The dead are coming

Acts of citizenship at Europe’s borders

Bibliographic Data

ID7724958
AuthorsAleksandra Lewicki (Freie Universität Berlin, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume21
Issue3
Pages275-290
Publication date2017-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCitizenship Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1362-1025 • E-ISSN: 1469-3593
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13621025.2016.1252717
OpenAlexW2546465963
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited22

This article combines the research agenda of the acts of citizenship literature with reflections on emancipatory theatre. I examine the Centre for Political Beauty’s activity-based artwork ‘The dead are coming’ which problematizes the cruelties of the European border regime in symbolically charged spaces in the German public. Focusing particularly on the roles available to ‘actors’ and ‘spectators’, and the directionality of the message conveyed through the artwork, I examine how the performance subverts the ‘sites’ and ‘scales’ of citizenship. My analysis indicates that the artwork’s subversive potential emerges not only from the political vision conveyed by the artist collective, but also from the way in which others become involved in the performance. Acts of political beauty thus most extensively challenge instituted citizenship’s orientalist anchoring, reverse status-based role allocations and subvert the structural violence of borders when the performance enables the enactment of novel forms of political agency and solidarity

Aesthetics · Art · Beauty · Citizenship · Literature · Media studies · Orientalism · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Social science · Sociology · Solidarity · European Union Policy and Governance · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Populism, Right-Wing Movements

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