n.e.w.s.:Renée Ridgway & Rick van Amersfoort

If one were to reflect on the migration of democracy and the manifold definitions of what this word actually means nowadays we come to a paradox of movement and standing still. Some of us can move, freely without much trouble, others cannot and are sometimes even imprisoned for having tried to ‘migrate democracy’. Or rather migrate democrazy[1]– it is like a gadget everyone wants to have but it is like a foreign language in the mouth, poisonous because of the lack of control to the production process. These fervent attempts to changes one’s life, fulfill one’s dream or just to escape torment and torture comprise an ever-changing landscape for politicizing art: not necessarily the form but content, yet in the form of the crudeness of reality. Media, in this case TV, would offer not only reality TV but a more in-depth look (investigative journalism) at the ‘art of’ diverse modes of participation and action, between parties large and small, known as well as unknown.

With the burgeoning of social media one asks why TV broadcasting? Has not TV been denounced as the drug of the masses and that it only makes you stupid? Mediatic alienation? TV is an odd, transductive machine of change, all kinds of programming flows into the room and scrambles the household. It’s like a catalytic force, changing the way in which we relate to what we are doing. The sensory environment marks a territory for the viewer, transforming the identity of viewer, a fluctuating constellation of conversion affect assemblage. It is a surface of inscription that interfaces with viewers during broadcast. Some say there’s nothing on TV’, that is the distraction function. Void of content, except for commercials? We want to add content to TV. Something is on TV- it’s this.

If  TV is a distracted medium, then it’s our obligation to critically engage it. Is TV only a minor tactical media? For Guattari, the ‘machinic subjectivity refrains’ of the televisual offered scenes of decoding. He wanted to change the way it was watched by reaching a maximal amount people, a viewership, who would connect. In the cinema approach TV is a choice medium, searching for a public that has yet to be articulated and showing new pathways for viewership. How does one summon a viewership that does not exist without a teleological or a messianic approach?

The viewership is yet to come- it is the condition of the not yet. Much like migration it is a process of becomings, transformations and (de)terrorialisations. The concept of identity impinges upon one when engaging with a medium, as a passage into our lives it reconfigures bodies of experience while watching. Traduced through the field of the viewer, the enunciation of the talking head allows the viewer, at times, to become the speaker. This assemblage of transmissions could be considered mediactivism or at the very least, altering alterity. Maybe not consistent but the common interest is less exploitation, less racism and more life.

Renée Ridgway & Rick van Amersfoort will develop a productions for Murcian TV Channel 7, based on three areas of interest

I. Migrating Identities or On/Unbecoming European

II. Some reflections on the migration of democrazy

III. Row, Row, Row your boat

I  Migrating Identities or On/Unbecoming European

1. The art of war, Frontex the new frontline machine in war on migration

2. The art of detaining, prisons for refugees and illegal immigrants

3. The art of surveillance, the satellite center near Madrid scanning the European borders

4. The art of humanity, civilians who help/support migrants across the Mediterranean sea

5. The art of traveling, boat refugees from Africa to Europe Now the boat people are escaping capitalism in Africa because of lack of future and want to go to capitalism that is exploiting its resources at home.

6. The art of economy, cheap workers from all over the world working for low costs in Spain

7. The art of smuggling, the thin line between criminality and humanity (in similar quotation between humanitarian warfare and welfare)

8. The art of storage, human fragments stored in databases like SIS II

9. The art of hospitality, people inviting refugees and giving them shelter, taking care of them

10.The art of dying, bodies floating on the sea and washing ashore

II. Some reflections on the migration of democrazy

Rick van Amersfoort will host a talk show within a prison of refugees or illegal immigrants who have tried to migrate to Europe. Guests will be interviewed about their predicament as detainees and the connection this has to their ideologies.

III. Row, Row, Row your boat

Row, Row, Row your boat, gently down a stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, live is but a dream. This English children’s lullaby connotes a positive future and that water will bring us ultimately to a good destination. For some people inwards in desert regions, water is a scarce necessity, for others an abundance (NL) and for many a means of transport, change, flux. For those without the proper papers yet wanting to test the migrating dream of democracy, leaving Africa to Europe could be hard, difficult and dangerous. The chance of success, by which one usually means reaching Europe without being caught, is slim. We would like to offer a willing yet anonymous group of refugees, or an individual in North Africa, to take a satellite web cam to film their/his/her journey. This would be streamed on the local station in Murcia and Amsterdam simultaneously, or broadcasted live to a website. (n.e.w.s. http://northeastwestsouth.net)

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[1] Some reflections on the ‘migration of democrazy’ is the fact that WE say we bring democracy all over the world, look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. But our own democrazy is beyond doubt, is perfect and people who criticize that are “terrorists, take a look at the last example of COP15 demonstrators treatment. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/14/climate-change-activist-held So the some who are not able to move are not only outside but also inside Europe.