“What is the purpose of your visit? – A journey towards to the high seas”

“What is the purpose of your visit? – A  journey towards to the high seas” is a performative response within an ongoing research on the complex relations between the state, the individual and the territory. It addresses and questions the concept of citizenship today. 

In May 2015 I undertook a fourteen-hour journey on a fishermen boat in the Mediterranean sea, departing from the southernmost village of Italy reaching the high seas, defined by UNCLOS (United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea) as a portion of sea where no State can claim sovereignty. The purpose of this journey is the collection of fifty litres of international water, which I transported to the Netherlands (Eindhoven, Maastricht, Amsterdam) as first destinations.

This symbolic gesture suggests a spatial opportunity. A moving portion of high seas becomes a temporary exception zone, like an embassy without nationality. I intend the high seas as a zero degree space, where it might be possible to re-imagine the relations between state, individual and territory, and therefore citizenship status.

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