čardak on screen: Transforming Violence, Silence into Language, Control of Violence and Migration

X-OP / Risk Change
Webinar Series / On-line conversation

Hamza Aziz, Khalid Ali, Ana Dana Beroš, Aigul Hakimova, Un-war Space Lab: Karla Crnčević, Armina Pilav and Servet Cihangiroglu

ČARDAK ON SCREEN: TRANSFORMING VIOLENCE, SILENCE INTO LANGUAGE, CONTROL OF VIOLENCE AND MIGRATION

Friday, 8 May 2020 at 5 pm CET

On Friday, 8 May 2020 at 5 p. m. you are kindly invited to join us for an on-line conversation čardak on screen. The conversation will be live-streamed through the JITSI online platform – everyone is welcome. The link will be published here an hour prior to the event.**

Webinar Series / On-line conversation:
https://soundcloud.com/user-942772342/x-op-webinar-series-cardak-on-screen

čardak on screen is an on-line conversation bringing together multiple narratives: everyday migration experiences of Khalid and Hamza; a presentation of the research and documentation of the intensive re-construction of borders along the Balkan route, physical walls, and migrants' resilient practices on routes and borders by the Un-War Space Lab; contemporary “silenced” migration thresholds,such as the once notorious “Jungle” near the port of Calais, and historic military infrastructure, the sound mirrors, erected as a manifestation of pre-WWII fears along the British coast, based on Ana Dana’s artistic residency in 2019.

Furthermore, in her talk, Aigul Hakimova will focus on spaces of survival and the significance of movement from the perspective of people on the move. She considers border externalisation as a vital policy of the European Union for controlling migration and violence on the Balkan route.

čardak/çardak is an impermanent space that was created by the Un-war Space Lab (Armina, Karla and Servet) in Rijeka in November 2019, within the project Risk Change Touring Residency Program (followed by residencies in Novi Sad, Serbia and Malta).

“In Croatia, Serbia and Malta, we explored forms/entanglements of performing and transforming the violence in relation to human and non-human migrations through different times and contexts. The word čardak/çardak originates from the ottoman empire and refers to a border control object close to rivers, crossroads, on the edges of cities and strategic borders. In the conflict geographies contemporary čardak are the numerous check points between Israel and Palestine, the drones flying over the USA and Mexico border to control and stop migration to the USA, thermal night vision cameras on the borders of the Balkan route, as well as on the Slovenian and Croatian borders, to control and stop migration to the European union. We created čardak/çardak for ourselves, to live together, but also to host “others”, to share knowledge about an impermanent way of life. The project is an attempt at forming an “impermanent society”, which would be aware of transitional geographies; to inhabit spaces opposing the fascist notion of belonging to nation-state constructs and the continuous reproduction of violence and war with all possible means, from weapons, military industry, migration laws, to capitalism and the patriarchal abuse of nature and humans.” (Un-War Space Lab)

Hamza Aziz

"My name is Hamza Aziz and I come from Iraq. I will be 19 years old in August 2020. Now I live in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in the Asylum Home. I left Iraq when I was 15 years old. The situation in Iraq was dangerous for me. My way to Europe was even more hazardous, there were many obstacles, and borders were closed. From Iraq I came to Turkey where I stayed for two months, from there to Greece by boat. In Greece, I waited for one year and one month. From Greece to Albania, from Albania to Montenegro, and heading to Bosnia and Herzegovina. I spent almost one year and eight months in Bosnia and tried to cross first the Croatian and then the Slovenian border 24 times. I hope I will get a definite answer here and build my life in Slovenia."

Khalid Ali
"My name is Khalid Ali and I come from Eritrea. I am 40 years old. I came to Slovenia in May 2019. I started my way in Bulgaria, heading to Serbia, crossing to Bosnia and Herzegovina, then to Croatia, and finally, I reached Slovenia. It was tough to make it to Slovenia because I had to cross the border between Bosnia and Croatia, at least ten times. Every time, the Croatian police returned my friends and me to Bosnia; this is now called a "pushback". Living conditions in Bosnia were challenging. My friend from Palestine and I slept and lived in a container near the bus station for more than two months; it was in Velika Kladuša. It was freezing there, no water, and in the end the police kicked me out and set me up into an official camp, Miral. The Croatian policemen beat us, took all our belongings, phones, sleeping bags. They did not give anything back. They left us starving day and night, 25 people inside one microbus. Then they drove us to the border with Bosnia. More police came and made a kind of corridor, two lines of police were standing parallel. One by one, we had to pass through this police-body corridor, and they were beating us with sticks from both sides."

Aigul Hakimova is an activist and community organizer. Aigul is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia and since 2002 has been involved in numerous self-organized movements in the field of migration and autonomous spaces. Aigul's primary area of engagement in recent years includes the questions of political organization, resistance and commons. She was born in the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic in 1980 and moved to Ljubljana in 2001 to study anthropology. She is the member of the initiative Infokolpa, which draws attention to the illegal collective expulsion of refugees from Slovenia to Croatia and participates in solidarity networks along the Balkan route. Aigul is the legal representative of Kulturno Društvo Gmajna, a non-governmental association founded 2002 to carry out non-profit activities in the field of culture, art, social welfare and education.

Ana Dana Beroš is a trained architect, based in Zagreb, but often exploring contested borderscapes elsewhere. Her post-disciplinary practice has components of curating, publishing and architectural design, in which she uses art as a weapon to deconstruct the hegemonic image of the world and to construct spaces for insights of the excluded. Her curatorial research project “Intermundia” with a focus on Lampedusa received a Special Mention at the XIV Venice Architecture Biennale (2014). She was the guest editor of Life of Art scientific journal on the topic “Trans/migration: Psychogeographies of the Threshold” (2017). Ana Dana is member of the Un-war Space Lab.

Un-War Space Lab is led by Armina Pilav, a researcher in ecologies of violent spatial transformations and lecturer at the Department of Landscape Architecture, The University of Sheffield. She received the Marie Curie Fellowship for her Un-war Space research (2016-2018) developed at the Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment at TU Delft. Karla Crnčević holds a MA in film dramaturgy and is based in Rijeka and Zagreb. She is one of founders of the Unseen, experimental hybrid festival held in Cavtat, started in 2017. Her work explores politics of images and sound through various formats and working conditions. Servet Cihangiroglu's work focuses on ephemeral documenting of the contemporary conditions of war in Turkey while exploring his own experience and living in complex and conflict environments. In his practice, he employs various bodily interactions and different physical materials in performative relationships, photography, video, urban and domestic spaces.

This webinar is the fifth in a series of lectures, conversations and workshops organized by X-OP Association for Contemporary Art as part of the project Risk Change (2016—2020). In the context of the current global situation, the series has been moved into the digital space and now takes place in the form of web-based seminars, or webinars. By the end of May, you will be able to listen and talk to (international) guests operating in various fields of culture, contemporary visual arts, film, architecture and education, whose practices are concerned with modern-day migrations, digital culture, infrastructure, politics and global relations of power, through a variety of original theoretical and practical approaches. The program will be regularly updated and events will be announced one week in advance.

**For more information regarding the content of the event or link to the Jitsi conversation do not hesitate to contact X-OP Risk Change Webinar Series curator Živa Kleindienst (ziva@x-op.eu).

The Webinar Series is part of the Risk Change (2016–2020) which is co-financed by Creative Europe program of European Union, Ministry for Public Administration of Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Maribor and Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia.