Beyond this World: Refugee Camps as Digital Spaces

Western Sahara is the last colony of Africa. Occupied by Morocco since 1975, the population lives divided by a wall of 2720km and a huge minefield: one part under the violent control of Moroccan militaries, the other part in the refugee camps of Algeria, the oldest refugee camps in the world.
Refugee camps are a spot in-between, a temporary space outside global trades and informative lines which construct the architecture of our times. There is no activity in a refugee camp, just surviving and waiting. A land outside time and space which connects with ‘the world’ through surveillance and satellite pictures.
With its deterritorializing nature, the refugee camps, as an urban paradigm, can be considered archeological traces of SUPRAINFINIT, a material place beyond the material.
The proposal decentralizes an already decentralized residency to tackle concepts such as territory and digital (in)visibility by means of working online from two almost antithetical places. The residency will be developed during the 10th ARTifariti edition (www.afterthefuture.care) entitled After the Future. While Azahara Cerezo stays in Europe having contact with the refugee camps through virtual mediums, connecting our world with an invisible land, Jose Iglesias Gª-Arenal will be working in the camp of Bojador.
The residency will take shape as an online visual essay, combining Internet-found materials with heterotopic reflections from the camp to expand our understanding of the SUPRAINFINIT horizon.