Curator, lecturer and artist historian Ana Peraica wrote a thorough article TRESPASSING: FROM GREAT DIVIDE TO “BALKAN ROUTE" of the editorial theme of Springer's latest magazine issue 'The Migrant Issue' through the presentation of the artistic in-situ intervention 'HUMAN:ČOVEK' of the  association Apsolutno (attached)
Springerin 2/2026  'Migration Issues / Migrationsfragen'

 

Few things have been as unsettling our societies in recent times as global migration. It's not just the growing tendency towards ethnonationalism and authoritarianism that can be linked to it. Many other developments, by no means for the better, such as the "racialization" of everyone else or the constantly reignited debates about social envy, are also connected to it. At the same time, the migratory transformation of the social sphere produces many new inequalities and differences, all of which warrant closer examination: "good" migrants (those who are like us) versus "bad" migrants (those who will always remain foreign and cannot be integrated); border regimes in which some enjoy the EU-wide "right to freedom of movement," while others have little chance of ever overcoming the barriers erected against them; and finally, the radical disparity in the causes of migration (flight from political persecution, climate emergency, economic hopelessness, the general imbalance between the global North and the global South, etc.). All these aspects are reflected in current art and are addressed in a wide variety of ways. In the issue "Migration Issues," we want to explore not only how contemporary art can adequately reflect these processes and conditions, but also how a migration-sensitive artistic practice can generate and promote a different, broader understanding of these new realities. We want to examine how old, entrenched, or resurgent binaries like "us" versus "them" can be effectively subverted. And we want to explore what new, "post-migrant" horizons might look like that do justice to the irreversible reality of current migration movements in an unvarnished way.

'' ... Borders had changed the placement. Since the 90s, all the countries in which Apsolutno was working had integrated into the EU. Traveling between them is barely controlled. As the border of Fortress Europe had moved, defining new B (East), some other nations were trespassing on the territory. Yet the largest change is in empathy. Looking back to times when war migrations in the ex-Yugoslavian countries were enforced by politics and peaceful displacement, when in most cases refugees were hosted by their own family and friends on the other side, with only a few camps for refugees existing, and were easily integrated, today’s refugees are not cared for ... ''

Ana Peraica: TRESPASSING: FROM GREAT DIVIDE TO “BALKAN ROUTE"

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