speaking truth to power

Location: Barge “MS Stralau”, Berlin, a barge journey on the river Spree along a defined route, parts of which marked the bound between former east and west Berlin.

In an attempt to deterritorialize the project Periferry (2007–), an alternative artist-led space and residency program situated on a ferry docked on the Brahmaputra River in Guwahati, India, the artists recreated another temporary laboratory in flux in Berlin. For Desire Machine Collective, “periferry” acts as a threshold, a place where all places meet and dialogue about collaborative practices and cultural resistance takes place. It offers the possibility of keeping up endless processes of movement, where the movement itself is important, rather than the performance of each group or individual. The event was scripted around the concept of Foucault’s “heterotopia” and the reclaiming of landscapes.

It included lectures and discussions, as well as film screenings. The main contributions was from Desire Machine Collective, other discussants were Peter Zorn, Ben Eastop and Sandhini Poddar.

The event was part of the public program of the exhibition Being Singular Plural: Moving Images from India at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin.

image courtesy- Sithumini Rathnamalala