Pitching session
July 14, 2024
Santarcangelo Festival

Santarcangelo Festival hosts the closing meeting of In Ex(ile) Lab. Partners, mentors and selected artists will gather to join professional meetings, talks and performances throughout a three-days shared meeting. Sunday 14th of July, a Pitching session will be hosted in the Teatro Il Lavatoio. Eisa Baddour, Emmanuel Ndefo, Francisco Thiago Cavalcanti, Irkalla, Liryc Dela Cruz and Polina Chebanu will share with the audience their artistic research developed within the one-year laboratory.

EISA BADDOUR
His projects are characterised by a strong sense of social responsibility and environmental sustainability. Baddour continues to pursue his passion for socially responsible art and believes that artwork can make a real difference in the lives of people around the world. The installation ΑΓΑΠΗ is an engaging performance that aims to explore the power of love and the impact of cultural barriers on relationships.

EMMANUEL NDEFO
Emmanuel Ndefo is an experimental performance artist, researcher and choreographer working with his body as an instrument of resistance. He is interested in de-colonial and queer pedagogies within indigenous African spirituality and performance practices. His current artistic and research practice foregrounds acts of performances that unsettles hegemonic political and social norms around gender and sexuality in Africa.

FRANCISCO THIAGO CAVALCANTI
Francisco Thiago Cavalcanti is an artist working in dance, theatre and performance. He began his artistic training at the age of 9 at the same time as he discovered his neurodiversity (mild autism). He founded the collective “um cavalo disse mamãe” with the artists Piero Mamella (Italy), Bárbara Cordeiro (Portugal) and Francisca Pinto (Portugal), beginning a cross-border partnership that seeks new modes of artistic creation and existence.

IRKALLA
Irkalla is a visual artist, performance artist, women’s rights activist, and a mother of two. She was born in the predominantly Yazidi region of Sinjar in northern Iraq. She started her life as an artist in 2017. The same year, she left her country for Europe to protect her daughters and her art from those who were opposed to her as an artist and woman. Her work centres around the body and the dangers it experiences daily.

LIRYC DELA CRUZ
Liryc Dela Cruz is an artist/filmmaker from the Philippines. His works have been screened, presented and exhibited in several international film festivals and art events. His films are thematically related to his origins, history and personal psychology, and his performances and research focus on care, indigenous practices, decolonial practices, post-colonial Philippines, the transpacific slave trade and hospitality.

POLINA CHEBANU
Originally from Nizhyn, Ukraine, Polina practiced as an artist in Kyiv. Polina trained actress in her home town of Nizhyn, before moving to Kyiv to study directing at the “Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Karyi University of Theatre, Cinema and Television”. Polina in her artistic practice works at the intersection of various artistic styles and trends, combining stand-up and classical theater, painting and poetry.

More info on www.santarcangelofestival.com

© Vladimir Bertozzi, Pietro Bertora

Curating Post:Migrant Europe

This fourth meet-up is aimed at exploring the ethics of curation and reflecting on the roles of cultural organisations and curators in making space for artists in exile. Looking and listening through the lens and frame of Post:Migrant Europe, how can we examine the current migration, refugee crisis, and the overarching decolonization debates in Europe? Proposing post:migrant as a decolonial framework and method for curation, we unravel how marginalized artists and their artistic knowledge and praxes are appropriated by and receive legitimization from European cultural institutions. Concomitantly, we reimagine the labor of artistic curation unhindered by a Eurocentric logic.

Speakers:

meLê yamomo is an Assistant Professor of New Dramaturgies, Media Cultures, Artistic Research, and Decoloniality at the University of Amsterdam, a member of the Amsterdam Young Academy, and author of Sounding Modernities (2018). He is project leader of the project Decolonizing Southeast Asian Archives (DeCoSEAS), and the Dutch Research Council project “Sonic Entanglements”. He is also a resident artist at Theater Ballhaus Naunynstrasse. meLê curates the Decolonial Frequences Festival. In his works as artist-scholar, he engages the topics of sonic migrations, queer aesthetics and post/de-colonial acoustemologies.

Prof. Dr. Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo (University of Bremen) is a public anthropologist and curator. Straddling academic, artistic, and activist practices, her work encompasses a broad spectrum of interrelated areas including memory, imagination, mediated politics, political emotions, solidarity, ethics, and decoloniality. She explores the intersections of these fields, seeking innovative approaches to investigate, theorize, and address pressing social issues, with a particular attention to processes and dynamics of dehumanization and rehumanization that undergird violence, inequalities, and resistance.

When? May 30, 2024, from 10am to 12pm CET.
Where? Online.
Registration at cooperation@aa-e.org

Climate justice, environment and migration: how are these topics interconnected?

This third meet-up is aimed at exploring in what ways the topics of climate justice, the environment and migration are intertwined and how art can be a platform to discuss pressing environmental issues.

During the session, we will try to address the following topics:
– Climate change as one of the factors of displacement and exile
– The notion of climate refugee in debate
– Where are the refugee camps in Europe, what do they look like and what purpose do
they serve? Reflecting on the notion of environment in the context of refugee camps.
– Climate justice, artivism and artists in exile

Speakers:

Marine Denis is a doctor in public law and a legal consultant specialized in environmental law based in France. She is co-founder of a web series on climate displacement. She is also a volunteer for ‘Notre AYaire à Tous’, a French NGO stemming from the ‘End Ecocide on Earth’ movement which seeks international criminal recognition for the most serious environmental abuses. ‘Notre AYaire à Tous’ works towards establishing climate justice.

Louis Fernier is a PhD student in Geography at the University of Poitiers, a member of the Migrinter laboratory. He is seeking to understand whether camp environments are used to spatially and socially relegate “undesirable” migrants; and whether these people manage to keep their autonomy. After introducing the context of his research, he will explain his methodology, his Lrst maps and current examples of refugee camps that are particularly isolated and/or exposed to extreme weather events.

Buliash Todaeva is an artist, designer and sustainability researcher of Kalmyk descent, hailing from the self-named Oirad community – a group of Western Mongolians located in the southern region of Russia. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she left Moscow and has since relocated to France. Buliash focuses her projects on sustainability, decolonial studies, sociocultural injustice, and environmental issues. She is working with multidisciplinary mediums, including recycled/ organic material research, digital production, tech and artistic reflection.

Tatiana Calderón Ellis is a playwright, actress, writer and musician. A graduate of Bogotá’s Teatro Libre, she founded her theater company Puerto Teatro in 2008. She integrates an environmental dimension into her theatre work. She performed in the ohces of multinational companies such as Coca Cola or Ecopetrol to raise workers’ awareness of environmental issues. She wrote 19 plays denouncing ecocides and genocides perpetrated by agribusiness in Colombia. In 2021, she began writing her novel ‘The Happiest Village in the World’ in which she denounced the diversion and draining of rivers by large companies. Following threats she received, this work could not be published.

When? April 16, 2024, from 10am to 12pm CET.
Where? Online.
Registration at cooperation@aa-e.org

Freedom of artistic expression: what does it mean and how is it protected by European and international law?

This second meet-up is aimed at giving cultural professionals and artists an understanding of an artist’s rights’ to express themselves. It will give a general and easily accessible overview of the legal framework to protect their freedom of artistic expression which can be under attack both in their home and host countries.

During the session, we will try to address the following questions and will rely on specific cases to do so:
– Is there such a notion as “freedom of artistic expression” in international and European law, or is the artistic expression encompassed in the term “freedom of expression”?
– To what extent is an artist’s right to freedom of expression protected?
– Under what circumstances can the state lawfully interfere with the exercise of this right?
– Censorship by state and non-state actors.
– Navigating self-censorship by artists – what is the “chilling effect” of certain laws and measures on freedom of expression?
– What can artists do if they are facing interference with their freedom of expression?

Speakers:
Sanchit Saluja is Programme Manager at Avant-Garde Lawyers (AGL), an international legal organisation that works to ensure that artists can imagine and create freely. Prior to managing case work at AGL, he has worked in the domain of artistic freedom on research and advocacy projects for artists in situations of increased vulnerability. Sanchit is a graduate in Law and Arts from the National Law University in New Delhi and a Master in Cultural Policy from Sciences Po, Paris.

When? December 5, 2023, from 10am to 12pm CET.
Where? Online.
Registration at cooperation@aa-e.org

Pitching session
November 17—19
Alkantara Festival, Lisbon

Within the context of Alkantara Festival, consortium partners and selected artists joined visits, professional meetings, talks and performances throughout a three-day shared moment. The In Ex(ile) Lab pitching session has been an opportunity to meet some of the artists supported by the two-year laboratory and to learn more about the projects they are developing. Eisa Baddour, Francisco Thiago Cavalcanti, Irkalla, Letícia Simões and Liryc Dela Cruz shared images, sounds, words and ideas with the audience, disclosing new steps of their artistic research.

© Tiago Moura

With the rise of new social media platforms relying heavily on video contents, video is an essential creation and communication tool for artists. In line with our cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary approach, the workshop will encourage participants to use other artistic mediums in promoting their work. This is particularly important for the artistic work developed in the frame of In Ex(ile) Lab since it will facilitate the creation of higher quality and more consistent audio-visual outputs for artist’s project promotion. The workshops took place in France, Cyprus, Portugal and Italy, hosted by the In Ex(ile) Lab partner organizations.

The sessions have been led by the artists Nastya Kuzmina (France), Keti Papadema (Cyprus), Luciano B. Cieza (Portugal) and Rafael Bresciani (Italy).

Migrant, asylum seeker, refugee, exile: what are we talking about?

This meet-up is aimed at giving everyone a common ground on the phenomenon of migration before going deeper into topics connected to exiled artists.

What is the difference between terms that are often used interchangeably in public discourse and in the media? Beyond a definition of terms, this professional meet-up will also be an occasion to tackle what is exile with a transnational approach. We will discuss what is guaranteed by international and European law but also what are the specificities of reception systems in the four participating countries (Cyprus, France, Italy, Portugal).

Speakers:
Céline Schmitt, UNHCR spokesperson in France
Karen Akoka, Associate Professor in Political Science at Paris Nanterre University, researcher at Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique (ISP) and fellow of Institut Convergences Migrations

With the participation of:
Michela Bignami (Lai Momo)
Kheira Ardennes (atelier des artistes en exil)

When? September 19, 2023, from 10am to 12pm CET.
Where? Online.
Registration at cooperation@aa-e.org