Rory Thomas

Migratory Ambivalences

The migratory experience is often saturated with ambiguity. A not-yet-here or there, migration stands as a process which troubles the perceived solidity of borders, bodies, and the nation state. In this way, it could be said that migration, in its manifold material and conceptual manifestations, productively queers the strictures of normative nation-building and (inter)subjectivity. To evoke such a disruptive notion is not, as Sara Ahmed (1999: 333, 344) warns, to “construct an essence of migration in order then to theorize that migration as a refusal of essence” in aid of an idealised migratory discourse, but to explore how this process constructs nonnormative communities of refusal and sustenance that “come to life through the collective act of remembering in the absence of a common terrain.” In this context, community building as a socially conscious (artistic) practice stands as a fecund devise to navigate the potentialities of a world made otherwise through queer articulations. 

My contribution to the exhibition consists of a curatorial gesture featuring events which plan to enliven the space through theoretically minded yet materially bound interventions that may help the viewer engage more deeply with the broader concepts of the show. Inspired by the insistent refusal of migration to be ideologically or conceptually restrained (as evidenced by the course material), this programme, entitled Migratory Ambivalences, would work to problematise the relational connectivity of queerness and migration through arts-based research events in order to “consider how each of our contemporary articulations of sexual and gender identity are produced within, and in relation to, globalization” (Wesling 2008: 45). Some proposed examples include a postcard/zine-making workshop facilitated in collaboration with the GALA Queer Archive and The Fruit Basket organisation and an arts-based research presentation from the ACMS.

Workshop and Presentation, 2022