From the 11th to the 18th of January, Elena Mazzi will present Performing the self – the interview, a video installation created in collaboration with the searcher Enrica Camporesi on the occasion of her 4-month residency at the Fondation Thalie.
This work stages the impossible conversation between a protection officer and an asylum seeker just before the interpreter arrives. Drawing on interviews with protection officers, asylum seekers, recognized refugees, lawyers and social workers as well the academic literature, “Performing the self – the interview” zooms in on the protection officer and the asylum seeker as co-producers of a dialogical but reliable and consistent life story, a new and reasonable plot whose crucial goal is to be awarded with the asylum status. Such interview becomes thus a real “make or break moment” in the life of the asylum seeker. What might happen before such an overloaded conversation begins? “Performing the self – the interview” builds up an imaginary space that redefines the existing protocol of questions and answers, mutual expectations and power relations.
PROGRAMME
11/01/2018 – 18:00>21:00
Opening
17/01/2018 – 18:00>21:00
Book-launch of Performing the self – the interview, a publication by Elena Mazzi & Enrica Camporesi (in presence of the artists)
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Opening hours: 14>18:00 and by appointment at event@fondationthalie.org
Free entrance
Closed on Sunday 14th and Monday 15th
Elena Mazzi & Enrica Camporesi share the same curiosity for the intriguing topic of the oral witnesses as a very special source for performance and historiography. Elena Mazzi (1984) is a visual artist, working with specific geographical and socio-political contexts. Her poetics deal with the relationship between man and the environment in which he lives and with which he must reckon on a daily basis. This analysis, which often follows an anthropological approach, investigates and documents an identity which is at the same time personal and collective, and gives rise to forms of exchange and transformation.
After an academic formation in Arab language and literature, Enrica Camporesi (1985) combined working as a theatre director for socio-cultural projects with refugees and asylum seekers with her research, translating and writing activity in Lebanon, Egypt, Italy and Belgium. She currently works as a social integration teacher for Arab newcomers and refugees in Antwerpen, gathering stories, interviews and different perspectives on truth and credibility. Based on her social research, she is further developing her theatrical and writing practice.