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Day 123, Year of #Mygration: Trigger Warning in MK

Art installation by There There

Last month we highlighted an exciting collaboration happening between Dr Agnes Czajka, from The Open University, There There Performance Company and Counterpoints Arts. It brought together the participatory installation, Trigger Warning with an experimental Ideas Lab exploring identity, belonging, ‘integration’ and xenophobia for a day of activities at Bar Bar Black Sheep in Wolverton, Milton Keynes. In today's blog, the founders of There There talk about their project and experience of the day.

 

There There is a London-based performance company of two Eastern European immigrants: Bojana Janković and Dana Olărescu. Our work is formally diverse and finds home in very different contexts, from major heritage institutions like the Museum of London to Live Art festivals such as SPILL. The one common denominator is our preoccupation with contemporary immigration, and within that frame, Eastern European identity. Our installations and performances interrogate what it means to be Eastern European and how this hybrid identity is constructed; it’s also a reclaiming of the term - a way to subvert its derogatory undertones.

Trigger Warning, the piece we recently brought to Milton Keynes in collaboration with the OU (and as part of Who Are We?) is an example of how we (try to) do this. The installation is made out of five games, each taking a prevalent stereotype on Eastern Europeans and making it into a British fête game. The audiences are invited to steal jobs (in a game that rips-off hook-a-duck), scrounge on benefits (via our wheel of fortune turned Wheel of Benefits), snap a photo of themselves as health tourist (on our NHS photo stand-in), cheat their way to a passport (by throwing PG tips bags into a teapot), and find out their post-Brexit fortunes (through a subversion of the Lucky Dip game). Under this guise of light entertainment, Trigger Warning lures audiences of all passports into talking immigration.

The installation is not just about the games however - it’s about the invigilators who lead the audience through them, gently prodding players into talking about what it means to be an immigrant, or Eastern European right now. Wherever Trigger Warning goes, it is invigilated by local immigrants - people of different ages, economic, social and cultural backgrounds, and of course countries. The installation reflects national issues, but local participation channels the conversation toward the local context - giving visibility to a demographic that is so often removed from public discussions on migration: the immigrants themselves.

Our participatory approach requires committed local partners who understand and work with their communities. In Agnes Czajka, Trigger Warning found a collaborator embedded in local migration policy. Milton Keynes, a ‘new town’ in close proximity to the capital, is a good base from which to explore immigration, and a home to many immigrants. The OU itself, a diverse institution where immigrants abound among the ranks of both staff and students on campus. Agnes suggested we hold the event at Bar Bar Black Sheep, an artist-led and community-focused, café in the heart of Wolverton. What better way to strike up a conversation than over a hot drink, we thought.

The event at Bar Bar brought together three separate elements: Trigger Warning, an Ideas Lab facilitated by Agnes, and an artist response to our installation by our hosts, the Black Sheep Collective. Inviting audiences to bring artefacts that spoke to their experiences of migration, the Lab explored personal stories of migration, and introduced issues experienced by the extended migrant community. The Black Sheep Collective’s contribution was an innovative and thought provoking creation entitled ‘Bad Nagtowek’ – a dress formed around a mannequin, made entirely from local tabloid headlines, all of which were negatively portraying migration of Europeans to the UK.

On the day, Trigger Warning’s invigilators originated from Ukraine and Zimbabwe - both Open University students. We observed a noticeable intensity as people played and talked. There was a lot of sharing of personal stories, but a lot of it was centring around Brexit – its consequences, impacts for immigrants and strategies people were developing to deal with it, which for many included the possibility of relocation. For a German national, resident in Wolverton for over twenty years, the referendum meant revisiting the implications of national identity; despite often passing as British, she had readopted her German accent, and proudly deployed it in new encounters, for example. A black African-British business owner, was considering migrating to Canada after ten years in Wolverton. She explained struggles ranging from sourcing staff for her restaurant, to costs incurred by non-European citizens’ student fees and renewal of visas. She argued that, after being required to haemorrhage money into it, ‘the system doesn’t give us anything in return.’ 

While our games are designed to get people talking, to challenge stereotypes and break down negative perceptions of immigrants, it is also great to see when it stirs others to take positive action.

While our games are designed to get people talking, to challenge stereotypes and break down negative perceptions of immigrants, it is also great to see when it stirs others to take positive action.  We heard later that day, that immediately after leaving Bar Bar, the restaurant owner was looking to set up a Facebook Live post, to help counter general prevarications around immigrant discourse. Visiting the installation had made her realise she could use social media in this way, which she hadn’t previously. 

Our visit to Milton Keynes and Wolverton allowed us access to some of the local community’s issues. By interrogating both current intensification of social repression, and Eastern European / immigrant identity, we hope to have created space for participants to express different views on their immigrant realities, shaped by their differing histories, nationalities, and cultures – to help move towards singularities to coexistence even within the day-to-day of a wider ‘hostile environment’.

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