TITLE: “Migration of memory / Memory of migration”, 2019

 

 

 

 

Migration is most often a traumatic life event. The subject is forced to leave his or her known cultural and social environment and to adapt as much as possible to someone else, to a stranger. Romania is a special case in this constellation, since international policies on migration were a heavy topic, hardly digestible, for the Bucharest authorities. 

 

The research has begun with a strong collaboration between the members of the community built around the National Council for Refugees, a non-profit NGO, which was facilitated our contacts with some of the people arrived to Bucharest, Romania. I talked to some of them about events organizing their everyday lives, about the difficulties they face in finding a job, the chances of finding a job depending on their professional training, about the exploitation of work, etc.

 

Starting with the personal level, that of remembrance and projected futures, memories are reciprocally mixed in common cultural and everyday territories. They influence us more or less subtly, while invisibly operating social relationships. We are neighbors and friends. We host or buy from oriental shops products that feed our common epic. We migrate via tastes and smells, via smiles of children belonging to various nationalities and spoken languages. We build life stories created from images, words, real and imaginary, contemporary histories, recent events or some that disappeared long ago, etc. (Iulia Toma)

 

 

https://europalia.eu/en/events/displacement-and-togetherness

 

http://salonuldeproiecte.ro/exhibitions/Displacement-and-Togetherness/