draft text for hydrarchy part 2.
'Hydrarchy - Transitional and transformative seas is the second part of a two-phase project, which started with Hydrarchy - Power and resistance at sea that took place in London at Gasworks and the University of Central London in September 2010. [1]
In the early chapters of Madness and Civilisation, Michel Foucault describes the Narrenschiff, a boat that sailed the lowland canals of Europe serving as a container of insane citizens. This ‘ship of fools’, as it was known, removed inconvenient or dangerous citizens, but it also served amongst a contemporaneous metaphorical series of ships of 'gluttony’ or ‘lust’; illustrations of sins that increasingly were felt to be in need of separation from the rest of the emerging European Enlightenment. The Narrenschiff as both illustration and as real vessel was thus simultaneously a tool of physical, but also ideological control. The ship; the offshore; the waterborne all play a key role in its special function of containment and externalisation, and which yet remained sovereign to its country of origin.
Today, contemporary offshore practices such as prison boats and offshore finance mirror the functions of the Narrenschiff, benefiting from this convenient, silent mobility of sovereign space at sea. However, this flexible situation can also be exploited by non-state actors such as pirates, 'illegal' migrants, who use ever-shifting tactics of evasion and opportunism in achieving their goals. This often brutal negotiability happens outside of the conventional political and cultural gaze, only mentioned in sensational accounts befitting the irresistibly extreme phenomena of the sea, or in a manner defined by the stable fictions of cultural, national, and ethnic boundaries.
To speak of politics, borders, relations and cultures from the perspective of the seaborne rather than the landbound, presents a profound critical shift, prioritising transition and flux over fixity, state control and mappability. It is no surprise, then, that actions such as piracy and maritime migration are primary foci within the political logics of globalization. Overall, Egypt has historically been a case in point, most of whose land borders are administrative constructions with a linear simplicity that belies the violence behind their construction; yet Egypt's water borders are acknowledged 'natural' sites of contest.
Artistic and discursive contributions to Hydrarchy - Transitional and transformative seas conceptualise the Mediterranean Basin, the Suez Canal, besieged Gaza, and the broader North African context. These spaces are taken not only as flashpoints within the network of international economic and military relations, but also as spaces bearing the unmarked and embodied experiences of those attempting to migrate to Europe, and as spaces where the outlines of the nation state are simultaneously stretched, punctured; where new fictions of sovereignty and cultural distinction are written and unwritten.
[1] To view exhibition and conference documentation of this first phase, please visit http://disclosuresproject.wordpress.com/disclosures-iv