How much ever in these days, especially in the provinces of Venice and Treviso, we witnessed scenes violence and hostility against migrant people.
We therefore comeback again to talk about Migrant Bodies, the european project that involved coreographers, writers, visual artists coming from Italy, France, Croatia, Quèbec and Vancouver in a research on migration and the social and cultural impact it generates within local societies.
During the Symposium in Bassano del Grappa the two years project highlighted the other side of the coin of what we are used to call problem : the richness, the values and the resources related to migration, reminding us that we are all migrant bodies.
These are some of the thoughts and the images participants at the Symposium left us to share.
SU-FEH LEE
Dancer, choreographer, dramaturge and teacher born and raised in Malaysia.
She is one of the artist involved in Migrant Bodies Project. She performed her Solo “The Things I Carry”.
What is for you a migrant body?
Immediately when I think about a migrant body I think of my migrant body because I come from a long funny history of migrations, a sort of a diaspora. So I think about my body as my temple, also my laboratory, my nation. Then I think about borders of my body and actually how porous it is and how porous I can be and still not be flatten out.
Which is the richness that a migrant body can give to our society?
I think of me is art (I speak as an artist of course). Art is good when after you enter and then when you leave you have more empathy for the world. Art opens to have more empathy in yourself. I think more empathy in the world is good, as kindness, and more generosity.
PEGGY OLISLAEGERS
Director at Nederlandse Dansdagen Festival (NL).
She has coordinated the conference “Body as territory”.
What is for you a migrant body?
I think the first associations that I have is a body literaly travelling from one place you call home to another place. Sometimes if you want to, sometimes very often actually because you are forced to, because a political climate, social climate, also sometimes because of age. Migrant body is maybe our bodies travelling in other place in the oder we can land there, we can route there.
Which is the richness that a migrant body can give to our society?
The evolution of Mankind is definitely related to new elements sometimes almost incredibly because they are so strange to you. Especially living in Europe we are the result of migrations, we must not forget this, we are a continent that is constantly pushing people around and inviting people also to move around, our continents are the result of that. I think we must not underestimate what we do with our environments if we start to stop people from connecting to this territory that’s it Europe.
MIRNA ZAGAR
The Dance Centre’s executive director of Bristish Columbia in Vancouver, Migrant Bodies Project’s partner.
What is for you a migrant body?
For me a migrant body is a body that thinks to survive and create something new. So it is always in transformation.
Which is the richness that a migrant body can give to our society?
I believe that not just migrant bodies but people in migration bring their cultures and they can enrich us. We are always coming from somewhere and going in some place. And for our whole life we collect this experience and we can share it, as well as knowledge, culture and create a dialogue that has created a good world as much as it has created a bad world if we don’t take time to listen, to learn and to really be open to share. Migrant bodies or the bodies in migration are people, and people have the richness and I think we have to have faith in that richness that they bring to us and that we can share.
JASNA LAYES VINOVRSKI
performer, choreographer, teacher and eternal student of life from Zagreb, Croatia.
She is one of the artist involved in Migrant Bodies Project. She performed her Solo “Staying Alive”.
What is for you a migrant body?
At the beginning, this question was not easy. Because I was not interested only in human bodies but in living beings in general. In my approach I took in consideration plants, animals, human bodies and not, things, all these entities moving in the world. When you say “migrant body”, I think at more entities, so everything that emigrates. It’s different in the moving. The moving of these migrants entities is not the same.I’m coming from performative arts and dance where movement is my primary expression mood. But it doesn’t mean that I’m the most competent to speak about this topic of migration. Migration is a moving in the space, from one place to another, changing everything, and maybe never coming back at the first place. It’s a quite different action for a human or a not human. This is what I discovered in this project.
Which is the richness that a migrant body can give to our society?
I think that the richness is the “meeting”. Something known encounters something unknown, what they can get together is very broad. This is the biggest thing if we consider it as a richness. So what I found is that the richness is the consciousness that is a richness at all!
DANIEL FAVIER
Director of La Briqueterie – Centre de développment chorégraphique du Val de Marne (France), Migrant Bodies Project’s partner.
What is for you a migrant body?
Each person is a migrant body, we are all migrants in our story, in our social life. We have to convince ourselves that migration is inside our body.
Which is the richness that a migrant body can give to our society?
It’s to have a new reflection on what we use to do. It’s necessary to incorporate the innovation in our mind in the sense that we are all migrating in ideas, in reflections, in sensibilities. We have to keep attention about our small defense and we have to find a new way of thinking.
MANUEL ROQUE
Dancer, choreographer from Montreal (Vancouver).
He is one of the artist involved in Migrant Bodies Project. He performed his Solo “Matière Noire”.
What is for you a migrant body?
It could be anything: bird migrating, human travelling… so in this project my questions were how to position myself regarding creating something about it. How is it possible to address these specific subjects but also open what it is around our proposition.
Which is the richness that a migrant body can give to our society?
Sharing of different cultures, habits, for me it’s very inspiring. This project is a good metaphor of this, because we didn’t know each other when we started and now after two year you can see what happened between us.
PIERRE BISSONETTE
Biologist from Québec.
He has partecipated as relator at the conference “Body as territory”.
I’m scientist, I need numbers and facts. Personally what I really think that we take home from Migrant Bodies Project is this aspect of evolutions and take a step back on this planet and looking at the way we can see the planet as a organism… planet is a project on its own, it is a living project, for me its something that is more than biological it is something that can be raise to other levels.
Tags: Migrant Bodies, operaestate
