Spaces Between (Living) Places / 2016

Spaces Between (Living) Places is a project based on a living experience / Within the international ACTOPOLIS project by Goethe-Institut and Urbane Künste Ruhr, curators: Angelica Fitz, Katja Assmann and Martin Fritz / Croatian conception: Inivisible Belonging by curator Ana Dana Beroš / Stuttgart 2015/2016 / exhibition: SC Gallery, Zagreb 2016

Spaces Between (Living) Places is a project based on a living experience. It examined the phenomenology of migrant and fluid identities and cultural and geographic “in between spaces” resulting from economic migrations. By using my own one-year migrant experience between Croatia and Germany and a series of interviews with other protagonists with similar biographies, I portrayed a common collection of experiences of economic migration, causes for the recent mass departure from one’s country, but also the processes behind constructing one’s identity and belonging to a new place, culture and community. In collaboration with cultural anthropologist Petra Kelemen, I looked into methodological forms and formats of artistic and scientific research. The artwork was based on a series of encounters between me and the protagonists, which I found mostly via social networks, a new kind of support-platform for contemporary migrants, and which took place during walks in German cities in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria.

The exhibition Spaces Between (Living) Places at the Student Centre Gallery was showcased as a media installation composed of three segments: a multi-channel sound installation presenting discussions with numerous individuals, economic migrants from the region, a video projection of discussions with the artist and reading of the “Bewerbung“, the official application form used for finding employment in Germany as a tool for creating a new identity, and a selection of clips from the artist’s relocated everyday life.

The text by Petra Kleemen, “Migration, encounters and recognitions”, can be found in the broschure: Spaces Between (Living) Places PDF