Extract from Cultural Mobility: a Basic Right for All
by Transmitting Stones who also created the Anti Visa Passport Zine.

“We are cultural workers and artists writing to you with urgency and outrage. The Schengen visa system is becoming increasingly discriminatory and unjust for African cultural workers and artists, and its impact on international cultural diversity is undeniable. The current visa system is a bureaucratic, capitalist, and humiliating instrument for Africans.

Under the pretext of border security, Europe systematically excludes Africans from participating in the global cultural ecosystem, controlling access to opportunities, industries, and vital cultural exchanges. This is evident through the excessive paperwork disconnected from local economic realities, the prohibitive visa fees and outsourced services and the arbitrary rejections without refunds or clear justification.

Together, these practices form a new colonial regime based on border control, determining who has the right of participation in international cultural exchange. How can we create, collaborate, and share stories in a world where our right to move is denied? Cultural mobility should not be a privilege for western countries, it is a basic right, long denied through policies that treat African passports as threats rather than equals.”

At dif we believe that art knows no border, art is the universal language that allows us to focus on what connects all humans rather than what might divide us. When instead art becomes a means of influencing Global South cultures, while refusing that in exchange they present their art to the West, we face a dangerous and unfair dynamic.

Already in 2023 the EU raised 130M by rejecting visas mostly from Black and Brown musicians from Africa and Asia. EU artists can mostly play easily in these countries, but the EU does not want to hear these artists’ music; they instead steal financial resources to weaken them. Tamizdat commented on the same subject in the USA in 2024, and Le Guess Who Festival told stories of denied visas that same year.

Sadly, in 2025, both the EU and the USA decided to restrict cultural mobility even more: when current events seem to worsen every other day, and if governments keep on preventing us from sharing art and culture with each other, will we only communicate across borders via purposefully polarising, algorithm-manipulated, and monitored social media platforms?