@ -120,26 +120,15 @@ The contradiction embedded in many cultural and educational institutions lies in
The genuine essence of education is not bureaucratic at all, neither does it have to fit and ground its foundations under a bureaucratic roof. “The pedagogical process runs counter to the hierarchical, impersonal qualities of bureaucracy” (Cunningham, 2017). However, people working in educational institutions acknowledge the fact that entrenched bureaucratic systems impose their material constraints on teaching structures and on how these actors in this process interact with each other.“Students and staff are treated as human capital” (Cunningham, 2017). This determination can dehumanize people involved, like when "faculty-as-labor" and "students-as-consumers" are marginalized and treated as just variables.
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|…………………*…………………|
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|………………………………………|
|………………………………………|
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| |
| ... + |
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“t h e r e i s n o
D O C U M E N T
o f
c i v i l i s a t i o n
w h i c h i s n o t
a t t h e s a m e t i m e
a d o c u m e n t
o f b a r b a r i s m”
“there is no
document
of civilisation
which is not
at the same time
a document
of barbarism”
-Walter Benjamin-
(Pater, 2021)
@ -172,9 +161,9 @@ One month ago (from the writing present), my friend Chae made for my birthday th
In the latter case, the inscription technology used is the sugar blue paste and the handwriting of Chae. The text in the white-blue government document forces a different reading from the white-blue biscuit document, even if they carry the same bits of information. If I do not read carefully the text in the folder and if I do not act according to the suggested actions there is a threat. The level of threat varies in relation to the case, the identities of the holder, the state, the context, etc. There is no room for negotiation in bureaucracy and this is the omnipresent underlying violence. The threat of violence shrouded within its structures and foundations does not permit any questioning but on the contrary creates “willful blindness” towards them(15). Bureaucracies are not stupid inherently rather they manage and coerce processes that reproduce docile and stupid behaviors.
[ The birthday biscuit that Chae made, re-creating the Dutch government form ]
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### v o c a l a r c h i v e s – t a l k i n g d o c u m e n t s
This chapter is mainly a constellation of some prototypes I created while writing and coping with personal bureaucratic challenges. I provided some further space for my anxiety by unpacking and exploring the material conditions that nourished it within this timeline.
@ -203,7 +192,8 @@ Reflections-Thoughts: This experiment was my first attempt to start interrogatin
These 'rituals' are components of a larger “culture of evidence”, serving as a tool that blurs the distinction between discourse and reality (Cunningham, 2017). This culture of evidence influences how people perceive and understand information. The primary purposes of these metrics are twofold: they play a role in the marketing sphere, attracting potential students to the university as well as they are utilized in interactions and negotiations with the government, which increasingly cuts budgets allocated to universities.
[ The linguistic experiment of the Quality Assurance Questionnaire Document ]
#### 2.
Title: “Department of Bureaucracy and Administration Customs Enforcement”
@ -216,10 +206,10 @@ Description: During the first public moment at Leeszaal, I decided to embody and
Reflections-Thoughts: Beyond the information gathered through my bureaucratic-like questionnaires, the most crucial element of this experiment was the understanding and highlighting of the hidden performative elements that entrench these “rituals”. It was amazing seeing the audience becoming instantly actors of the play enacting willingly a administrative ritualistic scene.
The provided context of this “play” was a social library hosting a masters course public event on graduation projects. I am wondering whether this asymphony between the repetitive bureaucratic acts within the space of Leeszaal, where such acts are not expected to be performed, evoked contradictory feelings or thoughts. Over-identifying with a role was being instrumentalized as an “interrogation” of one’s own involvement in the reproduction of social discourses, power, authority, hegemony.
[Leeszaal West Rotterdam - November 2023 – People queuing(18) to receive their documents and sign ]
[ One of the forms that the audience had to fill out during the Lesszaal event ]
#### 3.
Title: “Passport Reading Session”
@ -235,7 +225,9 @@ Reflections-Thoughts: For the first time I observed this object so closely. The
We read the embedded signs, symbols, categories, texts, magical numbers in our passports that construct our profiles. Seeing someone's passport, ID cards, visas, travel documents might mean that you are able to understand how easy or not is for them to move, what are their travel paths, how departure or arrival is smooth or cruel. Are there emotions along the way? For some people these are documents “that embody power — minimal or no waiting, peaceful departure, warm and confident arrival” (Khosravi, 2021).
[ Part of the A6 booklet of the transcription of the passport readings session ] x2
[Part of the A6 booklet of the transcription of the passport readings session](../aglaia/passport1.png)
[](../aglaia/passport2.png)
#### 4.
Title: “Postal Address Application Scenario”
@ -249,26 +241,26 @@ The first and the last moment of the performance was during a semi-public tryout
Reflections-Thoughts: Vocalizing and embodying the bureaucratic questions was quite useful in acknowledging the government’s voice and presence as something tangible rather than a floating, arbitrary entity. It was interesting observing the bureaucrats performing their role with confidence and entitlement, contrasting with the applicants who appeared to be more stressed to respond convincingly and promptly. There is a notable distinction between performativity and performance. Performing consciously and theatrically amplifying real bureaucratic texts by occupying roles and overidentifying with them can constitute a diffractive moment, a tool itself. From bureaucratic text to performative text scenarios to speech. The embedded (but rather unconscious) performativity of “real” bureaucratic rituals establishes and empowers (bureaucratic) institutions through repetitive acts. These theatrical moments attempt to highlight the shrouded performative elements of these processes.
[A6 booklet of the first chapter of the “theatrical” scenario created out of the Postal Address Application documents and performed by XPUB peers ] x2
[A6 booklet of the first chapter of the “theatrical” scenario created out of the Postal Address Application documents and performed by XPUB peers](../aglaia/postal.png)
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### (instead of) c o n c l u s i o n
### c o n c l u s i o n
#### (next chapters of the case with reference number A.B.2024.4.03188)
#### next chapters of the case with reference number A.B.2024.4.03188
I expanded the “play” by incorporating additional “scenes” sourced again from the documents accompanying the ongoing “conversation with the government”. Two weeks after submitting my application for a short-term postal address [16/02/2024], I received a letter from the municipality stating their rejection of my request and warning me of potential fines if I fail to declare a valid address and provide a rental contract. After extensive communication with the municipality, I decided to respond to this decision by writing and sending an objection letter [19/02/2024]. The objections committee received my letter [21/02/2024], and after some days, they issued a confirmation letter outlining the following steps of the objection process which involves hearings with municipality lawyers and further investigation of my case. The textual components collaged for the next “episodes” are sourced from the transcribed recordings of my actual conversations with the municipality clerks, my objection letter, the confirmation documents including the steps I am required to take.
My case has finished by this time. I withdrew my objection [7/03/2024] and I de-registered [11/03/2024] after a good amount of stress and precarity. My bureaucratic literature is meant to be read and voiced collectively. People’s bureaucratic literatures should be read and voiced collectively.
My intention is to facilitate a series of collective performative readings of bureaucratic scenarios or other portable paperwork stories as a way of publishing and inspecting bureaucratic bordering infrastructures. The marginal voices of potential applicants are embodying and performing a role. “The speech does not only describe but brings things into existence” (Austin, 1975). I would like to stretch the limits of dramaturgical speech through vocalizing a document in public with others and turn an individual administrative case into a public one. How do the inscribed words in the documents are not descriptive but on the contrary “are instrumentalized in getting things done” (Butler, 1997). Words as active agents. I am inviting past and future applicants, traumatized students, injured bearers, bureaucratic border crossers, stressed expired document holders or just curious people to share, vocalize, talk through, read out loud, amplify, (un)name, unplace, dismantle the injurious words of these artifacts.
[ Part of A6 booklet scenarios of the next chapters of my bureaucratic story aimed to be performed ] x2
[](../aglaia/objection1.png)
[](../aglaia/objection2.png)
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#### “we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us”(20)
As I sit in the waiting area at the gate B7 in the airport preparing to come back to the Netherlands, I am writing the last lines of this text. I am thinking of all these borders and gates that my body was able to pass through smoothly, carrying my magical object through which I embody power- at least within this context. However, I yearn for a reality where we stop looking at those bodies that cross the multifaceted borders and get crossed and entrenched by them, but on the contrary we start interrogating and shouting at the contexts and the frameworks that construct them and render them invisible, natural and powerful.
### s i d e n o t e s
1. I live somewhere in the margins of scattered references, footnotes, citations, examinations embracing the inconvenience of talking back to myself, to the reader and to all those people whose ideas gave soul to the text. I shelter in the borderlands of the pages my fragmented thoughts, flying words, introspections, voices. Enlightenment and inspiration given by the text “Dear Science” written by Katherine McKittrick.
2. I use the word borderland to refer to Greece as a (mostly) transit zone in the migrants’ and refugees’ route towards Europe.
@ -292,7 +284,7 @@ The term is borrowed from the protests of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 201
19. Vosk is an offline open-source speech recognition toolkit
20. US Immigrant Rights Movement Slogan (Keshavarz, 2016)
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### r e f e r e n c e s
Agamben, G. (2000) Means without end: Notes on politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
