IMMIGRATION IN SUITCASE / 2007-2008
video-documentation about Chinese variant in rickshaw - 2009
video performance: PAL colour screening (720/576 pixels), sound / dimensions: variable / duration: 30 minutes up to hour
(Watch videodocumentation: below!)
description: Directly on the street or in the space of the gallery, a very small and old red car is with open luggage-carrier, in which is visible a suitcase. In the suitcase there is an alive man in embryonic position, who is the author of the project – Neno. Inside the suitcase is based video-camera, which broadcasts TV signal with the support of a transmitter. The image of the sweating and suffering man in very uncomfortable position of the body in very tight space is received by the multimedia projector (beamer) and it is projected on a wall of the gallery or on the gallery's window, which looks to the street.
conception: For different reasons, outcast from their native born places, many people undertake dangerous journeys with the purpose to find better place for living. Many of them die during the way, traveling in suitcases, luggage-carriers and containers. Neno makes this performance as a research, to understand: what is it, which force so many people to immigrate in other country. What is the value of the emigration? And what is the value of the "better" life?
Based on the idea that we unconsciously feel empathy with the characters in movie or in the picture, we watch; or in the book, we read, this performance is a result of the author's desire to identify him with the immigrants and to drive the spectators to put themselves in the place of the immigrants and to feel their suffering.
Not the governments, which accept them, but rather the governments, which force them go abroad, have to think on this problem, because the main reason for immigration is not the availability of good conditions in some countries but the absence of same conditions in some other countries.
Neno believes that there are a lot of people, who sympathize and help the immigrants, but he also believes that this is not enough. He feels himself close to this theme, because before years he had a friend, who immigrated in Germany in a suitcase.
This performance has been created in 2007, first realization during 2008 and has been presented at:
13 August 2013 – Migration 2013: action for the International Youth Day, organisators: AMORPHA group, Varna Puppet Theatre, Varna, BULGARIA
14 June 2013 – TPA: Torino Performance Festival, curators: Manuela Maco and Guido Salvini , gallery Green Box, Turin, ITALY http://vimeo.com/69224004
8 June 2013 – OTETZ PAISIY: the street festival, curator: Stefka Tzaneva, Plovdiv, BULGARIA, http://opsfestival.com/
23 October 2009 – The Invisible Generation project, OCAT - Contemporary ArtTerminal of He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, CHINA http://www.vimeo.com/17814039
11 December 2008 – KAUNAS IN ART: "CONTEXTS" festival for contemporary art (catalog), Kaunas, LITHUANIA
4 October 2008 – REDline'08_Bordering on Us International Meeting of Contemporary Art Community IDEIAS EMERGENTES, Rua Santa Catarina, 777; Porto, PORTUGAL (catalog)
