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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May 12, 2020 by Maya Chowdhry

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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December 23, 2019 by Sai Murray

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

———————————————————————————–

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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October 15, 2019 by Maya Chowdhry

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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February 13, 2018 by

Continent Chop Chop documentary re-launches critical climate justice creativity by Virtual Migrants

Around the end of 2015 Virtual Migrants toured Continent Chop Chop, an innovative theatrical performance which is now the short film – the Continent Chop Chop documentary.  This film exposes the complex process involved in making an authentic artist-activist statement that avoids being didactic, doesn’t pull punches, and steers away from the common trappings of climate change art and performance.

Here it is, please leave comments below or watch it directly on YouTube and leave comments there: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAPKS3IobTk.

Background to the Continent Chop Chop Documentary

‘Continent Chop Chop’ is a touring transmedia production linking narratives of climate change to the broader issues of poverty, race and social justice. Using interwoven narratives portrayed through music, poetry, and projected imagery, it will ask:

  • Continent Chop Chop documentary - still from the performance by Max FarrarWho controls the narrative of climate change?
  • 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?

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.

Featuring commissioned work from guest artists:

Nnimmo Bassey, a leading environmental activist who has won a number of awards and has played leading roles in Friends Of The Earth International, Oilwatch Africa and the Global South Network.

Zena Edwards, a London-based performance poet, writer and musician and creative director of Conversations: Verse in Dialog; Re-Imagining Arts In Action; The Fury Project; The Poetic Debaters.

Visit www.virtualmigrants.net/continent-chop-chop for more information about the project.

More is coming…

Virtual Migrants have been involved in a number of small interventions and mini-projects over the last two years, and have been working on organisational development over the last six months in preparation for sustained and focused slate of projects which will begin to emerge soon.  If you liked watching our work in the Continent Chop Chop documentary, please watch this space and see you soon!

Photo Gallery of Continent Chop Chop show in Leeds

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This website mostly features our work from 2013 onwards, for previous work go to: www.virtualmigrants.com

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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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Virtual Migrants refuse to take any oil, coal, or gas corporate sponsorship for our cultural work.

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