Untitled 2015, (working title)
by Luisa Spina, artist.

Statuses are arbitrary. They are decided by structural systems made up by a society, a nation, a country. They change and can be changed accordingly to its economic, financial and political dynamics. Statuses don’t and can’t define people’s feelings but they do define their role in society. And they do affect as well the way we see or relate to each other. They create a separation, a labelling.

In fact the status of citizenship exists only in the context of a nation-state, which is based on cultural specificity, on the belief of being different from other nations (Brideget Byrne, 2011). This creates a discourse in which the ‘other’ is excluded from this imagining.

I’m trying to approach the issue of separation and more specifically of immigration from a different perspective. By experiencing and understanding feelings attached normally to certain statuses, we can perceive ourselves as part of the infinite sea of emotions that connect us all.

‘Our egos are not aware that outside the limits of their little islands, outside the narrow perimeters of their vision, there is a whole universe of realities and truths contained in the vast sea of the unconscious that our egos can’t perceive. Centres of alternative consciousness, alternative values, attitudes, and ideas exist there like other islands in the great sea. They wait to be discovered and acknowledge by the searching conscious mind.’

Robert Johnson, 1986

In this video I explored the celebratory aspect of bringing together ‘difference’ and juxtaposed it with moments in which this possibility is interrupt and disturbed. Our own security can be shaken any time by uncontrollable and unpredictable causes. We can all in fact found ourselves defendless, shaken and uprooted.

Luisa Spina 2015
http://luisaspina.tumblr.com/