TRACKING THE SUBJECT

2018 - Audiovisual installation & publication

TRACKING THE SUBJECT is a research-based audiovisual installation and textual publication by the Brussels based artists’ collective TRIPOT, that sets out to present the audience with the subjective memories of the experiences immigrants lived during the ‘illegal’ journey they undertook towards Western Europe. The work aims to create a subjective counter narrative on the subject of the so-called ‘European migrant crisis’.

Current political and media discourses consist mainly of statistical data, dramatic anecdotes and constructed threats, which at once victimize and alienate the refugee. Both perspectives result in a dehumanization of the depicted subject. Simultaneously the refugees themselves are confronted with an administrative system that puts the onus on their shoulders, forcing them to document their request for asylum solely with objective and verifiable facts. Being repeatedly approached on these ‘objective’ elements of their journey, many start incorporating and reproducing this self-objectified perspective which results in distancing themselves from their personal motives, experiences, thoughts and memories.

TRACKING THE SUBJECT sets out to research and recreate the subjective and undocumentable space of illegal migration. By the use of phenomenological in-depth interview techniques, primary witnesses have been questioned on their subjective sensorial memories of the immigration trajectory. These testimonies have been analyzed and transformed into an audiovisual script that served as a guide for the recording process.

The audiovisual installation will consist of naturalistic as well as abstract images accompanied by a soundscape of concrete and synthetic sounds. Using projection mapping (spatial augmented reality) the visual recordings will be projected as a 360° panoramic image onto the surface of a circular sculptural installation. When the spectator enters this room, he or she will sensorially enter the subjective perspective of a refugee traveling across state borders.

The installation will be accompanied by an artistic textual publication. This publication will present a selection of the research material and will function as a complementary source of information to the more immersive (non-verbal) video installation. Primarily, the publication will consist of excerpts from the phenomenological interviews, combined with children’s drawings from refugee camps, fragments of juridical texts and photos of the audiovisual installation.