Video installation, 2017
Anna Knappe & Amir Jan
HD video, 17 min; aluminium prints, carpet, windows and curtains
A Camp is a Wall in a Forest examines the camp as an architecture of waiting, distance, and controlled visibility. The installation approaches reception centres, detention centres, and temporary shelters through spaces, surfaces, voices, and traces. Windows, reflections, emptied interiors, exterior views, and domestic materials create a visual language in which access remains partial.
The work focuses on the spatial and political condition of the camp: a place connected to society and separated from it at the same time. Often located in remote areas, camps isolate the people living in them while keeping them within systems of administration, surveillance, and delay.
The word mohajer refers to asylum seekers, refugees, and others living in precarious forms of migration and non-belonging. In the installation, this condition is expressed through the everyday architecture of waiting: rooms, corridors, views, thresholds, and windows that frame a world visible but out of reach.
Preview and distribution via AV-Arkki