"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism." (Walter Benjamin 1940)
This summer school program and workshop series, developed in collaboration with Merve Bedir, Armina Pilav and (initially) Michaela Büsse, engages with the island-as-infrastructure and EU nation of Malta. The "Governance: Documents & Monuments" sessions formed part of the Virtual Summer School 2020, part of the activities of the European Forum for Advanced Practices and in the context of the Cycles of Circulation project. The discussions and research addressed case studies in migration and movement of bodies and materialities through media, aesthetic, cultural, ecological, and practice-led research and methods.
The relation of documents and monuments that allows for migrations of materials and peoples is explored, tracing the physical effects of specific documents (historical and contemporary policies, agreements, contracts, and waybills) on linked sites, industrial and infrastructural objects and installations, regions and landscapes) as resulting in and stemming from monuments (specific sites, industrial and infrastructural objects and installations, regions and landscapes). Maltese archipelago and its relation to globalizing initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative is the context for bureaucratic forensics using data, field visits, and investigative tracing, visualization and media storytelling.