Library Exhibition: Migration Dreams and Nightmares - visit or watch the video

Alia Syed and Nadia Perrotta's exhibition in the Stuart Hall Library responds to themes of migrant experience in John Berger and Jean Mohr’s novel A Seventh Man. Watch a video (below) about Alia Syed's site-specific film installation On a Wing and a Prayer, currently on show until 31 May 2016.

John Berger and Jean Mohr's book, A Seventh Man, first published in 1975, is an intense exploration of the individual and collective experience of migration from departure to work and return but which also has timely resonances with the hopes and fears that are driving the movements of current migrants and refugees

The exhibition features Syed's new film On a Wing and a Prayer, created especially for the library, and will continue to evolve over its duration. The film imaginatively recreates the journey undertaken by Abdul Rahman Haroun who in August 2015 walked the entire 31 mile length of the Channel Tunnel in a bid to find asylum in the UK. He was arrested by the police and charged under the 1861 Malicious Damage Act. His trial is ongoing. For this installation the film is inserted into a book (a register of ships, evoking other migrations) and accompanied by maps of London and England overlaid with graphs visualising patterns of migration drawn from Berger's book.

The exhibition also features Traits and Lines #1, an artist's book created by Nadia Perrotta telling stories collected through interviews of migrants from her native southern Italy to the UK as well as with migrants from West Africa to Italy. The book is presented as parallel English and Italian texts and overlaid drawings. In the text she draws on her own experience of migration and with helping Anglophone communities from West Africa settle in Italy. The interviews provide the source material for a video work, I Hope for Something Good (2015), which builds to a cacophony of overlaid voices in multiple languages. Perrotta has also crystallised objects washed up on the Thanet shoreline that are evocative of the journeys undertaken.

The exhibition is part of a larger project, Migration Dreams and Nightmares, led by sociologists Nirmal Puwar and Mariam Motamedi Fraser from the Methods Lab at Goldsmiths and includes a concurrent exhibition at Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as three seminars focusing on ‘the ways in which dreams, hopes, promises and aspirations are enfolded into the experiences of migration; specifically the connection between migrants' dreams and the nightmarish qualities of migration.'
A recording of the opening panel discussion with the artists and Nirmal Puwar (Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths) and Ashwani Sharma (Principal Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, UEL) is available below.

Migration Dreams and Nightmares

Stuart Hall Library Research Network Event 19 November 2015
To listen to audio recordings of the event, please scroll down.

A panel discussion to mark the opening of Alia Syed and Nadia Perrotta’s exhibition in the library which responds to themes of migrant experience in John Berger’s novel 'A Seventh Man' (1973).

The panellists were Nirmal Purwar (Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths) Ashwani Sharma (Principal Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, UEL), Nadia Perrotta (artist) Alia Syed (artist nominee for the 2015 Jarman Award).

Alia Syed, On a Wing and a Prayer (film still) 2015

Alia Syed showed her hypnotic film 'On a Wing and a Prayer' recording her walk through the alien environment of the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Alia was invited to respond to Berger's 'The Seventh Man' as part of  the Goldsmiths Methods Lab Project  Migration Dreams and Nightmares. Alia had been affected by a news story about the asylum seeker, Abdul Rahman Haroun, who had walked the 31 miles through the Channel Tunnel. Her film recreates the claustrophobia and fear that Haroun experienced during his nightmarish journey. 

Alia Syed and Nadia Perrotta

Nadia Perrotta interviewed six migrants during a journey to and from her native Italy and the UK. Her artists' book, 'Traits and Lines #1' contains transcripts of the interviews in English and Italian and overlapping drawings of the migrants. Nadia stressed the unique identities of the migrants by capturing the inaccuracies and idioms of language used by each individual. Her 'Crystalised Objects Archive' is also on display in the library which contains alum-coated flotsam collected from the Thanet shoreline, with echoes of dangerous migratory sea-crossings .

Ash Sharma and Nirmal Puwar

The artists' presentations were followed by reposes to the works from Ash and Nirmal, a lively discussion by the panel and questions from the audience.

The library exhibition is part of a larger project, Migration Dreams and Nightmares, led by Nirmal Puwar and Mariam Motamedi Fraser from the Methods Lab at Goldsmiths University of London. A concurrent exhibition and seminars at Goldsmiths "Migrating Dreams + Nightmares: Materials and Movement" Nov 2015-April 2016.

Stuart Hall Library Research Network Guest blog post: Sayed Hasan and Karl Ohiri

© Karl Ohiri and Sayed Hasan: Side by Side

My Granddad's Car  is an art project, but most importantly a personal endeavour. Our story has moved through Nigeria, Pakistan and England, affecting our families, friends and become part of our history.

I thought about bringing my granddad's car to the UK for many years and decided the best time to do so would be when it retired from its long service in Pakistan. I wanted it to make a journey across the geographic and cultural divide that separated my life from the cars and desired to physically touch it in England.

When mentioning the idea to Karl - while sitting in a pub in New Cross - we chanced upon a coincidence which kick-started our collaboration. Karl had been contemplating his grandfather's car too, after discovering it laying in ruin in his family village in Nigeria. We thought it poignant to combine our narratives and grew excited at the prospect of bringing our granddads’ cars together. This marked the beginning of the project.

After securing funding for our venture and organising the necessary steps to export the cars, Karl and I made our journeys. We understood that the experience would be challenging, but didn't anticipate the events that transpired during our trips. In the short time we spent in Nigeria and Pakistan to oversee the shipment of the cars’, the course of the project radically changed. Both cars’ - a fragile Beetle shell and a beaten-up Toyota Corolla - were unable to leave their respective countries. Karl was tricked by a corrupt port official who decided to hold his car for ransom after it entered the shipping yard in Port Harcourt (where it remains to this day). As for my car, it became lost in a legal fiasco. The car remains the possession of my late grandfather and is unable to leave the country.

After our travels we were left deflated and uncertain about the direction of the project. Eventually however, we come to accept our failure as part of the creative process and a reflection of the unpredictability of everyday life. 

It was a privilege to present a collection of our photography and video work at the Research Network in The Stuart Hall Library in December 2013. We especially took enjoyment from the discussion our project provoked. My Granddad's Car is an on-going project, so gaining the perspectives of a critically engaged group helped us to think about our own project differently.

Many thanks to Sonia Hope and Roshini Kempadoo for their support.

For more information about the Stuart Hall Library Research Network and how to participate, email the Library.

Save the date: Stuart Hall Library Research Network 20 February 2014

Join us at our next meeting Thursday 20th February 18:30. The presentations will be followed followed by a question and answer session.

     

Still from the video Postcard Choreographies 2013, Dan Munn

Please book your place online The event is free but we would be grateful if you could let us know if you book and then cannot attend.

Laura Preston, art critic and curator will present Next Spring

A reading from "Next Spring," a story that departs from living in a government housing project in the North East of Japan in early 2012, post-tsunami and nuclear disaster. Tracing recent time-based-film and photographic-works made by artists in Japan and connected to the energy politics of this island state, the text considers the possibilities of imaging an invisible threat.

Laura Preston is currently on residency at the Cité internationale des arts, Paris. Her practice as an art critic questions understandings of time and the production of space. As a curator she endeavours to present different models for publishing. She has worked at May contemporary art journal, Paris, 2013; Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2012; Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington, 2008-2012; Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2007; and Artspace, Auckland, 2006. She continues to work for the Adam Art Gallery as Curator-at-Large.

Dan Munn, artist and writer  will present
Where in time is Europe's last wilderness?

Just over a year ago I took a trip to the town of the indigenous capital of Karasjok in Norway's Far North. I was curious as to how climate defines natural and cultural geography, specifically in regard to producing difference for the tourist market. Through recollections from this trip and a screening of Postcard Choreographies, 2013, which I produced on my return, I ask a series of questions including:
How has distance been replaced as the main signifier of remoteness?
Why did my bottle of Corona cost so much?
What kind of time do Far North cultural activities produce and what is it about traditional technologies that affects our experience of time?
Ski vs. phone: what does it mean to get nowhere?

Dan Munn is an artist and writer based in London. He recently completed an MA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College and has contributed to Art New Zealand, thisistomorrow, C Magazine, and Eyecontact, with work forthcoming in Magazine Issue 3 and The Pantograph Punch.

More information

Please book your place online (see above) Enquiries library@iniva.org 020 7749 1255