collaboration with David GIBBS
2-channel digital video, 36'
2004
In the certainty of statelessness, the construction of uncertainties. This visual document attempts to reveal the distant and ambiguous parallels between two gas stations near the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium, and the unresolved status of inhabitants of an asylum seekers' center in Middelburg, Holland. As outlined by the shipping forecasts from which the title is taken, destination is not always the best distinguishing marker of transit. At two gas stations situated on opposite sides of the highway, place becomes a nebulous identity rather than a fixed point. The directness of a pre-packaged architecture and environment is also the setting for indeterminacy. It is in fact amidst these most banally articulated structures that we find the cracks in the system through which we trace the routes of those displaced and without legal right of passage. The enormous disjunction is a paradox of time; in the case of the refugee, the culture of expediency can turn moments into years, or a supposedly temporary center into a mental condition.
screenings include: OK5 2004 Thesis Exhibition (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Arnhem, NL; 2014), Borderline Film Festival (Platform China, Beijing, CN; 2006), Border Conditions (66 East: Centre for Urban Culture, Amsterdam, NL; 2004)
