Exterritory Project

Exterritory Project deploys different media for theoretical and practical investigations of extraterritorial phenomena and an extraterritorial logic of representation. This art project was conceived when we decided to screen a video compilation of works by Middle-Eastern artists onto the sails of boats navigating in the extraterritorial waters of the Mediterranean, as a response to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The naval limits of sovereign territories were created by Western colonial powers in order to establish trade relations between nations. The extent of state’s
territorial waters was originally defined by the range covered by a cannon shot fired from the state’s land territory out to the sea. In the ensuing centuries, the range of territorial waters became increasingly determined by the technological limits of a nation’s ability to wage war and exercise control. For these reasons, we wanted to launch the project in the extraterritorial waters at the point at which the sovereignty of the state is no longer effective, if only symbolically.  As part of the project, we have been experimenting with extraterritoriality as a tool from which to reflect on visual knowledge gaps and thresholds of representability. We believe that exploring extraterritoriality may help present blind spots that maintain certain dominant discriminating conceptions while also challenging arbitrary borders that limit the formations of political subjectivities.