The following words, as well as two other poems to be published on Allegra in the near future were written during three plenaries at the 15th EASA Biennal Conference “Staying – Moving – Settling” which took place at Stockholm University from 14 to 17 August 2018. They are momentary reactions to the content of the lectures and reactions to the moods that floated in the room. Written during the talks, the poems intermingle the words spoken by the panel speakers with the words they triggered in me. I call these poems “The Other Protocols” because they differ from mere notes of the occurred and said. They are utterly subjective and incomplete. They do not describe or report the whole content of a lecture but the feeling of it, trying to grasp the essence of an ephemeral moment.
Opening Keynote Lecture “Walling, Unsettling, Stealing” by Shahram Khosravi, 14 August 2018
Condensed Notes by Nila Jeep; pictures and captions by Shahram Khosravi
Barbed wire
the devils rope
the border walls stick like gum in your head
materializing exclusion in powerful symbolic ways.
Borders won’t stop people but delay them
racializing time.
Waiting…
as power
forced
reminding
the others
the outers
their place in racialized world
of coding
the different passenger.
Keeping people in circulation is a way of depriving them from the future
of not-becoming
not letting them arrive
not letting them become
unpaid pensions
unpaid working hours
surplus value created:
How much time has been stolen?
How many hours?
How many lives?
Who is stuck in the waiting rooms of history
in the circulation of lines and travels
non-linear?
Who is caught
in times
and country lines?
The passenger
always passenger…
Shahram Khosravi’s parents’ house
Idomeni railway station on the border between Greece and Macedonia, July 2017
Idomeni railway station on the border between Greece and Macedonia, July 2017
