Alien Nation - I-team#1
In September 2019 I was invited to take part in a transnational learning programme for creative practitioners curated by Relais Culture Europe based in Paris. As part of the programme I am visiting a number of cities - Palermo, Paris, Izmir and Sarajevo - over the course of 9 months. Each visit has a programme of learning attached ranging from talks, walks, screenings, sharing and workshops. It is intense but so far it has been an amazing experience, shared with 19 other individuals from different parts of Europe and beyond (China, Reunion Island and South Korea are also represented).
The topics for each visit vary slightly and are closely linked to the cities where the programme takes place. This year’s programme focuses on ‘The Mediterranean as place of tension’ and we are looking in particular at issues that arise from mass migration, borders and mobility, hostile environments, colonialism, diversity and integration. These are of course enormous subjects in themselves but it is up to us as individuals and as a group to make sense of this within our own thinking and practices.
The first two visits - Palermo and Paris - have been amazing, unsettling, thought provoking and I feel as if this learning will impact enormously on how I work with other people in future. I have been a bit quiet of late because of this.
But something I spoke about in a recent blog post (white girl black girl) has come up in the last visit where one of the speakers mentioned the ‘double absence’ (as in a belonging neither here or there) and this was particularly noticeable in this small area in Paris, Le Goute D’or, where we stayed in the Islamic Cultural Centre for a part of the week.
There is a 'double absence' , a twofold lack, in the melancholy of the migrant: the longing for a place which does not exist any more, homeland, and the mirage of a place which will never exist, the arriving country as we imagined. Two places which do not exist, but which have nevertheless a real consistency.
It is making me think again about Brexit too - what role melancholy played in the lives of people who don’t recognise their homeland anymore. On both the Leave and Remain side. We’re all just spinning myths.
Homeland is such a weird concept for a place and yet - as in ‘motherland’ or ‘nation-state’ - we have been conditioned to imagine some mythical umbilical chord that connects us forever, even when it is ripped from the flesh and leaves a wound that will never heal. Our mother tongues, our faith, our traditions so deeply ingrained that we perceive this as having created a shared identity. And how difficult is it to accept an other’s way of living, believing, doing things - even if this other poses no threat,
During our last programme visit we were asked to choose a place where we could go in smaller groups in February2020 to observe the place of tension more closely where perhaps it is more evident, understandable and … scary? I chose Izmir (others have chosen Beirut, Tangiers, St Louis (Senegal) and Skopje) and will need to brush up on my Turkish.
Next week I will have some more time in Palermo. This week I will have some work in a “Christmas” exhibition ‘The Bethlehem Boys Club’ at The Sidney and Matilda Gallery Not so strange perhaps that my new paintings mostly feature weapons and ammunition when I am thinking of places of tension.
