We Sell Reality:
Love File
Presentation in the appartement of Kunsthal Gent, exceptionally open to the public during the weekend of 29 September to 1 October. Entrance: Lange Steenstraat, opposite café Folklore
Love File is a testimonial describing the trajectory of two people from the collective We Sell Reality who did everything they could to resolve the limbo one of them found themselves in. The protagonists in the spatial narrative that will be shown in Kunsthal Gent, applied for - and eventually obtained - a residence permit in Belgium for the one who found himself in limbo, on the basis of their long-term relationship. They were driven to do so after the male protagonist's asylum application in the Netherlands had been rejected twice, making the chances of resolving the limbo in the Netherlands seem remote. After an eight-year period of waiting interspersed with periods of staying in illegality in the Netherlands, the two protagonists including two children moved to Belgium to force an opening.
Using the timeline they had to produce to prove their long-term relationship in Belgium, they will tell a story in which the boundaries of the right to choose who you love, the right to privacy and the right to have non-standard relationships are crossed. In the process, it becomes clear that procedures are set up in such a way that you are forced to direct your relationship to perfection. The inconveniences that come with directing one's love life, as well as the emotions that flare up when two people are forced to become embroiled in a relationship of inequality because one is utterly dependent on the other, are highlighted. The spatial timeline that will run through the love nest, will show that the carrying capacity required to get a simple approval of existence is out of all proportion. The protagonists gradually become so exhausted that the shine of love is increasingly lost. Don't the barriers put up for refugees in limbo and those who embrace them go way too far?
We Sell Reality is a social contrarian label set up collectively. We Sell Reality reflects on the paradox of closed borders for some and open borders for others. For migrants with little to no wealth and with whom we, in the West, do not identify so easily, our borders are almost impossible to cross. And these borders are not only on the edges of the European Union, but they manifest themselves in the internal policies of all individual EU member states. As long as a person has not been granted an official (final) residence status, that person is restricted in many ways.
The dependency position individuals end up in as a result of these border policies is visualised and made tangible by We Sell Reality. The collective develops products and presentations that give an insight into the injustice resulting from migration policies based on fundamental inequality.
We Sell Reality:
Love File
