Dufourmantelle – A Space switcher.
Notes:
Land areas that delineate borders and their lines via water bodies, are being switched and inverted.*
Therefore sea comes here as a space and place of hope. A hope through passing and through the very living with and on the water.**
Water masses offer spaces of difference from land masses by the fact that bodies of water are thought of as “natural” borders, as delineating connectors between bound land masses.
Lands and water masses therefore, can come as different connectors rather than water being an agreed bind between regimes that enforce and inflict their borders.
Water bodies tend to come used as borders. However, they are practically, theoretically, culturally, and socially – anything but some kind of a fence. Nor, as borders’ etymological sense goes: a band surrounding a shield.
Water bodies are fuzzy, they offer movement and life beyond the human – as well as where, for example, south africa and norway can be in a shouting distance from one another, or even collide in the north pacific ocean. ***
Sure, human perception of sea as border comes, in part, since we tend to remain on land and use the sea for occasional movements.
However, such perceptions come ironic: both human oriented and inhumane.
Let’s think of how humans can do other than offer self brutalising, auto-immune disease-like practices that create hardships and serve to attack possibilities for assisting the very lives harmed by the hardships created.****
Through considering the sea as a home environment, we can begin to have a refuge space. The Sea as a place of refuge that refuses the bars from bounding binds of borders – a route for refuge that’s a possible safe haven in and of itself.
Dufourmantelle, the project, offers an open Else.
A place to stay on the sea – rather than moving from a to b.
A space to work, do and practice art and other activities as part of a sea that both defies human centred border making, and reminds that life thrives when boundless.
Let’s imagine art practices that offer a refuge to the brutalised by borders.
Fancy going beyond the borders?
Feeling brutalised by binds? Be it Political, Cultural, Racial, Sexual, or Historical. Perhaps these binds are Musical, Performative, biological, Visual, or Intellectual. Or indeed Neurological, Social or Economical bounds that open a need for refuge.
Dufourmantelle offers a refuge beyond bounds.
Art, as an element of life, lives boundlessly and slowly ebbs away when bound and bordered.
The name, Dufourmantelle, comes with respect to the life, work, ideas and philosophy of Anne Dufourmantelle who sadly drowned while helping refugees in 21.07.17*******
NOTES:
*
The inversion comes via considering land masses to be in between. We could think of land masses as connectors between part of water bodies.
One can cross France from the Rhine through to the Atlantic since they think of the land as connecting the two water bodies.
ie by focusing on the sea between an island and a continent, we get to consider both land masses as elements between bodies of water. Let’s learn to consider the sea as differentiating connection that offers a hope for lands and life.
Another aspect of inversion?
Next time someone asks “where are you from”, maybe try indicating you are from a certain ocean or sea area. “I am from the North Atlantic”. “I am from the Black sea”. This can be contrasted with hardly populated land areas like a desert, or a mountain range.
The experience based intuition here is that while saying one is from the North Sahara will be greeted with a welcoming curiosity, a a water mass equivalent will come with a dismissing kind of curiosity such as: this can not be. We don’t intuitively consider sea areas as a living space. An inversion of that intuition offers a reflective platform on that which we have bound and bordered ourselves with.
A culture of grab-and-hold that produces refugees in all sorts of manners.
**
Sure, life on seas and oceans requires an apreciation of many lemenets other than water. However, since, for example, the winds affect feels different from that on land since water is involved – Water is used as a general term that may include a fair few other things which came come into detailed focus in later discusssions.
***
Registered boats are areas under a certain flags that include the rules and indeed suverenity of states the flangs belong to. For example, an attack on an Egyptian registered ship, can easily be taken by Egypt as an attack on it’s own land, own suverenity. )
****
The statement re hardships may sound the wrong side of naive – ie the ignorant rather than child-like wonder. Life does not come smooth, lovely and good. Any junior tory party member may recite such a point fondly.
However, the call here is to attend difficulties while having in mind, we will have some other hardships. Should we refuse assisting a person just because such assistance could also help them live longer and they might harm someone, or get some old age illness?
The motion here comes towards attending hardships for that very particular attention and intention to help. A call to alter conditions – unconditionally. Rather than conservatively letting what’s in need remain needy since “that’s the way of the world – we might as well let it be while surreptitiously Exploit it.”
The call is for Other possibilities. An *other* might not come as *better*, however by the very act of thinking a general Else or a particular Other – we keep life pumping since we open a culture of hope.
Another way to view this is that imagination is the food of hope – while imagining itself fails to fool. I think a common imagination-fooling comes when an imagined is conflated with Imaginaring – the act of super imposing mind wondering onto a perceived real.
Let’s do stuff despite circumstances, for the Outcome the very acts offer rather than a consequence of the acts, while keeping an ability to respond and adjust.
I think it’s when Love and Art meet.
(In case you went WTF when attempting to dig “Imaginearing” – The reference here is the Imaginary. A concept that talks about mapping an image onto an environment outside that image. Simply: when may see themselves as looking good wearing such and such garment – they do imaginary. The brain perceives something and superimpose that onto a perceived real – a body.
However, that feeling of “good”, the goodness it might feel – wearing the garment – is a sensation that’s imagination IMHO – since there’s no need for anything but the sensing itself. It is it’s own reality. We may get the garment, have a very different feeling wearing it, yet – the sensation of goodness we felt while imagining – can be recalled regardless.
This is an interpenetration of imaginary/imagination differences, and one that’s slightly controversial.)
*******
I tried to reach-out for people who might have known Anne Dufourmantelle.
Asking whether the gesture with this project comes acceptable. In case it is not acceptable, the name with the rather strong linking to Anne Dufourmantelle, will change. There’s no wish to upset anyone. I have gotten on with it since so far nothing came back. Indeed, if anyone reading this has an idea of how to contact people who knew Anne – please do get in touch.