The Concurrency of Migration and Transculturalism in Moving Image (original) (raw)

Migration and Art. Introductory Remarks

2020

This special issue seeks to bring together cross-discipline articles exploring the relationship between migration and art. The current migration discourse is dominated by political and economic issues, whereas not enough attention is being paid to cultural aspects. Moreover, research and reflections on migration and art are carried out rather within particular disciplines (literature, film studies, musicology, cultural studies, etc.) than in the field of migration studies. In particular, a significant body of literature emerged in the realm of postcolonial studies and literary studies. A growing interest in literary texts written by authors with migrant background (firstor second-generation migrants)3 as well as in works dealing with themes of migration, exile, integration, multiculturalism, to name just a few, provoked a vigorous debate on the terminology and definitions. As a result scholars have shifted from using the term “migrant literature” to broader and more inclusive “migra...

JMK 4(2) – December 2019 – Artistic Strategies of Migration: Art as a Resistance or as a Reinsurance? – ed. by Erik Berggren & Elsa Claire Gomis

2019

Themes and Perspectives BERGGREN, E. − Representation, Victimization or Identification. Negotiating Power and Powerlessness in Art on Migration, 113-136 MORALLI, M., MUSARÒ, P. & PARMIGGIANI, P. − Borders Kill. Tania Bruguera’s Referendum as an Artistic Strategy of Political Participation. 137-160 GOMIS, E.C. − Counteracting Dominant Discourses about Migrations with Images: a Typology Attempt, 161-181 PETERSON, A. − Ai Weiwei and JR. Political Artists and Activist Artists and the Plight of Refugees, 183-202 AHLGREN, K. − Art as a Trigger for Reflection in Sociolinguistic Migration Research, 203-222 Comments and Debates DEL GADO, J. & GOMIS, E.C. − A Conversation on Cinematic Representation and Resistance in the films "Altered Landscapes" (2016) by Juan del Gado and "The People Behind the Scenes" (2019), by Elsa Claire Gomis, 223-233 MASULLO, G. − Invisible Affections and Socialization to the Sexuality of Lesbians. A Case Study in Italy, 235-246 Reviews and Reports PADILLA TEJEDA, C. − Review of Picarella L. & Truda G. (eds.), Fundamental Rights, Gender, Inequalities. Vulnerability and Protection Systems, Gutenberg, Baronissi (SA), 2019, 247-252

The Migrant Longing for Form: Articulating Aesthetics with Migration, Immigration, and Movement.

_Pacific Coast Philology_ Volume 49 Issue 2, pp. 153-166, 2014

aesthetics is intertwined with experiences and processes of migration, immigration, and movement, because it is caught up in the various representational forms and discursive frameworks through which national and diasporic communities understand themselves and each other. since the 1990s aesthetics has been part of our intellectual conversations about migration, diaspora, and multiculturalism, despite the prominence of scholarship on these issues framed by more sociopolitical questions. this essay rebuts the claim that aesthetics is apolitically autonomous or simply a matter of elite taste by tracing the movement and development of aesthetic thinking through a set of critical texts that articulate aesthetic ideas with the movement and migration of peoples across nations and cultures. the migrant longing for form points toward the movement and migration of aesthetic thought over a critical terrain inasmuch as it marks the imbrication of aesthetics with the lived experiences and cultural representations of migrant and minority communities. this essay invites the reader to engage literary and cultural objects through an aesthetic dimension, to trace the movement of structures of feeling and figurative gestures as they fold and unfold in sentient engagement with thought and judgment.

Transdisciplinary Practices on Migration Topic: The Case of “Migrations in Art – the Art of Migrations”

AM Journal of Art and Media Studies

In this paper, I will deal with transdisciplinary artistic and media practices on the example of a project “Migrations in Art – the Art of Migrations” that was realized by the Gallery of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad, Serbia. This project is a good example of interdisciplinary connection on the topic of migration, a topic that I also deal with in my Ph.D. dissertation. I would especially like to refer to the new theoretical and sociological readings in this example and the way in which certain practices have been applied and linked in this project. I will also show why this approach is very important for understanding the way the issue of migrants and migration are presented in the media and in artistic practice, which significantly implies the presentation of this very important 21st-century issue. I would try to shift the focus toward migrant corridors and new tendencies in art projects that provide “flashbacks” to the past and search for connective tissue with the present. Article re...

CFP -- Forms of Migration: An International Conference on Transnational Literature & Innovative Aesthetics

, in conjunction with the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), announces a call for papers for an interdisciplinary, transnational conference on contemporary im/migrant literature and innovative aesthetics. Many important texts of the 21st century reflect complex processes of memory, migration, and identity formation from the margins of migrant communities globally. Exciting opportunities exist to integrate im/migrant literature from an interdisciplinary, transnational approach. This conference asks: what narratives are shaping our understanding of the dynamics and identities involved in and around im/migration processes and, more importantly, what forms do these narratives take? Through face-to-face interaction and hands-on work, this conference showcases how innovative literature is not simply abstract expressions of remote concepts, but is directly informed by and informing the material realities that shape human existence. Words have power. While data driven social science research can inform important public policy debates and affect policy outcomes, such conversations and policy decisions should also consider the cultural values and criticisms expressed in literature and the arts more generally. This conference argues that thoughtful cultural and literary study can help to give voice to the voiceless and can create opportunities to unite, through readership and through a wider circulation of texts, communities which might not otherwise come into contact with each other. This conference's emphasis on form argues (drawing on scholars such as Jameson, Nussbaum, Sontag, Spivak) that it is also because of form that the arts matter. It is the very materiality of texts and formal qualities of certain stories that impact readers and shape public knowledge. To read about migration and its effects not only through news media or online sources, but also through innovative storytelling creates opportunities for greater empathy, or at least understanding, with diverse audiences of readers. How literature's formal attributes can bring us, as readers, into powerful experiences that we do not yet know how to name has been theorized variously by many scholars in recent times—as " empathy " by Nussbaum or " affect " by Jameson, for example. Yet by calling attention to what is not yet incorporated into the status quo, such a relationship between a text and its

Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving Image Art: Cinema Beyond Europe (Routledge, 2016)

Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving Image Art explores cinematic and artistic representations of migration and mobility in Europe from the 1990s to today. Drawing on theories of migrant and diasporic cinema, moving-image art, and mobility studies, Bayraktar provides historically situated close readings of films, videos, and cinematic installations that concern migratory networks and infrastructures across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Probing the notion of Europe as a coherent entity and a borderless space, this interdisciplinary study investigates the ways in which European ideals of mobility and fluidity are deeply enmeshed with forced migration, illegalization, and xenophobia. With a specific focus on distinct forms of mobility such as labor migration, postcolonial migration, tourism, and refugee mobilities, Bayraktar studies the new counter-hegemonic imaginations invoked by the work of filmmakers such as Ayşe Polat, Fatih Akin, Michael Haneke, and Tony Gatlif as well as video essays and installations of artists such as Kutluğ Ataman, Ursula Biemann, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo. Challenging aesthetic as well as national, cultural, and political boundaries, the works central to this book envision Europe as a diverse, inclusive, and unfixed continent that is reimagined from many elsewheres well beyond its borders.

(Imagined) spaces of migration in contemporary graphic literature: from testimony and naturalism to fabulation and satire

PhiN Beiheft 18/2020 "(T)Räume der Migration", 2020

This article deals with the multifaceted and increasingly visible topic of migration in contemporary graphic literature. Selective readings of post-2000 works by Francophone and Anglophone authors (e.g. Jean-Philippe Stassen, Joe Sacco, Shaun Tan, Zabus & Hippolyte, Yvan Alagbé, and Bill) will give a critical insight into the artistic scope, the testimonial truthfulness, and the political significance of these graphic productions. Several main narrative modes and aesthetic strategies in these works – such as realist convention and testimony, stylisation and allegory, or experimental storytelling and satire – will be discussed. Further analysis will cover two major narrative and chronotopical elements: the dreamed spaces opened up by migration (in the sense of 'imagined hostlands'); and the complex loci of the contact and (hoped for) transit zones. Examining the recurrent scenographical properties of these fictions, their sensitive effects, and their identitarian and political implications will show potentials and capacities, but also possible shortcomings and pitfalls of representing migrant subjectivities through this mode of creative expression.

Entangled Histories of Art and Migration. Theories, Sites and Research Methods ed. by Call for Papers.

The DFG network "Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Forms, Visibilities, Agents" invites contributions for its upcoming publication, dedicated to the interwoven histories of migration, art and globalisation as a significant phenomenon of social and political transformation in the 20 th and 21 st centuries. From a decisively art and cultural studies-centred perspective, the book explores the complex entanglements of art and aesthetic practices with migration, flight and other forms of enforced disloca tion and border/border crossings. We are interested in scholarly as well as artistic proposals that tackle the meaning of global migration for both art-making and theory production. It is our aim to contribute to the interdisciplinary field of research on the migratory turn in the arts with a publication that is shaped by multiple and diverse forms of knowledge production. The book envisages to give voice to current debates on racism and decolonisation, as well as epistemologies of the Sou th. Against this backdrop and in close relation to theoretical approaches and case studies, the argumentative thrust of the book unfolds over five key concepts and sections: 1) Resistance/Racism, 2) Visibilities/Invisibilities, 3) Sites/Spaces, 4) Materialization/Manifestation and 5) Practices/Performativity. These five sections are connected by way of a common line of inquiry ("cross-cutting topics") which considers agency and self-empowerment, gender and queerness, the importance of new digital and social media, and the role of religion. "Entangled Histories of Art and Migration" aims at sustainably anchoring research on migration within the field of global art history by introducing fresh categories and methodologies.