FINDING HOME
Finding Home is a series of films, writings and reflections created in response to the UK's hostile environment policies and its impact on migrant artists.
Led by artists and researchers Dr. Elena Marchevska, Dr. Carolyn Defrin and filmmaker Winstan Whitter, the work focuses on the power of responsive art-making to hostile political climates. Made in collaboration with activists and artists across the UK and Europe, the films explore policy, acts of art-making and the ways in which CoVid has further impacted notions of home.
This team's work is part of a larger project: Project Finding Home exploring the migrant crisis in Canada, UK and Australia, supported by London South Bank University, Ryerson University and University of South Wales.
THE FILMS
HOME-LESS
created with Sebastian Aguirre
Mechanisms of migration control continue to consign migrants upon their arrival to sectors of the economy where there is a demand for racialized and exploitable migrant labour. As scholars have remarked on several occasions, border controls and visa-regimes do not prevent people from moving from their countries of origin nor from reaching the EU (Andreas and Snyder, 2000; Mezzadra and Rigo, 2003). Rather, they increase undocumented modes of travel, the involvement of trafficking networks and profit for third parties (Koslowski, 2001; Andrijasevic, 2003). Furthermore, restrictive residency and labour regulations throughout the EU restrain the social and labour mobility of migrants and fix them to an exploitative, illogical system.
As part of our research into this issue, we met with Sebastian Aguirre, a human rights activist and theatre practitioner from the Chilean refugee diaspora living in the UK. He runs Actors For Human Rights (AFHR), a project at Ice&Fire theatre which uses documentary and verbatim theatre to engage a variety of audiences across the UK on human rights issues.
In this video, Sebastian explains the asylum-seeking process to us using a creative exercise. We hear about a system in UK that is harrowing, shocking and disturbing. But we also hear about human beings who are showing remarkable resilience and dignity despite being thrown into a system which is arduous, deliberately complicated, and often incredibly lengthy.
STAGING HOME
created with Sophie Besse,
Mohand Hasb Alrsol Badr and Peter Pearson of
PSYCHEdelight Theatre company
Real life friends and performers Mohand and Peter met working together with theatre company, PSYCHEdelight.
PSYCHEdelight is a participatory Theatre Company of Sanctuary founded in 2011 by Sophie Besse, a playwright and theatre director trained in both drama and therapy. We met with them to discuss their work on a developing piece called 'Mohand and Peter.' We also were invited to observe their rehearsal process and attend their first showing at Theatre Deli in November, 2019. The following short film summarizes some of our discussions about home, art, traveling, prejudice and language.
SUSPENDING HOME
created with Khaled Barakeh
Khaled Barakeh is a visual and conceptual artist and activist, originally from Syria, and based in Berlin. We met him in London in 2019 while he was presenting his work and have since embarked on conversations about how art can often speak more powerfully to the complexities of the refugee crisis. In a specific desire to move past 'talking head' documentaries that can often further marginalise refugees, we have considered how to present a work of art for 'Finding Home' that would illuminate how migration stories are part of who we are, but not all of who we are.
In these two films, Khaled revisits an installation he made in 2015 called 'On the Ropes.'
"Expressing states of anxiety and instability, every item and piece of furniture in the artist’s studio was suspended 15 cm above the ground by invisible fishing wire. Opened to the public, the studio was transformed into a gallery space, and the artwork morphed into a stage of its own, allowing the audience to walk through emotions that are usually hidden away and viewed as a sign of vulnerability" (Barakeh, 2020)
Reflecting back on this project- its original showing in Berlin and iterative showing in Paris- Barakeh shares with us a mesmerising reflection on the constant presence of absence.
AT HOME
created with d'Bi Anitafrika, Carolyn Defrin, Mojisola Elufowoju, Josie Gardner, Caroline Lenette, Elena Marchevska and Winstan Whitter.
Our final stages of creative research were affected by the Covid crisis. Consequently, we decided to experiment with our capacity to be creative virtually. Inviting our collaborators to create short films based on our themes of ‘home’ in relation to migration, we now asked them (and ourselves) to consider how these ideas took on new meaning as we all spent much more time ‘at home’ during the pandemic. How, as artists, do we navigate home in our practice and navigate practice in our home?
Daily meals, walks and domestic objects became the lens through which we could reflect on home, art and migration. Each collaborating artist received a set of instructions. We then edited these home-made films together in the omnibus above.
We invite anyone to use these instructions in an educational or community setting. (We kindly just ask that you acknowledge our work properly).