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# 5

Birdlike voices of women

Moreover, I think that the women were called doves by the people of Dodona for the reason that they were Barbarians and because it seemed to them that they uttered voice like birds; but after a time (they say) the dove spoke with human voice, that is when the woman began to speak so that they could understand; but so long as she spoke a Barbarian tongue she seemed to them to be uttering voice like a bird: for had it been really a dove, how could it speak with human voice? 

Herodotus, Histories, c. 430 BCE
Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
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  • Where does Europe begin and Where does Europe end
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  • Giovanni Ambrosio. Please do not show my face. Chapter: Thresholds. Untitled.
Giovanni Ambrosio Argumenta Please Do Not Show My Face 011
# 3

Giovanni Ambrosio. Please do not show my face. Chapter: Thresholds. Untitled.

Every image in the Alterlibrary collection is intended as a quote, an excerpt of a larger discourse. But every image also stands as a matter that could undergo a series of operations and alterations. Therefore, images are renewable sources.

  • Operations: Extraction and Collection. Image alteration: none.

This is an original photographic image extracted from my series called Please do not show my face. It is a collection of photographs divided into six chapters. All images have been shot in Calais and Dunkerque migration camps, across the cities and in the so-called jungles. Please do not show my face is not a documentary series on migration or migrants (but no one can control how images can collect arguments)—this work aims mainly to be an essay on the concept of the gaze. In using documentary photography materials, it interrogates the boundaries of visibility, authorship, and power of representation.

In the chapter devoted to thresholds, each image probes the notion of a threshold as a political act for those possessing the means of representation, compelling us to ask how far we can—or should—go in portraying others. Simultaneously, migration—moving from one place, status, or idea to another—is inextricably linked to thresholds and is never neutral: having, or being denied, the power to cross them determines who can move freely and who remains excluded.

Invitations to contemplate
  • why did I collect this image
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This image is part of the collection
  • Imagine an Ecosystemic Europe
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  • We would ask to transform and reform the modalities of membership by which the city (cité) belongs to the state, as in a developing Europe or in international juridical structures still dominated by the inviolable rule of state sovereignty […] This should no longer be the ultimate horizon for citie …
  • Giovanni Ambrosio. Ius Soli. Chapter one: waiting, passing, redemption. Soils:
Tessuto non tessuto. 2018-
of our Imagination