11.09. – 23.10.2021

Hostile Terrain 94

Exhibition in the former police prison Klapperfeld

ostile Terrain 94 is a global pop-up Exhibition about America’s Humanitarian Crisis at the Southern Border. The project aims to raise awareness about the realities of the U.S./Mexico border, including the death and suffering that have been happening daily due to the Border Patrol policy known as “Prevention Through Deterrence” (PTD). It is a participatory art venture organized by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a non-profit research-art-education-media collective, which documents fatalities since 2009, directed by the anthropologist Jason de León.

The exhibition, shown in more than 150 locations worldwide (see list of hosting partners), is a participatory, democratic, and inexpensive public display. In the various localities, communities, activists, and scholars will adapt the display and assemble a plurality of perspectives.

In Frankfurt, the scope of the exhibition will be enhanced to demonstrate how different border policies affect and transform the policies in other regions. Against the backdrop of current migration movements the Frankfurt at the Main (FFM) exhibition will host additional visual and audio-visual materials presenting perspectives of border dwellers and crossers, artists and activists from Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and Europe (see list of contributors). Here, the urgent question of the global humanitarian crisis, border control, and living at and with borders will be addressed.

The autonomously governed cultural center Klapperfeld, a former Gestapo and deportation prison, provides a unique, emblematic place for this project by linking the external to the internal (historical) borders and the respective crises and struggles.