Migration Dreams and Nightmares Alia Syed and Nadia Perrotta

Panellists Ashwani Sharma and Nirmal Puwar

Audio recordings of the event are available:  please scroll down.

In 1973 John Berger collaborated with photographer Jean Mohr on a book of words and images with the intention to show how the economies of rich nations were dependent on the labour of several poorer nations. What they produced was instead an intense exploration of the individual and collective experience of migration from departure to work and return.

Artists Alia Syed and Nadia Perrotta have created an exhibition in the Stuart Hall Library which responds to Berger and Mohr’s book to examine the hopes and fears that are driving the movements of current migrants and refugees.
The exhibition is part of a larger project, Migration Dreams and Nightmares, led by Nirmal Puwar and Mariam Motamedi Fraser from the Methods Lab at Goldsmiths and includes a concurrent exhibition at Goldsmiths, University of London and three seminars focusing on ‘the ways in which dreams, hopes, promises and aspirations are enfolded into the experiences of migration; specifically the connection between migrants’ dreams and the nightmarish qualities of migration.’ The exhibition is linked to the Migrating Dreams + Nightmares: Materials and Movement exhibition and seminar series at Goldsmiths, Nov 2015-April 2016. http://www.gold.ac.uk/methods-lab/migrating-dreams-and-nightmares/
The panel discussion will address the multiple ways that these themes are so urgent today. The panellists will be

– Alia Syed (artist and current Jarman Award nominee)

– Nadia Perrotta (artist)

– Antoinette Brown (artist)

– Nirmal Puwar (Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths)

– Ashwani Sharma (Principal Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, UEL)

– Almir Koldzic (Director of Counterpoint Arts)