CAPSULAR

Ciudad Autonoma de Ceuta is a Spanish enclave on the coast of Morocco. Formerly administered by the Spanish province of Cadiz, it is now an autonomous community with a parliament and a president of its own.  Ceuta, along with Spain, is now  part of the European Union. It is an outpost of European neo-liberal and xenophobic refugee policy and serves as a contemporary ‘Iron Curtain’. The border fence which the EU has constructed on Ceuta’s perimeter is a wall between Europe and Africa, a line of fracture between North and South, ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. It demarcates an area used by the security industry as a deportation annex. As a symbol, this enclave represents both the harsh reality of Africans looking for a brighter existence and the fantasy of Europeans beset and menaced by barbarism. With its ‘remote control’ policy, Europe has literally exported its asylum problem: not only does it outsource the management of its borders to third parties, but it forces Africans to participate in the fight against illegal immigration. The presence of asylum places on African territory pushes Europe’s sovereignty far beyond its actual borders, turning the local authorities into watchdogs and hiding the migrant population from Westerners’ view. Capsular is a reflection on the relevance and irrelevance of images, on ‘the camp’ as symbol and symptom. As in his previous video work, Asselberghs uses mainstream media productions as his primary material,  comments on them and counters them.