Virtual Migrants

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

  • HOME
  • About
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
  • events
    • Migrant Frontiers
  • Exhibitions
    • 90 Degree Citizen
      • Introduction
      • RE-PRESENTING REFUGEES: discussion, performance, exhibition
      • Artists
        • Amang Mardokhy
        • Flora Alexander
        • Iseult Timmermans
        • Maya Chowdhry
        • Mazaher
        • Tracey Zengeni
      • Stephen Welsh (Manchester Museum)
      • 90 Degree Citizen – feedback please!
    • Committed To Represent
      • Introduction
      • Exhibition Photos
      • Gallery: exhibition panels
    • Buy This – installation art
    • Exhibitions history (from the Blog)
  • Performance
    • CONTINENT CHOP CHOP
    • Performance History (from the blog)
  • Blog

  • Breathe!
    • Breathe!
    • Gallery |Breathe! |Photographs
    • Breathe! Information and Resources
    • Breathe! reconnect: recover: reclaim social space
  • Interplay Now
    • Original call out
  • CONTINENT CHOP CHOP
    • The Documentary
    • Gallery Continent Chop Chop – Photographs
    • Remembrance Wall
    • Tour Dates + Tickets
    • NNIMMO BASSEY award-winning African climate activist
    • A5 Flyer for Continent Chop Chop
  • 90 Degree Citizen
    • Feedback please!
    • RE-PRESENTING REFUGEES
    • Artists
      • Amang Mardokhy
      • Flora Alexander
      • Iseult Timmermans
      • Mazaher
      • Tracey Zengeni
  • Centre Cannot Hold
    • About
    • Buy This – installation art
    • Articles (re. climate and race)
      • Article: Climate Change and Race
      • Article: Tolerating Mass Murder
      • Tolerating Mass Murder – Full Paper
  • Other
    • arts
    • climate
    • imperialism
    • linked activity
    • media
    • news
    • project info
    • race
    • refugee
    • reports
    • research

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…]

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Print

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.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Print

April 25, 2014 by koojchuhan

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

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Print

October 18, 2013 by Maya Chowdhry

RE-PRESENTING REFUGEES: discussion, performance, exhibition

90 Degree Citizen exhibition project:
Special Event on Weds 30th October, 6pm – 9pm, at Manchester Museum

>> ‘RE-PRESENTING REFUGEES’ panel discussion <<
>>
‘PASSENGER 12’ multimedia performance <<
>>
‘COMMITTED TO REPRESENT’ exhibition premiere – open to view from 5pm <<

audience+maz_IMG_2284_cropWide_v2_se

A range of key speakers and artists explore critical issues around art, displacement and refugees.  As a dynamic movement, alternative practices and perspectives, cultural resistance or affirmation, political and historical contexts.  Open to the public on the eve of the Platforma national conference on arts and refugees.  A Virtual Migrants event www.virtualmigrants.net .

Discussion begins 7.20pm – panel includes:

Flora Alexander – Iranian visual artist based in Glasgow
Yusra Warsama – poet, playwright and actor from Somalia
Tom Green – director of Platforma national network of arts and refugees
Humberto Velez – international visual, media and performance artist
Isobel Bowler – legal case worker at GM Immigration Aid Unit
Iseult Timmermans – artist and creative producer with refugee groups at Street Level Photoworks
Discussion chaired by Kooj Chuhan – artist and cultural producer; founder of Virtual Migrants and director of 90 Degree Citizen

Multimedia experimental performance: part 1 begins 7pm with part 2 after the discussion – includes artists:

Sai Murray (writer, poet, spoken word)
Maya Chowdhry (performer, writer, multimedia and interactive artist)
Aidan Jolly (composer-songwriter and musician)
Tracey Zengeni (vocalist)
Mazaher (VJ projections)
Elmi Ali (writer, poet, spoken word)
Pat Mackela (drums and percussion)

Committed To Represent – exhibition premiere with talks about the work at 6pm including special guest Mavis Makhaza from Gtr Manchester Immigration Aid Unit and WAST (Women Asylum Seekers Together):

Portable panels of photography and text, portraying the people behind the labels – our unsung heroes the legal immigration caseworkers and those who have needed their support. Created by Kooj Chuhan, Ursula Sharma and Mazaher, as a partnership project between GM Immigration Aid and Virtual Migrants.  This is a pop-up exhibition only on show until 1st November in the Kanaris Foyer at the museum.

This event is a part of the 90 Degree Citizen exhibition, on show from 10th October – 17th November at Manchester Museum, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

FREE to attend, but please register at www.re-presentingrefugees.eventbrite.co.uk

The café will be open during this event for food and drinks.  Light refreshments provided.  All timings are approximate.

logo Banner funders

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Print
This website mostly features our work from 2013 onwards, for previous work go to: www.virtualmigrants.com

Connect with Us

  • View VirtualMigrants’s profile on Facebook
  • View VirtualMigrants’s profile on Twitter
  • View virtualmigrants’s profile on YouTube

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

Follow this Blog

Enter your email address below and click "FOLLOW" to receive receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

SUBSCRIBE to occasional email news about our projects and events:

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets
Fossil Funds Free

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

  • HOME
  • About
  • events
  • Exhibitions
  • Performance
  • Blog

Pretty Chic Theme By: Pretty Darn Cute Design

 

Loading Comments...