Our Central European reality is pervaded by gaps, camps, transit spaces, and waiting rooms. More people than ever before are currently under way, waiting and living in places that were intended as temporary, but where the state of emergency has become the general rule. According to the United Nations, a refugee camp exists for 20 years and a refugee spends about 12 years there.
The BLACKMARKET FOR USEFUL KNOWLEDGE AND NON-KNOWLEDGE in Braunschweig explores concrete and symbolic intermediate spaces in our present society, and the characters and people, who live within those spaces: refugees who await recognition of their status at the end of a journey but have still not arrived anywhere, traffickers and smugglers, spies and tourists, businessmen, border crossers and transgressors, digital and hedonistic nomads. But there are not only those who have to be on their way, but also those who simply can or want to be: bloggers, hackers, frequent flyers. They trigger a different political debate. One that is held between those, who embrace a new freedom of movement and dream of transnational identities in a world without borders, and those who fear losing their identity and homeland.