project outline / theme / activities and process
Moved, Mutated and Disturbed Identities has been set as the 2009/2010 theme to challenge European and Asian artists to realities and identities in both China and Luxembourg.
Movement, in the context of identity, suggests geographic displacements of a voluntary, involuntary or even forced kind. But it can also evoke distance, itinerary, gaps, and instances of the inexpressible that our own self has to confront in the face of cultures or moral codes distinct from our own. The thematic association of identity and mutation gives rise to a series of hybrid concepts. It enables the building of new identities, helped along by technological means of communication that render the threshold between inner and outer world, between subject and object, between representation and reality, transparent. Disturbance evokes an interruption in the linear development of identities. It carries along inevitable social and political changes—the consequences of which can be multiple, positive and/or negative—in the process of identity shaping. It can also, in a figurative or psychological sense, bear witness to so-called disorders. In all these cases, probability is high that disturbed identities give way to new, sometimes knotty, relationships with the Other.
In general, the representation of identities is complex. Only parts are visible, because presentable. Reading between the lines, looking behind the façade is made difficult. Whereas represented, thus simplified, identities create fronts and barriers, disturbed ones may open up spaces for negotiation, change, infiltration, segmentation, transformation, alienation, discovery, re-appropriation., …
Movement, mutation, disturbance of identities can happen at micro and macro scales. Individuals, groups, communities, citizens, cities, states etc can be the subjects or objects concerned by these acts and affected to become constructed identities, changing identities, fake identities, multiple identities, lost identities, split identities, refuted identities, hidden identities, repressed identities etc.
The artists are invited to respond to the theme through local contexts, states and situations.