Circular Storytelling
Storytelling Tools
October 2018, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (+MSUM).
A workshop with migrants led by the artist Ibro Hasanović at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova from 1 to 5 October 2018 resulted in a series stories told in varius media:
- a performative video Circular Storytelling,
- a series of clay sculptures,
- lists of humorous examples of words pronunciated the same in Slovenian and migrants' mother tongues (Arabian, Farsi, Tigrinya, Tigre, Dahlik, Dari, Pashto) but have quite different and unexpected meaning.
Storytelling Tools
July to November 2018, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA).
Throughout 2018, MIMA hosted a series of conversations around the importance of migration in the development of Middlesbrough and the Tees Valley. The oral histories and graphic illustration that document these conversations draw together the experiences of migrants from the widest spectrum of backgrounds. This activity maps alternative routes of migration, labour, relationships and affects through personal narratives in the largely unheard, often undocumented, voices of local people.
By looking at both longer histories of migration and contemporary experiences, the project aimed to support people to find synergies between seemingly divergent experiences. This endeavour was a reaction to the lack of narratives of migration that can be found in the area’s civic archives and an attempt to bring visibility to a range of voices and experiences.
At Community Day, MIMA’s weekly programme, and at community events, researcher Nicola Gasgoigne supported constituents to map their routes to the area, their motivations for travelling and for staying, their hopes, interests and traditions. The resulting diagrams were collated using digital network visualisation tool Graph Commons, which was developed by artist Burak Arikan. The overall ‘map’ visualises connections and cross overs between people from a range of backgrounds.
To follow up on these conversations, Gasgoigne conducted in-depth interviews with a number of people, five of whom are represented in the audio piece. Some of those interviewed were new to the area and others had grown up here, the children of migrants; some were economic migrants while others sought sanctuary in UK as refugees.
The interviews were conducted by Nicola Gasgoigne. This work was supported by Dr Roisín Higgins, Teesside University.
Four short stories
January to August 2019, Museum of Modern Art (MG+MSUM), Ljubljana.
Short stories by Romat Hasan, a refugee from Aleppo, Syria, resident of Ljubljana, Slovenia.