‘Migrating dialogues’ is a transit zone. Between here and there. Between the past and the present. Between the personal and the geopolitical. Between ourselves and others. It is a collection of stories on migration. How does a transplantation process effect your own life and the lives of those close to you? Which choices did you make yourself and which were made for you? What are HERE and THERE in the first place? Where do the self-justifications and blind spots reside? What is left unsaid?
We are mapping our own migration routes by interviewing family and friends. Looking into our own migration histories, facing our own doubts, failures and vulnerabilities, opens up the possibility of a dialogue with others about their experiences. Confronting our own stories we invite others to share theirs. This ongoing investigation and (re-) collection is developed and documented in performances, interventions and podcasts. It is an attempt to engage with different perspectives on migration. Migration is a complex story of all times, of all places, that connects all of us.
Migrating Dialogues #1. “Inheriting the Empire”
Migrating dialogues #1 is an audio-installation about Rona Kennedy’s youth in South-Africa, the UK and Ohio, about apartheid, boarding schools and terrorism, about spiders, sick bags and hand grenades, about shame, anger and silence. Listen and leave us a postcard with your own migration route.
It is the 6 September 1970. My mum and dad are flying for the first time in their lives. It won’t be their last time.
Everything is new, exciting, strange. My dad is 22, my mum has just turned 23. They are newlyweds but this is not their honeymoon.
They are emigrating.
Ze emigreren.
The 6th of September 1970 is ‘Skyjack Sunday’.
Migrating Dialogues #2. “Spaghetti Junction”
Rona is having an ongoing conversation with Lola. Two British women who somehow found themselves in Belgium. Roughly the same age and social class, their lives are like Spaghetti Junction, crossing paths, intersecting and departing, above and below each other as they move back and forth between London and the Home Counties. The talk is about power, decolonization, wearing ‘Gays against Nazis’ badges, singing Free-eee Nelson Mande-eela, Margret Thatcher, Samira Adamu and the Notting Hill Riots. Their identities are complex, multilayered, both so called ‘expats’. But what does that actually mean?
In September 1998, Lola and I both leave the UK for Belgium. Why not, I can always go back if it doesn’t work out. I’ll see how it goes. On the 22nd of September 1998, Samira Adamu is murdered by the two policemen charged with her forced deportation. A third films everything.
See the pictures of 22/okt @ Rataplan
See Photo’s from Podcast Festival 2 december in NEST
Credits
Performance: Rona Kennedy
Concept and text: Rona Kennedy, based on interviews with William Kennedy (#1) and Ademilola Oduwole (#2)
Concept, sound design, editing: Fabián Espinosa-Díaz
Concept and dramaturgy: Helena Elshout