I. Intro / Territorial Bigotry

The following journey is intended to be a search for alternative visions for a future that is not inscribed in territorial bigotry. What do I mean by that? I mean the narrow-mindedness and fanaticism that come with the proclamation and defense of monolithic narratives that connect a landscape with one particular idea of identity – often defined through a unified, for example biologically determined, core. A territory or territorial space in general is defined by “clear borders to the outside” and the acceptance of a “restriction of diversity to the inside.”¹ A bigot is stubborn and intolerant. The term is also connected to racism and/or hatred towards a particular group. Consequently, territorial bigotry neglects the transcultural influences that ultimately shape all landscapes and communities. Community-building narratives, like founding myths and other tales told about the characteristics of a community, including national narratives, often contain images and symbols. This also resonates in the concept of imagined geographies, or, what I prefer because it also includes other spatial elements beyond the geographical: spatial imaginaries. While spatial theories have long moved beyond space as defined by fixed borders, the current trend in Europe and the world seems to be pointing in the opposite direction: Border protection and the attempt to get refugees out of one’s ‘own’ country are dominant topics in public and political debate, resulting in actual policies like the budget increase of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex from €142 million in 2015 to €922 millionin 2024.² Such border politics can be read as a symptom of territorial imaginations. Sociologist Martina Löw and urban anthropologist Ignacio Farías write that “territorial states are constantly working to secure the borders of territorial spaces and thereby reduce heterogeneity within them.”³ However, the idea of space as a territorial space is only one possible concept. It is in tension with other spatial figures that Löw and Farías have worked out. Above all the two emphasize the simultaneity of the various spatial figures (for them, these are territorial space, trajectory space, network space and place; other theoreticians have worked out other figures).⁴ By territorial bigotry, I now mean 1) the stubborn insistence on a one-dimensional consideration of space as exclusively territorial space; and 2) the stubborn insistence on a statically defined territory; static both in terms of its borders and its narrative legitimation in relation to the community ‘rightfully’ living there. This idea of a statically inscribed narrative describes the opposite of the potential that the editors of Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World envision epic tales to have. Referring to philosopher Walter Benjamin’s essay The Storyteller, they write that the epic is “the product of a community and […] thereby ever-changing, insofar as it is told by a storyteller whose manner of presenting tales is oral and alive.”⁵ (These storytellers will appear again later, in the journey ahead.) It is important to note that here the community produces the epic and not the other way around. The community is not derived from the epic. The suggestion that what a community produces is necessarily ever-changing, is denied in static imaginaries of Germanness, Dutchness, Frenchness or whateverness – which are characterized by “a desire […] to grant authority to epic tales of origins and political legitimation.”⁶ How can the prevailing territorial bigotry be overcome? How can community building narratives be presented in a manner that keeps them “alive”? What images – though not static, but dynamic, changing and ambivalent – can render the inherently transcultural relationship between narratives, landscapes and identities tangible?

In the following, I would like to explore the Fata Morgana as one possible figure of thought for a transcultural and transgeographical relationship between territory and identity that explicitly negates any idea of a single origin. Through countless references to different myths and legends, the Fata Morgana spans a story that neither fits into national boundaries nor tells of patriarchal appropriation. Furthermore, in its fleetingness, the Fata Morgana opens up a perspective of the unreachable that the great utopias lack and that makes them potentially dangerous. My work on the Fata Morgana can thus be understood as a possible artistic exploration of the idea of brieftopia. Following this introduction, in II. Fata Morgana / Morgain Le Fay, I will explore some of the characteristics of the Fata Morgana and investigate the term’s etymology. After the artistic intervention III. Traveling Mountains, in Chapter IV. Of Cauldrons and Carrier Bags I try to show the impossibility of narrowing down the Fata Morgana’s origin to one single point in space and time. Drawing on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, I propose to understand the chapter (and story in general) as a cauldron containing different ingredients that cannot be arranged in a straight line, not essentialized. Chapter V. Errant Diffusions dives deeper into this idea of storytelling by examining the conditions under which the story of Morgain Le Fay became part of different communities and landscapes and by examining the wandering poets who were part of the story’s dissemination. The way I intend to follow the Fata Morgana through different times and landscapes is reminiscent of Aby Warburg’s concept of the Bilderfahrzeuge (image vehicles).

In their introduction to the volume Bilderfahrzeuge – Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology, the editors point out that the invented concept of Bilderfahrzeuge was not further elaborated by Warburg himself and is therefore particularly suitable for an examination of the migration of images “in the broadest sense.”⁷ One focus of their international research project on Warburg's concept is “the appropriation of an “international” art history by national models of interpretation,”⁸ which hints at the political dimension and possible appropriation of images for ideological reasons. This work here is about something similar, in which I attempt to explore the Fata Morgana as a figure of thought of transgeographical entanglements between territory and identity. This is done explicitly in contrast to national interpretations and appropriations of myths, epics and other community-building narratives. While I have written elsewhere about the image-making of space,⁹ by which I mean the freezing of dynamic and complex processes and relations into a static image, the work on the Fata Morgana is more about a figure of thought that travels through centuries and landscapes and yet can never be captured. The following is a rather incidental connection, which perhaps makes for a good introduction: Warburg's well-known Bilderatlas (image atlas), in which he shows examples of the temporal and spatial movements of some images and motifs, is entitled Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne was the Greek goddess of memory. She had nine daughters with Zeus, who are known as the nine muses. These nine muses are “the same as the nine Goddesses of the Fortunate Isles ruled by Morgan le Fay^”10 – who is the central figure in this story here and gave the name to the optical phenomenon we know as Fata Morgana.

1 Löw, Martina / Sayman, Volkan / Schwerer, Jona / Wolf, Hannah (Ed.) 2021. Am Ende der Globalisierung. Über die Refiguration von Räumen. Bielefeld: transcript. P. 36.

Fata Morgana. An Essay Journey

II. Fata Morgana / Morgain le Fay