Join Counterpoints Arts and Open University in association with Stance Podcast and University of York Migration Network for a week of experimental production and many other collaborators.
Drop in to activities spanning the visual arts: film and photography; design and architecture; digital cultures; the spoken and written word and Live Art. Examine connected questions around housing, dis/placement and place-making; labour and inequality; and citizenship and the production of social democracy. Engage with the production of solidarities and of neighbourhoods and cities. Look into issues relating to knowledge and the commons, and local ecologies and climate change. Investigate the production of communities, identities and belonging, public spheres, and the transformative power of art and pop culture in tumultuous times.
As well as joining our drop-in activities at Tate Exchange, engage with additional off-site activities happening in locations across the UK and beyond (alongside partners across Europe). Our off-site projects will be transmitted to Tate Exchange and our activities at Tate will be transmitted to our off-site collaborators.
For a full listing of events, please visit the Who Are We? website here.
On every day
Afghan Camera Box (Kamra-e-faoree) with Farhad Berahman and b-side Arts, Dorset. A photographic installation commissioned for b-side festival, drawing audiences and participants into gentle conversation around identity, memory, home; alongside thoughts and concerns about displacement, migration and people and place.
Art House Wakefield installation of an evolving ecosystem, with a participatory mural by printmaker, Mohammad Barrangi Fashtani; and the collaborative tailoring of studio holders Hamid Reza Yavari Shoer and Helen O’Sullivan; together with recent studio holders, Wakefield City of Sanctuary; and recent commission, ‘Living Room’, by the artist, Juan delGado.
Are We Data? is an immersive installation produced by AWED, a research team led by Liz McFall and Darren Umney at the Open University, and David Moats (Linkoping University) working collectively with Sapphire Goss and London based software programmer, AV systems designer and musician, Thomas Blackburn. ‘Are We Data?’ questions the relationship between place and place-less ‘big data’ to explore whether digital data can really reveal ‘who we are’.
A Stitch in Time… durational installation combining collective stitching, conversations and film. With artists, Sonia Tuttiett, and makers from East London Textile Arts, filmmaker, Marcia Chandra plus language teachers; and OU researchers Inma Álvarez and Carlos Montoro leading on the AHRC-funded Language Acts and Worldmaking.
Gresham’s Wooden Horse Part 2 a participatory workshop with artist, Isabel Lima, and Isis (Newcastle) focusing on the second stage of a place-based, participatory arts and housing project with residents from the Gresham neighbourhood in Middlesborough (originally commissioned by mima and supported by Counterpoints Arts).
The Consul: A collaborative response by musicians, singers, performers and creative facilitators to the powerful themes of displacement and dispossession at the centre of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s intense 1950 opera, The Consul. As well as sampling and performing music from The Consul, we have created a space, through dialogue and reciprocal teaching and learning, to share lullabies and music from across the globe, including those from members of the public attending Who Are We? The team includes opera singers: Becca Marriott and Marie-Claire op ten Noort, Iranian composer Shorheh Sakoory, choir-leader Naveen Arles, Musical Director, Andrew Charity and Director, Stephen Tiller from Opera Machine & Kent Opera – working alongside a chorus of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees from Sanctuary Voices.
Floor Plans (journeys from there to here) is a collaborative participatory installation focusing on floor plans of homes relating to personal migratory histories, the architecture of memory and the body as a site of memory by artist Natasha Davis, poet & researcher Siobhan Campbell, and researcher Sara de Jong (Open University).
A Guide to the Hostile Environment floor trail mapping the everyday reality of ‘hostile environment’ policies – narrated through the recent Liberty (Civil Liberties and Human Rights) publication.
This event is programmed by Counterpoints Arts, The Open University and Stance Podcast Tate Exchange Associates.
About Counterpoints Arts
Counterpoints Arts support, produce and promote the arts by and about migrants and refugees. Their work is done in collaboration and through co-productions – with artists, arts, cultural and educational organizations and civil society activists working with refugees and migrants. Central to their mission is a belief in the ability of the arts to inspire social change.
About The Open University
The Open University is a pioneer of teaching, learning and research methods contributing specifically through its scholarship on collective digital identities, citizenship and governance.
About Stance Podcast
Stance Podcast, named in Guardian’s ‘Best Podcasts 2017’, explores diverse, global perspectives in arts, culture and current affairs. Launched in January 2017, Stance is a monthly transatlantic conversation between journalists Chrystal Genesis in London and Heta Fell in San Francisco. Stance aims to inform, entertain and inspire action. Guests so far have ranged from award-winning documentary filmmakers, directors and actors, avant-garde artists, musicians, authors, politicians, virtual reality experts, world-renowned activists, philosophers and more. #StancePodcast @StancePodcast
