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“Art. 16a [Diskurs2] – Ein Kommentar”

Thomas Locher

The Art. 16a [Asylum Law], which Thomas Locher publishes in an enlarged form as a wall text, represents a turning point in German asylum legislature. It is based on the “asylum compromise” of 1992, which signified an important limitation of Art. 16 “politically persecuted persons have the right to asylum”. With Art. 16a, the third state regulation went into effect on June 1st 1993, which comes close to canceling out the right to political asylum. Also since that time, the practice airplane processes has been intensified and the “asylum applicant benefits law” was introduced, according to which subsistence is only covered by benefits in kind – the absolute end of the scale of social benefits.

Together with new amendments, including the immigration law (January 1st 2005), these points still form the basis for the right of asylum. “Art. 16a [Diskurs2]” by Thomas Locher is an excerpt from a larger work on the preamble and the basic laws of the German constitution. Like every law, this article also needs a commentary. Thomas Locher’s commentaries are not legal commentaries, however, but instead present a multitude of voices. They are inscribed in the legal text in different typographies. Single words are underlined and appended with footnotes that interrupt the text. They do not interpret anything, but are instead conceived as a structure of open questions and dialogue. What are “facts”, or what does “obviously unfounded” mean, who is the imagined subject of the asylum law (the asylum applicant or the state)? This level of questions and commentaries opens up Art. 16a in the direction of those whose life is regulated by the law: every individual and thus a “nonstandardized, plural and chaotic public” (Christoph Menke). The multitude of voices disrupts the order that the law is intended to found and cancels out its inadequate authority. Locher’s text-image shows a possibility for placing oneself in a reflective relationship to law and alludes to the mutability of the legal text.

Artist, born 1956, lives and works in Berlin.

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Thomas Locher