57th Venice Biennale, 2017, NSK State Pavilion

The Stranger

The stranger is not just an individual body but a body that brings a world into being through acts of naming, acting, and living.

Sara Ahmed

"The stranger is often the one who brings to light the secret conversations that circulate around what we call our familiar."

Sara Ahmed

NSK State in Time

Venice

57th Venice Biennale

From May 11 to July 15, 2017

Curators: Zdenka Badovinac, Charles Esche

Project Director: Mara Ambrozic

LINK

NSK State in Time was founded by artist collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) in 1992. It was conceived as a utopian formation, which would have no physical territory and would not be identified with any existing nation state. Along with organising temporary embassies and consulates in cities such as Moscow, Berlin, Florence, Sarajevo and New York, NSK State in Time began issuing passports in 1993. There are currently about 15,000 NSK Passport holders around the world.

The NSK State Pavilion will provide an added and new dimension to NSK State in Time, built upon a collaboration with migrant communities, humanitarian protection applicants, and stateless individuals who are looking for new citizenship. With the unique opportunity of the Venice Biennale, the project aims to rethink what a contemporary state can be, offering an open form of citizenship which contrasts with that generated by spatially-defined states.

The Pavilion does not stand in opposition to the national structure of the Venice Biennale, but rather seeks to stand as an independent Pavilion that will redefine the idea of the state and proffer a new type of citizenship. It will engage with a range of issues that most trouble current contemporary states – migration, citizenship, heritage and identity – and generate ideas from a wide spectrum of individuals about how to build new collectivities and shared histories across national borders, looking beyond Europe’s current fragmentation and inner antagonisms.

In total it will involve contributions from more than 200 individuals, including citizens of NSK State in Time, artists, philosophers, students, young art professionals, cultural institutions, social cooperatives, and international universities.

The Pavilion space will be experienced in two parts: a room of ‘global disorder’ including over 100 responses from contributors and an NSK Passport office where passports will be issued. The NSK State in Time Pavilion in Venice will be equally governable by its community from sans-papiers to migrants and citizens. For this specific occasion, an apology was written on behalf of the liberal western world to the refugees, as well as to those who were unable to chose to not to flee.