PORTFOLIO ENTRY #18.1

WALLS

Reimagining borders

Get to know our continuously interconnected world with talks that transcend our traditional understanding of boundaries and their limitations.

Taiye Selasi explores our relationship with our multiple identities.

This video is about a girl named Taiye Salasi who refuses to accept the fact that a person is from the country where he/she was born. Taiye was born in England and grew up in the United States. She says that wherever she goes people call her "multinational". She does not agree with this term and she explains why is this so. Taiye does not think that a country is an absolute, fixed point in place and time. On the contrary, a country, in Taiye's opinion, is a thing that could be born- die- expand- etc and it hardly seems to be the basis for understanding a human being. What we call "countries" are actually a sovereign statehood and an idea that come to fashion 400 years ago.

Taiye claims to be a multi-local instead of a multinational person as she thinks that all experience is local. She says that what makes her come from the United States is not the passport but the experiences she had in that country. She proposes a three-step we should all have in mind at the time of answering where are we from Ritual, Relationships, and Restrictions. First, you have to think about your everyday rituals (have a shower, 

making coffee in the morning, go to work, etc). Second, you have to think about your relationships and about the people who shape your days (to whom you speak once a week, to whom you speak every day, etc). Third, restrictions in the sense of where you are able to live or what passport you hold. It is a good idea to write these three in a piece of paper whenever someone asks us where we are from.

I found this video fascinating because I have never thought about all these things when someone asks me where am I from. It made me think of a friend of mine who visited a lot of countries throughout her life and when she tells me about her trips I feel that she has a part of her in each country. She is from Argentina, but her best experiences took place in the different places she has been. I also thought about how interesting it is to take a minute and think about all these Rituals, Relationships and Experiences we had in the different places we have been before answering the questions "Where are you from?". In fact, the experiences and how we managed certain situations are what make a place important for us.