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mikala updated their profile

April 19

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http://www.mikala-hyldig-dal.net

Artistic Field or Interest

Profession

Artistic and professional experiences

yes

Statement

In my artistic work a focal point concerns body-politics, particularly with regard to the female body, specifically regarding the status and capacity of experience of my own body in a multilayered socio-political field of desires, restraints, hegemonial structures and autobiographical complexity.

I attempt to approach "the Image" as an entity in a constantly fluid state, as something in itself ungraspable, a bi-product of something else, an action, intervention or a deception.

I am also concerned with exploring various possibilities and potentials of artistic self-organisation surpassing institutional rigidity in favor of new and interchangeable frameworks for broadened, activist-minded modes of artistic practices.
In the lines of this pursuit, 2 years ago I initiated the exhibition project Homo Bellicus (www.homobellicus.org) for a joint artistic contemplation on institutionalised violence.

Research interests

Der Ausnahmezustand* & the vanguard refugee

*State of emergency, in German literary: State of exception.

Streugedanken / Abstract / Question-Outlines

What happens when the state of emergency becomes a permanent condition of the society that employs it?
What, when the norm that a country should supposedly return to after the state of emergency is called off is non-existent because one state of emergency is continuously followed by the next? Which criteria define the norm then, which concepts and related imagery are used for (self)reflection; which are cast aside?

Can one imagine a country without history, a country without collective records, a country for instance, in which each new regime disposes of the images and data of its predecessor, and with it the archives of the most recent past? (and which storage-space is held for the visual preservation of collective memory then?)

Is it possible to perceive of (each round of ) emergencies as blank page beginnings; could a positive inversion of the dynamics of the exception re-open a transitory space within which societies are re-thought while the collective re-orientates itself - guided by the privileged refugee; the vanguard of transition?
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With tentacles to Hannah Arendt I orientate myself towards the writings of Giorgio Agamben i.e. the Homo Sacer trilogy contemplating the state of exception as the defining concept of postmodern societies.
For Agamben the notion of the State of Emergency manifests exemplarily in the Camp, be it the KZ-camp of nazi-Germany, the EU refugee camp or in Guantanamo; further critiques argue that the concept of the colony likewise can be seen as an extended manifestation of the concept of the camp- as externalized spaces within which the hegemonial state suspends its inherent constitutional regulations in order to obtain sovereign power outside of its national borders, as well as maintaining it within.

Some of the concepts Agamben employs to illustrate his theory, might hold potentials for positive inversions when re-arranged artistically; this applies particularly to the termini of the mobile home (Wohncontainer), the transitory space (Transitraum) and the vanguard refugee (avantgardistische Fluechtling).

Exploring the grounds for hidden potentials in (some of) the constructs manifesting within the structure of the state of emergency might seem obscure in its premise, considering the often devastating reality of the applied "Ausnahmezustand"/ State of Exception
However, beyond the border of the ideological disillusion of the concept of the national state, the status of the state-less might hold hidden privileges or potentials as Arendt suggests in her essay "We Refugees", when she refers to the refugee as a Vanguard of her/his people, to whom the pages of history lay open, to whom the restructuring of (a) society is not only a necessity but might also be a privilege.
Agamben notes structural similarities between two current -seemingly polarised- social strata: the one of the Refugee and the one of the Urban Nomad; both, if on very different terms and with infinite differentiation within the former category, abandon their native-states, entering a status of quasi or de facto statelessness, in favour of a re-structuring elsewhere.
This restructuring, or reorientation, might turn out to be a constant process as the concept of a geographically determined/definite sense of belonging (Zugehoerigkeit) turns invalid, just as the transitory space might be internalised to a degree that it becomes permanent, an inherent state of the transitory mind.

Conceiving of "space" "home", "belonging" and "identity" as fluctuant and transcendent entities that manifest, contract and are re-construed continuously, on an inner scale and in temporary modes, might constitute the framework for an actualised (zeitgemaess) contemporary model of life-engagement (?)

Could the State of Emergency, if a positive inversion is possible, instead of existing as a space within which constitutional laws and regulations are rendered invalid (reversing the Citizen to a monarchical Subject), constitute a space within which constitutional bases are re-thought, giving way for new concepts of society to be applied on a larger scale once they have proven themselves valid within the restraint of a spatially definite container (?) (test-stations, living think-tanks)

Strategies to render these thoughts and assumptions aesthetical, experience-able (erfahrbar), lay quite open but until now they involve spatial/architectural studies of the formation of various forms of camps and subsequent re-ordering or manipulation of their data under the premise of the inversion, maybe along the lines of a reversed panopticon abandoning the centralized spatial order of the disciplinary institution (Anstalt) in favour of a baroque-esc conglomerate of multiple viewpoints and superimposed, living architectural layers.

The implementation of some (re)developed spatial concepts might be possible in a small-scale within the city and/or existing spatial concepts that match the structural premise of the disciplinary institution (Anstalt) might be manipulated with the aim of a forced temporary reversal.

One might imagine a multitude of parallel societies, superimposed on each other, within fluid borderlines asserting different meaning and value to the same utilities. As an example for superimposed utilisations of one and the same spatial commodity Agamben lists the city of Jerusalem serving simultaneously as capital for two separate nations.
An experiment remaining valid so far only in theory - one might, however, imagine a different outcome if the idea is implemented among a multitude of fluctuating sub-societies among which members are continuously exchanged - lost and added-, based on pulsating and interchangeable sets of ideas rather than on ethnic distinctions and historical claims of sovereignty.

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How did you end up with Reloading Images?

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mikala's Videos

RAQS personnel intro

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Ashkan reading reading Ashkan

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Maria Elias - a Theatrical Situation

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Mikala's Blog

bomb, car, damascus, explosion

Posted on September 28, 2008 at 12:00am —

attachment to the artistic experiences box in my settings>about me>artistic experiences

some recent works from my hand and others

mikala_2008_small.pdf

Posted on August 24, 2008 at 2:07pm —

Proposal for an Assignment

As a suggestion for a playful communication of the various research topics of the group, and as an opportunity to present these within one body of works; please note the following: Proposal for an Assignment (which is also an attempt of a linguistic democratisation of the (idea)exchange process).

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Navigation through Flux

A (max) 60 seconds videocollage -montage -ravage -espionage that will give a subjective impression of your individual research topic and hint at your personal motivation fo… Continue

Posted on August 21, 2008 at 1:13am —

Research topic

Der Ausnahmezustand* & the vanguard refugee

*State of emergency, in German, literary: State of exception.

Abstract
What happens when the state of emergency becomes a permanent condition of the society that employs it?
What, when the norm that a country should supposedly return to after the state of emergency is called off is non-existent because one state of emergency is continuously followed by the next? Which criteria define the norm then, which concepts and related imagery are used for… Continue

Posted on August 21, 2008 at 1:00am —

Museum of the Occident

The Colonial Tea Salon, presented by Funtainment Surprises: a participatory museal installation at selected locations in your oriental urban environment.

We have chosen the Colonial Tea Salon as the motto for our new range of Living History ® Installations, bound to pop up in an area near you in no time.

The delightful English Tea Salon -already once a flourishing spatial concept for the selected few in the oriental strata- is now soon to be revived in a community near you.

We offer spotless… Continue

Posted on August 21, 2008 at 1:00am —