Virtual Migrants

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

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Dance the Guns to Silence III: Healing Separation, Mobilising Desire

Saturday 14th November from 7pm-10pm UK time, Zoom Webinar.

On the 10th November 1995 Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other people from the Ogoni people were executed by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. They were leaders of a non-violent campaign against the destruction of the Ogoni Delta in Nigeria by the oil industry, especially Royal Dutch Shell.

Virtual Migrants are proud to be co-organising this Global Arts Night in support of the Ogoni and other communities fighting extractivism around the world with Platform, in collaboration with MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People) and Voices that Shake!

Virtual Migrants contribution will be to showcase CCCTV, featuring chopped up Continent Chop Chop content hosted by Sai Murray, and including the launch of two unreleased films featuring Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey. (The link to view these films will go live at the same time as the event):

I Will Not Dance to Your Beat – poem by Nnimmo Bassey
I Thought It Was Oil, But It Was Blood – poem by Nnimmo Bassey

The Climate Crisis Needs System Change – an interview with Nnimmo Bassey

The event links the murder of the Ogoni 9 to current global struggles, and features:

*Panel discussions

*Short film screenings

*Artistic presentations

*Performance, poetry and singing for justice

*Collective meditation/ Healing practice

*and much more!

*live English subtitles + translation in french & Spanish will be available

To book tickets:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dance-the-guns-to-silence-iii-healing-separation-mobilising-desire-tickets-125024105465

FB event here https://fb.me/e/356cJWlYy

WATCH OUT for further film launches:

On the 21st November we will be publishing two films documenting our ‘Breathe’ project:

In June 2019 Virtual Migrants and Numbi Arts collaborated on ‘Breathe!’, a protest/performance that asked who controls the local environment in Tower Hamlets, and questioned planning processes that are racialised and exclusive of the people who actually live in a given locality. These films show the protest performance created by young people and others as they occupied an abandoned community garden under threat from ‘developers’.

and on the 28th November two more films, from our 2015 touring production Continent Chop:

EPM – Ethical People Movement campaign promotion video – for the first time we’re making the spoof film from the show available, which looks at white saviour syndrome and charity ‘ethics’ – particularly relevant as Comic Relief stand down their celebrity offensive (or should that be the other way round?) and a film specially commissioned for the performance: Blind Spot – climate justice poetry video by Zena Edwards, which calls to account the ‘whiteness’ of climate campaigning.

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Poetic, filmic, visual & rhythmic responses to BREATHE!

Excited to invite you to our event on Friday 15th May online on Zoom or FaceBook Live at 7:30pm
A Numbi-Virtual Migrants-XR Tower Hamlets collab
feat. a stellar lineup of local/global artist + film premiere of BREATHE!

Join live audience on Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/511372970

Raffle ticket & donation link: https://tinyurl.com/y7p8yn6q

Proceeds from the event will benefit NUMBI Arts.

BREATHE!
Development – Exclusion – Community – Environment – Resistance
a documentary of a protest/performance project in a public community garden
by Virtual Migrants and Numbi with XR Tower Hamlets, the Women’s Environmental Network and local people

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Breathe! reconnect: recover: reclaim social space

Virtual Migrants and Numbi Arts presents:

BREATHE!
reconnect: recover: reclaim social space

 

artwork: Amber Perrier

 

“Breathe!” takes inspiration from Numbi‘s legacy of local/global art for change and Virtual Migrant’s methodology of protest performance, to explore the internal and external space of our communities, calling attention to the privatisation and commodification of social spaces.

The history of struggle, resistance and community in East London is rich and vibrant. Yet perhaps now more than ever, our communal spaces are under pressure. The whirlwinds of rising property prices, rents, gentrification, surveillance and over-policing are destroying connections with neighbours and breaking up long standing communities; spaces that we rely on for solidarity, health and conviviality; places where we can meet, connect, share food, dance, sing, breathe.

 

Through a FREE one day creative workshop (as part of Arts Admin’s #2DegreesFestival) with artist/ activists we will explore and create performance artworks on the themes of reconnecting to community and reclaiming social space, to be performed in a location the following week.

WORKSHOP – Sunday June 2nd 2019
12pm – 6pm
@ Rich Mix, 39-47 Bethnal Green Rd, E1 6LA

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PERFORMANCE – Sunday June 9th 2019
– meet at 11am  – location tbc (3 hours)

ABOUT THE ARTISTS 

Virtual Migrants connect art, digital media and performance with new aesthetics and perspectives exploring race, migration and global justice. They create, exhibit, perform and distribute work that can be installed in galleries, performance venues, public or community spaces.

www.virtualmigrants.net | @VirtualMigrants (Facebook) | @VirtualMigrants (Twitter)

Numbi Arts CIC is a non-profit organisation based in London that creates cross-art projects and works collaboratively with artists, educators and peer organisations, providing a range of inspiring opportunities for communities to engage with local/global art for change, contemporary arts and heritage. Somali-originated African-centred, with globally inclusive programming and outlook. 

Numbi.org | @numbiarts (Facebook) | @numbiarts (Twitter) | @numbiarts (Instagram)

To sign up please send us your details via this online form

#2DegreesFestival

This event is also part of #NumbiFest 2019.

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Interplay Now crossover music with webcasting

A project developed by Virtual Migrants in Sheffield (UK), Interplay Now enables new musical collaborations across different cultures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZtMsb7Jzfw
The final 2019 performance by Interplay Now, titled ‘Greater Than The Sum’

Interplay Now a new project bringing together very different musical genres, cultures and communities to create new music, and to encourage deeper understanding of the background to that music both artistically and socially using educative journalism. The UK is rich in having a very diverse range of cultures and the innovative possibilities through bringing us together are mostly underused. The project involved a significant training programme – in music, video, webcasting and journalism (also to a lesser degree, photography).

Webcasting with training for Interplay Now
Webcasting with training for Interplay Now

Interplay Now has it’s own website www.interplaynow.org – head over there for all up-to-date information with full details about the project. The project aims to bridge divides, generate artistic innovation and develop organisational skills among local people. We have also developed three micro-commissions connecting unusual pairs of Sheffield based musicians. Interplay Now hopes to catalyse the future evolution and understanding of musical crossover. We aim to use educative webcasting to develop audiences and influence musical and creative practice.

Interplay Now Collective rehearsing and developing new music

Interplay Now Collective

Interplay Now first full concert performance 1st August 2019 at Theatre Deli

Our project’s starting point was with a diverse group of people mostly who arrived as refugees, who created original material to perform, talk about and webcast a range of music created during the weekly project sessions. This is the Interplay Now Collective. The first live presentation on 20th June 2019 at Theatre Deli preceded a performance by Avital Raz at Sheffield’s Migration Matters festival during Refugee Week, more details at www.migrationmattersfestival.co.uk/full-programme-2019-b/my-jerusalem . The next was a dedicated performance of their own at Theatre Deli on 1st August 2019 – InterplayNow Collective LIVE with Arash Sabet.

Artist Commissions to create original crossover music

Six artists were commissioned to create new music in three pairs crossing over their very different genres and cultural backgrounds in unusual ways. The final presentation of the commissioned pieces took place at an event ‘Greater Than The Sum‘ on 9th October 2019 – a truly spellbinding and exhilarating event.

Greater Than The Sum - header image for final Interplay Now concert on 9th October 2019

In 2019, the commissioned artist pairs were:

Kate Griffin and Mina Salama
Mina Salama and Kate Griffin Two musicians grounded in their traditions, Arabic, UK folk and Bluegrass, playing instruments derived from some of the oldest in the world. With Oud, Nay and Kawala flutes, Qanoon and Armenian Duduk, Guitar, Banjo and voice as their palette.
Shu Jiang and Dirty Freud
Shu Jiang and Dirty Freud A Shangai trained musicologist and expert player of Chinese zithers meets a British DJ and electro-dub producer of Caribbean heritage. Possibly the most radical combination of the evening combining delicacy and drive, grace and guts.
LNA and Avital Raz
LNA and Avital Raz A Scandinavian in Yorkshire making melancholic electronic sounds meets experimental folk music from a Sheffield based singer via Varanasi and Jerusalem . Two voices and an array of instruments including guitar, tanpura, and keyboards.

PLUS… The Interplay Now Collective

The original Interplay Now trainees

Music inspired by refugee members’ roots and journeys from Sudan, Syria, DRCongo, and the UK. Expect uplifting narratives, sung in a variety of languages, and media journalism creating a vivid cultural context through video projections. >> More about Interplay Now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YQsG6hDsaE
Example of our developing a webcast format through training people from refugee backgrounds

We need your support to build this new project further – please SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/channel/UC3ujhN7adteCnU7Fa9g4WvQ and also please like our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Interplay Now is an amazing project run by Virtual Migrants in collaboration with Sheffield Refugee Council. We are also generously supported by SADACCA Studios who provide a fantastic space for us to work in. Other partners include Theatre Deli (Sheffield) and Koni Music, we are also grateful for financial support from Awards For All and the Arts Council England.

Interplay Now - logos of funders and supporters

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Stand up for La Guajira!

The Threepenny Festival Association, Virtual Migrants, Rainbow Collective, Voices That Shake!, with the London Mining Network and War On Want created an artist led intervention in the protest outside the BHP-Billiton Annual General Meeting in London on October 19th. A map representing villages displaced by the Cerrejón open cast mine was created and rolled out in front of the entrance to the conference hall, leaving shareholders with the choice of confronting or dodging their complicity. The film was made alongside this process, documenting the struggle of the WaYúu people, and calling for action.

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Mining as Neocolonialism – Stories of Resistance

Members of the Threepenny Festival and Virtual Migrants have to got together to perform songs, poetry and music for this event on October 19th at UCL in London – there will also be a special surprise! Come and show solidarity for communities affected by mining at this event, featuring speakers from indigenous communities in Colombia and Brazil. For more information click here.

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Photo Gallery of Continent Chop Chop show in Leeds

Following our recent tour, here is a photo gallery of Continent Chop Chop as it was performed in Leeds, all photos by Max Farrar.  We are going to add more updates about that tour as time goes on, as well as details of what we are currently developing.  For full details of the Continent Chop Chop project, go to http://virtualmigrants.net/continent-chop-chop/ or locate the project in the drop down menu above.

Photo Gallery:

Click on any image to view the photos in a nice and cool large-size slideshow.

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CONTINENT CHOP CHOP: climate justice film project on Indiegogo

Nnimmo Bassey with international activist Vandana Shiva

Nnimmo Bassey with international activist Vandana Shiva

We’ve launched a crowdfunder so that we can work with poet, author, activist Nnimmo Bassey. To support us click on the CCC logo on the right to go to Indiegogo.
For more information about the project click on the Continent Chop Chop menu.

What is CONTINENT CHOP CHOP?

A new transmedia performance by Virtual Migrants, touring from November 2015.  It focuses on climate destruction and how it is linked to global austerity policies and refugees.  It currently includes only a short voice-over from Nnimmo Bassey as a part of the story.  We’ve launched a crowdfunder for this climate justice film project on Indiegogo. The new film created in collaboration with Nnimmo Bassey will become a centre-piece of the performance.

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#RefugeeWeek #exhibition “Committed To Represent” at Manchester Central Library by #VirtualMigrants

The “Committed To Represent” exhibition by Virtual Migrants for Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMIAU) was exhibited at the youth-led Routes To Roots event on Monday 9th June at the Central Library, for Refugee Month.  The event was organised by Team V Manchester to ‘celebrate Manchester’s cultural diversity and challenge misconceptions around immigration’.

Here are some photos of how it looked:

This exhibition is available for borrowing or hire (if you have available funds), and a speaker can be provided if desired. The panels can be set up to accompany any relevant event or activity involving an audience, or cultural / artistic programme. Please contact virtual migrants via www.virtualmigrants.net or contact GMIAU directly via www.gmiau.org .

More information along with previews of the exhibition are available at http://virtualmigrants.net/committedtorepresent .

Design and direction by Kooj Chuhan. Research and text by Ursula Sharma. Photography by Mazaher.
www.virtualmigrants.net     www.gmiau.org

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Remember Oluwale 45th Anniversary incl #VirtualMigrants performance – Sat 3rd May 2014

45 years since David was found dead in the River Aire. Please help promote and come to our fundraiser for a memorial garden next saturday at Left Bank Leeds 3rd May with Virtual Migrants, Angel Of Youths, DJ SaIQa, Nigerian Community Leeds, street food, stalls, raffle + more.

Remember Oluwale 45th Anniversary Fundraiser – Saturday 3rd May 2014

http://www.rememberoluwale.org/david-oluwale/fundraiser-saturday-3rd-may-2014/

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