#documentation
02.04.2016 camp at eko gas station near polikastro /greece. when i arrived there around 16 o´clock, the highway was blockaded by the refugees. as it turned out the police shut down the medical tent in the camp a few hours before. the medical tent have been adopted by scm a few day´s ago, providing all the official papers to do medical treatments. word is that the police shut down the medical tent to increase the pressure on the refugees to move to the official camps, but the refugees know well about the bad conditions in this camps, the lack of food supply, bad army tents, lack of medical attention etc, so they refuse to relocate to the camps. in this camp there are several cases of refugees that need serious and regular medical treatment, so the closing of the medical tent is life threatening for them. the refugees blockaded the highway for hours, i left before it was open again.
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31-03-2016 camp at eko gas station near polikastro /greece. this place is called the eko camp. it is located on a highway gas station. around 3000 refugees live here in tents, about 25 km away from idomeni. several small ngo´s and private volunteers trying to help with medical attention, food distribution, cloth tents etc. there is even a tent with a little school by spanish volunteer´s. even if it is better than to be in the mud and dust of idomeni, the situation is bad. a lot of family´s live here. the kids play on the roads, even on the highway sometime.
this serious looking afghan girl is maybe 4-5 years old. i saw her several times during my visits on eko station and it was very rare that i saw her smiling. most of the time she had that serious look of a person, who seen and experienced to much.
to be frank, the european union and it´s members handle the situation now like a defensive-war in greece and other country´s in europa. military was alway´s the worst option to handle humanitarian crisis.
all hot spot camps and official camp facilities, including distributions are now under the control of frontex, greek military and other military forces. on the greek islands are fbi, interpol, greek, turkish frontex and other european police that have granted police and further rights. it is almost martial law installed. the official camps are detention center now, but you can even call it concentration camps. from the refugees coming after the 20th of april the military and frontex are ordered to take away the personal belongings, as well as the mobil phones. the big ngo´s like unhcr and doctors without borders withdraw their activities in the camps, publishing statements that they are not willing and able to work in prisons. you have to think about this for a moment. these organisations work all around the globe in almost all kind of crisis and in europa they have to stop the mission because of the political implanted conditions.
the smaller ngo´s where kicked out the camp some weeks before. private volunteers and journalist are generally not allowed to enter the camps. so almost no independent information can leak out of the camps.
since some time the refugees are ordered to claim for asylum via skype and as far as i know this process is mandatory now. this is kind of impossible if you don´t have a computer or smartphone and i actually never heard of one refugee that had a successful attempt to get through this way. that implies that there is no way right now to claim for asylum in greece for these refugees, a clear violation of the geneva convention for refugees and simply diabolic.
when volunteers try to pass supply´s and informations of what kind ever through the fences, the police comes within minutes and stop them. on the other hand the military/frontex hired subcontractors to deliver food. first of all the food is not enough. camps with baby´s and mothers need special food for the baby´s, because a lot of the mothers can´t breastfeed the baby´s anymore, but this supply is not ordered as well as most of the medical goods you need for ten thousands of people. there are several cases of subcontractors delivering bad quality, old, fungal affected food. in pireaus harbor, where a few thousand refugees live in tents now, near the space where the ferry from lesbos is landing, there was a wide spreading food poisoning because of this. these people are vulnerable, live under worst sanitary conditions and you fucking give them rotten food, seriously?
camps like pikpa are ordered to close. pikpa is a wonderful and special place on lesbos. it is a former municipal owned camping space for local kids, a summer camp. it was empty for years. now there is a refugee camp for the refugees that need special support and protection. children and grown ups with traumata, psychological problems, disability´s, ones who recover from wounds and medical conditions. it is a space of peace and care for people who are in real need for it. pikpa is running without state money and all the volunteers are working without payment. it is a real treat, a manifestation of humanitarian values, values that that europa blab about quiet a lot during the last six decades, a shiny example of civil service with almost no coast for the public authorities. there are several places like pikpa in greece. all face the same threat, closing without any plan for creating something equivalent from the government. instead all these special cases are planed to be moved to the official camps as well, all the new cases are going their already.
do we really wan´t to treat refugees, humans of all age, baby´s and small children like the british treated the boers in 1900 in south africa? because this is exactly what our governments implants right now. without the constant help of ten thousands of greek and international private volunteers working to prevent an absolut humanitarian disaster, we would face hundreds, if not thousands of dead refugees on european soil within a few month, because of the conditions they live in.
the european plan is to send them back in “safe third country´s”. safe country´s like turkey, that has a president that want to shape the state as he need it. a state where you face long term prison time if you dare to criticize the president, an islamist who dreams of a new ottoman empire. a man who managed to become the richest dude in turkey by corruption. a country in wich the border troups shoot to kill on incoming refugees, beat them up and sink their boats when they are leaving. a safe country where unattended teenager girls from syria are sold into marriage and refugee kids sold as working slaves. to a state that has not even fully signed the geneva convention nor has a working asylum system. where judges and police forces that try to uncover crimes of the government are thrown into prison, as well as journalist who dare to write about these scandals. a state that fights a brutal war against one if its minority´s, the kurdish, while it supports directly the al-nusra front and other hardcore pro-kalifat combat groups. if this is what you call a safe country, you can also call the caldera of an active volcano a safe substratum for your retirement house.
if we allow our government to treat humans in need of protection this way, because they are not from our region, the very same government will soon have no problem to use the very same kind of actions to the citizen of their own country´s as well. not only betray we all of the values that we claimed to have, but destroy the very fundament of the european union.
the nationalist movement in europa is stronger then it ever was before, since the second world war. two and a half generations after the second world war, the people don´t fear war enough anymore here in europa. they don´t remember what it is like. they just know about it from the media. the war´s we fought have been fought far away from us, mostly.
now the same healing promises are made by the same kind of narcissistic psychopath, using some group of humans to blame all bad on (refugees/muslim/terrorist), to instal repressive states. a lot of people resonate to this, because they live in society´s that offers not much of a future for them or their children. 30-40%, in some country´s even more, of our european populations are poor, undereducated, with no real chance to get better. new laws and technology create the consistently surveillance and screening of all the citizen in all our country´s. these are for sure not signs for freedom. these are signs for dictatorship.
check your history books.
it is our responsibility as citizen to take care of this, or we have to face the same consequences like our ancestors 80 years ago. in that case i can promise you a lot of no fun time.
neal mcqueen
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doing all this, helping people in need with such a large number of people from all over the world, is quiet uplifting, fun, exhausting, intense, happy and sad. almost all of the volunteers come back to their homes as changed personality´s. the experience changes your perception. a lot of the volunteers i talked to during the last six month, told me about this moment when the situation only enable them to function. all of them describe this moment as a no ego experience. this is something that let you grow as a person, as a being. it teaches you humility and can create a inner peace that you will not find in our modern bubble existence.
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17.03.2016 idomeni, greece. this is shaharzad hassan, an eight year old girl from aleppo, syria. in the last weeks she became kind of famous because of her drawings of her traumatic memory´s. since the press loves this kind of story´s she was in the news all over world. now she is running around the camp with her dad, showing the drawings to all media people they meet. it was kind of an strange encounter, i did not really wanted to take the photos, but then i realized that i would put her in shame if i don´t react and did a bunch of photos with her. the one she is holding up is called “living in a camp” and show an impression of idomeni. especially the syrian refugees that i met have a strong dignity, it seems always a little bit harder for them to accept help, an invitation, a present. shaharzad was super sweet in the end, also i could sense that she actually don´t really feel comfortable showing of like that, on the other side proud that she is able to reach attention with her art. her drawings are strong images, but what really got me was the way she looked at me. the eyes of a kid that had seen far too much in her young life. i was thinking of giving her father a litte something, but instead i gave her a lolly and she gave me a big smile back.
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18.19.03.2016 idomeni, greece. on the first three day´s of my time in idomeni the officials where passing the information to the ngo´s and refugees that the camp will be closed soon. if the refugees would not be willing to move away they would use force. now they still hand out flyers in 3 languages saying that the border is closed for good and the refugees should move to the other camps, but because the other camps are actually almost filled up, now there was a change of plans and the authority´s announced that they will try to approve the conditions. what we saw so far is a bunch of new containers for the police positioned in a way that it creates a bottle neck in the middle of the camp. i had a talk about this with a skilled crisis manager from the usa and he told me that this is one of the worst ideas to place them like that he could think of. apart from that it is like in autumn on lesbos, 100% of the support is done by ngo´s and private volunteers. a lot of the groups that have been on lesbos for the last 5-6 month went to idomeni with some of their people to help. the german red cross announced that they will build a huge medical tent in a cooperation with another red cross unit from, i hope i remember this right, denmark. this medicine tent will have the ability to even do surgery´s.
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THE WAR AGAINST THE KURDISH PEOPLE
18.03.2016 idomeni, greece. this refugee in idomeni is a kurd from aleppo, syria. i met him in the dawn of the day in the end of the trainstation where the camp ends. he was there with a group of dozen other kurdish young men, all from syria, most of them from the same neighborhood in aleppo. they all told me pretty much the same story, that they have not been part of one of the groups that are fighting, but during the last years they had to fight to defend their neighborhood. the kurdish people in turkey, syria and irak are under pressure from almost all other groups, turkey bombs and fight them everywhere, including massexecutions of civilians in southeast of turkey. the official syrian military, together with russia, the syrian isis and other dschihadist groups, are fighting against them in syria. in irak they have a semi autonom area, but also face fighting with turkey, the irak isis and other groups. since the kurdish have established a kind of modernist society in this region, including an equalisation of man and woman the exceed most of the western society´s, they are our natural ally in this region. did you know that they have always a man and a woman deciding together in important positions? nevertheless we let them down, sign a deal with turkey that europa will not interfere with their almost genocide war against the kurds. if europa will really grant the turkish people a visa free travel to the eu, we will face a new massive influx of kurdish people who will claim for asylum in europa.
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17-18.03.2016 idomeni, greece. idomeni by night is one thing first, a smell. since the refugees have to burn all they find to get some warmth, they do burn a lot of plastic and the smoke is everywhere. all the people who stay here a few hours start to cough and this is not because everyone catch some of the spreading diseases. there is actually a distribution for firewood but it is by far not enough. during the day´s you can see them wandering the wider area around to find additional wood. i only felt not save when the group of young refugees start to march around and chant slogans to fire themeself up for fighting, but apart from that, even in the worst parts of the camp, i never felt that danger to my own safety, which is quiet remarkable in this kind of situation.
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17.03.2016 idomeni, greece. i was watching this young syrian boy playing alone on the rails for some minutes. he was entirely in his own world, playing several roles. then he spotted me and came to me, making signs that he wants me to take photos of him, smiling with his beautiful soft eyes. as you can see a part of his head is burned badly. it was one of these barrel bombs of the assad regime that created the fire that did this to him.
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17.03.2016 idomeni,greece. the situation in the camp is so bad, tensions rise between the refugee groups. young syrians and afghans had several clashes, some minor, like on this photo, but also big fights involving hundreds of people. yesterday night it reached a new peak and it was for a very sad reason. when i was in the middle of the camp yesterday, i saw a man running in my direction. i lifted up the camera to take a photo but when he passed by and i saw all the details i did not take the photo. he carried his daughter and was in panic. her pants down to the feet, the shirt pulled up, naked, with wide open eyes, saggy in his arms. i thought she was dead or at least passed out. it is a picture i will never forget, stronger then anything i actually have taken here and i am very happy that i did not pull the trigger to take it. the syrian say that a afghan tried to rape the girl, but was interrupted, i don´t have any confirmation for it from other sources. she actually was in a deep shock. later in the afternoon, the sun went down already, i witnessed a group of young syrians chanting and powering themselves up to more anger. that was the moment i left the scenery. today i talked to a lot of refugees and volunteers and the picture of what happen after i left is like that: some older syrians, who stay in tends on the rails, told the young guys to not attack their afghan and pakistani neighbours, because “they are good people”. the group of syrians then went to the front of the camp, wich is a “new” part and as crowded as the fields on the other side of the rails. there is one area where mostly afghan stay in tends and that is where they went. they put fire to some of the tends, a few burned down, between 80 to 100 hundred people clashed, fistfighting, throwing bottles and stones. a few of the afghans where beaten up badly and one german volunteer, who was on the scene with a camera, was beaten up so bad that he ended up in the hospital. the refugees also took his camera. wrong time in the wrong place. today there was still a lot of tension in the camp and i believe that this will rise more and more because of the hopeless situation. when you have a lot of young desperate guys in a situation like this, you always have this kind of aggression, in every community, so they turn on each other. that is the base of the divide and rule idea. when you talk with these people, afghan, syrian, irakis, pakistanis, kurdish etc one to one, you meet very gentle and friendly folks, almost all of them. it is this situation they are stucked in, that is fucking them up and don´t forget, most of them coming from warzones.
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IDOMENI I
16.03.2016 idomeni, lesbos/greece. these are my first impression of the camp during the day time. as you can see, the conditions are a plain desaster. still people, especially kids find their way´s to cope with it, which always amaze me. rumors about the future of the camp is that i will be closed soon and if the refugees will not go by choice the authority´s will use force.
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16.03.2016 idomeni, greece. today i went to idomeni to stay for some day´s. wanted to go there for a longer while, but because of some finance struggle i had to postpone it several times. my first impression is of a desaster area. worst conditions i have experience so far since the crisis started. yes, there are several ngo´s giving food, medical attention etc, but the whole camp is a mudfield, people camp and live beside the trainrails as well, food is obvious an issue as well as really bad healthconditions, diseases are spreading. the refugee collect wood from all the area around, but still they have to burn plastic everywhere, it smells like hell. riot police from athens is on the spot, the real bad guys. this young boy from syria was holding his bread like a precious treasure for quiet a while. he came to me and give the biggest smile you can imagine.
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27.02.2016 molyvos, lesbos/greece. local and international activist came together at the beach of molyvos today at 13 o´clock, to show their solidarity with the refugees and to demand a humanitarian approach to the refugee crisis in europa. this event took place all over europa.
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13.02.2016 - EUROPEAN UNION
according to the magazine “the spiegel”, 4 members of the eu in the east, hungary, polen, czech republic and slovakia are meeting next monday to have talks and agree on ways to close the balkan route for refugees entirely.
first of all this will be a breach of a whole bunch of laws and treaty´s, since these country´s have signed the geneva convention for refugees and the the european convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. they would also breach some other european laws about cooperations.
also that would imply that these country would disavow on fundamental ethic grounds of the eu.
it is a unilateralist move that could have the power to destroy the fundaments of the european union.
the same time the eu and the nato, led by germany, is sending military forces to greece to handle the boarder situation with turkey, militarizing a crisis that is caused by refugees fleeing from a genocide like war in syria. this way the eu betrays every ethic and moral grounds that it is claiming to stand for.
the last time fear was leading the european politics this way, there was no good end to it, it was in the late 20s and beginning 30s of the last century. the uprising of the far right, the barbaric ideology of fascism, especially in the east of europa, but also in most other country´s of the european union, has reached a point where these forces are able to drive the political process in front of them.
in germany, after ww2, we had the saying: “resist the beginnings” and we used that phrase to remind our selfs and our fellow human beings to let this kind of horror, the holocaust, the fascist movement in germany, never happen again.
we are in the middle of the beginnings already, on a european scale this time.
if you wan´t to live in a free society, based on ethical standards, on democratic standards, you have to stand up for your rights and beliefs NOW. you have to leave your comfort zone, your private bubble and take a stand. there is no time for wait and see anymore, for nobody. stop distracting yourself with bullshit and talk about the important topics, get activ, find better solutions for everyone. don´t wait for others to clean up the mess. act!
if you don´t, you will ask yourself in a few years: how could that happen? like our ancestors did.
and like our ancestors, you will ask yourself this question in the ruins of europa.
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neal mcqueen
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30.01.2016 petra, lesbos/greece. this photo shows about 150 refugees waiting for getting out of the harbor area to get on busses bringing them to camp moria. they have been picked up by a greek navy vessel which is part of the frontex mission. the european union just decided to deploy a group of nato navy war-vessels to this part of the agean sea, officially to help the fight against the organized criminals that do the human trafficking. this is very obvious a false flag operation, because it is not even possible to get to these people on the water, since they are never in the boats. most of the times the boats are piloted by the refugees itself, or some poor dude making a little bit of cash. so this way there will be no chance to get to the real smugglers doing the business. the real reason will be to scare the refugees off, because they normally don´t start when they see a coastguard or navy vessel around. also, since turkey is part of the nato, this way the vessels are there for monitoring the area and pass their infos directly to the turkish side. the frontex and the turkish coastguard is actually restricted by law to do that, even if this is most likely ignored. the whole mission of the nato vessels is pretty much a task to close the boarder, which would be only legal for them in a case of defense, according to the law, which was not declared so far. this start to look like a war on refugees.
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22.01.2016 near skala sikamineas, lesbos/greece. turkey is a keyplayer in the whole crisis. first of all the government of president erdogan is deeply involved in the wars in syria and irak, supporting several fighting islamic extremist groups, including the isis. they deliver weapons, ammunition, other supply´s and military intelligence. they allow these fighters to freely pass the border to turkey to get medical treatment and allow groups like the isis to recruit new fighters within the turkish population, without interfering. the turkish president erdogan ordered the army to operate a war of extermination on the kurdish minority in the south-east of turkey, bombing and shooting the city´s where the kurdish people live. the turkish airforce is bombing them in syria and irak as well. the kurdish fighters, like the peschmerga, are the main reason why the isis was not able to conquer more parts of irak and syria, they even fought them back. so fighting the kurdish resistance groups is creating even more suffer and chaos in syria and irak and weaken other groups like the free syrian army. this forces a lot more people from syria and irak to flee their country´s, generating a massiv wave of new refugee movements. turkey now have officially 2.5 million syrian refugees within it´s borders and since turkey closed it´s borders, another estimated 40 to 50 thousand are waiting at the border to come in. the syrian and iraki refugees don´t have the status of refugees in turkey, the are “guest”. that means that turkey don´t grant them the rights of the geneva refugee convention. officially the turkish government grants them aid, the possibility to go to school for kids and even the right to work (since january), but actually these are only rights on paper not realized in reality. only a few hundred thousand of the refugees live in aided camps, but most hide somewhere in hotels, apartments, live on the street without any help from the government. parts of the turkish police and parts of the government are deeply ensnared with the smugglers who organize the traffiking to greece. the deal with european union had 4 major points. point 4 was the actual real deal. the european union granted erdogan that they will not interfere in his war against the kurdish people. now he is able to play the eu as he like´s, because he can control the stream of refugees. meanwhile he abolish the rest of the democratic foundation in turkey. there is almost no free, independent press left. in no other country in the world there are more journalist in prison than in turkey. the educational system is almost under complete control of the akp. they make sure that their supporters make it to the university´s by passing them the test questions and answers before the tests. whenever someone raises his or her voice against him or his government and their politics, he denunciate them as terrorist and chase them down with compliable prosecutors and secret services. the half of the turkish people who are rather modern or at least still think that atatürk had a point when he created the modern turkey, are demoralised and depressed by the not existing support from the western world. turkey is on the best way to become a flawless dictatorship and the west makes dirty deals with them. i guess thats about good old european tradition.
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07.02.2016 harbor of molyvos, lesbos/greece. greenpeace is with 2 rescue boats on the island for some time now. it is a cooperation with doctors without boarders. new teams for the boats came on the island and this is the handover and training day of the new teams.
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31.01.2016 harbor of mytilini, lesbos/greece. i met juval while we where both waiting for the ferry to turkey. he is from switzerland and had been on the island for quiet some time. one of his projects was building up the tea-tent at the moria camp and gives donation to groups and projects he beliefe´s in. he´s also a passionate photographer and a true humanitarian. the photo captures the moment before we introduced ourself to each other. we where waiting on the inside area of the harbor, on the other side of the fence in the open area of the harbor where some hundreds of refugees waiting for a ferry to athens. this girl, maybe 10 years old, was kind of playing with us and took his camera to take a few shots. it is a funny thing, even if we share friendship with more than 50 people on the island, we actually never met before. it is kind of a small island, because most of the stuff is happening in a few places, but being here for some month, it is not for granted that your way´s will cross. i am happy our´s did finally when he wen´t of for a holiday.
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29.01.2016 limantziki beach, near molyvos, lesbos/greece. around 10 o´clock this morning another shitty plastic dingy arrived at limantziki beach, the base of the hellas lifeguards. a boat fromseawatch guided them to the beach. the lifeguards hellas and another volunteering lifeguard group from international lifeguards helped the boat to land on a improvised base. volunteers from scm,drop in the ocean and one local member of irc then took over the further care. it was done smooth and fast, no screaming, a lot of smiles by the volunteers, so even the refugees that where stressed out from the horror ride, in particular some of the small kids, calmed down very fast.
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Masked Taping - Senga Nengudi
“Her later performances evinced an interest in African art. For the 1978/79 performance Masked Taping, she attached pieces of tape to her body and moved about, to explore ‘elements of my African heritage of mask making, dance, rites and rituals,’ the artist wrote.”
Ruach Redux - Tom Isaacs
Ruach Redux is currently being exhibited at Articulate Project Space as part of ‘per.doc’, Articulate’s fourth Decade Show. ‘per.doc’ features some of the performances and associated projects undertaken at APS over the past 10 years. My installation is located in the same room where I performed Ruach(2011).
My artist’s statement for Ruach Redux was included in the ‘per.doc’ exhibition catalogue:
In 2011 I was invited to spend two weeks working in the Articulate project space with the aim of producing work that responded to the site. During this time I devised a new performance piece called Ruach which I performed in the back room. For this performance I spent three days and nights in the space practicing breath meditation, capturing my exhalations in white balloons which slowly accumulated, filling up the space. My goal with this performance was to objectify the act of contemplation, to take something invisible—breath, spirit, energy—and make it visible. Ruach is a Hebrew word which means breath, life, or soul. In the book of Genesis it is the Ruach of God which is breathed into the first man, giving him life. Much later, the prophet Ezekiel witnessed the Ruach of God animating the bones of the dead, restoring them to new life. This Ruach is literally the breath of life. At the time that I performed this piece I still believed in God and believed that I was filled with his spirit. As I put it then, “I was created by God in His image and His Ruach lives within me. And for a time it was in the Articulate Project Space, 497 Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt.” I am currently agnostic about the existence of gods and souls.
In addition to making something visible, the original performance of Ruach took something ephemeral—breath, duration, performance—and made it physical and enduring (although not permanent). The balloons were, in effect, a form of documentation, albeit a temporary one (as I suppose all human attempts at documentation are likely to be on the grandest time scale). If I had kept the popped and deflated balloons from the performance I could have exhibited them as an indexical document. In their place I have chosen to exhibit the leftover unused balloons which remained at the end of the three day period. Alongside these artefacts I have selected one photograph of the performance by my good friend Alex Wisser.
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