Deborah Schamoni

If I Want to Go Home Will Robots Send Me Somewhere Else? is the curious question posed on this large billboard installed at Ostend’s railway station. Cuts in the corrugated steel plates — reminiscent of shipping containers — enable the viewer to see the changing sky behind the letters. Haliti drew her title from the “true or false” section of an online platform called “#rumours about Germany – facts for migrants”. On this website, one can find answers to questions that were supposedly submitted by asylum seekers. In Haliti’s alienated version, the word “robots” replaces “Germany” and “I” replaces “you” — a play on words that conveys a split sense of technological optimism and the uncertainty of the self in a machine-led future, beyond the control of human-dictated territories and borders. 

Curated by Caroline Dumalin
Text: EUROPALIA International Brussels
Photos: GRAYSC