As part of the Platforma Festival we are curating a multidisciplinary event of work by and about refugees at Club Row, Rochelle School in London (29 November - 4 December 2011). Admission will be free. Opening times: 11am - 8pm (Tue, Thur, Fri, Sat); 11am-6pm (Wed); 11am - 3.30pm (Sunday)

The title of the event is "Counterpoint". Counterpoint is defined as the art of combining two or more dimensions ‐ cultures, settings, homes, narratives, melodies etc ‐ in such a way that they establish a harmonic relationship between them, even if mutually antagonistic or irreconcilable. The intention of Counterpoint is to explore Edward Said’s idea that through their simultaneous awareness of different realities, exiles, refugees and migrants can create a uniquely plural vision of society, questioning the notions of objective reality and suggesting new ways forward. We were interested in proposals that respond to, reflect or unpick this concept in exciting and challenging ways.

Artists selected for Counterpoint are:

Behnam Al Agzeer (Calligraphy), Behjat Omer Abdulla (In Limbo); Robyn Appleton (Resource-ful); Oreet Ashery (Staying); Patricia Azevedo and Clare Charnley (Leave Blank); Ania Bas, Les Monaghan & asylum seekers and refugees from Portsmouth (Asylum Seekers - board game); Nick Bates and Alex Edwards; Caroline Bergvall (Ghost Cargo); Sean Burn (The Migrants Dictionary); David C. Byrne (Someone Talk To Me); James Cant (Divided to the Ocean ); Natasha Davis (Suspended (Unrooted)); Richard Dedomenici (Fame Asylum);  Jasim Gharfur (Memories in Time); Mik Godley (Considering Silesia); Claire Kearns (Convers[ation]III); Margareta Kern (GUESTure/GOSTIkulacija); Nicola McClelland (Internal Geographies);  Virtual Migrants ( Buy This (v3) video installation + Un-Earth live performance); Eva Mileusnic (A Human Landscape, Once Upon a Time); Theresa Nanigian (Seeker); Faith Pearson (Camp and Village); Mina Rahimi (Praying); Natasha Reid (The Embassy for Refugees); Ricky Romain (Scarred Memory Figures and Searching for Relatives); Monica Ross (Anniversary - an act of memory); Zory Shahrokhi (Flying); Anna Sherbany (Another Piece of the Story); Susan Stein (Etty); Iseult Timmermans (The End of the Red Road);  Nana Varveropoulou (No Man's Land) .

Contrapuntal Perspectives - Rochelle School

Tuesday 29 Nov (6-7.30pm)
Prof Jacqueline Rose (Queen Mary, University of London), Prof Irit Rogoff (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Dr Robert Spencer (University of Manchester)

Thursday 1 Dec (6-7.30pm)
Artists Oreet Ashery and Margareta Kern and Dr TJ Demos (University College London)

Friday 2 Dec  (6-7.30pm)
Artists Monica Ross and Caroline Bergvall with Cherry Smyth (art critic, curator and poet)

Live Art Programme

Monday 28 Nov
(7.10 – 8pm) Susan Stein, Etty
(8pm) Caroline Bergvall, Cropper
(Throughout the day) Asylum Seekers, Board Game by Ania Bas

Tuesday 29th Nov
(11am – 5pm) Sean Burn, The Migrants Dictionary)
(Throughout the day) Asylum Seekers, Board Game by Ania Bas

Thursday 1 Dec
(5pm) Monica Ross, Anniversary – an act of memory

Friday 2 Dec
(5pm) Virtual Migrants, Un-Earth

Saturday 3 Dec
(4 – 5.30pm) Richard DeDomenici, Fame Asylum
(6pm) Natasha Davis, Suspended [Unrooted]

Details of works selected for Counterpoint

Behnam Al Agzeer (Calligraphy)

Since arriving in Britain in 2003, Al Agzeer has taken part in a variety of exhibitions in Surrey and held his first solo exhibition displaying 40 plates at Sutton library in March 2007. He was born in Mosul and graduated from the Institute of Teacher Education and worked as deputy headmaster and then headmaster of the School of Syrian Catholics in Mosul. His fascination with art Arabesque and calligraphy led him to study at the Institute of Teacher Education under the mentorship of the renowned calligrapher Yousif Thanoun who had the greatest influence on his work. After graduating from the institute he continued studying with Thanoun at the University of Mosul and obtained the Fellowship of Arabic Calligraphy.

Behjat Omer Abdulla - In Limbo - 8 pencil and graphite powder drawings, 110x75cm

For the project, the chosen participants were asked to perform as if they were sitting for an ID photo for a document that may determine the course of their life, and result in the realisation of their hopes for the future. I took a number of photographs. I chose the photo I thought best captures the person’s core, framing their true identity. The moment captured within the photograph encapsulates an impression of the subject being absent from their own life, absent from misfortune, raised from the misery and anger caused by their destiny being held in the hands of a disengaged authority. In fact my drawings are of photographs rather than of the subjects themselves, mimicking the format of an ID picture as well as reinforcing a uniformity of appearance.

Robyn Appleton -  Resource-ful - sculpture 

Resource-ful explores the precarious circumstances in which refugees arrive into countries such as the UK, in the midst of a global economic crisis which critically impacts on how refugees are received.

Oreet Ashery - Staying - Sound Installation

Staying: Dream, Bin, Soft Stud and Other Stories was inspired by the lengthy administrative procedures that require gay asylum seekers to prove their sexual identity and often, their new western gay lifestyle. Ashery worked with the women, developing fictional characters and alter egos that channelled their ideas, stories and traumas into different types of narratives. In contrast to legal demands for complete accuracy, accountability and clarity in their applications to stay, the creative processes in Staying: Dream, Bin, Soft Stud and Other Stories generated repetitions, slippages, gaps in memory, interpretations, group work and fictions in immersive, deeply revealing and often painful insights into the women’s experiences.

Patricia Azevedo and Clare Charnley - Leave Blank - installation

A collection of immigration forms from a range of countries are reproduced with the words removed. This erasure (of questions asked to decide where individuals are allowed to be) opens up a space for new words; perhaps new questions about the assumptions and implications contained in the immigration forms’ original questions. Leave Blank is an ongoing project that takes place in different activities and processes. It includes a website in which people can download immigration forms or upload new ones to the collection. The title refers to the part of the document we are not supposed to use; leave blank for official use.

Ania Bas, Les Monaghan & asylum seekers and refugees from Portsmouth - Asylum Seekers - board game

We have been working for a year with asylum seekers, refugees and people with no legal status in Portsmouth. As a result we have created a board game Asylum Seekers that is exploring a journey from Home Office (entering the country) to Home Office (getting either leave to remain or being deported) - the vicious circle of poverty, bad treatment, loneliness, hunger and bad weather.

The game should be played. During Countrpoint exhibition one of the game creators will be for a day present by the game to play it with the visitor. People of all ages, nationalities and personal circumstances are welcome to join in.

Nick Bates and Alex Edwards - installation

The  work will focus on the notion that essentially total social cohesion of multiple ethnicities is rendered impossible by the current infrastructure of the city of London. Being a capital city, a western European city  that is a frantic, disorganized sprawling mess which has reached a stage (like most populated urban spaces) of being uncontrollable, that is to say such things which were deemed within out control such as architectural planning and development. So what we propose is to instead look into what can be obtained and offered for those moving to the city, with the attention to those arriving illegally or with little or no money. The work will be a printed map of tower hamlets which will be presented with a series of printed pamphlet’s/posters to include information on services, environments, and general locations that could be of great use to a refugee/tourist/foreigner.

Caroline Bergvall - Ghost Cargo - video document and live performance

The short video documents the sky banner event that was flown over Leeds on the Summer Solstice and as part of Refugee Week 2011. Flying over the city unannounced, Ghost Cargo seemed a transient event, yet carrier of a complex message. A reflection on what we see and what we fail to see. What goes missing. Who disappears. And why. And how. Specifically, planes have been passing over our heads for the past decade, unlawfully carrying unknown and untried prisoners to secret destinations. Fourteen European states have lent their airspace to the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme. These planes have cast their shadows over the world below. The flying line of text is based on a small-scale model for a large sculpture by Barbara Hepworth as her contribution to the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner of 1953, Tate Britain

Sean Burn - The Migrants Dictionary - live art

This anti-racist work celebrates the shared roots of language. In my performance any word that cannot 'prove' itself truly indigenous - (.e.g. containing elements derived 'off-island' perhaps via greek, latin, icelandic, german, french, spanish, tagalog, hindi etc etc) will be performatively and durationally redacted / whitewashed or correction-fluid painted out, excising those words from a standard english dictionary. This will provide a poetic and haunting comment on the lie of indigenousness - we are all out of everywhere.

David C. Byrne - Someone Talk To Me - sound installation

The piece is an interactive show that is on a computer linked to a projector & speakers. There is a screen with several titles on it and at random, a person can click on a title and then it is performed, it closes when finished. The pieces are poems & films that embed visuals and sound files of readers (previous refugee / asylum seeker students I have taught). The pieces are thematically linked with displacement / identity and migration.

James Cant - Divided to the Ocean - photographic potraits

Divided to the Ocean is a series of 11 photographic portraits of individuals, including artist's own father, who have migrated to England by sea. Clearly migration can be an enriching and liberating experience but this work uses the sea and tide as metaphors, to consider the inherent divisions of time, space and self as well as a potential for melancholy in the processes of migration and exile. The photographs are composites, palimpsests of twenty-four images. Made over a period spanning high water, they record a duration, as each person returned to, and was photographed at, the approaches to their port of arrival. They are portrayed in a liminal, hybrid space that is sometimes land and sometimes sea. The resulting backgrounds and seascapes are the actual seas that they crossed on their arrival. As in Grace Nichols’ poem these waters not only act as conduits for travel but also as sublime barriers. Ebbing and flowing, they both connect and divide the subjects to their land of origin and represent the sometimes hidden confrontation between present, past and future as the forces of rootedness battle with those of movement.

Natasha Davis - Suspended (Unrooted) - installation & performance

The Installation consists of silky blue fabric and long strings hanging, with locks of the artist’s hair at the bottom of each end, never touching the ground. In the space between, two video screens are obscured by the hanging strings. The public may, if they wish, part the strings, as one would part hair, to watch the short excerpts of films playing on the screens. There is also a framed collage of documents against the blue silk. All the documents belonged to the artist at some points in her life: an old Yugoslav ID card, various passports of different countries (some of which do not exist any more, like old Yugoslavia), student cards, work permits, stay permits from Greece, Syria, UK, as well as court papers from the time the artist sued Croatia to be recognized as a Croatian citizen, even though her mother is Croatian and she herself was born there.

Richard Dedomenici - Fame Asylum - tv documentary / participatory performance

Richard DeDomenici will give a screening and talk about his 2006 television documentary Fame Asylum, which charted his attempt to form a boyband comprised of young male asylum seekers. Probably his most complex and contentious project to date, Fame Asylum was created in collaboration with the PSi#12 Performing Rights, Refugee Week, Channel Four, and the Live Art Development Agency. Fame Asylum was designed to alter attitudes towards immigration issues among the difficult to reach but opinion influencing female adolescent demographic, harnessing pester-power and trickle-up theory to change minds, alter behaviour, shift paradigms, and transform societies.

Richard will discuss the reaction to the project, and how we may judge, five years on, whether his lofty aims were achieved.

Jasim Gharfur - Memories in Time - video installation

Memories in Time,is an attempt to investigate the historical dimension of the the human suffering. In this video work I have deployed a moving images contrasting a still image to facilitate a dialogue with the events that had a big impact on my life In the form of a paper plain I am taking a journey back to Halabja, sitting on an empty door steps, next to the fossilised bodies of a child and father; wanting to have a long discussion, listing to their endless stories and I also want to tell my endless stories that I have witnessed since we separated from one another. I (the paper plain) gets trapped in the time, making many attempts to escape, banging on the edges of the video. The continued movement (Animated like movement) with the paper plain is to represent my constant feeling of compulsory divorce from my past. The paper plain conveys a multiplicative representation; representing the pure childhood that I was denied of, when the real airplanes came in hundreds with poisonous chemical weapons to kill every living being in Halabja. It is representing myself, the games that I played with my childhood friends, children's representation of wars, destruction, but also children's imagination and the desire to explore the surrounding.

Mik Godley - Considering Silesia - 3 prints, 56''x42''

“Considering Silesia” has radically shifted both artist's perspective as a painter and his sense of identity – perhaps something that couldn’t be done before now – generating understandings of how ordinary people lived under the Nazi regime, the War’s cascading relevance to today, and the fear of new repressions we see creeping towards us.

Claire Kearns - Convers[ation]III - sound Installation

Convers[ation] III  is an interactive sound installation that questions three people seeking or who have formerly sought asylum or refugee status in the UK and are currently residing in Bradford.  It asks each what ‘Home’ means to them.  The aim of the work is to communicate a shared experience and affinity between people seeking or who have previously sought asylum or refugee status in the UK.

Margareta Kern - GUESTure/GOSTIkulacija - video installation

Based on the sound recordings of interviews the artist conducted with the women migrant workers in Berlin. The artist is currently working with professional actress, producing an experimental re-enactment of their narratives and our interviews, combining that with the archival film material. In the style of verbatim theatre the performer is re-enacting the words and pronunciations of the interviewees, to bring to life their character and stories. Inspired by political verbatum theatre, Bertolt Brecht’s theories of ‘gestus’ and Marx theory of alienation. The set is staged in a sparse mode, using the blackboard as a space within an image that suggests personal spaces of the women interviewed, as well as the artificiality of stage and re-staging.

Nicola McClelland - Internal Geographies - Maps and casting wax (15 small sculptures), 9 x 58 x 40 cm (H x W x D)

Maps of diverse geographical locations are manipulated and curled in on each other creating drifting vessels, biological forms or perhaps oceanic objects. These maps are displaced from their usual context and become three dimensional forms no longer providing a reliable reading of orientation and direction. The origin of this work lies in questioning how migrants combine the places they have left behind with the ones they inhabit now. How does the migrant combine these contrapuntal places into a world they can live with and find harmony out of this displacement? What are the ways they can reform and gain or reimagine new ground and find new meanings?

Virtual Migrants - Buy This (v3) video installation + Un-Earth live performance

Refugees and ‘third-world’ migrants bring with them intimate and undervalued knowledge about climate change. ‘Buy This’ juxtaposes such voices on one screen against another, over-saturated with colliding imagery of wars, colonial struggles, environmental upheaval and UK racism, overlaid with scrolling news messages. An exploration of how environmental change is integral to the economic and political forces bringing about human displacement and racial inequality, and a continuation of the “Centre Cannot Hold” project discussing climate imperialism and the violent commodification of humans and the environment.

Un-Earth - acoustic semi-improvised performance against electronic multimedia backdrop, 20 mins, performed at 5pm, Friday 2nd December

Drawing upon the group members’ respective roots traditions, 'Un-Earth' is a collision of sound, music and imagery following a practiced method of individual research, collective rehearsal, and live improvisation. Multiple hybrid narratives of climate change challenge the dominant ‘developed’ world agenda and implicitly racialised discourse that excludes migrant voices. Un-Earth is the latest in the ‘Passenger’ series of events, involving the installation as an integral component.

Installation by Kooj Chuhan with collaboration from Tanha Mehrzad Performance by Tracey Zengeni, Sai Murai and Aidan Jolly

Virtual Migrants dedicate this work to Wangari Maathai, the first environmentalist and also the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, 1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011.

Eva Mileusnic -  A Human Landscape, Once Upon a Time - 2 x Acrylic paint on ‘shoddy’ felt, wooden frames, 4 paintings on 2 wooden frames, 2.8m x 4m.

Based on four photographs taken in Europe during WW2. The photographs provide a historical record of the journey of a group of women and children, almost the entire population of one village, taken from their homes and marched off into the hills never to return. The original photographs were digitally altered to create four distorted abstract images painted onto canvases made from ‘shoddy’ felt. The “shoddy” felt used to form “A Human Landscape”, referenced the discarded lives of the women and children captured in the painted images. “Shoddy” is a material created from waste fabrics and recycled fibres sourced from around the world and processed in West Yorkshire.

Theresa Nanigian - Seeker - text based

Seeker explores Ireland from the perspective of the “outsider” through two disparate strands of research. First, a series of intimate conversations between the artist and local non-nationals during which participants defined their dream of Eden – a notion inspired by the poet W.H. Auden’s questionnaire “Everyman In His Eden”. These personal, poetic monologues by foreigners living in a single town, Portlaoise, are compared and contrasted to the second leg of investigation – the hard facts facing immigrants across the country as gleaned by sources as wide ranging as census data, the weekly national multicultural newspaper, solicitors who represent asylum seekers and gardaí surveys.

Faith Pearson - Camp and Village

Artists recreated in miniature specific refugee camps and other areas of poverty such as shanty towns and slums. Each place is a seperate 'island' with it's own specific methods of shelter construction using whatever is at hand. Camp and Village could appear at first glance to be straight forward depictions of reality in miniature . It is my intention to encourage the audience to draw parallels, make connections and to create narratives. The work contains references to different realities existing simultaneously. These different worlds could be in the past, future or in the subconcious. The scale of the work seperates the viewer and puts them above the scene as well as drawing them in for a closer look.

Mina Rahimi - Praying & Emigration - painting

Mina's thoughts on the two paintings:

A prayer
Sometimes, there is nothing that I can do. It seems like nature is far more stronger and powerful than my thoughts. And that it when I refuge to the holy sense of praying. Also, sometimes I pray to appreciate and to thanks to GOD, which is an amazing feeling. In this work, it is only the colours and forms that may visualise the sense of praying for me.

Emigration
When I migrated I realised in-depth meaning of these concepts: nature, base and character. Migration for me was like joining another culture. You will become part of a different community, different culture, a whole new world. And in the new chapter of your life, your in-depth personality changes. You will go an environment which is known to you by nature (as we all are human), with major cultural differences. In this collage, when I wanted to join Iron and wood to each other without using any glue, I experienced a new realisation of these theory. Wood and iron are both from nature and each one has it's own characteristic and usability, that is individual to themselves. However, in order to be able to join them together and make them as one, some works need to be done, and, to me, that is the meaning of the Unity.

Natasha Reid  -The Embassy for Refugees - installation, prints

The embassy addresses how the juxtapositions of unexpected publics and programmes can bring about new understandings. It is an investigation into creating a place wherer refugees and the wider public to be brought together. It is at once a platform for exchange between the public and refugees and also a sanctuary for those in need of assistance. It provides symbolic representation for this cause whilst also creating spaces of refuge within.

Ricky Romain - Scarred Memory Figures and Searching for Relatives - paintings, 186x155, 139x76

The notion of counterpoint, and its function to act as a metaphor within artistic practice, is a very engaging one. The concept, borrowed from musical terminology, readily translates into the language of painting - with its capacity to encapsulate and enhance the multi-textural potential of mark-making for both artists and audiences. The broadening of this metaphor to describe the disconnected experience, and dislocated influence, of exiled peoples is yet more interesting.

Monica Ross and Co- Recitors - Anniversary - an act of memory - a collective, multi-lingual recitation from memory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Anniversary ― an act of memory is a performance series in 60 acts focusing on the importance and relevance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and features solo, collective and multilingual recitations from memory of the entire UDHR by Monica Ross and Co-recitors. First performed solo by Ross to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Declaration in 2008, to date more than 300 Co-Recitors of all ages from different communities have memorised and publicly recited articles of significance to them in more than 40 languages. The Collective Recitation at Counterpoint will be Act 37. This recitation is part of the Anniversary — an act of memory UK Tour 2011 – 2013 and supported by Arts Council England.

Zory Shahrokhi - Flying - installation

Zory is a British- Iranian visual artist.  Her practice developed through a concern to explore cultural/political agendas, employing performance in relation to installation and photography.  She is primarily interested in issues and perceptions around freedom while aiming to arrive at visual poetry.

Anna Sherbany - Future Memories, 2011 - 4 screen video/sound installation

Using still and moving image and sound I have recorded childhood stories from Palestinians in Palestine and Palestinians who settled in London more than 30 years ago. The stories are told by one generation to another – the adult telling their story to a younger Palestinian – a human history. This juxtaposition of stories creates a multi-­‐layered “counterpoint” of time and place and people, in which the similarities are as significant as the differences. Fathers tell their stories in Palestine, mothers in London – a reflection of the demographic. The stories also act as a counterbalance to the main alestinian narrative of leaving behind their homes and possessions when they were forced from their land before and after 1948 The work throws in to sharp relief the changes to every day life that have occurred in Palestine since the Israeli occupation. The installation becomes another space for the continuity of this process of oral history as the stories are “witnessed” and taken away by visitors to the exhibition.

Susan Stein - Etty - live art

Using only Etty Hillesum's words, Susan Stein's adaptation brings us to 1943 when Etty, a young Jewish woman, is about to be deported out of Holland. As she prepares for the three day journey eastward, she digs deeper into her soul to understand “this piece of history” and root out any hatred or bitterness, believing that humanity is the best and only solution for survival. Etty's words, insights and beliefs reach out from the Holocaust and allow us to see the power of hope and individual thought in the most extreme circumstances. In her gentle yet forthright way, Etty asks us not to leave her at Auschwitz but to let her have a “bit of say” in what she hopes will be a new world.

Iseult Timmermans - The End of the Red Road -  mixed media installation

The Red Road Flats in Glasgow are the end of a long and often difficult journey for many people living there today. The stories of these journeys are as multi-layered as the flats themselves. One thing that unites everyone is hope – of a better future and sometimes, any future at all. The End of The Red Road is a collaborative artwork made through participatory workshops with current and former residents of the flats. This work explores both the capturing of reality and the creative playing with representation as a way of reflecting something of the lives lived, the hopes, aspirations and struggles of the changing population and to offer a sense of the place and the people that have passed through it. The Red Road Flats are iconic in Glasgow – once the tallest in Europe and the showcase of social housing policy - they now stand poised on the brink of demolition.

Nana Varveropoulou  - No Man's Land - photography installation, various sizes

No Man’s Land is a collaborative project that explores experiences of indefinite immigration detention in Colnbrook Immigration Detention Centre. During a period of two years, a number of men detained in the centre participated in photography workshops, producing photographs around pre-agreed themes, such as “Time”, “Powerlessness”, “Patience” and “Insomnia”. Others explored their experiences through still life photographs of the few objects that they were allowed to keep in their ‘rooms’. While running the workshops, Nana also produced her own photographs of spaces and portraits, creating a simultaneous record of the outsider’s and insider’s perspectives of detention.