Virtual Migrants

art, digital media, performance exploring race, migration, environment, global justice

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November 27, 2020 by koojchuhan

Rare interview and poetry by Nnimmo Bassey

Nigerian environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey self organised a filmmaker in Nigeria to give us a gem: on video both an interview and poetry by Nnimmo Bassey. To begin, he recites two of his original poems, ‘I Will Not Dance To Your Beat’ and ‘I Thought It Was Oil, But It Was Blood’.

The short film was originally created for CONTINENT CHOP CHOP transmedia performance by Virtual Migrants. A story told through poetry, music and digital-media connecting legacies of inequality to climate change. It is now released to the public, very worthwhile to watch.

Interview and poetry by Nnimmo Bassey

First off, the poetry:

Along with the above film is a rare interview with Nnimmo, created for the same project, on the subject of The Climate Crisis Needs System Change:

We are very grateful to have this interview and poetry by Nnimmo Bassey and to be able to make this available to our readers.

Pic of Nnimmo Bassey for the Continent Chop Chop production and the interview and poetry by Nnimmo Bassey

More about Nnimmo Bassey:

Nnimmo Bassey (b.11 June 58) is director of the ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and member steering committee of Oilwatch International. He was chair of Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012) and Executive Director of Nigeria’s Environmental Rights Action (1993-2013). He was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the “Alternative Noble Prize.” In 2012 he received the Rafto Human Rights Award. In 2014 he received Nigeria’s national honour as Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in recognition of his environmental activism. Bassey is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects and has authored books on the environment, architecture and poetry. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of York, United Kingdom in July 2019. His books include We Thought it Was Oil, But It was Blood –Poetry (Kraft Books, 2002), I will Not Dance to Your Beat – Poetry (Kraft Books, 2011), To Cook a Continent – Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (Pambazuka Press, 2012) and Oil Politics – Echoes of Ecological War (Daraja Press, 2016).

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June 21, 2020 by koojchuhan

Refugee Week and Black Lives Matter fail to connect

Online film ‘Our Plymouth, This Land’ from our archives connected refugee week and black lives matter before they existed: WATCH NOW

Fifteen years ago Virtual Migrants were one of the few artist-activist groups producing challenging work exploring colonial legacies and their fundamental links with asylum and refuge, such as in this film. ‘Our Plymouth, This Land’ includes a specific critique of the monuments in the UK dedicated to people who profited from slavery, focusing on the slave traders Jack Hawkyns and Francis Drake who are celebrated on the streets of Plymouth. As we end Refugee Week 2020 taking place during both the COVID-19 lockdown as well as the widespread anger and protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and racial justice / Black Lives Matter movements, this film is completely relevant.

Our Plymouth, This Land

‘Our Plymouth, This Land’ stands among a number of testaments to the strong and bold critiques that drove the work of Virtual Migrants during our early inception. It was also created before the wider sets of refugee and migrant organisations developed a more standardised and expansive set of regular yet compromised activities. This year again I struggle with an ongoing depoliticisation within the ‘refugee sector’, in this case how there are almost no focused or substantial connections being made between refugee issues and Black Lives Matter. A quick scan of the hundreds of events during Refugee Week 2020 illustrates this, despite some protests managing to combine the two such as yesterday in Glasgow during World Refugee Day. Conversely, the dominant racial justice narratives surrounding Black Lives Matter appear to give low priority to linking with the incarceration of black and brown people in detention centres and the hostile policing of many refugee communities of colour.

Protest outside HOME arts centre in collaboration with These Walls Must Fall campaign: Refugee Week and Black Lives Matter

A similar scenario took place in 2018, when in March of that year the most significant piece of activism for a decade was carried out by around 120 black and brown women in Yarl’s Wood detention centre who sustained a hunger strike for a number of weeks. The subsequent Refugee Week of 2018 almost ignored that fact, people attending the many events would have been unlikely to register that the hunger strike had even happened. This realisation led me to propose a protest action ‘Hostile Detainment‘ dedicated to the women in Yarl’s Wood as an art intervention when Virtual Migrants were invited at the last minute to deliver ‘something’ for Refugee Week at Manchester’s HOME arts centre.

Looking back on our early work, we were setting a far more polemical, critical and radical tone than many subsequent activities that have developed within the institutionalised framework of refugee narratives. We made direct links between the arms trade, colonialism, deportation, systemic racism, racialised policing, public monuments and then also climate change and environmental justice. The full story of this critical development needs to be better documented but in common with the lack of capacity among most activism driven groups that project remains elusive.

We have always been wary of the domination of refugee issues by a focus on legal processes and definitions, and by artistic developments that focus on descriptive experiences, nurturing talent and the popular easy to appreciate art-as-social-work approach (unable to address the chronic systemic constructions of the issues being explored). More critical and challenging analyses and connections have been muscled out.

Still from the film 'Our Plymouth This Land, connecting Refugee Week with Black Lives Matter
Still from ‘Our Plymouth, This Land’

Some seven years after founding Virtual Migrants, I co-produced and directed ‘Our Plymouth, This Land’ in 2005 working closely with musician Aidan Jolly alongside local artists and communities in Plymouth. The production involves a combination of video art, third cinema and documentary approaches in tandem with a democratic production process alongside a parallel musical structure. Our approach was to facilitate a set of sub-narratives to emerge from the various community-based collaborators, and allow those to be presented alongside each other so allowing inherent resonances to become explicit. This creates a degree of montage approach rather than the usual imposed narrative framework generated to drive home a digestible statement.

At the time, ‘Our Plymouth, This Land’ was described as an “Art-film / documentary exploring the heritage of slavery and imperialism according to the experiences of young refugees and migrants, set to a fusion soundtrack involving Iranian-Kurdish Santoor.” Along with a set of other video and music works it was published on the EXHALE DVD-CD box set which also includes two booklets of writing, poetry and imagery, available at www.virtualmigrants.com/exhale .

'What If I'm Not Real' installation by the original Virtual Migrants artists' collective

The project was part of ‘The Next Breath’ outreach programme during the tour of our Terminal Frontiers exhibition. We had produced a prolific range of critical and ground-breaking work during the years 2001-2006 in collaboration with a wide set of people including those with experience of seeking refuge. Virtual Migrants have since morphed a few times and struggled with a combination of under-exposure, marginalisation and burn-out, yet despite the challenging times we are working hard in a new format focusing on performance-led activism.

As the world focuses on the way racial oppression and the often violent abuses of human rights play out particularly against people of African descent, the forces that drive those symptoms and the set of ideologies and wider process that they mutually feed off often remain hidden. There are a good many advocates for systemic change but the definition of what that is remains elusive for most people. Avoiding a gradual drift towards the status quo will not be easy, especially when there is such little crossover between parallel movements such as those around refugee advocacy and Black Lives Matter. Asylum, deportation and migration issues are central to both Refugee Week and the movements for racial justice relating to Black Lives Matter.

– Kooj Chuhan

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December 7, 2015 by koojchuhan

EXHALE artists DVD Box Set on sale

…an alternative to the usual festive items for those of a conscious disposition…

EXHALE artists DVD, audio-CD and booklets exploring asylum/refuge – box set on sale now!

EXHALE box set of DVD, audio-CD, bookletsOUT NOW! only £15.99 including free delivery [Read more…]

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October 22, 2015 by koojchuhan

Continent Chop Chop | Climate justice performance

CONTINENT CHOP CHOP
austerity, refugees and climate destruction: a story told through music, poetry, transmedia and spoken word

With performances currently touring from October-December 2015 in Manchester, London, Liverpool, Huddersfield, Leeds and Leicester. Tour dates and tickets

Continent Chop Chop climate justice performanceClimate justice stories from across the world weaved together via Afrobeat influences, experimental electronics, English Folk and deconstructed imperial anthems.

Continent Chop Chop asks: What are the connections between climate change and poverty? How does the wider climate of austerity and scapegoating of migrants connect with climate change? And why should anyone care when they don’t have enough to eat?

Featuring commissioned recordings and footage from Nnimmo Bassey, a Nigeria-based leading environmental activist, and from Zena Edwards, a London-based performance poet, writer and musician.

A performance project by the Virtual Migrants collective.
Devised and led by Sai Murray (writer, performer), Aidan Jolly (musician, composer) and Maya Chowdhry (transmedia artist).  Supporting artists: Tracey Zengeni (vocals, performer), Jaydev Mistry (musician, digital soundscapes), Kooj Chuhan (video artist), Mazaher Rafshajani (photography and video).
Directed by Amanda Huxtable.

Full details of Continent Chop Chop climate justice performance at: www.virtualmigrants.net/continent-chop-chop

LIST OF PERFORMANCES IN 2015:
Ticket prices and ticketing details here

Saturday 31st October, 7.30pm
Kirklees Media Centre, Huddersfield  http://www.the-media-centre.co.uk

Saturday 7th November, 6 – 8pm
Highfields Centre, Leicester  http://www.highfieldscentre.ac.uk/home.html

Tuesday 10th November 6pm  (excerpt as part of ‘Dance The Guns To Silence’)
Rich Mix, London  http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/dance-the-guns-to-silence-ii/

Saturday 14th November, 7.30pm
Anthony Burgess Centre, Manchester  www.anthonyburgess.org
Tickets: http://continent-chop-manchester.eventbrite.co.uk

Sunday 15th November, 3 – 5pm
The Lantern, Liverpool  http://www.lanterntheatreliverpool.co.uk/

Friday 20th November, 7.30pm
Seven Arts, Leeds  http://www.sevenleeds.co.uk/

Thursday 3rd December, 6.30pm
Free Word Centre, London  www.freewordcentre.com

Full details of the performances and online videos at www.virtualmigrants.net/continent-chop-chop
Information on our participatory workshops to be announced soon.

Continent Chop Chop climate justice performance - funders and partners logos

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September 28, 2015 by koojchuhan

NNIMMO BASSEY award-winning African climate activist: help make a film about his work

Nnimmo Bassey crowdfunderCardNNIMMO BASSEY is an award-winning African climate activist and poet: we want to make a film about his work and how it connects with austerity, refugees and our wider realities. Please spread the word about our crowdfunding campaign, or donate yourself if you can:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nnimmo-bassey-award-winning-climate-activist .

This film will be more than a film about a strong and critically important activist – which is worthwhile in itself. It will also connect Nnimmo’s work with immediate headline issues concerning many of us – austerity and refugees – and so will join some of the dots which many environmental films do not. [Read more…]

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August 6, 2015 by koojchuhan

Cultural consciousness: Poster Film Collective in the 80s and other online pieces

Selected posts by Kooj Chuhan recently on Virtual Migrants’ Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/VirtualMigrants :

Poster Film Collective cultural consciousness in the 80s

Whose World Is The World by Poster Film Collective cultural consciousness in the 80s. Any parallels now? http://poster-collective.org.uk/whoseworld/index.php
These posters were often in the youth clubs and community centres that we worked in, running creative, campaigning and discussion activities focused on anti-racist and suppressed historical ideas and knowledge. They gave a continuity in the environment that the people who used the building could continue to reflect on after the activities and workshops, in an immediate and visual way without too much text clutter. I really think we need this kind of stuff again in our physical environment, maybe the digital world makes us forget these possibilities?

Poster Film Collective "Whose World Is The World" cultural consciousness
Poster Film Collective "Whose World Is The World" cultural consciousness
Poster Film Collective "Whose World Is The World" cultural consciousness
Poster Film Collective "Whose World Is The World" cultural consciousness

Migrant crisis: tackle the cause and not the symptom?

The Chance Or Choice report suggests long term answer lies in [Read more…]

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January 12, 2015 by koojchuhan

Condemn murder but DON’T be Charlie!

Condemn murder but DON'T be Charlie!After the recent completely tragic murders I looked at a good number of Charlie Hebdo covers on Google images, and found racist stereotyping to be pretty consistent.  I might add that Muslims seem to be the target of ridicule by Charlie Hebdo more than others are, though thats purely based on the sample from Google images and not a statistical survey.   Sure, Charlie Hebdo does satirise almost everyone, but the way this is done in the case of Muslim people is using repeated images of Muslims that are practically from the colonial era, the equivalent of using gollywogs to depict people of African descent.  If those were to be used to supposedly satirise Africans, most would [Read more…]

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October 27, 2014 by koojchuhan

‘Doh Mix Meh Up’ exhibition in Oxford presents video art ‘Buy This (v3)’

This weekend on 1st Nov 2014 the ‘Doh Mix Meh Up’ Exhibition in Oxford presents video art titled “Buy This (v3)” on race-migration-climate issues by Kooj Chuhan / Virtual Migrants.

The ‘Doh Mix Meh Up’ exhibition

More info:

‘Doh Mix Meh Up’ – Diaspora and Identity in Art

A free one-day exhibition and performance programme exploring the role of the arts in understanding, expressing and experiencing diaspora.

1st November 2014, 3pm – 10pm

Panel Discussion:
‘Exploring Diaspora through [Read more…]

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September 25, 2014 by koojchuhan

How the People’s Climate March Became a Corporate PR Campaign

PCMlargestmarch“organizing thousands of people to nonviolently shut down the area around the United Nations was thwarted by paid staff with the organizing groups.”

Important and critical article by Arun Gupta, ‘How the People’s Climate March Became a Corporate PR Campaign’, originally published at http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/19/how-the-peoples-climate-march-became-a-corporate-pr-campaign/ .

Some extracts:

I’ve never been to a protest march that advertised in the New York City subway. That spent $220,000 on posters inviting Wall Street bankers to join a march to save the planet, according to one source. That claims you can change world history in an afternoon after walking the dog and eating brunch.

( … )

Environmental activist Anne Petermann and writer Quincy Saul describe how [Read more…]

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September 4, 2014 by koojchuhan

Unlawfully shooting working #migrants in #Greece #racism

Important story from the Guardian this week about farm guards shooting working migrants in Greece at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/01/greece-migrant-fruit-pickers-shot-they-kept-firing .  Some extracts here:

Greece’s migrant fruit pickers: ‘They kept firing. There was blood everywhere’

Last year, Greek farm guards shot at illegal migrant strawberry pickers, wounding 35. When a court acquitted them this summer, there was outrage. At the camp, where they continue to live like slaves, the workers share their stories

Is a man worth nothing when he is branded illegal? Tipu Chowdhury has spent the past 17 months wondering. The answer has not been easy. Even now, after being forced to endure subhuman living conditions, after being starved and worked like a slave, the Bangladeshi does not speak ill of Greece. Instead of anger, there is resignation, an almost fatalistic acceptance that this is the life meted out to those who go “undocumented”.

Had he and his fellow strawberry pickers not been shot at – had the case not reached the courts and the men who did the shooting not been scandalously freed – he might not have pondered the question at all.

“When they pointed their guns at us, and there were around 200 of us gathered in that space, we thought they were joking,” says Chowdhury of the April 2013 attack. “After all, we hadn’t been paid for more than five months. We couldn’t believe it when they actually began shooting.”

This week, unions, anti-racist groups and peasant workers’ associations will launch a solidarity campaign in support of the Bangladeshis, starting with a mass demonstration timed to coincide with a speech the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, will give on Sunday outlining the government’s economic policy at the international trade fair in Thessaloniki. As preparations get under way, 33-year-old Chowdhury has found himself reliving the events of that day, one that would go down as the worst assault in Europe on migrant workers in living memory.

(full story continues at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/01/greece-migrant-fruit-pickers-shot-they-kept-firing )

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on sale: EXHALE box set of DVD & CD

on sale: EXHALE box set of DVD, audio-CD, booklets – socio-art exploring asylum/refuge

5 years of video, music and digital art engaging with asylum and migration in a new world order, now on sale

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