The contribution of art-based projects seems even more urgent now that polarisation in society and in the political field is growning stronger and right wing parties using dehumanising images of refugees and migrants are gaining traction across Europe.
Investing in these (research) projects however requires a constant reflection on the implicit power relations in the context of setting up, making, producing, or conducting them.
From within networks of people with refugee background, critical perspectives have emerged. People who have been asked to participate in art-based projects sometimes
express concerns and a sense of discomfort, especially concerning projects where the life stories, intimate feelings or traumatic experiences of refugees are described, displayed or exposed, mostly by researchers or makers without refugee background. The proposed investigators (Idris Alhassan and Husniya Kedr) have encountered these reflections in personal conversations with others, who went through these experiences, or who experience a sense of disconfort or uneasiness when wittnessing art or media products that expose the life of people with similar backgrounds or stories as themselves. Part of the concerns involve the feeling of emptiness which might derive from sharing vulnerable or intitmate life stories in the name of ‘making impact’, while this often does not lead to any concrete change in the life of the person itself. This calls for more explicit conversations on boundaries and conditions for reciprocally meaningful co-creation in art-based projects.
However, articulating these concerns and discomfort is not easy. To start with, voicing these might open a dilemma, as participating in these projects is often at the same time experienced as meaningful and important (because of the potential societal impact). This doubleness makes it hard to criticize good intentioned makers/researchers and potentially positive projects. Also, there seems to be a lack of conceptual tools and shared vocabularies to adress these issues. Thirdly, focusing on these issues, even in protected and safe settings among people having similar experiences, might itself stirr a sense of loss or pain.
Therefore this small, refugee-led project contributes to making a first steps in articulating collectively the complexity of participating in art-based projects or research. This will spur reflection on the conditions for co-creative art based work, from the perspective of participants. Idris and Husnyia will organise, prepare and conduct two workshops with people with refugee background who have experience with art-based projects. They will organise an informed discussion to create collective knowledge and describe their outcomes in collaboration with participants in a video-lecture and short text.
