Saturday 26th
SOUTHWARK ROOM
Is this a Movement?
Displacement, disruption, the physical and cultural movement of people, to and from cities, across borders and continents, has never been greater. And its implications for artists, activists and cultural institutions everywhere has never been more urgent.
This Counterpoints Arts Learning Lab will bring together artists, activists, academics and audiences engaged in socially engaged arts projects in neighbourhoods and communities of place/interest across Europe and the USA to share comparative work around the contradictions and potentials of art in contemporary housing and activism in an age of re-gentrification and local and global displacement; and the intersection of arts and urban and rural transformation.
The Lab will take place in Two Movements:
Movement One: Adagio. Where have we moved? A round table sharing of practice.
Movement Two: Allegro. Where might we want to move together? A call to action.
Contributors include among many others: Ultra-Red, LA; Gresham Horse, UK; Museum of Movements, Malmo; Study Room in Exile, Liverpool; ISIS Arts, Newcastle, BSide, Isle of Portland; Art House Wakefield Yorkshire; Deveron Arts, Huntly Scotland; Syrian Cultural Index Project, Berlin, CREATE Dublin, Music in Detention, UK; Platforma Arts + Refugee Network; International Arts Rights Advisors (IARA); Terra Vera Slovenia; Studio for Media Activism, Toronto, Centre for Digital Storymaking, SEAS Brighton.
LEARNING LAB
1:30
GALLERIES
Today’s 10 minute talk is delivered by the artist Bern O’Donoghue. Bern is in the Project’s alumni with her work Dead Reckoning. Her talk is inspired by the Tower of Babel, by Cildo Mereiles. Bern will introduce her own art practice and why it is so much to do with the noise of misrepresentation of refugees and migrants by the media.
TALK
15:00 – 18:00
MAIN FLOOR
Hostile Environment Collective
Tour of the Hostile Environment trail starts at 3pm, at the entrance.
We are a group of artists, activists and academics running three creative workshops on the ‘hostile environment’ as part of Who Are We? We are members from the Art / Law Network, Liberty, Hunger For Freedom Strikers , SOAS Detainee Support , Protest Stencil and members of grass roots groups working against the hostile environment. If you have walked through the guide to the hostile environment, we invite you to join us in a stencil and poster-making workshop. Members of the Hostile Environment Collective are here to answer questions and guide you in your making.
You can leave a poster to become part of Who Are We? and take one away with you to continue the work outside Tate Exchange.
Workshops coordinated by Lizzy Willmington.
INSTALLATION WORKSHOP
14.00 – 17.00
MAIN FLOOR
Bards Without Borders poet Laila Sumpton performs short poetry pieces combining newly written work inspired by Who Are We? programme and conversations with audience members.
SPOKEN WORD
12:00 – 18:00
MAIN FLOOR
Afghan Camera Box (Kamra-e-faoree) with Farhad Berahman and b-side Arts, Dorset. A photographic installation commissioned for b-side festival, drawing audiences and participants into gentle conversation around identity, memory, home; alongside thoughts and concerns about displacement, migration and people and place.
INSTALLATION WORKSHOP
12:00 – 18:00
MAIN FLOOR
Art House Wakefield installation of an evolving ecosystem, with a participatory mural by printmaker, Mohammad Barrangi Fashtani; and the collaborative tailoring of studio holders Hamid Reza Yavari Shoer and Helen O’Sullivan; together with recent studio holders, Wakefield City of Sanctuary; and recent commission, ‘Living Room’, by the artist, Juan delGado.
INSTALLATION, WORKSHOP
12:00 – 18:00
MAIN FLOOR
Are We Data? is an immersive installation produced by AWED, a research team led by Liz McFall and Darren Umney at the Open University, and David Moats (Linkoping University) working collectively with Sapphire Goss and London based software programmer, AV systems designer and musician, Thomas Blackburn. ‘Are We Data?’ questions the relationship between place and place-less ‘big data’ to explore whether digital data can really reveal ‘who we are’.
INSTALLATION
12:00 – 18:00
MAIN FLOOR
A Stitch in Time… durational installation combining collective stitching, conversations and film. With artists, Sonia Tuttiett, and makers from East London Textile Arts, filmmaker, Marcia Chandra plus language teachers; and OU researchers Inma Álvarez and Carlos Montoro leading on the AHRC-funded Language Acts and Worldmaking.
INSTALLATION, WORKSHOP
12:00 – 18:00
MAIN FLOOR
Gresham’s Wooden Horse Part 2 a participatory workshop with artist, Isabel Lima, and Isis (Newcastle) focusing on the second stage of a place-based, participatory arts and housing project with residents from the Gresham neighbourhood in Middlesborough (originally commissioned by mima and supported by Counterpoints Arts).
INSTALLATION, WORKSHOP
12:00 – 18:00
MAIN FLOOR
The Consul: A collaborative response by musicians, singers, performers and creative facilitators to the powerful themes of displacement and dispossession at the centre of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s intense 1950 opera, The Consul. As well as sampling and performing music from The Consul, we have created a space, through dialogue and reciprocal teaching and learning, to share lullabies and music from across the globe, including those from members of the public attending Who Are We?
The team includes opera singers: Becca Marriott and Marie-Claire op ten Noort, Iranian composer Shorheh Sakoory, choir-leader Naveen Arles, Musical Director, Andrew Charity and Director, Stephen Tiller from Opera Machine & Kent Opera – working alongside a chorus of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees from Sanctuary Voices.
With more displaced people in the world than ever before, this 1950 opera has never been more relevant as a case for human rights.Limelight Magazine, Oct 2017.
INTERVENTION
12:00 – 18:00
MAIN FLOOR
Floor Plans (journeys from there to here) is a collaborative participatory installation focusing on floor plans of homes relating to personal migratory histories, the architecture of memory and the body as a site of memory by artist Natasha Davis, poet & researcher Siobhan Campbell, and researcher Sara de Jong (Open University).
INSTALLATION
12:00 – 18:00
MAIN FLOOR
A Guide to the Hostile Environment floor trail mapping the everyday reality of ‘hostile environment’ policies – narrated through the recent Liberty (Civil Liberties and Human Rights) publication.