"If we take the arrival of the clandestine, and then we have this brilliant example you have given and analysed with such lucidity, of a space that's able to redefine itself and rejuvenate itself and it does cross a certain threshold beyond which we can see it as a success - the particular housing estate you have described in Paris. But if we look at other scenes of the clandestine from the post-war period onwards, why are some regions of Europe in which self-organisation has not crossed the threshold into becoming a kind of success story such as this, and that we have these pockets of real desperation? So what I am really trying to understand is what are the factors that contribute towards pushing certain moments of self-organisation beyond the threshold, and we have this kind of success and what are the inhibiting factors which in other cases keep the scenes of the clandestine on this side of the threshold and we have breakdown. I'm trying to understand the cities in the north of England which have undergone the trauma of recent months where we come to see your model as an extremely important one through which to analyse what the moment is that makes self-organisation a thrust on the part of the illegal, the sans propriétaires, the clandestine, takes them over a certain border and what holds them on the other side of success."-question during conference

Sarat Maharaj was born and educated in South Africa prior to emigrating to Great Britain under the United Nations Convention for Refugees. A professor of Art History at Goldsmith's College, University of London, his interest in cultural translation and contemporary art practice has led to the publication of a number of catalogue essays including the exhibition interrogating Identity organized by the Grey Art Gallery, New york University and the Richard Hamilton catalogue for the Venice biennale in 1993. He has lectured extensively at various exhibitions including the Biennales of Sydney, Istanbul and Cairo and at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York.