FRANZISKA

Reflections on the concept of "Othering", written as I had the thoughts.
The last two sentences have been added as I had more time now to think about the subject.

SUGGESTED PROJECT REVIEW

Notes by Franziska on
the different projects
suggested in a teacher
review session.

What could we take from
them for our project?
What do we have to say
about borders?

FRANZISKA

PROJECT DELIVERY #1

About:
Our aim is to explore different ways in which borders are present in our lives, the ways that they obstruct. To think of ways to reconceptualize borders and make that visible. To look at borders on the personal and political layers.

Topic Headers:
history/contemporary
physical/mental
(personal/political)

Statement:
We all have our own relation/locality towards borders. They are present in our lives, if we see them or not.

Tools/exercises:
- journaling style, object collecting, archiving, experiment with film and writing, recording sounds in different places, interviewing
- puzzling all these different ways of data collecting together (Storytelling)
- exercise from Seecum: short video clips about what we think about borders
What does this small fragment represent?
(May be also colour editing tools, directly adapting it)
Setting up the shots beforehand (also setting up the time)
- half hour exercises (walking around taking pictures, drawing writing….data collection)
- reading together (study group), discuss theoretical articles together and our findings

NOTES 02/10

Overstepping borders
- what happens when you overstep a border?
- What happens to yourself?
- the personal lense
- which borders are you actually crossing?
- which things do you notice?
- when is something a border that you “fear” to overstep?
- psycologiacl and physical borders

Franziska: drawing, journaling style (joe sacco), collecting objects (police objects, emotional understanding)

Bodine: documenting in film, products (objects), voices and sounds

Yusser: experiment with film and writing (starting with writing), analog photography, archiving, old photographs (creating an archive from that, nostalgic), recording sounds in different places

Clara: puzzling things together, storytelling

METHODS OF RECORDING

- hyper political moment where borders are being erected
- borders are distant and close to you as well
- the borders of time
- Francis elise (tracing invisible borders) rigid borders
- the leakages of sound that travel through the walls itself (soundparticals that leak)
- border between history and contemporary
- border between now and then and today and yesterday and tomorrow
- we are exiting a period of constantly explaining, being exhausted


- exercise: short video clips about what we think about borders
- What does this small fragment represent?
- (May be also colour editing tools, directly adapting it)
- Setting up the shots beforehand (also setting up the time)
- How do we travel with the words that we are thinking about?
- auto-theory
- our norms are borders too (how you are expected to behave)
- Why certain countries are fighting for certain borders (prisoners of geography)

SEECUM'S TIPS

CLARA

Encounters are happening daily and in every second of your life. There is always something unexpectedly coming your way. Everything we cannot control is unexpected. The smell of cooked food from our neighbours, the subtle sound of our intestines digesting, a spontaneous visit from a friend. In our topic of “borders”, these encounters are very prominent.

Overstepping a border leads to encountering a different culture (country borders), you suddenly being in a different space (doors as a border) or being too much in someone else's space (personal borders/boundaries). Especially regarding the latter, it connects to the notion of stangerness, which Sara Ahmed presents in her book “Strange Encounters, Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality”. Sara Ahmed is focussing the view of simply someone that you do not recognise as a “stranger”, to some bodies already being “stranger” as they are recognised as such. Therefore a person assigns someone to be a stranger, just by the notion of them not belonging in a certain space.

(final version got lost, last sentences will be added very soon)

Maxigas:
- having a documentation with different languages
- being in a space (one room is the controller, one is the screen) to give a physical understanding of the technology

- recordings being all in different languages but all about the same topic
- drawing of the borders (everyone remembers differently) finds other things interesting

“We are transformed, individually, collectively, as we make radical creative space which affirms and sustains our subjectivity, which gives us a new location from which to articulate our sense of the world.” - bell hooks

COLLECTIVE EXCERCISE:

BRAINSTORM & NOTES

INSPIRATION

Bodine:

Theater play "Language" by Vanja Rukavina

If two people do not share a language, they cannot understand each other. Simple. But, if you understand even one word of someone else’s speech, you are presented with a problem. You have entered the world of another culture, another way of doing things, maybe even a different way of thinking.

READING AND DISCUSSING "THE MARGINS AS RADICAL SPACE OF OPENNESS"
BY bell hooks.

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2

YUSSER

The stranger is the figure of not belonging. Where there are borders there is the stranger. There is the ideal stranger outside of these boundaries, of which the real stranger within the borders lends his looks. Outside of these borders lie places and peoples who are both real and unreal at the same time. The outside is the otherized. The outside exists as real outside and as other. The outside, the otherized,
the ideal stranger.
-
He/she is complicated in the sense that he/she has complications. The ideal stranger, as the embodiment of the ideal of the stranger, is necessarily contradicting themself. He/she is a being of/in contradiction. Partly this has to do with the contradiction within the idea of ‘the embodiment of an ideal’, as within the realm of the real an ideal can never be embodied. This dynamic does something with strangerness.
-
Fetishization keeps the stranger alive within the realm of the real. Fetishisation makes sure that the other stays other. The other marks the unknowable ideal outside. Under the banner of inclusion, the other is desired. Always desired, never wanted. Desire maintains the position of the other, it fixates it in this unknowableness. It is the desire to know the unknowable that maintains the unknowable as unknowable, that maintains you as a stranger. The fetish must be kept alive. You must remain outside for us to enjoy you. You are the object of our desire. No I’m not racist, I loved going to africa, don’t you notice from the beautiful ornaments I’ve decorated my home with. No I’m not racist I fucked an arab once. No I’m not racist I love indian food. When you knock on my door I enjoy what you bring, never your presence. I enjoy your visit, as long as you don’t stay.

-

If you can’t enter the centre, let him enter you

I am the object of your desire.
You desire to enter me.
Mia Khalifa must be droned.
Go to Pornhub. Bomb Iraq.
Enjoy your visit.

No, I desire for you to enter me.
That’s how you see it, and to an extent you are right.
At least when you enter me I am close to you.
Maybe if you are in me I can experience what you do.
Enjoy their visit.

-

Question: Is entering the centre the same as the centre entering you?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: ...

Planning for next week:
- (08-10-20) focusing on language; "language is also a struggle", our language changes based on our location. Start researching language more, the difference in dialect,
pronouns etc.

BODINE

The difference between the “we” and the “stranger” often starts because of the creation of places and their (invisible) borders. Moving between places often requires pushing against oppressive boundaries set by race, sex and class domination, as is explained in the book “The margins as radical space of openness”.
Where do we place ourselves in the society, in our relationships or in our country etc?
Do we place ourselves on the side of the colonizing mentality or do we stand in political resistance with the oppressed? To stand with the oppressed means to create space for unlimited acces to power and knowledge. This space is a margin; a profound edge, not a safe place but a place where you need to have the ability to conceptualize alternatives.

The way we place ourselves is crucial in the way we approach people. The “we” will only sympathize with the “other” if that other is acknowledged by the “we”, which is often only through speech of suffering. Language is therefore also a place of suffering. It changes throughout the phases of life and based on who you’re speaking to. Sometimes it is needed to speak the language of the oppressor, which is an unnatural thing to do but a very important thing to do. By doing so you can influence the way you are being approached and the way you approach others.

Language and the way we speak is very interesting for our topic: borders. We talked about how we all sound different when speaking English, how we can not speak our minds directly and how we connect it to professionalism. English is the language of modernism, therefore a language of the oppressor.
You can compare the language English to a place, for instance Amsterdam, it’s the center of modernism, a place you should visit, a place where things get done and where you can reach new opportunities. It is largely known and heard because it is well represented. The violence this can cause is the exclusion of other places and other languages. All of a sudden we connect the place and/or language you speak to unprofessionalism without knowing you personally. You have become the other for nothing more than a barrier of place and language.

Even when we integrate in the same place, it will be hard for us to not have this created fear for the unknown. The unknown language or the unknown place and community the “other” person comes from. The border that is between us, that we are afraid to cross.

BODINE