The last decade has seen the establishment, dismantlement and dissolution of the ‘new world order’ coexist with the innumerous post-colonial, gender, religious, economical, military, anti-globalists and terrorist confrontations. These changes mark also the material re-organisation of the landscape and territory as well as their institutional framework. Within all these transformations, that are fundamental for the reassessment of modernity and to the establishment of identities, the more so when universalism of human rights and the secular endeavor of democracy are put to the test and raised for consideration, if not opposed to, the question of taking part, of assembling communal interests, of formulating clear standpoints, seems to bring about a whole set of resistances and difficulties, especially when connected to globalization and governance. Two points seem to be particularly interesting when we think of neutrality as a mean to manage these transitions, as a dispositif of change of the contemporary space, tuned to balance the conflictual forces that flare up in almost every human settlement. First of all, in constructing an overview of contemporary human settlements, we are thinking of a world without borders, a world whose parts have become increasingly plugged into each other, and which today is completely cordless at every turn, in which we have migrations of an endless kind almost at every point of the world. The second point is that the implementation of this borderless world is accompanied by an intermingled and entangled overlapping of logistic supply networks, of buffer zones, of extraterritorial enclaves, of refugee camps, of de-militarized areas. Neutrality could be a probe into the conflicts that are everywhere and nowhere at once. A condition that engages individuals with the spatial organization of our institutions, our societies, our nations, our differences, our wars.

http://roundtable.kein.org/v2v/Neutrality_John_Palmesino