Un-Home / Moving Stones1 focuses on the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion of uninvited newcomers to our Western societies. Whether documented or not, migrants entering Europe are facing ever more restrictive policies. Moreover, in the guest-countries they are confronted with a social climate of growing polarised discourse and controversy.
Likewise, the uninvited newcomer is forcibly placed ‘in limbo’ – in a border zone stuck between the past and the future, between expectations and reality, between ‘home’ and ‘un-home’.
Filip Berte aims at consciously standing still at different places in Europe that are characterised by this liminal ‘in-limbo’-state, such as refugee camps or asylum seekers’ registration- and reception centers; they are sites that embody a border crossing or ‘rite de passage’, they are the waiting rooms where people are received, but where at the same time they can be tracked down, traced and controlled, and where the decision on their next station in life will be made.
With the installation House of Eutopia Filip Berte wants to examine and reveal the social, political, geographic and historical margins of Europe. As an observer of the margin and the outsider, Berte tries with House of Eutopia to make the visitor aware of this reality. Under the name of Eutopia Filip Berte has been constructing his house room by room at the CAMPO arts centre (Ghent, B) since 2006. He has exhibited and worked from Ghent to Berlin, Prague to Poznan and put the final touches to House of Eutopia in 2013 in Utrecht.