shipping mid August 2023
160 pages
23 x 32 cm
70 colour plates
Section-sewn open spine softcover
With texts in English and Spanish by Juan Bockamp, Caterina Borelli, Albert Corbí, Youssef Elhafidi, Valeria Mata, Zakaria Mourachid and Ricardo Quesada
Edited by Loose Joints Studio & Felipe Romero Beltrán
Designed and Published by Loose Joints Studio
The poetics of documentary, performance, and choreography combine to politically interrogate the dead time of bureaucracy for young migrants stuck in the Spanish legal system.
Dialect covers three years of state violence for nine young Moroccan migrants exiled in Kafka-esque limbo in Seville, southern Spain. When underage migrants enter the country illegally and cannot be verified as adults, their custody remains in the hands of the state – subjecting them to a lengthy process of up to three years to gain legal status.
In this state of suspension and liminality, Beltrán engages with the body as a metaphor: using a carefully articulated language between photography, performance and collaboration, the weight of dead time is registered upon the shoulders of these young men, entering into dialogue with their memories, journeys, and the humiliating mundanity of waiting and migration. Alongside video works and choreographed dance, Dialect breaks new documentary ground to shine a critical light on practices of bureaucratic oppression.