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Newborn

Newborn is an intervention that "examines how multiple translocal networks constitute themselves in the common locla space of Zurich and how they develop specific forms of visibility and invisibility within the public space," according to Felix Stalder's email to nettime-l.

The original meaning of the NEWBORN sign will be evident primarily to migrants from the Balkans. Many of them were either present in person, or via the media, when an almost identical sculpture was unveiled at the Mother Theresa Square in Pristina when the independence of the Kosovo was declared (02.17.2008). For the Kosovo-Albanians, that sculpture symbolizes a new phase of their self-constitution. Not just in the Kosovo, but also in Zurich. Since the establishment of the state, the Kosovo-Albanian community in Switzerland is beginning to (re)present itself in the public sphere on their own terms. Kosovo-Albanians will also understand the rapper whose lyrics are partly in Albanian and how he interprets the NEWBORN sign from his individual perspective.

The issue of a 'new beginning' is also present in the Swiss political public, not the least through recurring debates over and votes on the conditions under which foreigners can become Swiss citizens. At the same time, a discourse on 'shifting identities' seems to offer -- if not a new beginning -- then at least an alternative conception of 'post-national'political identity.

jon posted this at 8:40 AM
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