Encuentro   transacciones / fadaiat
libertad del conocimiento / libertad de movimiento
houriat al maarifa / houriat al haraka
 liberté de savoir / liberté de mouvement
freedom of knowledge / freedom of movement
 tarifa / tanger 22-23 de junio de 2004

Florian Schneider & Susanne Lang


Every one knows, if he or she knows nothing else, that Europe has
changed its shape from one day to the other, since the ten new
member-states have accessed the EU on 1st of May 2004. There is much
fear as well as much hope, but only one simple reason: Some borders
seem to dissapear. At least, this is the official version or better to
say: half of the truth.

But what will really happen? Where have the borders been moved to and
how do these actual developments effect people who have been living and
working from borders, alongside borders, against borders or across
borders?

In the next few months an independent, international and
interdisciplinary commission is going to start to investigate the
realities around Europes new borders: New media and noborder activists,
filmmakers, video- and fotografers, DJ's and VJ's, fine art and
performance artists, scientists and investigators will set a series of
events in motion that surround, circumvent and perforate the borders of
Europe.

On one hand BORDER04 is a virtual travel along both sides of the new
borders of an enlarged European Union, from the balcan to the baltic
states. On the other hand BORDER04 will connect and shortcircuit
projects, activities and debates about migration and the expansion of
the borders of the EU, about mobility, mobile technologies and freedom
of movement with those about freedom of communications, the future
dimensions of networking and the impact this will have for people
living within the borders of the EU and those previously, temporarily
or permanently outside of it.

BORDER04 has emerged out of a movement that was organizing and
promoting noborder-camps for the past six years. When in July 1998 a
few hundred activists put up their tents for a ten day stay near
Goerlitz, only a few metres away from the border river the Neisse, the
example came to set a precedent and in the following years the summer
camps along the outer borders of the European union had multiplied.

But it wasn't about campfire romanticism and instead of a 'back to
nature' theme the motto was: "Hacking the borderline!" Characteristic
of the border camps was a multiple strategy consisting of the exchange
of skills, experiences and political debates, more or less traditional
political education taking place in remote areas and direct actions
with the aim of disrupting the smooth running of the border regime.

Up to now there have been more than 25 noborder camps, as close as
possible to the actual border: from the first beta-version at the
German-Polish border in 1998 to the joint european one in 2002 in
Strasbourg with several thousands of participants; from Tijuana in the
north-west of Mexico to Woomera in the Australian desert; from the
Francfort international airport with it's extra-territorial detention
center to the central foreigners database in Cologne; from Tarifa at
Streets of Gibraltar to Frassanito at the Streets of Otranto.

Last year, during a noborder camp in a small town in Romania something
astonishing happened: By chance, a young guy passes by. He works for a
corporation that manufactures hardware for brand-name electronics
companies near the Hungarian-Serbian border.

He tells the story of an unsuccessful attempt to unionise the workers
of this factory and described a vicious circle with enormous symbolic
impact. Snared within the boundaries of the local, every attempt to
self-organize apparently leads to nothing but an affirmation of and
increase in the power of a corporation that operates globally and
constantly blackmails workers with threats to close down the factory
site and move production to a different place in the world.

And: A few weeks later a group of the noborder activists went back to
Romania in order to interview agricultural workers they got in contact
with recently. The workers just won a wage-claim against a german
farmer who refused to pay their salary at all and blackmailed them with
their illegal status. For outsiders such a success story certainly
comes as a surprise, so why not to share these kind of experiences with
others in living and working under potentially similar conditions?

Were these just two rather exceptional, individual cases or examplaric
in a way that they refer to widespread problems along and across the
outer borders of europe? Probably the latter. At least from both
conversations the idea sprung out that it might be time to reshape the
concept of noborder-camps.

The political credit of the original concept was long overdue. It
seemed to make sense to think about a radical relaunch according to
various criteria: rather researching than protesting, rather
experimenting with uncalculable movements and mobility than re-using
the all-to predictable grammar of binary confrontations, rather
attempting greatest possible openness and curiousity than a static or
even hermetic attitude.

BORDER04 is the common framework for a certain range of local and
remote, mobile and stationary activities that will take place in summer
2004. It is a modular, temporary, and tactical association of various
new media- and network-initiatives from east and west, the south and
the north of europe.

1. Tracing the routes of migrant labor:

The many faces of migration cause dramatic changes, that are not only
affecting local and remote economies. People in transit, commuters
between east and west, seasonal and domestic workers build concepts of
Europe, that are based on mobility, no matter if unsolicited or
unvoluntarily.

Despite the fact that for up to seven years the free circulation of
labor force is suspended, the EU-enlargement could be seen as a
de-facto amnesty for hundred thousands of illegalized workers
originating from the ten accession states who stay at least part-time
in the countries of the old Europe. Instead of deportation these
workers may fear only fines now.

In a broader view such a privileged, but yet illegal status may very
likely turn out as one of the cornerstones within an emerging labor
management regime, that is set up to expose cheap, migrant workforce
without basic social rights to emerging forms of hyper-exploitation.

Bordercrossing between the former east and west, urban centers and
maquiladora zones, luggage and transit economies, agricultural and
affect industries will produce new, roaming subjectivities of
hyper-alienation with a yet uncalculable power and potential.

2. Mapping the spaces in between:

Theoretically it's only a small drift from what lies beyond the
limitations of national imagination to the imaginations of those
outside of it. But in practice, the spaces between Europe and
non-Europe are being dispersed, extracted and contracted by numerous
movements of very different actors.

The dissemination of social, political and cultural rights management
refer to a virtualization of border regime that no longer relies on the
operations of inclusion and exclusion. The old notion of the border is
step by step replaced by a highly differentiating and flexible system
of biopolitical control on different levels of density and intensity.

How to find and how to map the lines of flight that are escaping
paranoia and enclosure? What does it then mean to be in motion or in
movement? How to constitute processes of selforganization even in
extreme situations, such as detention or transit?

3. Crossing the borders from the real to a virtual europe:

There is no Europe and there is no East. Today both concepts refer to
nothing but failure.

Leaving traditional political and geographical notions of Europe behind
the new communication technologies as well as the flows of migration do
shape places, that are characterized by their openness and potentials
rather than their borders.

There is an unrepresentable multitude of europes actualized in the
recent struggles of social movements, in the autonomy of migrant
workers and undocumented migrants, in the experiences of social
networking and creativity across borders.

Working alongside these three fields BORDER04 will consist of four
modules that will be developed and carried out by teams, that are
networking amongst each others:

A Research:

In order to investigate subjectivities and constitutive power of people
crossing borders and networking across borders, research projects will
work on frequently asked questions: How does a re-designed european
border regime change the daily life of the people in the areas of the
new border regions? What are the stories, experiences and desires of
people, who live on this and that side of the new border of the
official, but in the midst of a virtual Europe? What are the living
conditions of people who are on the move from or into precariousness,
illegality or detention centers? How do workers in the world market
factories struggle and organise -- on both sides of the new borders?

B Workshops:

BORDER04 involves remote activists and local community organisers in
workshops and training programs in both an adhoc and a sustainable
fashion. It will focus on skill-sharing in order to enable and empower
people with the practical use of new media technologies by providing
connectivity, introducing open source software and offering unfettered
access to communication tools.

The project of a transnational migration-guide is planned to support
and empower people on their way to find better living- or working
conditions, no question if it is temporarily or permanently. There will
be a special focus on the potential of digital media to facilitate
dialogue and communication across national borders, and on the power of
filmmaking, photography and storytelling in the negotiation of
emerging, hyphenated identities.

C Performances:

To present the images and narratives of an emerging culture that is
created around the issues of knowledge sharing and transnational
mobility, BORDER04 will be a platform for exhibitions, screenings and
performances in public spaces and in collaboration with local and
international artists and art institutions.

D Documentation:

BORDER04 aims to document the experiences, acquaintances, results and
achievements of the project publically, in real-time or near on
real-time. Therefore internet connectivity is one of the key issues.
Excursions and trips in the framework of BORDER04 can be accompanied by
a specially equipped van that provides a high-bandwith internet
connection via satellite. Using all available media from print to radio
to video in different output-formats the documentation of a project at
such an extend aims to facilitate dialogue and interactive
communication.

BORDER04 is a virtual project insofar as it will turn out as something
different to what was imagined in the beginning. It is open end, work
in progress, actualizing the virtualities of a movement of movements
day by day, move by move, step by step. It is experimental, in order to
explore different concepts of mobility and different forms of
organizing.

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