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Since the rise of modern nation-states, borders have played the important role to order society because they have the power to define territories, not only on the ground, but also on the level of the imaginary by shaping national identities and perceptions of the world. Borders can be intended not as places, rather as processes, as socially constructed and shifting structures of practices and discourses that produce norms of difference and exclusion. Within this context, arts, and particularly performing arts, can play a role in challenging these forms of representation, overturning the spectacle of the border into collective performances. Drawing upon these conceptual premises, the article presents the empirical insights related to Tania Bruguera's 'Referendum'. Referendum was intended both as a performance and as a form of political activism, inviting people to vote on the following question: "Borders kill. Should we abolish borders?". After analysing the collaborative procedure that led to the final results of the performance, we reflect upon the role of arts as pedagogical and political tool capable of changing the existing imagery on borders - and specifically on the Mediterranean Sea - and human mobility, stimulating new forms of debate and responsabilization in terms of co-citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical consumption, Ethics, Responsibility, Sustenance, Supermarket activism. These are just a few of the terms spread around in recent years which attempt to describe a new reality, that we may consider as the most interesting form of a rising participation, for some reasons copying and then, as a result there is a lack of trust in economic institutions. A phenomenon not so obvious to the onlooker gives civil society a central role, which is the main actor. This main actor maintains relationships with public institutions together with the market. New forms of citizenship are created and new forms of co-operation between different actors are created. As not clearly identifiable by the onlooker, this is a process of mutual contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]