Libertat

Photography + Seaweed, Mussels & Stones (Readymades)
40 x 55 cm (Framed, Oak Wood), Fine Art Print Hahnemühle PhotoRag
Shown at Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark, Group Exhibition/Project, 2024
Notes For Supplement Existing Knowledge, Program by Carsten Rabe
Supported by Goethe Institute Denmark & Behörde für Kultur & Medien Hamburg

Freedom of movement

In the 18th century, individual freedom was defined by a person called Blackstone on the basis of “locomotion”¹. Reduced to the sense of the ability to move, a rather mechanical idea of freedom. At this moment, mobility therefore stands for freedom to move freely from one place to another. This freedom of movement can be made possible by the street space, for example. Within this space we find something like “legally circled spheres” ², such as the boundaries of the road edge (curbs), crash barriers, etc.. If we read this form of freedom of movement as liberal freedom, we almost need the “spatial imaginary” ³, an almost spatial figure. This figure can also be a roundabout, for example, which is shaped and demarcated by this legally defined sphere. 


Roundabout = Traffic Island Space 

Roundabouts are places that are almost cut out of the public space by the surrounding road. The road is the space for movement around the traffic island, which itself remains as a leftover space and has no other function than to be a geometric shape. The shape of the traffic island is a circle and at this moment part of the spatial imaginary that describes liberal freedom. The traffic island is therefore a cut-out of public space and is separated as a place by the legal sphere of the streets – it can therefore not be clearly read as public space. 

The Roundabout is therefore basically a place that is not freely accessible and is even made inaccessible by legal regulations. It is often planted with greenery and pretends to be a natural space and is often home to highly symbolic monuments, as in the case of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The monument served the glory of the imperial army and was also known as the “altar of the fatherland”. The space of the traffic island is used here to celebrate the expansion of the nation through Napoleon’s occupation and campaigns of invasion. The space for freedom of movement is perforated here by a rather dominant definition of freedom, whose foundation is often based on submission and lack of freedom and not on the individual rights of all.

Power Radius

An island, in the sense of a land mass surrounded by water, is in the original spatial context something that could be reached freely. There is only the sea that surrounds the island and the sea is free – Mare Liberum, as Hugo Grotius stated in 1609. Natural law rules in the sea and it encloses the island for the first time as a sphere free of any law. In 1703, Cornelis van Bynkershoek redefined Mare Liberum and assumed that, in principle, ownership of the sea could exist as far as the power of the state would reach. The power radius of the state was defined by the range of the cannon guns of the time (3 miles). 

Today, the range of the Frontex motorboats, among other things, defines how far the sea is a space on which people can move freely and who is allowed to live in freedom and, above all, in safety in which place. In this case, it is Europe’s radius of power that, against natural law, creates a sphere of non-accessibility.

Freedom of instinct

Natural law is not a construct of human rulers who conquer, restrict and own. The horse on the traffic island reminds us of this. At this moment, it frees itself from its owner and does not want to know anything about legal spheres. It follows the instinct of freedom embedded in it and invokes individual natural law, freedom of movement and, in this case, the freedom to remain. Within the circle of traffic, the animal stands there and watches us as we move around, confident in the freedom provided to us. 

Today it is not the majestic arch of triumph that decorates the traffic island. Instead, I see the grassing horse, which at this moment has no ambitions to be majestic or to triumph over anything. As I turn into the traffic circle, I stop at the Guardia Civil police officers standing at the side of the road. They immediately and nervously ask me if this horse belongs to me. I replied “No, it doesn’t belong to me”. As I drove on through Catalonia, I thought about this sentence for a while longer. And another text of Eva von Reddecker came into my mind…it was that one about the „Stutenberg“ a location of her youth, about ownership and controll of things. 

1, 2, 3   Eva von Redecker, Bleibefreiheit, Seite 9, 2023
5   Eva von Redecker, Revolution für das Leben, 2020

Supplements

The stones, on which seaweed and mussels grow and colonize, come from the Baltic Sea in Aarhus.
During a morning swim by the sea accompanied by Louise Vind-Nielsen and Simon Schultz, Kemper collected the stones together with their attachments. In the Kunsthal Aarhus space, they complemented the work Libertat as representatives of the “Mare Liberum”. In the coastal area, at the intersection between the land and the sea sphere, they show how naturally free coexistence can be achieved. They remind me to constantly question the self-evidence of human order and systems.