the european biennial of contemporary art
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artists

Saskia Sassen

1949, The Hague, NL Lives in London, UK, and New York, US

These Lands, Crisscrossed by Migrant Workers Over the Centuries, 2008 Text

FORTEZZA/FRANZENSFESTE

Saskia Sassen’s research and writing focuses on globalization in its many social, economic and political dimensions – immigration, global cities (including the influence of terrorism), new technological networks and changes within the liberal state resulting from current trans-national conditions. Each of her three major books has sought to demolish what she perceives as an established “truth.” In her most recent book, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (2006), she shows how the fundamental transformations today largely take place inside the core of densely nationalistic environments. This allows Sassen to explain that when these changes occur inside liberal states, they are not distortions nor anomalies, but the results of severe upheavals within the state apparatus, part of the dynamics of globalization and denationalization. In her essay for Scenarios , Sassen focuses on the issues of settlement and migration presented by the location of Fortezza / Franzensfeste at a crossroads. She turns to the undercurrent history of millions of displaced persons, on the move during two World Wars. While emphasizing the “making” of urbanity, Saskia Sassen shows that over the last three centuries refugee flows, massive labor migrations and the movement of religious and political asylum-seekers have played a crucial role in building Europe’s infrastructure and its present concept of culture.


Location

FORTEZZA/FRANZENSFESTE

ADAM BUDAK, ANSELM FRANKE/HILA PELEG, RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE: "SCENARIOS"

FORTE ASBURGICO, EISACKTAL/VALLE ISARCO,
FRANZENSFESTE/FORTEZZA, ITALY

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