Abstract:

The sea is central to constructions of the refugee —maritime passage indelibly linked to political process—even as image-making and narrativization on water are inhibited by the otherness of the pelagic environment. Legally unauthorized maritime transit has informed condemnatory narratives of refugeeness in recent decades, and wealthy nations increasingly rely on extra-territorial and expulsive procedures to prevent the arrival of forced migrants. The central Mediterranean is unique for its maritime activist activity, whereby NGO vessels carry out a volume of migrant rescues. The self-fashioning of NGO vessels—the so-called Civil Fleet—highlights the link between constructions of refugees as disorderly collectives and neocolonial power structures. This discussion centres around the work of the NGO boat Louise Michel, funded by the pseudonymous British graffiti artist Banksy. The vessel’s entry in 2020 into the domain of NGO search and rescue (SAR) activity in the Mediterranean increased the profile of this form of political humanitarian activism. As far as refugee processing is concerned, the Civil Fleet exemplifies intervention in its literal sense of coming between, using direct action to disrupt expulsive state-sanctioned bordering regimes, visibly exposing the relational dynamics of asylum. The maritime rescue of refugees by European NGOs constructs a hospitable mode of refugee processing that is paradoxically both predicted and unsanctioned. The aestheticization of Louise Michel’s interceptive acts is considered here in a dual sense: visually, as design, but also conceptually, as framed political dysfunction. The former renders rescue as image and narrative, while the latter reveals the limits of political humanitarianism itself within an ill-functioning asylum system.

摘要：

海洋是难民建筑的核心——海上通道与政治进程有着不可磨灭的联系——尽管水上的图像制作和叙事受到远洋环境的差异性的抑制。近几十年来，未经合法授权的海上过境引发了对难民的谴责，富裕国家越来越多地依靠治外法权和驱逐程序来防止被迫移民的到来。地中海中部地区因其海上活动而独一无二，非政府组织船只通过这些活动开展了大量移民救援活动。非政府组织船只的自我塑造——所谓的民用舰队——凸显了难民作为无序集体的构建与新​​殖民主义权力结构之间的联系。本次讨论围绕非政府组织路易斯·米歇尔号船的作品展开，该船由匿名的英国涂鸦艺术家班克斯资助。该船于 2020 年进入地中海非政府组织搜救 (SAR) 活动领域，提高了这种形式的政治人道主义行动的知名度。就难民处理而言，民用舰队体现了字面意义上的干预，利用直接行动破坏国家批准的驱逐边境政权，明显暴露了庇护的关系动态。欧洲非政府组织对难民的海上救援构建了一种热情好客的难民处理模式，这种模式既是预料之中的，又是未经批准的。路易丝·米歇尔的拦截行为的审美化在这里被认为是双重意义的：视觉上，作为设计，但在概念上，作为框架性的政治功能障碍。前者将救援呈现为图像和叙事，而后者则揭示了政治人道主义本身在运作不良的庇护系统中的局限性。