Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Alien Staff When the right to be heard is not yet universal
In his actions and installations, Krzysztof Wodiczko reveals the double standards applied to the migrant population, both in the United States and Europe. In the 1990s, Wodiczko created the project Xenology: Immigrant Instruments, consisting of two mechanical devices used to denounce the covert racism encountered in Europe by non-EU migrants. One of them, Alien Staff, was produced and tested in Barcelona in June 1992 in an action that was subsequently reproduced in New York, Paris, Marseille, Stockholm, Warsaw and Rotterdam. The instrument consists of an electronic staff, equipped with a small monitor and a loudspeaker at the upper end, and containing samples and images of the life journey of a migrant person carrying the staff: work permits, visas, letters to the family, broken dreams and countless social prejudices. By turning the voice of the person into a sci-fi electronic device, it attracts the attention of passers-by who approach the migrant to hear a life story that, in other circumstances, they would most certainly have ignored.
