Hans Ulrich Obrist with Stefano Boeri and Barbara Vanderlinden describe today's citizenship in terms of "bands of perception" - "less about belonging to a single and fixed geography but more about constructing a personal collage inflected by the various place one travers, travels to, lives in, emigrates to" etc. -- I had a conversation last weekend with Tejpal Ajji and he was telling me about his research about airport cities, outside major cities, like Heathrow, Queens, and Malton (which happens to be Tejpal's city of residence) + a conversation with Will Kwan led us into speculating about sharing a studio in Berlin or New York in the future, an outpost for our careers. I started to think about outposts and hubs and extensions this week. Sometime during the week i've been hypothesizing about the idea of a "Little Canada" --- I wonder how that could transpire in the fabric of a city like Berlin or Beijing, for instance; in Toronto we have China town, Korea town, Little Italy, Little India et al. and I'm thinking it would be interesting (and fun) to flip the idea back around and let immigrant culture come full circle - I bet there's a word for it... but what do you call an immigrant who goes back to where the hell he came from?
My father, who travels much between Canada and Poland has recently lamented to me about the migration of Polish, and now EU, citizens out of Poland to try and earn better money; many have ended up in England, Ireland, Germany etc + he says that the country has "lost" about 5 million inhabitants. I ask him if that's bad, and he says that it is, of course it is. And when I ask: How do you know? We both smile.
Image: Yesterday's Queen Street W. fire.
