Virtual Migrants

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

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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?

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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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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‘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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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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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/

PROFILE PIC FOR FACEBOOKPOSTER_VERSION_1604 BANNER FACEBOOK

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90 degree citizen exhibition: Re-Presenting Refugees event 30th October!

Re-Presenting Refugees event 30th October!

90 Degree Citizen
an exhibition by Virtual Migrants + performance / discussion events
on show at the Manchester Museum 10th October – 17th November 2013
90DC-A5flyer-back
migrant art – alternative connections – cultural boundaries
A rare exhibition of work by a new wave of visual artists whose experiences include life as refugees in the UK, and engaging with objects from The Manchester Museum

Special event:  Re-Presenting Refugees panel discussion with ‘Passenger 12’ multimedia performance  + special guests incl. international artist Humberto Velez, Denise McDowell the director of Greater Manchester Immigration Aid, and Iranian artist Flora Alexander
Wednesday 30th October, 6.00 – 9.00pm
plus: at 5.00pm a talk + preview of the “Committed To Represent” pop-up exhibition
FREE: please register at www.re-presentingrefugees.eventbrite.co.uk

view the trailer

Full details of the event

Exhibition full details here!

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A cultural-political-arts project on climate imperialism

There are some incredible and devastating predictions for the future levels of displaced people due to climate change.  A recent issue of Forced Migration Review (#31) began to map out these issues in a useful way yet when you look at the range of articles you are left with a sense that this field is struggling to gain a proper framework; a question for a group like ours is on the role for UK artists with an initial UK audience in response to this, and its relationship to other political positions regarding refugee and migrant issues.  Issues of resource depletion are directly affecting many originating lands of diaspora communities but the immediate pre-occupations of anti-racist and migrant groups seem to have left them forever on a back-burner.  The potential urgency such communities could bring to the debate could be enormous.  This project challenges us as politically engaged artists to disentangle, reposition and debate these pressing realities in a public forum.

This blog has just been set up by Kooj from Virtual Migrants (www.virtualmigrants.com), for The Centre Cannot Hold, a non-limited project about Climate Change and Imperialism.

There is a keynote paper by Kooj Chuhan, titled “Tolerating Mass Murder”, outlining our starting points for this investigation.  You can read it HERE – comments/discussions are welcome.

An outline of the first stage of this project, currently focused at The Arnolfini in Bristol (UK), is as follows.

‘The Centre Cannot Hold (part 1)‘

by Virtual Migrants

 

Installation with performances and direct dialogues exploring climate imperialism

THEME / SUBJECT

The project will explore two critical, under-developed, poorly represented and inter-related areas:

(a)   the ways in which Climate Change is a continuation of imperialist processes that have been active for a few hundred years.  Destruction of human beings along with their environment on a large scale is nothing new, and climate change is perhaps the most sanitised way in which ‘third’ economies will be decimated by the omnipresent culture of greed led by the first economies.

(b)   The perceptions of migrant, ‘third sector’ and diaspora people and groups in the UK, particularly of activists, and their counterparts in ‘third’ economies of the world.  Active engagement of such groups with climate change particularly in the context of imperialism and racism appears to be embryonic at best, because of other continually pressing issues which are always of higher priority such as more direct racism, immediate survival and resistance.  The potential of such groups beginning to discuss such narratives and forming linkages around such issues could be significant.  Integrating with perspectives on class inequality and poverty is also critically relevant.

These areas are difficult, and this project will not pretend to be able to create work that is conclusive within this timescale.  Rather, Virtual Migrants intends to continue this exploration and discussion over the next few years, with work being produced at various intervals of which the exhibition and events at the Arnolfini will be the first landmark stop on this journey.

FORM – aesthetics

The work will focus on the aesthetics of words, spoken and written, with an emphasis on immediacy and direct connection with the source of those words.  Activists will be speaking directly about current situations, ideas, thoughts and activities as a part of the presentations.  We want to minimise the amount of interpretation which artists would normally introduce to such work, and allow such non-performers and non-artists to become a part of work with integrated cultural, aesthetic and political meaning.

There are many examples across the world throughout history where popular consumption of words, both of their depth of meaning as well as of their beauty, has been an essential part of cultures which can more easily be critical and engage in discussion.  Our approach is to encourage directness, anti-packaging, and active engagement with rather than passive consumerism of such narratives.

We intend to use musical and digital visuals to create audio-visual environments that reflect both historical and contemporary sensibilities, rhythms, and contexts in which these direct narratives can be enriched.  These will inevitably be simple and complex at the same time, and will continually change and evolve during the period of installation.