A film by Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, 24 min., 2012

“If I walk in and say, ‘I am going to blow myself up’ in a crowded subway and extort somebody for money, you can probably get people to pay you a lot of money to not blow yourself up. The banks […] were effectively walking around with bombs on them all the time.” – Yves Smith, The Bull Laid Bear.

In their second collaborative film Zanny Begg (Sydney) and Oliver Ressler (Vienna) focus on the financial and economic crisis post 2008. The Bull Laid Bear “lays bare” the economic recession (bear market) that hides behind each boom time (bull market). The film pokes fun at the slippery justifications made for the bailouts and austerity packages by exploring how governments in the United States, and other countries such as Ireland, turned a banking crisis into a budgetary crisis at the governmental level.

The Bull Laid Bear is structured around a series of interviews with US economists and activists including: William K. Black, a white-collar criminologist; Yves Smith, the author of the blog Naked Capitalism; Tiffiniy Cheng, campaign coordinator for A New Way Forward; and Gerald Epstein co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute in Amherst, MA. The material gathered from these four interviewees has been blended with hand drawn animations to create a quasi-fictitious criminal world of gangster bankers and corrupt courts.

Sydney based performer Singing Sadie provides a sound track for the film with a reinterpretation of Billie Holiday’s classic lament on money, God Bless The Child.

The Bull Laid Bear probes our collective “beliefs” in financial markets, unravelling responsibility for the 2008 financial meltdown and looking at some of the causes of the spiralling economic crisis in Europe.

Concept, film editing and production: Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler
Animation and drawings: Zanny Begg
Camera and interviews: Oliver Ressler
Vocals: Singing Sadie
Piano: Mick Hana
Other music: Captain Ahab
Camera Singing Sadie: Arunas Klupsas
Sound Singing Sadie: Jon Hunter
Sound and image editing: Rudi Gottsberger
Special thanks to Nancy Folbre, Brian Holmes, Jon Hunter, Pascal Jurt, Arunas Klupsas and Singing Sadie.
Financial assistance provided by Kulturamt der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung and Australia Council for the Visual Arts New Work Grant.

6-min excerpt from the film

A film by Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler, 94 min., 2010

“We have to decide for ourselves what we want. We are the ones who know about our needs and what is happening in our community”, Omayra Peréz explains confidently. She wants to convince her community, located on the hillside of the poor districts of Caracas, to found a Consejo Comunal (community council). In more than 30.000 Consejos Comunales the Venezuelan inhabitants decide on their concerns collectively via assemblies. Omayra is supported by the activists of the nearby shantytown “Emiliano Hernández”, which has had a Consejo Comunal for three years already. The inhabitants there managed to get a doctor from the governmental program “Barrio Adentro”, who treats everyone free of charge. They also got money to renovate their houses and replaced over a dozen of corrugated-iron huts by new houses. All of these activities and a lot more have been organized via the Consejo Comunal. By local self-organization several working groups have been established on self-selected topics and decisions are made in assemblies.

Several Consejos Comunales can form a Comuna and finally a communal town. The film “Comuna Under Construction” follows these developments throughout the hillside of the shantytowns of Caracas and the vast and wet plains of Barinas in the countryside. The councils are built from below and alongside the existing institutions and are supposed to overcome the existing state through self-government. In a constituent assembly for the construction of the communal town “Antonio José de Sucre” Ramon Virigay from the independent peasant’s organization Frente Nacional Campesino Ezequiel Zamora (FNCEZ) reminds the delegates of the participating Consejos Comunales: “Even if we definitely need the government agencies at the moment, we have to be independent tomorrow due to our development. We cannot depend solely on the state forever.” For this reason the councils are to establish own structures of production and distribution in order to achieve autonomy.

The assemblies are a central element of the film “Comuna Under Construction”. The film starts off in the well organized Consejo Comunal Emiliano Hernández located in one of the shantytowns of Caracas. It then shows the intentions of forming Comunas and a communal town in rural Barinas and ends in Petare, a gigantic shantytown of the agglomeration of Caracas where there are 29 Consejos Comunales intending to build the Comuna of Maca. Is it even possible to bring together state and autonomy at all? Every one of the Consejos Comunales spokes-persons has positive as well as negative experiences with the institutions in store to talk about. In an assembly in Petare the grass-roots activist Yusmeli Patiño blames a high government representative: “We are losing our credibility because of the incompetence of the state institutions”. But there are also members of the institutions who make a big effort to accompany the basis in making its own decisions. Relations between the grass roots and the institutions are marked by cooperation as well as conflict. But the Consejos Comunales also have internal difficulties; participation has to be learned. Both progress and setback mark the difficult process of people actually taking the power of deciding on their own lives and environment by themselves.

Original Spanish version with German and English subtitles available.

Concept, film editing, production: Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler
Camera: Volkmar Geiblinger, Oliver Ressler
Sound, sound editing, supervisory editor: Rudi Gottsberger
Production assistant: Adriana Rivas
Image editing: Markus Koessl, David Grohe

Grants: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur; Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien; Stiftung Umverteilen; Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung; Solifond der Hans Böckler Stiftung; Fraktion die Linke im EU-Parlament; Bundestagsfraktion die Linke; Netzwerk e.V.

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Austria License

12-min excerpt from the film (Antonio José de Sucre, communal town under construction, Barinas)

A film by Oliver Ressler, 118 min., 2009

“What is democracy?” is not one question, but is actually two questions. On the one hand, the question relates to conditions of the current, parliamentary representative democracies that are scrutinized critically in this project. On the other hand, the question traces different approaches to what a more democratic system might look like and which organizational forms it could take.

The project asked “What is democracy?” to numerous activists and political analysts in 15 cities around the world, in Amsterdam, Berkeley, Berlin, Bern, Budapest, Copenhagen, Moscow, New York, Rostock, San Francisco, Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Thessaloniki and Warsaw.
The interviews have been recorded on video since January 2007. Even though all interviewees were asked the same question, the result was a multiplicity of different perspectives and viewpoints from people living in states that are usually labeled “democracies”.

This pool of interviews builds the basis for a film in eight parts, which (re)presents a kind of global analysis about the deep political crises of the Western democratic model. In one video, Adam Ostolski (Warsaw) explains that originally “the modern idea of democracy was connected to the notion of progress” and parliamentary states “had some tendency to become more and more democratic by including new types of political actors, such as workers and women. […] But since the 1980s, since the neoliberal trend in politics and economy we have a regression of democracy.” Lize Mogel (New York) notes that situation changed in such a way, that when you think about representative democracy today “you are not necessarily talking about individuals being represented, but more capital being represented.” Nikos Panagos (Thessaloniki) even argues that “representation and democracy are incompatible terms. Therefore, under no circumstances could the present system be called a democracy. It is just a sophisticated form of oligarchy.” While some subjects in the videos elaborate their ideas of direct democracy or decision-making processes of indigenous communities, David McNeill (Sydney) raises the issue of whether it makes sense “to continue contesting for the right to own and define the term democracy” or whether “it has been so corrupted and polluted by the conservatives that claimed ownership of it, that it is better to be surrendered.”

The film discusses the contested notion of “democracy”, which is misused for the maintenance of order by those in power, while at the same time “democracy” still represents an ideal hundreds of million people in the South desperately want to achieve. Today it seems almost impossible to be against “democracy”, even though it is getting emptier and emptier. A potential strategy could try to fill what is called “democracy” with new meaning. In this sense, the film presents a multi-layered discourse on democracy, which expresses a broad field of opinions that go beyond the borders of nation-states and continents.

The film has eight parts with the following titles: “Rethinking representation”, “Politics of exclusions”, “Secrecy instead of democratic transparency”, “New democracies?”, “Is representative democracy a democracy?”, “Direct democracy”, “Reclaiming Indigenous politics” and “Should we consign the Western democracy model to the ash heap of history?”

Concept, interviews, camera and sound recording: Oliver Ressler
Interviewees: Kuan-Hsing Chen, Noortje Marres, Lin Chalozin Dovrat, Thanasis Triaridis, Tone Olaf Nielsen, Jo van der Spek, Cheikh Papa Sakho, Wolf Dieter Narr, Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, Joanna Erbel, Yvonne Riano, Trevor Paglen, Tadeusz Kowalik, Adam Ostolski, Boris Kagarlitsky, Michal Kozlowski, Lize Mogel, Rick Ayers, Nikos Panagos, Macha Kurzina, Gabor Csillag, Zachary Running Wolf, Jenny Munroe, David McNeill
Video editing and production: Oliver Ressler
Image editing and subtitles: David Grohe
Animation: Zanny Begg
Composition and sound editing: Rudi Gottsberger
Footage: Sierpien 80 (© Telewizja Polska S.A.)
Special thanks to Louisa Avgita, Kai Bauer, Zanny Begg, Karen Bennett, Christine Boehler, Paul Chatterton, Amy Cheng, Eyal Danon, Hilla Dayan, Miklos Erhardt, Takis Fotopoulos, Frédérique Gautier, Peter Grabher, Hou Hanru, Laila Huber, Manray Hsu, Jens Kastner, Caroline Lensing-Hebben, Geert Lovink, Margarethe Makovec, Davor Miskovic, Nikos Panagos, Ted Purves, Gerald Raunig, Natalia Romik, Walter Seidl, Katharina Schlieben, Gregory Sholette, Kuba Szreder, Nora Theiss, Dmitry Vilensky, Tom Waibel
Translation for English subtitles: Harold Otto
Translation for German subtitles: Otmar Lichtenwörther
Translation for French subtitles: Lucile Gourraud-Beyron

Grants: ERSTE Foundation, Kulturamt der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung, Kulturamt Stadt Graz, Otto-Mauer-Fonds, Biennale de Lyon, 2009

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 1 (Rethinking representation)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 2 (Politics of exclusion)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 3 (Secrecy instead of democratic transparency)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 4 (New democracies?)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 5 (Is representative democracy a democracy?)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 6 (Direct democracy)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 7 (Reclaiming Indigenous politics)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 8 (Should we consign the Western democracy model to the ash heap of history?)

A film by Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, 40 min., 2008

“What Would It Mean To Win?” was filmed on the blockades at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007. In their first collaborative film Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler focus on the current state of the counter-globalisation movement in a project which grows out of both artists’ preoccupation with globalisation and its discontents. The film, which combines documentary footage, interviews, and animation sequences, is structured around three questions pertinent to the movement: Who are we? What is our power? What would it mean to win?

Almost ten years after “Seattle” this film explores the impact this movement has had on contemporary politics. Seattle has been described as the birthplace for the “movement of movements” and marked a time when resistance to capitalist globalisation emerged in industrialised nations. In many senses it has been regarded as the time when a new social subject – the multitude – entered the political landscape. Recently the counter-globalisation movement has gone through a certain malaise accentuated by the shifts in global politics in the post 911 context.

The protests in Heiligendamm seemed to re-assert the confidence, inventiveness and creativity of the counter-globalisation movement. In particular the five finger tactic – where protesters spread out across the fields of Rostock slipping around police lines – proved successful in establishing blockades in all roads into Heiligendamm. Staff working for the G8 summit were forced to enter and leave the meeting by helicopter or boat thus providing a symbolic victory to the movement.

“What Would It Mean To Win?”, as the title implies, addresses this central question for the movement. During the Seattle demonstrations “we are winning” was a popular graffiti slogan that captured the sense of euphoria that came with the birth of a new movement. Since that time however this slogan has been regarded in a much more speculative manner. This film aims to move beyond the question of whether we are “winning” or not by addressing what would it actually mean to win.

When addressing the question “what would it mean to win?” John Holloway quotes Subcomandante Marcos who once described “winning” as the ability to live an “infinite film program” where participants could re-invent themselves each day, each hour, each minute. The animated sequences take this as their starting point to explore how ideas of social agency, struggle and winning are incorporated into our imagination of politics.

The film was recorded in English and German and exists also in a French subtitled version. “What Would It Mean To Win?” will be presented in screenings in a variety of contexts and will also be part of the upcoming installation “Jumps and Surprises” by Begg and Ressler, which will present a broader perspective of different approaches to the counter-globalisation movement.

• Concept, Interviews, Film Editing, Production: Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler
• Interviewees: Emma Dowling, John Holloway, Adam Idrissou, Tadzio Mueller, Michal Osterweil, Sarah T.
• Camera: Oliver Ressler
• Animation: Zanny Begg
• Sound: Kate Carr
• Image Editing: Markus Koessl
• Sound Editing: Rudi Gottsberger, Oliver Ressler
• Special thanks to Turbulence, Holy Damn It, Conrad Barrett
• Grants: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur; College of Fine Art Research Grants Scheme, Sydney

The French version of the film is online at http://www.art-act.fr/?p=44

Oliver Ressler, 23 min.

Factors like “danger”, “risk” and “wilderness” are no longer considered only in the dark, suppressed underside of the globalisation dream. These possibly deterring factors have become a resistance to be overcome by, apparently, only the best and the strongest. Thus, to a certain extent, mastering these daunting elements have become standards for achievement in the economic discipline. The crisis regions’ growth markets make particularly clear that the law of market economics requires hardness and ruthlessness. This warlike character of market economics transforms life into a fight in which specific individuals face ever-higher demands for better performance.

In order to prepare for this competitive, social Darwinist, pecking order of global capitalism, privately-owned, security enterprises offer their self-developed, civilian training programs that simulate conflict-situations – in varying complexities up to war scenarios. One of these enterprises, the British AKE Group, promises, according to their web page, to provide “…clients the competitive advantage of engaging safely in areas that might otherwise have been closed to opportunity.”

The video “The Fittest Survive” is based on filming the five-day course “Surviving Hostile Regions” done in January 2006 in Wales, Great Britain by the AKE Group. The course instructors are British ex-special force soldiers. The participants are businessmen who are preparing for business in Iraq and other dangerous regions, government officials and mainstream journalists who, with their dishonest discourse of democracy and human rights, help to legitimise and secure the ideology of market-economics expansion.

The video, primarily filmed by hand camera, follows the survival-course participants as they experience the staged reality of live shell bombardments, an assault by armed guerrillas, the rescue of accident victims, and moving through mine fields. Above this training camp in Wales, low-flying British fighter planes hold manoeuvres and foreshadow the real war theatres in which the class participants will soon be.

The video “The Fittest Survive” is available in English, German and Spanish versions.

Starting June 6, 2006, the video will be shown regularly in the permanent exhibition “working_world.net” in the Museum Arbeitswelt in Steyr, Austria, and is part of the exhibition of the Steirischer Herbst “Traurig sicher, im Training” in the Grazer Kunstverein (21.09. – 31.10.2006).

• Concept, Film Editing, Production: Oliver Ressler
• Camera: Volkmar Geiblinger
• Image Editing: Markus Koessl
• Sound Editing: Rudi Gottsberger

Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler, 81 min.

In their second film regarding political and social change in Venezuela, after “” (67 min., 2004), Azzellini and Ressler focus on the industrial sector in “5 Factories–Worker Control in Venezuela“. The changes in Venezuela’s productive sphere are demonstrated with five large companies in various regions: a textile company, aluminum works, a tomato factory, a cocoa factory, and a paper factory. In all, the workers are struggling for different forms of co- or self-management supported by credits from the government. “The assembly is basically governing the company”, says Rigoberto López from the textile factory “Textileros del Táchira” in front of steaming tubs. And coning machine operator Carmen Ortiz summarizes the experience as follows: “Working collectively is much better than working for another–working for another is like being a slave to that other”.

The protagonists portrayed at the five production locations present insights into ways of alternative organizing and models of workers’ control. Mechanisms and difficulties of self-organization are explained as well as the production processes. The portrayal of machine processes could be seen as a metaphor for the dream machine of the “Bolivarian process”, and the hopes and desires it inspires among the workers. The situation in the five factories varies, but they share the common search for better models of production and life. This not only means concrete improvements for the workers. Aury Arocha, laboratory analyst at the ketchup factory “Tomates Guárico”, emphasizes that the difference between “social production companies” (EPS) and capitalist corporations is that the EPS “work for the community and society”. Carlos Lanz, president of the second largest aluminum factory in Venezuela, Alcasa, coins the key question: “How does a company push toward socialism within a capitalist framework?”

The film ends with an extended sequence from a management meeting at Alcasa, a company with 2.700 workers, with discussions about co-management and the changes of production relations they aspire towards.

The film is originally in Spanish and available with German or English subtitles.

The English version “5 Factories–Worker Control in Venezuela” as an installation version with six video projections from March 26 to May 28, 2006 opened the MATRIX cycle “Now-Time Venezuela: Media Along the Path of the Bolivarian Process” at the Berkeley Art Museum (U.S.A.), organized by Chris Gilbert.

• Concept, interviews, film editing, production: Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler
• Camera: Volkmar Geiblinger
• Production Assistant in Venezuela: Eduardo Daza
• Image editing and titles: Markus Koessl
• Sound Editor: Rudi Gottsberger
• Interviewees: José Luis Acosta, Luis Alfonso, Luis Alvarez, Aury Arocha, Zulay Boyer, Carolina Chacón, Eleuterio Córdova, Hugo Favero, Manrique Gonzales, Dulfo Guerrero, Rowan Jiménez, Carlos Lanz, Marivit Lopez, Rigoberto López, Willys Lugo, Gonzalo Maestre, Luis Mata Castillo, Domingo Meléndez, Edith Mendoza, José Gregorio Moy, Carmen Ortíz, Alexander Patiño, Santos Pérez, Juana Ruíz, Elio Sayago, José del Carmen Tapias, Leslie E. Turmero

Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler, 67 min.

In Venezuela, a profound social transformation identified as the Bolivarian process has been underway since Hugo Chávez’s governmental takeover in 1998. It concerns a broad process of self organization, from which has developed a progressive constitution, a labor law, new educational possibilities, and a number of further reforms for the impoverished majority of the population of what is potentially a wealthy state. The government’s politics, which take an open stance against neo-liberalism, have experienced vehement rejection from Venezuela’s major private industries and from the U.S., expressed in two attempted coups and boycotts. Nonetheless, Chávez and his government enjoy the trust of the majority of the population. The society is heavily politicized; many people who had never before thought of what they wanted to change are now a part of a profound transformation taking place in the country.

In the film “Venezuela from Below,” the true actors in the social process are able to speak: the grassroots. After an introduction by philosopher Carlos Lazo, workers from the oil company PDVSA in Puerto La Cruz report how in 2002/2003 they protected the refinery from breaking down during the oil sabotage, which was pawned off as a strike, and how they were able to reinstate oil production. Several farmers from a newly founded cooperative in Aragua report on their process of self organization, on the literacy campaign, and how things should continue. A women’s bank project in Miranda and several loan recipients from Caracas’ disadvantaged district, 23 de Enero, present their projects. Indígena community members near the Orinoco river in Bolívar speak about how their demands and struggles are reflected in the constitution and what has changed for them. Workers from the occupied National Valve Company in Los Teques and the paper production company Venepal in Carabobo – which was occupied by 350 workers after the owners drove it to bankruptcy, and which now, after a partial agreement, is running production again – speak about corrupt unions, labor control, and their struggles. Protagonists in the revolutionary movement Tupamaro, the cultural foundation Simón Bolívar, the leftist website www.23.net, and the Bolivarian Circle Abrebrecha from 23 de Enero report on their work and what has changed for them through the social revolutions.

They are the people of the grassroots and they speak about what they did and what they are doing, how they feel about the Bolivarian process, about their expectations and ideas. They see themselves as part of the process that is underway, but also problematize numerous points. The search for a social and economic model beyond neo-liberalism is no easy terrain; there are currently no successful, tested alternatives. The protagonists in the Bolivarian process have, however, set upon a path from which there is no return.

The film is available in Spanish, with English or with German subtitles.

• Concept, interviews, film editing, production: Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler
• Camera: Volkmar Geiblinger
• Image editing and titles: Markus Koessl
• Interviewees: Titina Azuaje, Gustavo Borges, Stalin Pérez Borges, Juan Brizuela, Bertha de Castillo, José Ramón Castillo, Eduardo Daza, Arlenis Espinal, Freddy Farias, Juán Fermín, José Flores, Randy García, Círe y Guarán, Sandra Heredia de Goncalves, Juana Catalina Guzman, María Elisa Irazabal de Píneda, Natalí Jaimes, Carlos Lazo, Henry Mariño, Maritza Marquez, Esther de Mena, Esteban Michelena, Argelia Naguanagua de Ramos, Emma Ortega, Edgar Peña, Judith Sánchez, José Mercedes Sifontes, Alfonso Tovar, Antolino Vasquez, Eduardo Yaguaracuto
• Grants: Kunstsektion des BKA, Stiftung Umverteilen

Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler, 54 min.

The video “Disobbedienti” thematizes the Disobbedienti’s origins, political bases, and forms of direct action on the basis of conversations with seven members of the movement.

The Disobbedienti emerged from the Tute Bianche during the demonstrations against the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001. The “Tute Bianche” were the white-clad Italian activists who used their bodies – protected by foam rubber, tires, helmets, gas masks, and homemade shields – in direct acts and demonstrations as weapons of civil disobedience. The Tute Bianche first appeared in Italy in 1994 in the midst of a social setting in which the “mass laborer,” who had played a central role in the 1970s in production and in labor struggles, was gradually replaced in the transition to precarious post-Fordist means of production. By forcing the closing of detention camps through specially developed acts of dismantling the Tute Bianche became involved in protests against precarious working conditions and the immigrants’ struggle for freedom of movement. The Tute Bianche were part of the demonstration against the WTO in Seattle in 1999 and the IMF in Prague in 2000. They sent delegates to the Lakandon rainforest in Chiapas and accompanied the Zapatist Comandantes 3,000 kilometers to Mexico City.

At the G8 summit in Genoa the Tute Bianche decided to take off their trademark white overalls that had given them their name and instead blend in the multitude of 300,000 demonstration participants. The transition from the Tute Bianche to the Disobbedienti, the disobedients, also marked a development from “civil disobedience” to “social disobedience.” The repressive actions and massacre by the police force in Genoa brought the practice of social disobedience in from the streets to the most diverse social realms. In the video, the Disobbedienti spokesperson Luca Casarini describes the Tute Bianche as a subjective experience and a small army, whereas Disobbedienti is a multitude and a movement.

Disobbedienti maintains the political form of the Tute Bianche and attempts to create a better legal justice for and from the people. Spectacular actions are still being carried out against detention centers, such as the dismantling of the detention camp in the Via Mattei in Bologna on 25 January 2002, as shown in the video. Additionally, attempts are being made to further develop “social disobedience” as a collective practice of various groups, to block the flows of goods and communication, to make general the strikes of individual groups, and to plan and carry out general strikes.

The conversations with the Disobbedienti were carried out in Italian in Bologna and Genoa in July 2002.

There are two versions of the video “Disobbedienti,” one with German and one with English subtitles.

Concept, interview preparation, editing, realization: Oliver Ressler
Interviews, conceptual work, translation: Dario Azzellini
Camera: Claudio Ruggieri
Sound: Rainer Antesberger
Interview partners: Luca Casarini, Ulia Conti, Gianmarco de Pieri, Enrico Ludovici, Federico Martelloni, Francesco Raparelli, Francesca Ruocco

For more infos about this project by Oliver Ressler visit the project website http://www.ressler.at/democracy/

• Direct mailing in Styria at the EU-border (A)
• Exhibition in the Kunstraum of the University of Lüneburg (D), 26.4. – 21.7.2001
• Exhibition in the Pavel-Haus, Laafeld in Styria at the EU-border (A), 21.9. – 13.10.2001
• 
  

The European Union member states’ restrictive immigration regulations mean that there is almost no chance to legally migrate to the EU and reside in a member state. For those who want to enter, making use of border crossing services is often the only possibility for penetrating ”Fortress Europe.”

The goal of the project ”Border Crossing Services” (”Dienstleistung: Fluchthilfe”) is to redefine and highlight the positive aspects of terms such as ”smuggler” or ”trafficker” which have been given a negative connotation through the dominant medial discourse. In contrast to the widespread model for representation, the actual act of ”smuggling” is not presented as a criminal exploitation of asylum seekers. Instead, we highlight the service character of this business made necessary by European policies of exclusion.

Associated themes such as borders, migration and escape were worked on in cooperation with anti-racist groups, migrant organizations and students at the University of Lüneburg.

The project ”Border Crossing Services” was realized in a variety of media such as a direct mailing and a video which, together with additional fields of information, form an exhibition in the Kunstraum Lüneburg.

The project is based on a process-oriented approach. Throughout the course of the project, results from the different areas of research mutually influenced the other aspects of the project.

Direct-mailing ”Neues Grenzblatt”

Participating groups: Platform ”Für eine Welt ohne Rassismus” (For a World without Racism), Forschungsgesellschaft: Flucht und Migration (Research Group: Flight and Migration), TATblatt, Zebra, Maiz, The Voice, Kanak Attak, TschuschenPower

In cooperation with anti-racist groups and migrant organizations, the informational brochure ”Neues Grenzblatt” was produced and distributed in April 2001 along the outer-borders in Styria (A) to 12,000 households as a direct-mailing. The layout had a ”folksy” design to allow easier entry into a confrontation with the themes. The popular design featuring pictures of the region and headlines such as ”Border Crossing – Quality Services” is meant to arouse the curiosity of the region’s inhabitants. The readers are confronted with anti-racist positions and perspectives which are marginalized in conservative media. In the text contributions from the participating groups, all have employed a language which could theoretically also appeal to readers less familiar with such material. The informational brochure was also distributed at diverse events (some held in public spaces) and in cooperation with leftist groups. The brochures are also freely available at the exhibition.

Video ”Border Crossing Services”

A video (DV, color, 51 min), forms a central element of the exhibition, and will also be shown at thematically related events and alternative video festivals. It confronts the hegemonic model for representation of ”border crossing services” and migration. Based on conversations carried out in Germany and Austria with immigrants and persons involved in the political left, the basic theme was separated into four sections for analysis and critique: ”Who is allowed to migrate?,” ”Celebrating and excluding,” ”About border crossing services” and ”Against racism.”

A representative of the activist group ”Taxistas” describes how taxi drivers in Germany are criminalized as ”smugglers” for transporting illegalized people. The section ”Celebrating and excluding” is a ”short report” about the latest war machinery for border security, eagerly presented by soldiers at a festival of the federal armed forces at the Heldenplatz in Vienna on the Austrian national holiday. In the section ”About border crossing services,” a conversation with a leading border patrol officer in Frankfurt an der Oder shows contradictory arguments which are used to try to legitimize racist mechanisms for exclusion. The digital video premiered in March 2001 at the Diagonale, the Austrian film festival, in the framework of the events series ”Politik bilden!” (”Form Politics!”).

Exhibition ”Border Crossing Services”

Project group Lüneburg: Tina Dust, Uta Gielke, Maja Grafe, Nina Heinlein, Patricia Holder, Mara Horstmann, Sarah Kaeberich, Nina Koch, Susanne Neubronner, Astrid Robbers, Stig Oeveraas, Sabine Zaeske

Starting from a block seminar which we carried out at the University of Lüneburg, participating students formed a self-organized project group. In order to counteract the hierarchical relations which can possibly develop in the cooperative work between artists and students, we decided to present together the works which we co-produced, the independently produced contributions of the project groups and our own exhibition contributions in a commonly created exhibition framework.

All of the exhibition contributions were discussed in working meetings held at various stages of development. Thus, critique could subsequently be integrated into the later stages of the production process.

During a visit to Frankfurt an der Oder, research was carried out at the border. Elements of this research flowed into a video produced by the students which deals with further facets of the theme of migration and border crossing services. Conversations between members of the project group with students in Frankfurt an der Oder, with representatives of the migrant group ”Kanak Attak” in Hamburg and with representatives of ”Netzwerk gegen Rechts” in Lüneburg form a pool of research which allows insight into the local situations and reflects the students’ approach to the theme. The resulting video, edited by the project group was shown along with the video ”Border Crossing Services” as a video projection in the exhibition.

In a wall installation, texts, direct-mailings and flyers refer to the work of the groups who wrote articles for the ”Neues Grenzblatt” and to other contacted groups.

Based on a seminar on racism led by Ulf Wuggenig at the University of Lüneburg held during this time, the project group chose quotes from the literature discussed and discussed them with us. This is shown in an exhibit of text passages from the literature, which together with anti-racist magazines form a theoretical framework for the individual elements of the exhibition.

The project was sponsored by the Kunstraum of the University of Lüneburg and Verein Ökologie und Kunst, which supports the cooperation of art and science in the framework of cultural landscape research.

For more information about this project visit the original project website from 2001.

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