Text and images by Camilla Glorioso,
MA Fashion Photography, London College of Fashion
Reporting back on Session Two: Passagens: Migration and Environmental Change
On Tuesday 29th November it took place the second session of the Postgraduate Reading Group: Passagens, this time at John Prince’s Street London College of Fashion campus.
As in the previous session, the aim was to gather different postgraduate creatives from UAL colleges for an open a discussion around migration, refugees and how art can interact with these realities. Curator and art writer Anne-Marie Melster introduced her last project to the group: a co-curated exhibition reflecting on the notions of migration and environmental change, trying to put together a series of artists that not only have migration stories in their past but who choose to work with specific communities as part of their creative process. This means not necessarily only working in refugees camps or border towns, but also groups that never completely integrated in the country they live in, have created a very close community within the country, or dealing with groups that normally migrate and travel from one country to another and how the changes in their environment influence these movements.
The core concept of the Reading Group is the idea of transit – ‘Passagens’, which means, among other things passages in Portuguese – to contrast the meaning of immigration and emigration, attempting to investigate the limbo that many migrants go through that can become a permanent situation.
From slums, to border camps and ghettos, it seems that some of the time communities are unable to open and merge with the ones that arrive, leaving them in terrible conditions for lengthy periods of time without a chance to pursue their dream of a new life in a new place.
Anne-Marie Melster talked about showing a series of artists selected for the exhibition, for example: Meschac Gaba, Sam Hopkins, Marc Johnson, Francis Alÿs, Oto Hudec, Basim Magdi and many more. She also underlined the importance of the involvement of local artists as the exhibition will travel around the UK. This is a fundamental part of her curation practice; she explained that local artists have the ability to create interest and a stronger connection with the local public, addressing specific issues, traditions or symbols that trigger something in the viewer.
As soon as the discussion has been opened up to the participants in the group, many interesting questions came about. How can the artist help in making the viewer feel again? How important is the artist’s social practice in this historical moment? What do we mean by artist’s social involvement? and does this necessarily mean a personal interaction with people and specific communities or does this mean just dealing with social subjects?
These questions generated a rich discussion and some of them still remain without an answer. What is sure is that they produced a deep moment of reflection in the room and after the reading group was over.
More Passagens Meetings are planned for the Spring Term, keep visiting the Passagens Reading Group page for updates and Book!
Background:
About Anne-Marie Melster
Curator and Art Critic. Co-founder and executive director of the curatorial practice ARTPORT_making waves, which focuses on social and environmental issues. She has curated numerous international art exhibitions and projects in collaboration with renowned institutions worldwide, since 2006, including the UN Climate Change Conferences COP21, COP16, COP15, and LACE Los Angeles. Anne-Marie is a guest lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Valencia (Spain), the University of Hamburg (Germany), and the Universidad Veritas in San José (Costa Rica). She is a fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar.
About Passagens
With the aim of interrogating dialogues about a cross-disciplinary subject Passagens (a Postgraduate Community Reading Group) is a response to increased anxiety amongst students at UAL, to address the meaning and the issues surrounding the act of migration. Passagens takes its meaning from the linguistic variables of the Portuguese ‘passagem’, which implies a number of different journeys: from one period in life to another, from one country, language culture and conviction to another, from being home to being a foreigner, from student to professional, child to teenager to adult, but also from one geological epoch to another, and allows for diverse perspectives to interweave.
This event is the second in a series of four events, organised by Lucy Orta, UAL Chair of Art and the Environment Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF), in collaboration with CSF Associate Curator Camilla Palestra, and is supported by the UAL Postgraduate Community.
Related Links:
Passagens – Postgraduate Reading Group
Camilla Glorioso is the Postgraduate Community Ambassador at London College of Fashion for the Autumn Term 2016-2017.