"passports" a radiofeature with interviewparts with s. kalff

Introduction/information/suggestions

Already since the beginning of the year 2008, European citizens with a European passport are able to pass 24 European borders with being controlled. Since yesterday, (March 30th) you do not even need to officially pass any controls for inner European flights. This means, that EU citizens are hardly ever forced to show their passports at any given European border. This sounds more then paradox, referring to the fact, that the passport is more and more rearmed to represent a mini computer carrying all biometric data about its owner. Why lead the whole discourse about the violation about private sphere, protection of data privacy and human dignity, when you hardly need any passport? But everyone travelling to the USA lately knows that the passport there is more important then ever. EU passport, here being a "free ticket to ride" across Europe, becomes an instrument of totalitarian state control systems over there. And its owners from privileged ones to completely surveilled ones.

Extremes and contradictions coin the history of the passport, its meaning and function. It was always an obligation for some and a privilege for the others. An instrument of control and surveillance and a document of individual freedom. Daniela Mayer met people, who research the function of the passport and its function either seen from a culture historical point of view or from an artistic one and explore it - as a book full of stories and a hologram for all problems in this world.

Music

(childlike melody of "Timid Tiger", shortly free then accompanying the text)

Text:

A teddy bear sits lonely on an island and sadly looks into the afar. Written on its belly the word "love" and little hearts circle around its head. Longingly he thinks of a walrus, that sits millions of miles afar on an other island. Lonely, sad and longingly thinking of the teddy bear.

Music shortly up

Text:

These two tragic figures are stamped images. Someone stamped them straight and accurately on the two islands. The islands are painted with red watercolours and framed with black marker. A kid's work, you could think. But this little scene has inspite of all seemingly naive charm a nearly political explosiveness. Because it is depicted right in the middle of an official passport, stamped invalid aslant.

Atmo:

Big stamp sound

Text: Responsible for this work is the Cologne artist Sibyll Kalff. In this work, she expresses the deep gap, that burocracy can enforce on lovers with different origins.

Voiceover Sibyll Kalff:

I know so many loving couples having their lives destroyed by immigration situations and laws or the impossibility to marry or the caused by the elimination of being able to live together worldwide.

Text:

Caused by the simple fact of not being in possession of the same passports and therefore connected rights. An impassable barrier - for two humans, that wants to come together, but is not allowed to. For Sibyll Kalff only one of the many impacts, that a passport can have for its owner.

Voiceover 2 Sibyll Kalff:

You can exemplify the whole insanity of this world that would not necessarily have to exist, by the means of this passport.

Music

(Sibyll Kalff Song: Fingerprint files-shortly free then accompanying the text)

Text:

With her series "passports" Sibyll Kalff exactly focuses on these issues. She is using her own expired passports and the ones of her parents and grandparents as sketchbooks. During the last years, she inscribed and painted more then 15 of them page by page.

Voiceover 3 Sibyll Kalff:

You find collages; you find sketches, many photos from my parents or me, many drawings, there is texts, text fragments, simply coloured pages, coloured in various styles, you find stamps, stamped works

Text:

And again and again pages with symbols. The ones of the Tuaregs for example, African Berbers, who have to fight for their right of a nomadic life nowadays. For them the passport is nothing but a restraint a symbol of the restriction of their individual freedom.

Atmo: Stamp sound

Text: Contraire to that, original stamps always flash up between the drawings, likewise photos, or glued in visa, prove for an unlimited life, that the passport can guarantee and make possible as well.

Voiceover 4 Sibyll Kalff

I always wanted to make sure, that you can recognize the photos and portraits of my family and that you can perceive and reconstruct their travels and journeys as well. And this is of course the poetical aspect, when you can see them as passports, telling stories of travels.

Text: The ones of her own, for example. An old visa recalls the memories of Sibyll Kalff travelling to Nepal, having been 19 years old.

Music (India/Nepal)

Voiceover 5 Sibyll Kalff

We had to spend a whole night in a transit room at the airport (in Delhi) and I met this about 70 or 80 years old rather extraordinary Austrian 1´17´15 and we talked the whole night, and philosophised and I remember this picture of standing in this other room later to identify our luggage and everywhere stood this blue expedition tons, and right across every single one Harrer- Expeditions, Harrer- Expeditions, Harrer- Expeditions, Harrer- Expeditions (Heinrich Harrer having been the personal teacher and friend of his Holiness, the Dalei Lama)

Music Nepal up (shortly free, then fade out under text)

Text:

The passport as the travel diary

Voiceover 6 Sibyll Kalff

This is my favourite aspect, the poetic travelling. 10´20 But of course an insane power is manifested within this little book, connected to this few pages of paper.

Atmo: Stamp sounds

Atmo New York (Police, sirens etx, as a contrast to the dreamlike music from Nepal)

Text:

Sibyll Kalff experienced that herself and assimilates that in her passport series, too. For 10 years the artist tried to live in New York, without any permanent residency constantly forced to travel back to Cologne. And more then ever, since 9/11, that she lived through in the Lower East Side of New York, she knows, that a passport can transmit apart from the feeling of freedom, the feel of permanent control and surveillance.

Voiceover 7 Sibyll Kalff

It was month and month cops and police barricades. Cops on every corner of every block, carrying machine guns. (32´5). And of course you had to identify yourself. (32´25). If I would not have had my passport, I could not have walked around at all. That's again the passport as the entrance ticket, the certificate to pass, the legitimating, 34´00 this is why they call it passport. That you can pass.

Atmo Repeated knocks on a heavy wooden door Music (15th century a little longer, then free as a separator, then mixed under)

Voiceover 8 Valentin Groebner

Passport itself is a word from the 15th century, it means literally, walk through that door,

Text: The passport as a certificate to pass. Hardly any of its various functions is as old as that and as original as that. Explains Valentin Groebner, Professor for History, University Luzern and expert of the historical meaning of passports and certificates of legitimating

Voiceover 9 Valentin Groebner

The passport, as we know it nowadays, or as it is used nowadays has its origin in the middle ages, in the certificate to pass, or in the letter of consignment, with that a sovereign, a town, a bishop, a king ensures a traveller, by the way in exchange for money, that he can travel through his territory undisturbed and without fearing any violation or attack on his person.

Atmo (carriages, horses, music etx.)

Voiceover 10 Valentin Groebner

Travellers, transporting precious good were handed out this letters of consignment for themselves and their entourage, pilgrims had they guaranteed by law, because they travelled under the special religious protectorate of the king. This was, if you want to see it that way, honours, privileges, and very expensive special permits.

Text: But already in those times not for everyone.

New Music (Middle age, more threatening, maybe Atmo Mass)

Text:

It was very soon a must for the masses, to carry papers that identified them and their doings - for control and surveillance reasons and to classify them by the controlling and ruling powers.

Voiceover 11 Valentin Groebner

At the end of the 15th century, first the towns, then more and more territories in Europe decree regulations, against vagrant beggars, regulations, that basically make it more then over clear to only support beggars or poor people, that can identify them with a certificate, that they are really locals, and really in need of support and not surreptitious beggars (from other territories). D.h. You can easily prove the collision of force and privilege at the same time here.

Atmo :( historical music, Atmo fades out) Double stamp sound

Voiceover 12 Valentin Groebner

Pinnacle we can say, that we are all derelicts from this beggars and mercenary soldiers and travelling salesmen of the 15th and 16 th century. Because we have to have a passport, or we just cannot pass the borders.

Atmo: Airplane taking off

Text:

This is still the same nowadays in the so called boundless Europe. Indeed all borders of 24 European countries are open for the owners of the EU passport - without any passport control, not even at any longer at any airport. But this does not reduce the importance and meaning of a passport at all. Only the one, who has it, does not have to show it. The one without any has to expect rigorous controls. That's the way it always has been, says Valentin Groebner.

Voiceover 12 Valentin Groebner

Historically seen, the creating of an inner space, where the controlling rulers of the EU abstain from surveilling their travellers, always goes parallel with a shifting of control of the/to the outside. For rich people the pass control was abolished in the 19th century, but for poor people a system was established, where they always had to prove to have work, for all servants, craftspeople, people working for the industrial complexes, that travel from place to place, where they always had to prove to have work, to have money or trouble was created for them.

Text:

Today as well, problems can be caused by the social status, but in the meantime alike the national affiliation, the last travels or the political interests. Information, easily decodable thanks to the transformation of a passport into a biometrical microcomputer full of personal data.

Atmo: Electronical bleeps

Text:

More then ever the passport unites in its meaning the function of control and security. The let pass and the need to identify. And it separates the society into the humans with the right and the wrong passport.

Voiceover 14 Sibyll Kalff (9´15)

Not even to mention the existence of millions of humans, who cannot travel at all, because the do not own a passport at all. Of course all manifested within the passport itself, whether you have a passport or not, whether you are allowed to travel or not, whether you have the necessary documents. And of course I would love to stand there and hand out every single human on the planet my art passport or an art passport, to move and travel around freely worldwide.

Text:

A vision, that motivated Sibyll Kalff to work on her passport series and that the Berlin artist Uwe Koch realized since 2 years - in his ways, with the project Takatako.

Atmo (Sounds Takatako - sounds like the rattling of an old train)

Text: Two years ago, he designed such an art passport. A little red book. Outside the label Takatako Passport, inside many empty pages. The passport does not have the connotation of an official document, neither is it a certificate to pass. It is a book for notes between decampment and arrival.

Music (visionary, dreamy)

Speaker I (female voice, nearly whispering) Time slows down. To pause becomes the rule. To sink into the moment of vastness.

Text:

Travellers are supposed to fill their passports with thoughts and visions and this way give it very personal meaning, far away from any official function or a real passport.

Speaker I (shortly up, then fade out) Sun, wind, waves, a scream, deep, deep clear water................ Iron wheels on track ages make takatako, takatako, takatako, takatako.....

Text:

Already 700 passports were distributed to humans worldwide by Uwe Koch. Everyone is asked to fill it and to send it back to Berlin. That is part of the concept.

Voiceover 15 Uwe Koch (3'00)

The traveller should in the best case take the passport along on his journey and in the meantime fill it with notes and perceptions, that he has during his travels.

Atmo: Stamp sound

Speaker I

Stamped. Passed the security lock. Nothing beeps. I made it through again, just like this. And then two border executives: Completely mechanical they take passport after passport and control with a short glance the analogy between the photo and the passport owner. Do I go to her or him? I observe them for a little while and finally go to her and ask, whether she could stamp my takatako passport. "For an art project?" She takes a very serious look at it, then smiles and stamps it. It's that easy.

Atmo: Stamp sound

Text:

Uwe Koch collected more the 150 passport stories like that in the meantime. And it's becoming more and more.

Voiceover 16 Uwe Koch:

Which means, the net of experiences becomes more dense then ever and more pluriversal at the same time and actually, we did not state any final statement in that history. But our goal is, when we have a real treasure, that we can lift, to scoop from this fund and prepare and exhibition, which documents the project.

Text:

You can already read many passport stories on the homepage of the project Takatako.

Atmo (Sounds Takatako - sounds like the rattling of an old train)

Text:

They tell stories from transit - and border experiences, the meaning and art of travelling, from passports and the own identity. And from the utopia, that all passports of all humans of this planet are equal and artistically books - books full of pictures, stories and stamps from the whole world.

Atmo: Stamp sound, three times.

FIN WebPages:

Translation: by Sibyll Kalff, April 2008