Mischa Leinkauf

There are more than 70 border installations similar to the former Berlin Wall worldwide (as of 2019). And the number is rising. Mischa Leinkauf crosses in his work Fiction of a Non-Entry the underwater extensions of such borders between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Jordan, and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and Morocco. The title of the work refers to the legal construct of the fiction of non-entry, stipulated in the German government’s asylum agreement of 2018, according to which people, who have not yet passed border controls, are considered not having entered the country, even though they are already in the country. This law allows to turn back refugees, who are already registered in another EU country, at the state border. 

Leinkauf’s immersive installation submerges us in the depth and vastness of the sea. He moves calmly, almost meditatively over the seabed, across the borders, and back. He visualizes in a performative manner the absurdity of militarily guarded borders, of all attempts at exclusion and isolation.

MG