Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative an Event Accompanying

Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative An event accompanying Under the Same Sun “Tania Bruguera and Saskia Sassen in Conversation” London School of Economics August 18, 2016

JOHN BINGHAM-HALL I’m John Bingham-Hall, and I’d like to welcome you all to the LSE on behalf of Theatrum Mundi, which I’m very lucky to have a role in, doing research and creating programs like this, and also on behalf of the South London Gallery, who we’ve worked in partnership with to bring together this exciting, and I also think quite critically timed conversation between urban sociologist Saskia Sassen and artist Tania Bruguera. Both women, whether through research or artistic practice, are facing up to the new global reality of mass migration, and the crisis in the rights of migrants to visibility and audibility in the cities they find themselves in. For Theatrum Mundi, which is a project based in LSE cities which aims to create a platform for debate about the qualities and values of urban culture, tonight’s conversation is particularly exciting, as it engenders a lot of what we’re trying to do in our project. It brings together urbanism, thinking about how and why cities take shape, and the conditions for life they create, with art that imagines how things might be other than they currently are. It demonstrates how art and urbanism could learn from one another in addressing political challenges facing cities. And in doing so it shows that within art we can find not only reflections on the conditions of urban life, but also propositions for new kinds of social relationships, and also public moments of expression—particularly, in this case, where expression has been suppressed. This speaks very much to the aims of our multi-year project Designing Politics, which takes the shape of a series of design challenges in cities around the world, asking artists, urbanists, activists, and so on, to answer questions such as, how can urban design stimulate our use of the right to free speech? Can we design the conditions for the emergence of a new urban commons? And what would spaces designed to create a situation of respect look like in a starkly divided city like Rio, where our current challenge is open and receiving submissions.

I don’t think that Saskia Sassen needs much introduction for many of you, but just to say very briefly that she’s one of the leading thinkers drawing attention to the social and economic conditions that are creating this reality of expulsions and global migration that I’m talking about. And I’ll hand over in one second to Pablo León de la Barra, who’s going to say a little more about Tania Bruguera’s presence here. Finally, I just want to say a huge thank you to the South London Gallery. I think it’s very exciting to see a partnership like this between the academy and an arts institution in stimulating public debate about some of our most urgent issues, especially given how poor the quality of that debate currently appears in the public realm. So, we’re very grateful to have been able to work with the South London Gallery, who have really made this happen, and I hand over to Pablo León de la Barra for a brief moment.

PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA Thank you everyone for being here. I am Pablo León de la Barra, and I am the Guggenheim UBS MAP Latin America curator. In the name of the Guggenheim and the South London Gallery, our partner for the exhibition Under the Same Sun at South London Gallery, I welcome you all here,

and I thank Saskia and Tania for joining us tonight. I’m going to tell you just a little bit about Tania before handing it to them. I wanted to find her bio on the Internet, and I Googled “Tania Bruguera bio,” and her page was hacked, which is kind a normal thing to happen to Tania, after her activism in Cuba [laughter]. Tania was born sometime in the late ’60s in Cuba. Since she was young, she started making art, moving to performance and body actions. She slowly started to shift from performative actions in which she herself was the subject of these actions, to a critique of the Cuban revolution, specifically the failures of the revolution, the promises of the revolution, and Fidel himself. More recently, she has been doing a kind of performance that involves the social body, which involves a critique of urban situations. Many of you might have seen recently, at Tate Modern, the reactivation of her 2008 performance Tatlin’s Whisper #5, in which two policemen riding horses start to move and herd people inside the Turbine Hall, really reactivating, or acting as people manifesting in the streets are treated sometimes by police forces.

In 2009, during the Havana Biennial, she did Tatlin’s Whisper #6, in which she had a platform, a podium, similar to this one, with a mustard curtain behind it, and a microphone, which allowed people in Cuba, in Havana, to say whatever they wanted for a minute, something that’s normally not allowed in Cuba. This was done within the biennial, but of course it proves how Tania’s work moves beyond the gallery, and activates society. The work that was very problematic for her, even within the art context, was attempted to be reactivated a year and a half ago on December 31, 2014, shortly after it was announced that the USA and Cuba were reestablishing relations. At that time, she attempted to reactivate the work not at an art space, but at what was called José Martí Square before the revolution, and now is called Revolution Square. Tania was detained for attempting to do this, and was placed under intense surveillance because of attempting to do this. She says about her work, and the relationship between art, activism, and politics in her work, that she seeks to transform audiences into active citizens. So really this kind of moving away from the contemplation of the art object into really transforming us as the public into political, active citizens.

As part of her recent social practice, she ran Arte de Conducta, which was an art and activism school in Havana, which laid the ground for the new generation of Cuban artists working today. More recently, she has been developing the project Arte Útil, which happened at Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and at MIMA [Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art] in Middlesbrough. It really uses and takes further this idea that she’s been developing of “useful art,” art that is useful politically and socially, and which makes us part of the action. More recently, in Cuba, she’s been trying to open the Hannah Arendt School of Activism, which has caused her lots of problems [Tania laughs]. But, knowing her, she won’t stop until that school is open.

Finally, for the past five years, she’s been working in Queens, initially supported by the Queens Museum, developing the project Immigrant Movement International, which is really using the budget of art in order to create a space, a center, where immigrants in Queens—especially Mexican and Bolivian—could reclaim the rights and have access to a community space in which they could challenge their situation. It was because of this project that, together with South London Gallery, we invited Tania to do a residency at the South London Gallery as part of the exhibition Under the Same Sun. She has been here almost a month. A lot of what she’s been doing has been talking to different immigrant leaders and immigrant thinkers. Part of this is the

conversation with Saskia, so we’ll hear a little bit more about Tania’s project and Saskia’s thinking about current situation of the immigrant, which of course has become super relevant, in the current situation in England, something that we didn’t plan when we thought about having Tania coming here.

Tania’s residencies, Tania’s project, and Tania’s talk are all part of the bigger public program that we’ve been doing with the South London Gallery as part of the exhibition Under the Same Sun. And really, there’s this idea of pushing the limits of the gallery beyond the South London Gallery, beyond Peckham, and really activating it with different activities and programs within London and outside. Maybe some of you saw a few weeks ago the activation by Alfredo Jaar, at Piccadilly Circus, of A Logo for America. And I think with this, I’ll finish, and really thank Saskia for being here, Tania for being here, and all of you. Thank you.

TANIA BRUGUERA Thank you Pablo, for the information. Thank you so much for this project, and for bringing it to different places, and seeing how it relates to different places. Thank you so much to the South London Gallery, they have been amazing. I just want to say a little thing, that their program Art Assassins is one of the best in the world I’ve seen. So I invite you to collaborate with them, or to work with them on that. And also I want to thank John, for bringing us here. And of course, Saskia, who I met a few years ago. Saskia and I talked a little bit, and we decided to focus on immigration. So I’m only going to talk about the projects I’ve done on immigration.

Declaring that you are an immigrant is a very confusing situation. Most of the immigrants I know never say they are immigrants. They say, “I am from Lebanon,” “I am from Cuba,” “I am from Ecuador,” “I am from Holland.” Or the Netherlands, let’s say. So I think it’s extremely strange already when you have to redefine yourself. As soon as you become an immigrant, you have to redefine yourself and put everything into question. Unfortunately, many people do that for you as well, and they don’t give you the chance, for you to, let’s say, then come up with your own ideas of who you want to be. Personally, because the situation in Cuba in relation with people who leave, who become emigrados, emigrants, is very charged politically. So for a long time I didn’t say, “I’m an immigrant.” Because in Cuba, you are not an immigrant, you are an emigrant.

But I was in Paris, by chance, during the Banlieue unrest, and it was extremely intense for me to see the news on TV, then walk in the street with a friend and find a gun—an actual gun—that was broken in the street. That was the moment when I realized that, yes, we are immigrants, but the only thing they give us is violence. They take away from us ways of communicating, ways of negotiating, ways of coming up with different ideas. So, I started meeting with all these associates and activists, and it was very interesting to find that some immigrants were more politically equipped than the people who were helping them in their countries. So I thought, okay, one of the issues that I’m interested in working with, in terms of immigration, is the political power of immigrants, which I realized was the first thing they were stripped of.

In 2011, I created this project called Immigrant Movement International, which was working in the neighborhood of Corona, Queens, in the United States, New York. And the first action of the project was to come up with a manifesto—a migrant manifesto. This is how I met Saskia,

because we came up with a group of experts, together with people in the neighborhood, together with political scientists, economists, rapporteurs from the UN, plus the mom who has no job—a stay-at-home mom. It was pretty interesting to have all of these people together, and they all together came up with this beautiful manifesto. Some of the strategies we used were of course taken from previous struggles. For example, one of the people in the groups said that one thing that they were reverting to was the idea of naming—you know, how they name you negatively. We have been called many names—illegals, aliens, guest workers, border crossers, undesirables, exiles, criminals—not citizens—terrorists, thief, foreigners, invaders, undocumented. How can we understand the differences between each other, converge in one place all together? What were the elements that we could find, that everybody could relate to in the experience of immigration?

So we came up with these different ideas. We know the international connectivities and the reality that migrants have helped create. We understand that the quality of life of a person or country is contingent on migrants’ work. We identified as part of the engine of change. I think that was extremely important, because we wanted to make sure that we were integrated in all the social struggles of the country we are in, as well. Of course, there was this idea about being tied to more than one country, and the idea that right now, we cannot solve this multilateral problem from only one country. So it has to be this kind of overall network of solutions. Of course, we wanted to claim the right to move, but one of the things I really like is when we start asking for the same rights as corporations. For immigrants, we are not allowed, in general, especially the people who are fleeing from wars, and who are fleeing from economic wars, and so on, they don’t have the same opportunity these corporations have, where they decide, “Okay, I’ll go here, I’ll try for a year, let’s see if it works, and then if not, I’ll leave.” When you become an immigrant, you make a lifelong decision that sometimes you cannot undo.

We also said that—and I think this was very important, because of course the law is important— we think that sometimes the law is not fair, not just. So we believe that the only law deserving of our respect is an unprejudiced law, one that protects everyone everywhere. No exclusions, no exceptions. We condemn the criminalization of migrant lives. So I think with all of these points, we were trying also to come up with a counter narrative, especially one in which we really wanted not only to value the working force of migrants, but also to understand that these people come with a cultural, social, technical, and political knowledge that we are eliminating, that we are not acknowledging. So we were really much interested in revisiting the figure of the immigrant.

Of course, this is a no-border manifesto. Although many people in the group were not in favor of this, we wanted to acknowledge the damage borders are doing to this conversation, and we decided to say, we are convinced that the functionality of international borders should be reimagined in the service of humanity. So we have also the idea of the commons, saying that the Earth, of course, is for everybody. And the last one, which I really like, is we witness how fear creates boundaries, how boundaries create hate, and how hate only serves the oppressors. We understand that migrants and non-migrants are interconnected. When the rights of migrants are denied, the rights of citizens are at risk, which was Saskia’s contribution in general, but that was her very specific point. Then we decided to come with the slogan, which is, “Dignity has no

nationality,” which has followed the project all along. This is only a preview, to establish the conversation. And I want now to welcome Saskia to do her presentation, and then I’ll come back.

SASKIA SASSEN I love that manifesto. We should have had copies for everybody. When you have time, you can really move into each of those statements. There is a lot of depth. And I think it looks at the future. It doesn’t look simply at our present. A lot of those clauses really, they’re barely imaginable today. But I think we are going in that direction in bits and pieces, and we must also go. We have two subjects—the immigrant, and the refugee. Right? Recognized in law—very different types of law. One is an international regime. When the refugee appears, and has a legitimate claim, we see the refugee. When the immigrant appears, and each… I mean, the refugee law is an international law. Refugee, immigrant, every country has their own mish-mash, and often it is truly a mish-mash. There are contradictions there, they change this, and they move that. So it’s a bit arbitrary. But nonetheless, if you have a legitimate claim in the eye of the law, you are recognized.

I have gotten very interested—and this also belongs to the future—in a third, emergent subject. And that is the subject when she appears at our border, and is invisible. It doesn’t matter how much materiality there is—her body—the law cannot see her. And I think this third subject is the subject we’re witnessing today in these migrations in Europe, in the migrations of children from Central America—I’m talking about Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, not Mexico. These are very specific new migrations. And the Rohingya in Myanmar, along with some Bangladeshi, etc., so there is a new emergent history. And I think that a lot of what is happening with a considerable disarray in the current condition in Europe—and Europe has been more generous than the United States. The United States said, “Oh yeah, we’ll take two thousand Syrians.” What is that? That is nothing! And then they moved it up to twenty. And now they’re having trouble. So when I look at Europe, Europe was not prepared. I’ve done a big analysis of where all they went wrong. But at least Europe took in millions. I mean, it’s not a perfect picture. However, the mode in which we were taken in is not a solution. You know, you have 2.5 million recognized refugees from Iraq. You have 2.5 million in Afghanistan. The Syrians, we know, in Lebanon, in Jordan, it’s not a manageable proposition. And then there are the ones who are coming from Africa.

So we, right now, do not know how to handle this. And in that sense, this manifesto that you presented, Tania, opens up—after all, they’re humans. I was going to show, and I totally forgot, there is a slide that said, “What did America look like before immigrants?” Which in the Trump version—you know whom I’m talking about—they’re all white. [laughter] But what did America look like before immigrants? And this is a map that shows all the different original tribes, right? I mean, so the immigration story is everywhere.

Now, back to my three flows. These are actually generated by questions of climate change. What was land is now a desert, or is a flooded plain. And what we call—and I say it in quotation marks”economic development,” the expansion of mining, the expansion of plantation agriculture, the expansion of cities, the building of gated communities. This is a subject—and let me just focus on one sort of moment of these multiple arrangements—small holders. Small agricultural types, right? Who know, by the way, how to keep Earth alive, as opposed to the

plantation. So they actually contribute to our future, as opposed to plantations or the mining, which really, you know, destroy our future, basically. Now when they are thrown out, and they’re thrown—the estimate is two to three million people every year, in a whole multiplicity of sites across the world. They are migrants. They are refugees. They’re actually economic development refugees, or climate change refugees. And there’s this intermediate step that has me very disturbed, which is when they are thrown off their land—and it’s brutal, and it’s happening in many places—the first step is often that they disappear in the big slums of the nearby big city. And then we’ve lost them. We’ve lost the fact that they are not slum-dwellers—and slum- dwellers are very capable people, by the way—but these former small holders, they have knowledge about land, about plants, about all kinds of things. And we need that knowledge—we are forgetting that knowledge. So they disappear, and they become a generic urban slum-dweller. Something very big is lost for all of us. We lose a subject. We lose the knowledge—there is a lot of knowledge in these particular subjects, etc., etc. And then of course as they move on, they are neither a refugee, nor are they a regular immigrant. And when I ask myself, who is the immigrant? The immigrant is radically different, in many ways, from the refugee, if you want to narrow it down.

So the immigrant is actually a strong subject. Very often the immigrant doesn’t have to leave. But she leaves. And she leaves behind a home, a place, to which she wants to contribute, which she wants to grow—she might go back there. But she’s, above all, a very strong subject. I’d like to mention—though for me it was a bad adventure—my first job in the United States, where I went illegally. I mean, you know, it wasn’t a big deal, frankly. I looked like a tourist. You know? So I didn’t have any problem. But yeah, my first job was as a cleaning woman. And the other cleaning women were mostly of Caribbean, African descent. Each one of us knew, number one, that we were strong. Yes it was hard work, yes it paid little, but we were not oppressed, broken beings. And the most important thing—and from there came a whole theoretical thing for me— that we as subjects could not be flattened, could not be reduced to the space, the workspace within which we were functioning. And in fact, most of the other women had training as nurses. I always say, we need to develop a digital app that allows the members of a low-income community, in other words, a stressed-out neighborhood, if you want, to know all the knowledge in that neighborhood? I know doctors and lawyers who have to wait a few years before they can get accepted in the context of the United States. I’m sure it’s happening in the UK as well. They have knowledge but they are, what? They are taking care of parking lots, that kind of stuff. The people in the neighborhood should know, we have a doctor, we have a lawyer. You know what I mean? So you begin to reposition the subject. You begin to see that the subject contributes, and can contribute. Same thing with the fact that immigrants make jobs. And when you see who’s against immigrants, like Brexit—although that was a distorted discussion, I thought, about immigration—the ones who were so afraid were often people who lived in areas where there were not many immigrants, but where there was a loss of jobs. From that perspective, the immigrant means they’re going to take away a job. If you’re in London, you know, immigrants make jobs. They make neighborhood economies. Right? You know, there is such level of confusion.

Now, there are two types of flows, the ones that I mentioned, that are sort of different. And in that sense, they signal the making of new histories. And one of them is just the data source, the movement of children, by themselves, out of mostly the capitals of these countries—Honduras,

Guatemala, and El Salvador, which, as you know, are some of the most violent places. Now the typical explanation is, the violence. I go digging. Violence doesn’t just fall from the sky, readymade. Violence is made through a variety of practices. One factor I want to mention, which connects with what I was saying, is these economic development migrants, and the enormous number of plantations, the wood—Central America is one of the areas where you still have a big forest, or they’re cutting it down. The violence was actually started in rural areas, by massive displacements of people, who then arrived to fairly limited cities, the capitals of these countries, and they can’t live.

So the violence is actually partly generated by—if you look at GDP per capita as economic development . . . So there is a real distortion there. While I talk, you can look at some of these figures. What is interesting here, the violet up there is Mexico. That goes down, and these three Central Americans go very high up. Then it falls down. Because the United States tells Mexico, “Set up controls in the southern border of Mexico.” And those controls were brutal, absolutely brutal. The United States are pretty brutal. But the Mexicans actually outdid the Americans; we don’t know how many were sold. We don’t know how many died. We know very little. So what we know is that in terms of arrivals at the United States, it falls down radically. And now it’s back up, because the United States, under pressure from all kinds of human rights organizations, had to stop that modality in the south. Now these children, when you ask them, they say, “I am afraid. I’m afraid.” They don’t say, “I want a better life.” The youngest that we know about is eight years old. And it’s just fear. So, these are horrible stories. This is not simply an immigrant. But this child will not be recognized as a refugee, because there is no war supposedly going on. And partly they are there in cities, and partly the violence is explained by, absolutely, the takeover of rural areas, rural economies, by plantations, etc. Now here are a few more—here, you see how it grows, grows, grows. These are just three flows.

Now a second flow: Myanmar. So, the Rohingya—I’m sure that some of you have heard of the Rohingya. They have been there for centuries, in Myanmar—no conflict, no nothing. A second actor suddenly pops up. A particular group of Buddhist monks say, at one point, “It is legitimate to kill the Rohingya.” The Rohingya are Muslims. And a persecution happens, and you have a new migration. So just to situate the area, Myanmar, Thailand, etc. This is the Andaman Sea. I always say, we have the Mediterranean as a very grand operational space, and then we have the Andaman Sea, which has seen boats floating there with thousands of people slowly dying. Just what we saw in the Mediterranean every now and then, we saw there. But here is the interesting bit. So suddenly, the Rohingya are persecuted. See, this stuff [violence] again. It doesn’t fall from the sky. One has to interrogate. What other histories are being made? And one of the big histories that is being made is land grabs in Myanmar. And it started about four years ago. Once Myanmar opens up, there are vast numbers of investors that are coming. It’s untouched. It’s virgin terrain, to some extent, in terms of mining issues, in terms of plantation agriculture. So that’s what happened there. Again, this is economic development—and I say “development” in quotation marks.

Now there is a third sector. Now these figures are much smaller than what we have seen in Europe, and again, this is a community that has lived there for centuries, without a problem. But now that land is getting grabbed, and the major victims of the land grabs are, of course, the Myanmari themselves, the rural people. And the United States actually got so bad, that the

United States took in about 25,000 of these refugees. And there is the other story that is developing, which is very bad, is that a lot of the Thai mountain people are basically enslaved by the fishing industry of Thailand and Malaysia. And they have discovered graves on the border between southern Thailand and Malaysia. They have discovered mass graves of workers who were too old to keep on working, etc. This is a horror zone. As is Central America, as is some of the stuff, of course, that is happening in Europe. To me, this third subject, this subject that we cannot see, there is no law that captures it, because we think of all of these plantations, and the mining, etc., as economic development—to me, that is a very troubled subject. The children are a bit that way, too. They are neither here nor there, and it is one that we just don’t think about. They are sort of invisible. Many of the people who are coming in from Asia into Europe are that kind of person. They are not all simply war refugees. And especially from Sub-Saharan Africa, we have such people. So that, for me, is sort of one of the histories, if you want, in the making.

[applause]

TANIA BRUGUERA I’ve been working on the subject of immigration, in my work, since 2005. But I’m just going to show you two pieces, because we decided I would want to give time for you guys to interact with us and create a dialogue. So, I’m going to focus on two projects. The first one is called El Partido del Pueblo Migrante, the Party for Migrant People. One of the things that I was very interested in, with this project, was to come up with the idea of a nation of immigrants. There are so many immigrants in the world. They are living under the same struggles around the world. They have the same challenges as human beings, as well as political beings, as well as labor, and professionals, whatever that means. Because as you say, the knowledge of the earth is something that is being lost, because these people come from these rural places, to the city, and they only want them to work in what that city needs, instead of understanding what they have that they can provide to the city with. So, I’m very interested in this idea of the people, you know? En Espanol, in Spanish, “Pueblo” means the actual people who are part of the nation, and also means, you know . . .

SASKIA SASSEN You know, we don’t have a good translation.

TANIA BRUGUERA The people—I don’t know how you say that in English. It’s just like kind of this dual situation. “Pueblo” could be a town; it could be a nation. So, I was very interested in this idea of, how could I put together all these people that are having this situation? And especially this idea of party. I was very interested in creating a political party that would represent these people politically. Why? Because there was a problem of intermediation.. Everywhere I went—and this is a real story—I went to the Netherlands, and I met with this group of immigrants who were coming from different countries in Africa, and they were a national problem for the Dutch. They had all these amazing, nice people helping them to navigate this new society, and trying to navigate the negotiations with the government for their rights. And it was impressive how the people who were trying to help knew much less than the people who just came to that country. Because these people were fleeing from political situations, and they were political organizers, they were leaders of their parties in their countries, and they knew how to create a campaign,

they knew how to confront power. And that made me think about all of this. And again, the fact that the first right an immigrant is stripped of is their political rights. We don’t see them as political subjects. We see them as labor subjects.

We did this in Mexico, during the elections, the presidential elections. We were looking at, what were the ways in which art can infiltrate political spaces to come up with different creative solutions, or different approach to the imaginary of immigrants. And this is one of the art show, where we had a hundred voceros—anybody know what that is? Yeah, okay. So, vocero is a very peculiar job in Latin America, especially Mexico—I don’t know if you have that here—where people are in the street shouting the news.

SASKIA SASSEN Yeah.

TANIA BRUGUERA Like, the headlines of the news, in order for people to get their attention, and buy the newspaper.

SASKIA SASSEN And they’re not always shouting the same headline. [laughs]

TANIA BRUGUERA Yeah. Sometimes they repeat the same one over and over and over. So what we did is, we had a hundred voceros in the city of Mexico, in the main square where everybody goes to protest and so on, shouting the rights of immigrants. And demand that the candidates look at the right of immigrants. One thing, as you were saying, that was pretty shocking in Mexico, is like—I was doing this work in New York with Immigrant Movement—seeing people arriving from those countries, and what happened when they arrived. And then I went to Mexico thinking that they would be sympathetic, because you know, there is a high percent of the population in Mexico that lived outside of the country, and know what happens with, you know, like, they get in jail, and how they are treated. It was a big surprise, because Mexico, as you said, was worse than anything I’ve seen anywhere, with the immigrants coming from the south. So I think that was a bit of a shocking experience. As well as when I was in the United States, it was very shocking seeing that most of the racist and separatist people regarding immigrants were immigrants themselves, who have already acquired a legal status. So I think this is a complex situation, but it’s important, because many of us think that the immigrants are the subjects of the 21st century. And that’s the one battle we have to win, for this century.

Then what happened is, I’m an artist, so you go to an exhibition in a museum, and they just want you to do a little drawing with the logo of the party. And I said to the person in the museum, “No, no, no, I want to do a real party. This is not a joke. We’re going to do a real party.” So we started organizing. And we start trying to locate all these activists and so on. And in Mexico, there is a weird legal loophole, which is every six months, after the president is elected, there is the possibility that the electoral institute can have anybody create a new party. So here we are, number 45 [laughter]. We created the party, and this, for me, was amazing, because as an artist, I always want to go beyond the spaces that are given to us as artists. Like, these protected spaces in a gallery, or a place where everybody is aware that they’re going to see something. I’m really

interested in getting inside the political everyday life of people. So we were part of it. Unfortunately, the museum had no more money for the project, and they had to move to the next exhibition [laughs]. That was very unfortunate, but at least we were part of that. And for me as an artist, the documentation of all the work we did is not a photo, but it is the memory of people who participated in the project, the energy these people took to continue the fights, and continue the work, after the project was done, and to be in that list, in the Instituto Federal Electoral of Mexico. So we are part of that history.

I’m very interested, also, as you might know by now, in the idea of confronting power, and how to use art to confront power. So, I did this project, actually, for the exhibition that is now in the South London Gallery that was at the Guggenheim, where I created a campaign, which was a postcard. And we were every day in front of the museum with the postcard, and people signed the postcards, and the campaign was . . . I’m going to read: “Your Holiness, Pope Francis. Today, when the established model of the nation-state no longer offers a sense of belonging, we call on a place that was borne as a conceptual nation without borders, to embrace those looking for a home.” And then you have two options. “I want to apply for Vatican City citizenship.” [laughs] And of course, because we really value solidarity, we say, “I request a Vatican City citizenship be granted to immigrants.” Underneath we have a little a little quote saying, “Undocumented immigrants need only provide the city and country of current residency.” That means that we wanted to make it as useful as possible. Meaning, the person has to sign, they have to have the name, where they live. Some people were very cautious with the information, but some even put their actual address where they live and everything. So, we got more than 15,000 signatures in over . . . I think it was three months, the show, or two months. And it was amazing, because as an artist, I used the big flow of people coming into the Guggenheim. And we had amazing experiences. Well, we had good ones, and not-so-good ones. We had a guy that was really horrible, and, “Why are you doing this? These immigrants want our jobs, our women. They are criminals.” And I was trying to educate, and you know, to have some sort of conversation. And this is an American, you know, a blonde, blue-eyed, typical white American guy. And then all of a sudden, this Asian woman comes, “Honey?” And he had an immigrant girlfriend. And I was like, “Okay. . .” And then I said—the only time I was religious in this project—“Please God, liberate her from this guy.” [laughter]

I’m referencing the Vatican for two reasons. First of all, because it is a kind of conceptual nation—this idea of rethinking the nation-state, which I know a lot of people don’t agree with this, but this idea of what are nation-states? These are fictions that we have created.

SASKIA SASSEN So, in fact, what you are describing here is that when I look at the world now, I see that we have the interstate system, but we also have other geographies that are getting shaped. Some of them are corporate, and they cut across, with great ease, all kinds of barriers and distinctions. And they include very particular parts of countries. So if you look at the corporate, high-level, etc., it’s quite interesting. It’s a kind of imperialism, that is quite different from the past imperialism, where if you think of Britain, they wanted the whole of Africa. This new kind of imperial geography is very . . . they just want the extractive moment. And when they’re done with extraction, they’re out of there.

TANIA BRUGUERA Exactly.

SASKIA SASSEN The migrants and the refugees, they also make geographies—you know, we see that very clearly also in the case of Europe now—and it would be very interesting actually to think of those geographies as spaces that are made by the migrants. And that somehow out of that must come another narrative than simply saying “You’re crossing a border.” We academics, we’re continuously traveling around. But the best part, I think, is the Vatican. Why not?

TANIA BRUGUERA [laughs] Absolutely, there are geographies that we create. And this is why the logo of the project is the Pangaea. So it’s funny because I didn’t treat Europe very well, as you see. But this idea that when everybody was in the same piece of the same land, before it separated, there were no borders. This idea we used in the manifesto—the Earth is a common; it belongs to everybody. But the idea of using the Vatican had this idea of the conceptual nation, and the fact that many, many times, we approach immigration with a charity attitude. Why? I mean, I’m not saying it’s wrong to help people. But immigrants don’t need your charity.

SASKIA SASSEN They are strong subjects.

TANIA BRUGUERA Exactly. They need jobs. They need for you to give them a chance.

SASKIA SASSEN And they’ll make jobs. They’ll make neighborhood economies, you know?

TANIA BRUGUERA And they come up with things. They come up with their own ways of creating economies, and their own knowledge. But in this case, of course, the Vatican and the church are very well- known for the charity work. Basically, we were stating that we don’t want charity. We want our papers. And of course, because the Vatican is what it is, I started research, and they don’t have that many people in there. And also because it’s a conceptual nation.

SASKIA SASSEN And even more interestingly, they own properties all over...

TANIA BRUGUERA Everywhere, exactly.

SASKIA SASSEN And they’re huge. They would accommodate quite a few people.

TANIA BRUGUERA In every country. [laughter] They can accommodate . . .

SASKIA SASSEN Many countries, that is correct.

TANIA BRUGUERA One more thing—I think it was very interesting, the idea of the Vatican passport, as well.

SASKIA SASSEN Yeah.

TANIA BRUGUERA Then you don’t need visa for anywhere [laughter].

SASKIA SASSEN You know, it reminds me of the Yongsan passport. Do people know what that was? That was the first passport that was invented. This goes way, way back when. It was great.

TANIA BRUGUERA But anyways, there is a website, it’s called Dignityhasnonationality.net. It is still open for more signatures, and we are in the process—if anybody in here knows him—of contacting the Pope, to give him all the postcards [applause].

SASKIA SASSEN So now we take questions, I guess.

TANIA BRUGUERA Okay. I think she was first, and then?

AUDIENCE MEMBER #1 Why couldn’t you work on forcing governments to implement these corporations that move into these particular places in Africa to actually do the homework, and provide a support system for the people they’re displacing, and to pay for it all?

SASKIA SASSEN Well, I’m working on that. That is why I emphasize, this is a subject that we have not recognized. It’s neither here nor there. And so we have to develop regimes. I also think that the UNHCR has to change a bit.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #1 What’s that?

SASKIA SASSEN That is the refugee regime. That was made out of wars. Our wars are no longer that way. Our wars today are asymmetric wars. So when we talk about these different geographies, there are many ways in which one can make an argument that there are new geographies that are very active, that are far more significant, often, than the continental edges, or the edges of countries.

So in the refugee regime, I think what you just said is extremely important. Most of the refugees are more highly educated than the average citizen. They come with knowledge. Give them a chance. So we have a whole effort now going on.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #1 And they have a vision.

SASKIA SASSEN You know, those abandoned, or semi-abandoned villages in Italy, in the northeast of Germany, etc. This is your village. One person did it in the south of Italy. They said, “This is your village.” And they took over. And at the beginning, the few elderly people who were left, they were a bit, “What is this?” And they sang, they wept, and they reinvented it. And so, the “ Schrumpfende Städte,” you know that whole situation in Northeastern Germany? But anyhow, there’s a lot of abandoned land. I know a group of techies who wound up going to an abandoned village, in the north of Spain. It took them two years, and they transformed it into an agricultural production— very smartly done. They’re very smart people. So when you begin to look at it that way. It is about new ways, new logics of incorporation, rather than this national passport as the only way.

TANIA BRUGUERA Yeah. And the idea of, like, these people are disposable. I remember going to Israel, and they were importing these Asian young women, because they needed people to take care of the elder.

SASKIA SASSEN Oh yeah, that is a big deal, that’s right.

TANIA BRUGUERA Right? And then as soon as that’s done, now you have to leave. Well, I’m sorry, I spent ten years of my life here, I created a life. You brought me here, right? So I think it’s pretty interesting, this idea of the disposable body.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #2 I’m interested in Saskia’s troubled but strong subject, and your notion of the political subject, and I’m thinking of the work of somebody like Wendy Brown, and also Étienne Balibar. The way they think about financialization, and the effect on the subject. The subject no longer being a subject, but being a speck of human capital—because of the mode of reason, biopolitics and governance of financialization, and the speck of human capital being able to be understood exclusively as self-enhancement, for the purposes of credit -seeking and investment. And the idea is that something in the subject has been lost, and they all agree that we have to find the “other “of biopolitics; we have to find an art practice that is the other of the biopolitics of financialization. So the big question is, for them, is you have to think the subject, if one wants to think about a new left, or think about the commons, whether one’s thinking about representation or association. So both of you seem to harness the importance of reactivating the subject, away from being just the speck of human capital.

TANIA BRUGUERA I’m going to illustrate it with the work I’ve done. In Immigrant Movement International, this project I’ve been doing since 2011, it was a big school, let’s say, for me. And one of the things I learned is that these subjects are ready to be responsible. They are ready to be responsible. And they are ready to commit. And I think there is some sort of a strange tension between the people who live in the place, who kind of think everybody else owe them for their contribution, but they don’t allow other people to contribute. It’s very interesting. Because we are in a moment where the location of things is very difficult to negotiate, because the Internet, and you’re here today, tomorrow there, if you are privileged. But it seems that when immigrants come to a place, the people in the place really want to make sure you’re staying there forever. Right? To make sure the investment is worth it. But the corporations don’t do that. They create different subjectivities of not pertinence, but use.

SASKIA SASSEN So, I do a lot of stuff on finance. I know their work, of course, I know them both. Wendy and Étienne Balibar are really adorable. But I would say finance is a logic of extraction. And our current period is marked by, I think, Google. Google is an extractive sector. We tend to think only mining as extractive. Finance is radically different from traditional banking. The traditional bank sells something it has—money—for an interest. Clean operation, we all need it. Finance sells something it does not have. And in selling what it does not have, becomes dangerous. And for instance, it has nothing to do with microeconomics, or macroeconomics, it is algorithmic math. I have done a lot of research on all of this. Goldman Sachs, in the back room—you know the back room? The back room is where the secretaries used to sit. A hundred physicists. Now I adore physicists, but many of them, after they are thirty, you know, they have done their inventions, etc., they don’t know what to do with themselves. You see them, they’re sitting, and they’re creating, they’re beautiful people. And these instruments are extraordinarily complex. And that is the tool with which finance invades other sectors. You can call it predatory. Extractive is a bit more gentle. When you think of something extractive, it’s like the sub-prime mortgage. According to our central bank, the Fed, in the United States, fifteen million households lost their homes, in an operation that was presented as a mortgage, and had nothing to do with a mortgage. They were using those people. They camouflaged the little mortgages to have an asset. When the high-level financial investment circuit said, “Please, enough of a derivative based on another derivative. Give me an asset,” you know, “backed security.” Well all that was left in the United States were very modest households. And the head of the Fed, he said it. This is criminal. And it’s now declared illegal, that instrument. Now the physicists, they developed it. I studied it. Sixteen complicated steps to delink the actual modest value of the little house, from the financial instrument—the asset-backed security—sold to the financial . . . To me, the financializing is a critical issue. Luckily, finance is overdone, you know, it’s so powerful, nobody can control it fully. But it absolutely has been extraordinarily destructive. And so then the immigrants . . . I think, Tania, what you were saying, these different spaces, these different geographies, cut across these interstate borders. Global capital has created its own geographies, of course. They are always doing it.

TANIA BRUGUERA It’s a little intense of an experience, talking about extraction. In Immigrant Movement, we had one woman, one mother, who told us one day in one of our sessions that her brother died, and we

all knew that, and we help her with this. And then we didn’t see her for a while, and then we saw her again, and she came and say, “I am very happy that finally, my brother is legal.” I said, “What do you mean?” Said, “Yes, because he was an organ donor. And three people, American people, are alive because of him today.”

SASKIA SASSEN But that’s another version of a subject. We are just bodies, to extract all kinds of things. And I always say, if they are in that extractive mode, rather than just taking out the eyes and the lungs or whatever. Hey, there’s so much more that they might as well, then, you know?

TANIA BRUGUERA Creativity, and all this.

SASKIA SASSEN So it is doubly destructive.

TANIA BRUGUERA Anybody else has a question? Okay, yeah?

AUDIENCE MEMBER #3 Thanks for your talk, Tania and Saskia. But there’s something I missed hearing a bit more about, which is the politics based on difference. Because of course, all of these democratic processes, what they tend to do is homogenize subjectivity, and of course, this leads to a lot of exclusions. So even when we talk about El Partido del Pueblo Migrante, what my concern is, we have a problem of representation. What if someone doesn’t feel like they can correspond to the ideals that are being promoted there? Because of course, each individual has his or her own story. So on a theoretical ground, and almost on a practical basis, it would be interesting to see, how is this difference incorporated within political regimes, which doesn’t lead to exclusionary practices, and that is also institutionalized. And it’s up to the institution to recognize them as a subject or not, because this, in the end, creates national identity struggles as well, of wanting to be this same as the other, or why am I not the same? Because we have two notions, which are refugee and immigrant. But there is nothing that sounds positive as an in-between, where I am part of the political body. So I would like to see how you would engage with that.

TANIA BRUGUERA A big conversation is always the difference, and how a lot of immigrants claim that difference among them, even if they are undocumented, so on. The idea of the political party, and this idea of unifying, are not to homogenize the experience or the people. This is a political tactic, to come together, the same way the LGBTQI people came together at some point, because they realized that there was something bigger than their own personal experience, or their own cultural experience. And you see right now an international or global movement of LGBTQI rights. Some people are in India, some people are in Turkey, some people are in United States—their experiences are extremely varied, but they all understand, this has to be a movement where everybody is together. You know?

SASKIA SASSEN These are these new geographies, you know? One way of thinking about it is that it is not about sharing, or we’re all the same, we’re on the same side—you know, that language, that older language. It’s another kind of formation. And one way of thinking about it is an alternative geography of difference, because the elites also have, what do we call them? [laughs] Those who are not migrants, or whatever, they also have difference. Differences are throughout.

TANIA BRUGUERA There is another thing regarding that—I think it’s more interesting to come together, to claim that immigrants are more than entertainers. Because the only function in society immigrants are given easily is entertaining, meaning food, music, or sport—you’re going to do something to entertain me, as a person who belongs here. I think having this idea of creating a party is stating that one is also a political subject. I also can tell you what happened in my country, and why maybe this doesn’t work, and you’re doing it here. It’s funny, because I remember in the year 2000, the elections in the United States, it was Gore versus Bush. And I was sitting very excited, for the first time in my life I was seeing elections, with a newspaper, a Coca-Cola, of course, the TV, and a pen, and I’m like, okay. I said to my roommate, “Oh, Gore won Miami.” I said, “Oh, that’s weird. But okay, it happens.” Okay. And then he came to me and said “Oh, he lost Miami.” It’s like, “Oh, you’re Cuban, you don’t understand anything about democracy,” Blah blah blah. And that day I told my friend, “You have the first capitalist dictator.” Because I know what a dictatorship is—I lived in one. So, because of my experience in Cuba, I was able to negotiate the subjectivities and the little nuances that grow into something else. And that’s some knowledge that all of us have, from different countries.

SASKIA SASSEN But it’s true. You know, that we are cantankerous beings, right? There is going to be this, and that is a way in which we cross through borders, cut down barriers and new configurations emerge, which then can also pass through an exclusionary . . . I mean, we are a bit of a mess. But I think it is very important to keep on moving, and recognizing. You know, I really have this sense now that I had that in the ’80s, too—I know some people were not born then, but anyhow—that we were really entering—and this is the West, now—a new phase. How do complex systems change? And they don’t change by changing everything. They often change by using existing capabilities of time, and shifting them to other organizing logics. You know, that kind of a thing. So when we talk about change, transformation, etc., there are multiple dynamics, really, that are in play. It’s not a homogeneity.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #4 It has been really interesting, your talk. But going a little bit beyond the perspective of the outsiders, I would like to ask both of you what should be the role of academia and the role of art to civilize insiders? Those who live the undeveloped life in the developed world? Because also that is a big issue, in order to think about integration of these refugees, of the immigrants.

SASKIA SASSEN In my latest book, one of the arguments I make is that we need to de-theorize, in order to re- theorize. We can’t escape theory. Because otherwise, we will see everything, you know, it just would be impossible. And one of the arguments that I make is that we have produced

extraordinary knowledge that has served us well in many ways. But we also have wound up now, after decades of this phase, this paradigmatic moment that takes on different specifics in different fields, but it is a kind of paradigmatic period—post-World War II, ’til now I would say. And so we have produced these incredible silos, chock full of knowledge. And because they are chock full of knowledge, one after the other, different. You can’t just say, “You know what? This stuff is not valid. Let’s just throw it out.” You can’t. There are so many rigidities. So back to this question of how do complex systems change. But say you take something like the gold mines in Montana, which are an absolutely disastrous history—an old history, full of total abuse of nature, etc. And you take the Norilsk nickel-producing complex in the north of Russia, which has a deep communist history—it started as a gulag, and is now the major nickel-producing thing in the world. And so, we are still caught up in the academy, in this interstate system. And so we see one as a communist blah-blah, and the other one capitalism. I say no. If we really interpolate that knowledge we have, about these two worlds, and we stand back, and ask, what really matters about these two, today? One answer, quickly, is that they’re both extraordinarily capable of destroying the environment. And that is result of flattening it out, out with all of those old histories, and silos, and borders, and just what is. And so, interpolating the present, huh? Which was your question—you, the swarm person? Swarm? [laughter] Your question was that kind of a question in a way, right? Sort of, working with all these other things, all these transversalities, and sort of a horizontalizing of the question. And yeah, that is sort of one practice that I engage in as an academic. And it actually works rather interestingly. I have my critics, clearly. But yes.

TANIA BRUGUERA What I have done with art, and the issue of immigration, what I have seen other people doing with art, regarding the issue of immigration, is a few things. The first thing is understanding that through art, these subjects can own the future. Because I’d give those people the opportunity to look beyond the everyday reality. So they can actually look at themselves differently, and then start trying to exercise their own identity, through art—the one they want, not the one that is imposed on them. So I think that’s one thing. The other thing is that I feel that through art, we can create a unity that otherwise is not possible in political parties, or social—even the activist groups, or this group don’t talk to that group. I mean, why? Because art brings together one commonality, which is the human experience. And it’s the humanity we all have to share. Like all these stories that I told you today were things that actually happened. And every time I told those stories to people, and other stories . . . We have many, many stories in Immigrant Movement that everybody understands. So everybody goes beyond these kinds of power relationships, and power dynamics. For example, this is a pin that I created.

SASKIA SASSEN Oh right, the pin.

TANIA BRUGUERA Because every time that we were talking with people, they went directly to the law, and to the way the law has affected immigration. And we say, “You know, let’s forget the law for a moment. Let’s talk about human respect.” And that’s what art does, you know?

SASKIA SASSEN That’s good.

TANIA BRUGUERA And of course, through Arte Útil. Why? Because Arte Útil is a way we have found, in which people who are not artists . . . because there is this idea that “Oh, I don’t know anything about art, I don’t know how to.” You know? So I think what we do is, like, we bring art as a tool, not as all the knowledge of our history they have to know to understand one image. We just say, art is a tool. And you can use it. And you can incorporate your own statement through that tool. So we use art, we don’t impose the history of our use, or that history for people to have in their hands.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #4 I just have a small question, maybe I didn’t explain myself properly. You are giving examples from the city. But in the rural areas, like here, in the UK, in the rural areas, they don’t have access to this kind of art, to this kind of sensibilization [sic]. Do you do anything like that, for those who have no access to the cultural life of the metropolis?

TANIA BRUGUERA I think a friend of ours might want to answer that. Do you want to answer that?

SASKIA SASSEN Oh, yeah, that’s good. We’re putting you to work.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #5 Well, not necessarily to answer it, but to extend it. And I think maybe what you’re trying to articulate is that on the one hand, you’re talking about an emerging subjectivity in the twenty- first century around the immigrant, which has huge potential, and is quite exciting and positive. But in a way, the dark matter in this new equation is the non-immigrant. The people who don’t move. The people who stayed, who don’t know how to get out of a hole. And this is where we’re finding the conflict, in the non-metropolitan centers. And so I think maybe a question is, what is the potential through this methodology to rethink those non-immigrant, non-migratory communities, who in a way need also to be liberated through the same mechanism.

SASKIA SASSEN Right. When I used to teach here at the London School of Economics—that was like ten years ago or something like that—it was full of mostly foreign Europeans, but not UK people. And they were all very European, you know? But they were all going back home, when they were done, to their homes. And so I see this new space, again, an operational space for a new generation, that of course “I’m European”—just to stick with Europe. Yeah, but you know, of course “I want to live in Poland,” you know, that kind of a thing. So it’s not, “I’m Polish.” It’s something else. So that the geography, where they wind up having a family, etc., is just one moment in a space that they consider their space. I’ve seen that with a lot of these young— they’re mostly, of course, I’m talking now of university students, right? But I was really struck by that, how they said, “I’m a European.” And then they all wound up mostly going back to their home countries. It could be Germany, it could be... And so, that is another variant. You see that, yes, there is still this sense of home, but there is also that other persona. And then when you add digital space—because digital also is creating extraordinary connections. And when you are in

digital space, it’s a kind of minimalism. And that minimalism enables a notion of membership. It’s when you are the thick subject that it really becomes difficult. I really have a sense that a lot of the young people are quite different from their parents—the big talkers are their parents. You know, in terms of the politicians, the artists, whatever they might be, right? Not the artists, let’s pull that out, but whatever. The academics. And so, but there is this other brewing reality, that is sort of my thing. I don’t mean everybody, because you have a lot of racisms everywhere, that is a whole other matter. But I do see this other emergent zone, you know?

TANIA BRUGUERA I totally agree with that. But I think there is also this problem of power dynamics. And I mean, if we go to the future, like, the ideal future, I think—I mean, this is an artist talking, right?—maybe people will not be separated by the place where they live, but the condition by which they decide to establish themselves. So maybe there is a group of people who are nomads, or who are temporary...

SASKIA SASSEN I always say I’m a nomad.

TANIA BRUGUERA Yeah, me too.

SASKIA SASSEN I’m nomadic, yeah. When I am for one day in Istanbul—Istanbul is less likely nowadays, but somewhere, you know—I put myself down, my friends come and say, “Let me show you the city.” I say, “No, no, I’m just putting my tent down right here in the café, on the sidewalk, and this is where I want to spend my day.” These are different ways in which you are not the old fashioned rootedness, you know—I shouldn’t say “old fashioned,” but you know, the more recognizable way.

TANIA BRUGUERA Yeah, well, exactly. While thinking this idea of the nomads, or the temporary and the permanent, and I think these are the categories. But the problem is when you create power dynamics within those, or when you create separation. It’s okay to be nomad. It’s not worse than being permanent. And vice versa. You know, permanent is not worse than being nomadic. The problem is when you give each of those categories a value, that is bigger or not than the other one. If everybody understands that these are modalities of living, what’s the problem? You like to be nomad, wonderful. You want to sleep with women? Wonderful. You want to sleep with men? Wonderful. It’s the same thing, like, it doesn’t matter. What’s the problem with this? And it’s because we are investing—that’s the problem. The idea of the economy, that is, we are investing in a place, and if you’re not going to invest, then we don’t want you. But what is investment? What is the investment in place?

SASKIA SASSEN Yeah. Is there one more absolutely urgent question? I’m ready for a glass of wine, so you’ll have to make it quick. [laughter and applause]

JOHN BINGHAM-HALL Thank you again to Saskia Sassen, our dear old friend, and Tania Bruguera, our new friend, everyone from South London Gallery, and Pablo. Thank you all for coming and being so attentive. Good night.