Babi Badalov, Me Grant He Grant, 2015, Peinture sur tissu. Courtesy galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris
We will meet on the 28th and the 29th to collectively write a Migrant Constitution.
The Migrant Constituent Assembly is a negative community that cannot, by its definition, constitute itself as a Nation. It is the assembly of a people which is missing. Emanating from this paradox statement, a « migrant constituent », what could be a constitution of a political subject that migrates.
An assembly which would be ordered by the community of the disappeared, of migrant and lost lives, on the Mediterranean sea – today the most lethal route of the 21st century-; yesterday being human trafficking in the Black Atlantic and the Middle Passage. An Assembly where the sea would be its missing soil and its language would be the translation itself as whispered to us by Camille de Toledo and Barbara Cassin.
The political subject of this Assembly defines itself starting from migrance, starting from our spiral and multi-scalar identities, where its center of gravity in those who suffer todays migration politics in the most cruel way. This assembly in exile, “that doesn’t belong”, in the sense of Derrida’s words “a language doesn’t belong”, is called to be endless, undoing spaces of separation within and without.
Our migrant constituent assembly is in itself an un-accomplishment of a migrant community, even its un-compossibility. It is nevertheless looking deliberately for its institutional form. The event opens with a space of declaration, a verbal trial and a judgement, denominating and witnessing – we seek to document and describe responsibilities of lost lives. If it’s a question of opening a public debate and a political controversy, this assembly can be understood also as an thought experiment, a simulation. Every participant of the assembly is invited to propose an article that will be negotiated and amended before being adopted or declined over these two days. Three writers will take notes of the proposed articles and collective discussions which will result in a draft of the constitution. The final text will have no linguistic confinement, no deviation; it is the place of our poetic, philosophic, technical and political languages and is permeated within (a) multitude(s) of linguistic migration, from all our exiled languages, overlapping within ourselves.
With Michel Agier / Mehdi Alioua / Nisrine Al Zahre / Kader Attia / Babi Badalov / Marie-Laure Basilien Gainche / Etienne Balibar / Tania Bruguera / Yves Citton / Catherine Coquio / Mahmoud El Hajj / Sylvain George / Charles Heller & Lorenzo Pezzani (Forensic Oceanography) / Marielle Macé / Mathieu Larnaudie / Carpanin Marimoutou / James Noël / Philippe Rekacewicz / Emmanuel Ruben / Dorcy Rugamba / Camille de Toledo / Samy Tchak / Sébastien Thiéry – le P.E.R.O.U. / Camille Louis & Etienne Tassin & Léa Drouet / Laurent de Sutter / Françoise Vergès / Abdourahman Waberi / la coordination des sans papiers du 93 / la coordination des sans papiers du 75 – CISPM/ Migreurop / RESOME (Réseau Etudes Supérieures et Orientation des Migrant.e.s et Exilé.e.s) / Paris d’Exil – collectif parisien de soutien aux exilés / Réfugiés Bienvenue / and the audience.
Curated by Aliocha Imhoff & Kantuta Quirós / le peuple qui manque
Scenography : Adel Cersaque
Une Constituante Migrante, Scenography : Adel Cersaque
Extraits de la revue de presse
Libération, Pour une Constituante migrante, 18 janvier 2017
Le Monde, par Emmanuelle Jardonnet, 28 janvier 2017
L’oeil n°698, par Olivier Partos
Diacritik, Une Constituante migrante, 28 janvier 2017
Afriscope janvier 2017, tribune par Aliocha Imhoff et Kantuta Quiros, à l’invitation d’Anne Bocandé
Africultures, Une Constituante migrante, 12 janvier 2017
Uzbek et Rica, Constituante migrante : une expérience poétique à Paris, par Charles Faugeron, 9 février 2017