Available Potential Guaranteed

The sale of citizenship is more commonly known as Golden Passports, or Citizenship-By-Investment. Estate agents sell recently developed apartments that because of their price, allow the buyer to obtain the passport of that country. To understand how this institutionalised mobility is enacted Tudor Rhys Etchells rehearsed such a purchase.* Performing as an investor he accessed projects that would soon (not) house new citizens or their tenants. 

Within those viewings, model flats presented as homes whilst the agent and purchaser believed to care about the quality of the finish. Reality was suspended for the duration of the negotiation. Citizenship itself acting only as a means of access to a third country otherwise not granted by the original passport. This disconnect from the nation by the roles played emulates the arbitrariness of citizenship when it is tied to material form as capital. New builds become an outlier as citizenship is usually unseen, its emptiness manifested in the failed utopia of new concrete.

Responding to the work through understanding how the idea of shelter and sanctuary are treated as privileged value exchange in the West, writer Sadia Pineda Hameed returns us to the very real conditions in which this scheme exists with the piece, condition space. In Available Potential Guaranteed this is crucial as the uncertainty created puts reality at stake. Revealing the systems of power that form these spheres by disrupting the authority of documentary, becomes a central theme to Etchells. 

When borders perform their apparent factualness a response that doubts their legitimacy is required. Where best to interrogate the ethics of performance than in the photograph.