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Off-White Tower

Location
Washington, DC

Date 2008

Description
The melting pot that once defined American society is cooling down. Global migratory fluxes are repainting the colors not only of our country but also of the entire surface of the planet. What can “national identity” represent today, other than the temporary belonging to a politically defined system, loosely based on porous geographical borders? The questions of territory, of the land, or of ancestral roots are certainly obsolete concepts at the global scale. While the rest of the western world has caught up to American heterogeneity, even Old Europe has reshuffled its constituencies into equally multifarious crowds. The history books have been re-written: our individual ancestors did not arrive on the Mayflower, nor were they Gauls, Vikings or Visigoths.

The crisis of representation has hit a peak: no global citizen can personally identify with a collective history; no national citizen can be adequately represented by an individual chosen on the basis of common roots, culture or collective interests. The president’s dual roles as both a citizen and a representation of all citizens belong to an archaic model. The Off-White Tower stems from the premise that, globally, local roots and required citizenship have become irrelevant to a president’s prerequisite for office. Rather than dig deeper into the no-exit of identity politics, the way of the presidency will inevitably open its doors to international candidates.