rights and lawlessness. A few works let us hear the individual voice of the immigrant.
Thinking about migration means making a close examination of oneself. With No Place - like Home, Argos lays claim to a trans-national political space. What public space, what identity stands counter to this? What and where is �home’? These are questions that will be further investigated in a parallel programme of lectures and video presentations.

Curated by Paul Willemsen with contributions by Miguel Abad, An Architektur, Xavier Arenós, Herman Asselberghs, Federico Baronnello, Ursula Biemann, Raphaël Cuomo, Pieter Geenen, Maria Iorio, Provdoliub Ivanov, Takuji Kogo, Armin Linke, Bénédicte Liénard, Thomas Locher, Hans Op de Beeck, Yves Mettler, Migreurop and Erzen Shkololli.