Tracking Europe: mobility, diaspora, and the politics of location

摘要

The grainy cover image showing a shabby car carrying several passengers and heavily topped with luggage approaching a border post - taken from Corridor X, a video by German-Greek media artist Angela Melitopoulos - with the stars of the European Union superimposed on the book's cover, is an apt metaphor for the contents and argument of Ginette Verstraete's Tracking Europe: Mobility, diaspora, and the politics of location. Are the occupants of the car tourists, smugglers or immigrants? Are they entering or leaving Europe? Is the contrast between the rundown car and the modernity of its representation (a color, electronically processed video still) telling us something significant about the uncertain identity of its occupants and their destination? Moreover, is the virtual gap between the video still and the symbols of the European Union suggested by the separation/interaction of the two images on the book's cover symbolic or not?