Bard College Berlin / Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna

Tread Softly

Migration History and Memory in a Post-Migrant Educational Context

There has always been migration. It is not migration itself but how it is framed that makes it costly, violent and subject to exploitation. In an ever more complex environment, we must experiment at the interstices, seeking possibilities between manifold limitations and restrictions. Bidding farewell to simplistic “grand” solutions, we insist on the freedom to be mindful, to build new connections, establish new practices and opportunities. „Tread softly because you tread on my dreams “: This last line from a famous poem by Yeats reminds us that the limitations of human mobility trespass upon the realm of ideas, of memories and hopes. Physical borders infringe on prospects and expectations, space precipitates into time.

Our exhibition attempts to tread softly by exploring new approaches to migration history, memory and experience in Germany. It does so in a post-migrant educational context where the students’ migrant background is the norm rather than the exception. The exhibits are based on academic research made by Bachelor students in Liberal Arts at Bard College Berlin. They grapple with issues of identity and belonging, of relating migrants’ memories to the memorialisation of the Holocaust in Germany, of gender visibility and invisibility, and of irony as a tool to cope with the ambiguities of migrant existence. Originally conceived as visual or audio notations which permit alternative modes of expression to the academic essay, they have become personal yet interconnected artistic statements.

The installation in which these exhibits are embedded was designed and built by Master students in Art and Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. The students have employed means and materials which have been either loaned, given or recycled, itself proposing an important alternative to consumerist methodology. The finished installation seeks neither to master nor to serve the individual embedded pieces but instead attempts to enter into a dialogue with them. Ideally, this dialogue should con-struct a complex system of interactive messages and materials that is convincing and sustainable, connected to its current domicile and to future domiciles: a post-migrant installation.

Instructors: Marion Detjen (BCB), Michelle Howard (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna)

With contributions from BCB: Wafa Mustafa, Joel Dombrower, Dachil Sado, Victoria Martinez, Clara Canales Gutierrez & Bono Sibelink, Tamar Maare, Ghaithaa Alshaar, Muhanad Kaikonnie, Anna Gersh & Maheen Atif, Nina Lewis, Marga Hattingh

Installations from Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna: Duha Samir, Clarissa Lim Kye Lee, Adam Hudec, Aya Kurz, Victor Autrin, Clara Fung Ka Yee, Ella Felber

Thanks to: Penny Yassour, FLAX-Foreign-Local Artistic Xchange, Nasan Tur, Rula Ali, Alina Amer, Sabine Hornig, Khaled Kurbeh, Tanja Knaus, Ulrike Kuschel, Mohamedali Ltaief Abdul, Razzak Shaballout, BOX Freiraum Carolina Mojto, Berlin Wall Memorial. 

Supported by: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung

First exhibition at Berlin Wall Memorial as part of the International Conference “Impossible Order”, in May 2017: