Right of Passage
Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler

“We can’t imagine a global citizenship or any concept of dynamic citizenship if we don’t think about it not only in terms of law but in terms of the political economy of bodies that move. There have to be structures that can receive and host this kind of movement. This is why citizenship is not simply a subjective phenomenon but also an objective phenomenon of hospitality.”
– Antonio Negri, The Right of Passage

In their third collaborative film, Zanny Begg (Sydney) and Oliver Ressler (Vienna) focus on the struggles of obtaining citizenship while questioning the implicitly exclusionary nature of “citizenship” as a concept.

The Right of Passage is partially constructed through a series of interviews with Ariella Azoulay, Antonio Negri and Sandro Mezzadra. These interviews form the starting point for a discussion in Barcelona, one of Europe’s most densely populated and multicultural cities, with a group of people living “without papers”. The film is set at night, against a city skyline, providing a dark void from which those marginalized and excluded can articulate their own relationship to the arbitrary nature of national identity and citizenship. Spain was chosen for this project as it is teetering on the brink of financial meltdown and is testing the limits of European cohesion. In the film, the conversations around citizenship are interwoven with animated sequences.

The title, The Right of Passage, refers to the stages, or “rites of passage,” that mark important transitions on the path to selfhood. The exchange of “rites” with “rights” suggests that freedom of movement must become a right granted to every person – regardless of his or her place of birth. The film explores how these journeys not only transform those who embark upon them but also the places they inhabit.

About the Artists

Oliver Ressler  (b. 1970) lives and works as an artist and filmmaker in Vienna, Austria. He produces exhibitions, projects in public spaces and films on such issues as economics, democracy, global warming, forms of resistance and social alternatives. His projects have been in solo exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum (USA), Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center (Istanbul, TR), Museum of Contemporary Art, (Belgrade, RS), Centro Cultural Conde Duque (Madrid, ES) and The Cube Project Space (Taipei, TW). Ressler has participated in more than 250 group exhibitions throughout the world. A retrospective of his 15 films took place at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève throughout 2013. In 2013 he also co-authored a book with Gregory Sholette titled It’s The Political Economy, Stupid: The Global Financial Crisis in Art and Theory. // ressler.at
 

Zanny Begg lives and works in Sydney, Australia as an artist, writer and curator. Her work revolves around an investigation of the politics of space, both its architecture and the social relationships that construct it. Begg is currently the director of Tin Sheds Gallery. She has been invited to participate in residencies around the world. Her recent exhibitions include Emeraldtown (Gary, IN), Artspace (Sydney, AU), What Keeps Mankind Alive( Istanbul Biennale, TR), the Taipei Biennial (TW), Have the cake and eat it too: Institutionskritik und instituierende Praxen at Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna, AT), and Self Education – Self organization at the National Centre for Contemporary Art, (Moscow, RU). // zannybegg.com