PHANTOMS OF PROMISE

Migrant:innen, die Familie, Freund:innen und ein Zuhause verloren haben, das nie wieder zurückkehren wird, stellt sich immer wieder eine Art Phantomschmerz ein. Nicht nur, dass die Erinnerung – oder die Erinnerung an die Erinnerung – für die Exilant:innen oft wie ein Gespenst zurückkehrt, sondern das vorherrschende Bild des:der Migrant:in ist, wie Sara Ahmed es ausdrückt, das „einer ziemlich gespenstischen Figur, die die zeitgenössische Kultur heimsucht“. An diesem Abend werden wir der Figur des Phantoms zuhören und über sie sprechen, sowohl in Bezug auf die versprochene Zukunft als auch auf die Gespenster des wiederkehrenden Schmerzes. Wir wollen über die heimtückischen und oft gebrochenen Versprechen eines besseren Lebens und einer besseren Staatsbürgerschaft für Migrant:innen nachdenken, aber auch über die Gespenster einer radikal anderen Zukunft, die noch möglich sein könnte.

Das noncitizen collective lädt zu einem Abend in englischer Sprache mit Gedichten, Filmen, Listening Sessions, performativen Vorträgen und Gesprächen ein.

Participants

Ahmad Alattar  (b. 1997, Lebanon) is a sound designer with a multidisciplinary background. Alattar lacks formal musical training and influences from his formative years but uses Arab pop song excerpts and virtual modular synthesizers to transform the music he was meant to have experienced growing up. His work aims to evoke the sensation of being stripped of music while retaining a music-adjacent atmosphere, resulting in an eerie and captivating auditory experience that captures the essence of rediscovering music.

Taysir Batniji  (b. 1966 Gaza) lives and works between Paris and Gaza. He graduated in arts from Al-Najah University in Nablus, Palestine (1994), and from the Bourges School of Fine Arts in France (1997). Since then, he has been dividing his time between two countries and cultures, from where he developed a multi-media practice, including drawing, installation, photography, video and performance. Batniji has participated in numerous exhibitions since 2002, including the upcoming Lyon Biennial (2024), Berlin Biennale (2022), Jeu de Paume (2016-2017 & 2020) and Centre Pompidou (2014) in Paris, Venice Biennale (2003, 2009 & 2011), Witte de With in Rotterdam (2004–2005).

Anna Kontopoulou (b. 1979, Greece) is an artist, practice-based researcher, curator, and educator working across cultural institutions, educational spaces, and community groups in London, Stockholm, and Athens. Besides her research, Kontopolou has developed long-term participatory projects, exhibitions and writings at the intersection of art and social issues like the struggles around the privatisation of education, democracy, migration, public housing, body politics, and care. Her book Curation of Autonomy offers insights into the radical potentials of curatorial solidarity projects.

Logan February (b. 1999, Nigeria) is a multidisciplinary poet living in Berlin. Author of In the Nude (Ouida Poetry, 2019) and three chapbooks of poetry, their writing appears in several international publications, including collected editions in Spanish and German. A 2024 Literature Fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, February has received other fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, as well as the Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature. Their latest book, Mental Voodoo (Engeler Verlage/Poesie Dekolonie, 2024), is a selection of poems translated into German by Christian Filips.

Alireza Masomi (b. 1999, Afghanistan) came to Sweden from Afghanistan in 2015 and fought for eight years for his right to asylum. The short film Svarta Lamm (Black Sheep) depicts this period in his life. Through the organization noncitizen, he created his first documentary, the short film Människor på en ön (People on an Island). Masomi is currently studying film in Trollhättan, hoping to continue telling stories through film about people’s experiences – the joys of life and the difficulties we have to go through.

Jonelle Twum (b. 1992, Ghana/Sweden) is an artist and filmmaker using archives and a broad array of media to interrogate issues of migration, memory, materiality, collectivity, desires, the body via Black feminist theories and the quotidian. A central part of her artistic practice is the project, Black Archives Sweden, which is an experimental and material interrogation of living archives. Twum has shown works at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Moderna Museet Stockholm, HotDocs and Malmö Konsthall.

Afrang Nordlöf Malekian (b. 1995, Iran/Sweden) lives and works in Berlin. His artistic and curatorial practice deals with the question of how to think about the political expression contained in fleeting moments or mundane actions, which are often dismissed as apolitical. Nordlöf Malekian has previously conducted artistic research at the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut, and been a resident at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, and holds an MA from the Dutch Art Institute. His work has been shown in places such as the 10th Berlin Biennale, Moderna Museet and West Den Haag. Nordlöf Malekian curates programs and exhibitions as part of the noncitizen collective.

Christian Rossipal  (b. 1991, Sweden) is a scholar, writer, and curator based in Stockholm and New York. He holds a PhD from New York University and is a member of noncitizen. His writing on borders, migration, and documentary has appeared in Film Quarterly, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and The Global South, among other journals. He has written on the noncitizen archive for the anthology Migrant, Multicultural and Diasporic Heritage: Beyond and Between Borders and World Records Journal. Christian was the programmer of two editions of the CinemAfrica film festival (2021–2022) and edited an installation on Édouard Glissant for the 34th São Paulo Biennale which was subsequently commissioned by the Amant Foundation in Brooklyn (2022).