Living map
Braidotti is constantly challenging her way of theoretical reasoning and writing, and in “Methamorphosis” ask a really important questions about the current state of the theoretical debate. She argues: “the point is not know who we are, but rather what, at last, we want to become, hot to represent mutations, changes and transformations, rather than Being in its classical modes.” ( 2002, p.2). For Braidotti figuration’s are not only figurative ways of thinking, but materialistic mapping of situated, or embedded and embodied, positions. Figuration is a politically informed map that outlines our own situated perspective. As an artist with “Valid unti…” I was testing this territory. The definition of my identity takes place between nature-technology, male-female, black-white, in the spaces that flow and connect in between. The work comments upon the permanent process of transition, hybridization and nomadization that we live in.
For Braidotti, figuration is a living map; a transformative account of the self-it is no metaphor. Being nomadic, homeless, an exile, a refugee, an itinerant migrant, an illegal immigrant, is no metaphor. There are highly specific geo-political and historical locations-history tattooed on your body. One may be empowered or beautified by it, but most people are not; some just die of it. (2002, p.3) .
Chicago, winter 2005. On a friends baby shower party. It is the first winter day, snow and wind, it is absolutely freezing outside. Standing next to a woman that I just met, waiting for our guest of honour to come. I hardly know anyone on this party, moreover it is my first experience of baby shower. She tries to understand where is Macedonia, I try to explain what I am doing here. And there she is, gutted by the snow, in a long greyish, old coat probably borrowed from her husband, Her hair is socking wet, and her face is pale from the cold. She enters shivering with a hesitant smile, her belly popping the buttons of the coat.
A man from the same end of the room, apparently half drunk and out of place in this whole “embrace the feminine” situation yells at her.
“Oh, there she is, Ann love, you look like an Eastern European women.”
And bursts in loud laughter.
She smiles back at him, puzzled with the comment, and then her gaze is frozen on my face. Her lips move in whisper
“ Sorry”.
I just wave my hand…
The woman next to me asks:
“ So Macedonia was in Eastern Europe? “
I nod with my head, starring at my shadow, thinking to myself:
“Can you tell that I am Eastern European? “
