Responding to Crisis: Forced Migration and the Humanities in the Twenty-First Century

根据国际特赦组织最近的一份报告，自2000年以来，据信有2.3万人在试图抵达欧洲的过程中丧生。用Iain Chambers的话来说，“他们的身体躺在海床上，无意识地促进了海洋的固化，将一个过境地点变成了一个不断上升的屏障”（Chambers 2008）。这种情况无疑是一种危机；不仅是地缘政治，还有价值观。这些死亡往往得不到承认和解释，不仅需要倡导团体、政治组织和政府作出回应，还需要关注叙事、表现和艺术的人作出回应。人文学科是探索当代移民及其影响的社会和文化知识的核心。艺术和人文学科专注于我们在21世纪解释、表现和概念化被迫移民的方式，为通常被认为是法律、社会学和政治学的领域提供了另一种视角。我们的目标是发展积极和干预主义的艺术和人文模式，对移民的生活产生积极影响。这种方法以对三个关键问题的严格概念分析为基础：当前政治、文化和社会对被迫移民的反应是否充分？人道主义价值观在这场危机中的地位如何？我们如何从伦理上叙述当代移民中这种致命的转变？政治、创意和学术部门以不同的方式处理这些问题。该项目的目的是在当代被迫移民问题上连接不同的学术学科，并在创造性、理论、学术和活动家之间提供“接触区”，以应对这一不断发展的危机。该项目超越了对目睹这些多人死亡的伦理考虑，将艺术和人文作为改变公众态度和影响政策的手段。它试图通过提高对代表性行为的认识来实现物质可能性的转变。三个国际研讨会将汇集艺术家、电影制作人、诗人、实践者和学者，利用跨学科工作的创造力，发展合作的“回应”作为一种方法论模式，包括新的创造性作品。除了为移民艺术家的现有作品提供一个平台，如Zineb Sedira， ZALAB（意大利）移民电影集体和Platforma（英国），我们将委托艺术家，摄影师和诗人对项目的主题和成果做出回应。我们的项目通过将强迫移民提上议程，介入并促进了既定的社区文化活动，如伦尼米德文学节。项目合作伙伴绘制了跨越不同地缘政治背景的轨迹。在英国，基尔和伦敦提供了移民经历的外围和大都市视角，而格拉斯哥则将移民和民族认同问题置于政治下放的苏格兰。我们与那不勒斯东方大学的合作将项目的地理范围扩展到南欧。这将把我们的注意力集中在地中海，因为地中海是目前未能解决欧洲边境缓慢展开的被迫移民危机的一个明显场所。

According to a recent Amnesty International report, 23,000 people are believed to have lost their lives trying to reach Europe since 2000. In Iain Chambers's words, '[t]heir bodies rest on the sea bed, unconsciously contributing to the solidifying of the sea, transforming a site of transit into a mounting barrier' (Chambers 2008). This situation is undoubtedly a crisis; not only of geopolitics, but also of values. Often unrecognised and unaccounted for, these deaths demand a response not just from advocacy groups, political organisations and governments, but also from those concerned with narrative, representation and the arts. The humanities are central to an exploration of social and cultural knowledge about contemporary migration and its effects. Focusing on the ways in which we interpret, represent and conceptualise forced migration in the twenty-first century, the arts and humanities provide an alternative perspective on a terrain usually considered to be that of law, sociology and political science. We aim to develop activist and interventionist models of the arts and humanities which have a positive impact on migrants' lives. This approach is undergirded by a rigorous conceptual analysis of three key questions: how adequate are current political, cultural, and social responses to forced migration? What is the status of humanitarian values in this crisis? And how can we narrate ethically this deathly turn in contemporary migration? Political, creative and academic sectors approach these issues in distinct ways. The aim of this project is to connect different scholarly disciplines on the issue of contemporary forced migration, and provide 'contact zones' between creative, theoretical, academic, and activist responses to this unfolding crisis. Moving beyond a consideration of the ethics of witnessing these multiple deaths, this project posits the arts and humanities as a means of changing public attitudes and influencing policy. It seeks to bring about the transformation of material possibilities through a heightened awareness of representational acts. Three international workshops will bring together artists, filmmakers, poets, practitioners, and scholars to draw on the creative energies of interdisciplinary working to develop collaborative 'response' as a methodological mode, including new creative works. As well as providing a platform for the existing work of migrant artists, such as Zineb Sedira, the ZALAB (Italy) migrant film collective and Platforma (UK), we will commission artists, photographers and poets to respond to the themes and outcomes of the project. Our project intervenes in and contributes to established community-cultural events, such as the Runnymede Literary Festival, by placing forced migration on the agenda. The project partners map a trajectory across varied geo-political contexts. In the UK, Keele and London provide peripheral and metropolitan perspectives on the migrant experience, while Glasgow situates questions of migration and national identity within a politically devolved Scotland. Our partnership with L'Orientale University, Naples, extends the geographical reach of the project to southern Europe. This will focus our attention on the Mediterranean as a visible site of the current failure to address the slowly unfolding crisis of forced migration at Europe's borders.