︎

Mark

Renegotiations in Self-Determination: Being In-Between (2020)


The project ‘Renegotiations in Self-Determination: Being In-Between’ aims on contextualising the impact of colonialism and globalisation in portraying the ‘state-of-being’ of (undocumented) Oversea Filipino Workers in Barcelona. The attempt of creating artificiality: the paradox process of constructing intimacy (The Colour of Truth: Documentarism in the Artistic Field, Hito Steyerl), descriptions of Marx’s theory of alienation from the self as a consequence of capitalistic fetishisms of endless growth and optimised production mechanisms. Finding patterns and structures in capturing the ‘Choreographies of Labo(u)r’ in the very specificity of precise actions and body movements of oversea workers in their field of execution. Thus creating juxtapositions of diverse acts of mechanical and soft gesticulations that can be translated into a performative act: causing a double bind — the intimate tie between behaviour and communication — in the collective minds that transpose methodologies of violence and exploitation into the actuality and climate of daily life. Narratives of individuals accepting deprivation for the sake of economic improvement and delusive abundance. Their migration experience shapes and fragments their ‘identity’*, self-determination and self-construction, which elevates the importance of their (des)integration in society in the format of coexistence, cooperation and collaboration.

Dispersed in the city of Barcelona, ‘Renegotiations in Self-Determination: Being In-Between’ is an analysis and a series of encounters with OFWs, historiographical references, cultural agents, and institutions.

Renegotiations in Self-Determination: Being In-Between (2020)




Q. Can we de facto detach human choreography from the medium ‘corpus’ itself and produce autonomous objects?
Mark