Many guests at the book launch

The book “Entangled Histories of Art and Migration”, which deals with the relationship between art and migration from a global perspective, has just been published. The publication is the result of an interdisciplinary network funded by the German Research Foundation, in which the HfK Bremen plays a leading role. Over 50 guests from various universities and art academies came to the HfK to celebrate the publication of the book.

After we editors - Cathrine Bublatzky, Burcu Dogramaci, Kerstin Pinther and Mona Schieren - had presented the themes of the book with scientific and artistic contributions from 32 international academics, curators and activist authors, the rest of the program began.

The collective walk that Cana Bilir-Meier, Bubu Mosiashvili, Hodan-Ali Farah and Fatma Ercan had conceived for the guests offered insights into the history, continuity and geography of migration in the neighborhoods adjacent to the HfK. On their way from Überseestadt via Walle to Gröpelingen, the participants explored the urban landscape in bright sunshine and discovered historical traces that often lie on the edge of invisibility. They discussed migration histories and experiences, particularly in schools and other university educational biographies from an intersectional perspective.

The walkers asked, for example: What does the term “hotspot school” signal? Does the architecture of a school that was built during the National Socialist era and has remained virtually unchanged influence how students and teachers meet and move around there? The walk ended in Gröpelingen, a neighborhood that was recently declared a gun-free zone and is monitored by public security cameras - measures that disproportionately target a community with a large number of people with a migrant background and an international community.

In this context, Abd Tammaa's video installation, which gives children from a second primary school class in Germany a voice and focuses on a text from their reading primer that attempts to corrupt the imaginations of the children learning to read, was also much discussed. The installation unfolds as a conversation of video work, syllabic panels and embroidered fabric - all in dialog that refuses the corrupted imagination that this lesson seeks to impose.

Abd presented this work as part of his diploma here at the HfK in the Fine Arts program and I immediately thought this work should be shown at the Booklaunch. It subtly and very elegantly dissects the power and percolation of racism. As Sabine Broeck, one of the voices in the video, says, the text from the reading primer currently used in many federal states is certainly “well-intentioned” by the authors, but is an expression of structural racism in school education. The children in the second grade, however, find their own emancipated way of dealing with it.

The program culminated in the evening at the GAK with the presentation of the films of one of the book contributors, Cana Bilir-Meier, and an exciting and moving artist talk.