What is the purpose of your visit? —A journey towards the high seas is a performative response to the fluctuating relationship between the state, the territory and the individual. In 2015 I undertook a fourteen-hour journey across the Mediterranean Sea, towards the high seas, defined by UNCLOS (United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea) as a portion of sea where no state can claim sovereignty. There, I collected fifty liters of international water in order to ship it to the Netherlands, as a first destination. I conceive this portable portion of high sea as a moveable exception zone, where our status is paused, as in an embassy without nationality. This gesture suggests a spatial opportunity, a symbolic zero degree zone, where it might be possible to reimagine the meaning of citizenship.

Giuditta Vendrame

Giuditta Vendrame is an Italian designer and researcher based in the Netherlands. She works at the intersections between design, art practice, and legal systems, focusing on personhood, space and mobility. She makes use of different media (film, performance, installations), often to question the opaque nature of laws and regulations, to make them debatable. Together with Paolo Patelli is part of La Jetée. giudittavendrame.net