Upcoming workshop: “Visual Memories of Migration – Colours of a Journey as a Counter-narrative to Europe’s Refugee Crisis”
Colours of a Journey team is organizing a workshop in Groningen, the Netherlands! It will take place on the 15th and 16th of May, at the University of Groningen. Below you can check all the information and program!
Visual Memories of Migration – Colours of a Journey as a Counter-narrative to Europe’s Refugee Crisis
Tuesday 15 May 2018 – Wednesday 16 May 2018 * University of Groningen * Transform!Europe
About the workshop
The workshop hopes to strengthen a dialogue – formed around the Colours of Journey platform – between researchers and practitioners who work with children on the move and on questions of migration and mobility, visuality and memory. The workshop will explore how past and future activities of the “Colours of a Journey” speak to the existing discussions about the construction of the European political and cultural imaginary and the role of visual representations and digital networks in transnationalization and/or deterritorialization of memory, and how we can better understand how memories are articulated, transmitted and translated transnationally and in the context of human mobility.
The “Colours of a Journey” can contribute to the ongoing discussions on the autonomy of migration and the production of deterritorialized political subjectivities. Our platform speaks to the work of authors such as Garelli and Tazzioli, de Genova and Mezzadra who already in 2003 voiced their opposition to the methodological nationalism intrinsic to (critical) migration studies, and the ensuing rendering of a “migrant” subjectivity as deviant and politically dangerous. Accordingly, autonomy of migration scholarship has brought valuable insights into how human mobility transgresses the embedded border regimes and disrupts the institutionalized borders and boundaries of Europeanness.
The workshop wishes to problematize “subjection and subjectivation” in view of the autonomy of migration scholarship. We pick up the central question posed by the autonomy of migration scholarship – under what circumstances, how and for what purpose can those living in precarity make sense and enact their political subjectivity – and locate the discussion on the becoming subject (subjectivation) in the domains of visuality and memory. This particularly refers to the political potency of personal (visual) stories of mobility for making sense of and enacting deterritorialized and multiple subjectivity in displaced and precarious contexts. We are interested in the potential of visuality and visual narratives of mobility to turn the analytical lenses back to the subjective desires, experiences and practices of migrants themselves.
Program
Tuesday, May 15; location A weg 30 room 214
- 00 – 10.15 – Coffee/tea
- 15 – 10.30 – Welcome address
- 10:30 – 12:30 Panel 1 – Narratives of Migration: Digital Archives and Oral History (moderator Aimilia Koukouma)
“The Colours of a Journey – Mobility, Memory, Visuality”
Patricia Bachmaier, Tuscany Bell, Martin Bogdan, Lara Ramos Yáñez, Colours of a Journey
“Autonomy of Migration”
Katerina Anastasiou, Transform!Network
“From Silenced Stories to History”
Eleni Kyramargiou, National Hellenic Research Foundation
“Exploring a Material Politics of Memory in the Statue of Peace”
David Shim, University of Groningen
- 12: 30 – 14: 00 Lunch
- 14:00 – 15:30 Panel 2 – Migration, Memory and the Digital Sphere (moderator James Leigh) “Title TBD”
Shreepali Patel, Anglia Ruskin University, Director of Story Lab
“Young Connected Migrants: Comparing Digital Practices of Young Refugees and Expatriates”
Koen Leurs, Utrecht University
“Memory Work in the Platform Society”
Rik Smit, University of Groningen
- 15:30 – 15:45 Break
- 15:45 – 17:00 – Open lecture “How to Design a Digital Project”
Spyros Tzortzis and Gregory Tsardanidis – Sociality (moderator Senka Neuman)
- 19:30 – Exhibition “Newcomer Children Envisioning their Past, Present and Future” (location Van Swietenlaan 23)
Introduction by Carla van Os, University of Groningen
Wednesday, May 16; location Turftorenstraat, Room 12
- 00 – 12.00 – Concluding Remarks and Future Outlooks – open discussion (moderator Katerina Anastasiou)