Movement is an exhale, a waving flag, a step into the unknown...
The second issue of gg place magazine channels the kinetic energy of our speedy worlds–from the pathways in our bodies and minds to those we walk and shape. Observing discussions between pilgrims who crossed mountains to reach a better life and astronauts navigating the way back home. Keeping up with cheetahs sprinting towards finishing lines and reaching behind barricades to hold hands with protesters who are left with no choice but to throw fireworks.
Selected features will be available in Vietnamese, French, Czech and Korean. More translations are in preparation.
Introduction
For Movement is Us,
and We Make the Waves
Join us for a ride through frosty mountains and buzzing streets, on the way to Oslo, Prague and Ho Chi Minh City, along the shores of Jeju Island and through the asphalt glades of Los Angeles. You’ll wake up all dizzy and sore, and we’ll breakfast on vending-machine espresso and discount croissants.
The first three Bourne films: Identity (2002), Supremacy (2004), and Ultimatum (2007) are basically an American power trip, following CIA agents making a mess around the world while trying and failing to capture an ex-assassin of theirs (Jason Bourne), who has suffered amnesia and is uncovering his past. I decided to open this issue with a dynamic reflection on this aged spy thriller series, because somehow, in the background of the action scenes, the films capture the essence of transnational identity in a raw feeling, that I, quite frankly, rarely see recreated. Let me explain.
Being an immigrant Euro-kid, I learned from a young age to find comfort in long rides. Cars, trams, buses, trains. Headlights reflecting on navigation boards, shoes off, watching racing raindrops. When I was seven, my mom and I would take an overnight express from Prague (where I grew up and where the Zurich scenes in The Bourne Identity were actually filmed) to a village in easternmost Slovakia, just by the Ukrainian border. There, I'd stay with my grandparents for a few summer weeks. Train stations meant warm evenings, peanut candy, and the calls of doves in poplar trees. When I layer this memory over Jason’s train escape to Moscow, the coloniser’s den and the source of suffering for my people and land, I get a picture where identical concrete blocks of flats rise from the ground and where the faces of extras and kin look alike.
I'm all grown up now, and the motion remains. Train stations in the cities I’ve called home each carry their own set of beeps, chimes and calls. They mean returning to peace after a busy day. As time passes, new trajectories emerge, and so does the motion sickness. Like there on the third pendulum car trip, when I was transporting random stuff from Prague to Rotterdam, passing liminal German gas stations with the aftertaste of black coffee and chewing gum stuck in my mouth. My beloved voluntary exile. No agents were chasing me, and yet I kept going. Perhaps you’ve been there before, touching the moist, blurry ghost layer that forms on the windows from the inside. FM radio playing songs you’ve heard too many times or will never hear again in a language you abandoned in high school. Or perhaps that’s the fourth language you mastered to build the life your parents dreamed up for you? Or the broken language you used to chat with the market owner on the corner?
Yes, I recognise you. We've met before, standing in the immigration line. In all lifetimes, we've remained united in our seeking. Was it an 11-hour flight or a month-long journey across war-torn lands and restless seas? On both occasions, a single piece of paper stretched into a border between hope and detention. We keep two passports in the drawer, along with a residence permit, a student card from another place and a couple of travel passes from elsewhere, not because we’re wanted criminal masterminds—although they like to portray us as such—but because in a way, we belong to all of these places and to none of them at the same time. Amnesia is the culprit, after all, as if we've forgotten a part of who we are somewhere and keep venturing out to retrieve it.
In reality, every day, as we navigate the universe, we are actively materialising it. By shaking the atoms in and around, we can shape movement into a spell that has the potential to turn a stranger into a friend, the foreign into the familiar, and reshape structures of power. Jason didn’t take it that far—his story is surprisingly self-conscious in its portrayal of harm, yet fails to deliver an actual condemnation of those who cause it—but I believe we can. As we find ourselves surrounded by efforts to weaponise and restrict human movement with artificial lines, honouring the eternal nature of passage, voyage, and escape becomes more important than ever. Think about this the next time you find your consciousness in a transitory state, perhaps on a tram one sunny Tuesday, passing a busy crowd.
For Movement is Us,
and We Make the Waves.
TEASERS COMING SOON!