Virtual Migrants

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

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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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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 1, 2014 by koojchuhan

Buy This (v3) by Kooj Chuhan – video installation art archived by Vtape (Toronto)

The 2-screen installation ‘Buy This (v3)’ created with support from Virtual Migrants as part of their Centre Cannot Hold ongoing exploration of climate imperialism, was re-formatted as a single screen artists’ video and toured Canada as part of the Monitor 9 programme by SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) in Toronto.  We now have this video installation art archived by Vtape, a non-profit distribution and resource centre in Toronto.  Vtape is the leading distributor for video art in Canada, established in 1980. They represent a collection of over 5000 titles, accessible to artists, curators and educators.

buyThisV3_still-01

The original ‘Buy This (v1) installation was more complex and interactive, exhibited at The Arnolfini in Bristol (2009) as a part of the ‘C Words’ exhibition about climate justice. This later non-interactive video-based version (v3) was premiered at the first Platforma Festival in December 2011 as a proper 2-screen installation followed by Manchester’s local Chorlton Arts Festival in 2012, and then in 2013 toured a few venues in Canada courtesy of South Asian Visual Arts Centre (Toronto) as part of Monitor 9 with the two screens compiled into a single screen for ease of exhibition, and then also at No.W.Here Gallery in London.

BuyThisV3_MG_7055_sAlthough this work has been screened as a single video stream, it is best viewed using two separate projectors as an installation because the intention is that the two screens loop at different rates so that the imagery juxtaposition continually changes.   Here is the original description of the work:

Buy This (v3) video installation 

by artist Kooj (Kuljit) Chuhan, 2012, a part of an ongoing exploration by Virtual Migrants artists’ group

Year of completion: 2012
Country of production: UK
Running time: 6 mins 20 secs as a continual loop

Refugees and ‘third-world’ migrants bring with them intimate and undervalued knowledge about climate change.  ‘Buy This’ juxtaposes such voices on one screen against another, over-saturated with colliding imagery of wars, colonial struggles, environmental upheaval and UK racism, overlaid with scrolling news messages.

An exploration of how environmental change is integral to the economic and political forces bringing about human displacement and racial inequality, and a continuation of the “Centre Cannot Hold” project discussing climate imperialism and the violent commodification of humans and the environment.

Increasing numbers of people in the UK are sceptical of man-made climate change, outnumbering those who accept climate change as man-made.  Many local members of refugee communities have recent personal experiences and observations from their originating countries which are able to testify to environmental change.  By enabling local refugees to express first-hand observations from countries they have recently migrated from, collaborating with scientists and social scientists to discuss their data, local people can intimately appreciate changing conditions in other countries.  At the same time, it is an opportunity to raise discussion in the UK about the global connections between race and climate, and also how they may impact on issues such as asylum in Europe and the West.

The media-saturated culture which we in the western world inhabit is a facet of a wider approach to (over-) consumption which has become the norm, and which is fundamental to ideas of maximising economic growth with the resultant process of murdering the planet’s resources and bringing about climate devastation.  More than this, the arts, media and cultural sectors is largely complicit in nurturing false illusions and political amnesia, this ‘soft’ consumption of particular cultural and aesthetic meanings actually forms our ways of thinking, seals our disconnections, and this video work taunts the viewer to Buy This.

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

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