The Blackbenz
Race was outlined as a semi fictional car race starting from Zurich,
with deviations to London and The Hague to Bari, Tirana, Tetovo,
Pristina and return to Zurich, traversing roads which were used
as support corridors during the Balkan War in Kosovo.
Since the end of the nineties Kosovo Albanian migrants, the second
largest foreign population in Switzerland, have been heavily discriminated
in the mass media as violent illegal racers on the Swiss roads.
The banalities of black limousines as heavily coded signs are referring
to political, economical and criminal contexts provoking different
reactions and affects in the translocal space reaching from desire,
admiration, to dazzle and contempt.
Migration contexts cannot enter visible into the focus of a highly
regulated global city spaces like Zurich, a network node which prefers
to visualize its status within economic networks but not through
migration ones.
Invisible
Race?
The
BlackBenz Race was forced to adapt to the logics of the political
coded and highly regulated spaces of European migration. Until now
it was not possible to start the race throughout Europe, it is only
possible to organize fragments of the race, test cases,in
certain areas.
The BlackBenz Racing drivers become visible in public space while
disappearing immediately inside the dense white fog of the burning
tyres, dissolving their fictive presence at European territory:
Most of them without acces to Schengen Visa, performing a wild standstill,
addressing their immobility concerning the translocal European space.
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