Tag: Refugee blog

Refugee Art

Refugee Art

Art has always been a mystery to me. And before our cycling journey, I was unable to fully grasp the importance of visually expressing oneself. But during the Refugee Roads journey, this changed. 

After our hasty arrival in La Liniere Camp in France, which was the first refugee camp I have ever been to, I took a walk around the wooden cabins to get to know the facility and to sort out my thoughts. At the back of one of the huts I stumbled upon this art piece:

It seemed so unreal. There I was, in eyesight of the train tracks heading to the UK, looking at this painting of a bridge at night that wished everyone that was about to attempt the dangerous crossing simply “Good luck”. Trying to grasp this paradox moved me deeply and I teared up.

From there on out we saw works of art at almost every stop we made. Ranging from simple slogans sprayed on camp walls to comprehensive and professional painting projects, art seemed to be one of many underlying themes of the refugee crisis in the Balkans.

But why? How do the concepts of ‘art’ and ‘refugee’ fit together? Well, there are three points that I took away from our encounters that each may just deliver a part of the answer.

First of all, I came to learn that the desire to take past experiences, emotions and creative thoughts is inherently human and does not know any borders. Art pieces act as a universal language, thereby transcending existing cultural, social, and language boundaries. Through creating, the artists can reach fellow humans on a communicative level which would otherwise be unavailable to them. 

Artwork Credits: Ghazwan Assaf



Secondly, we found that especially in such dire living situations, creating drawings or paintings may have a therapeutic effect. Shergo, who we met in a refugee camp in Northern Macedonia created over 200 pencil drawings throughout his four-year journey. He told us that he uses his drawings as an outlet to transfer the experiences of his journey out of his head and onto the paper. “My art helps me to keep a clear heart”, he said. 


And thirdly, refugee art functions as a means of creating empathy for the situation of the ‘Other’. Through participatory art projects in refugee camps, refugee art shows in western museums, just as much as with public art installations around the world, conversations around migration are created. When the message behind a drawing is being received by a person in the host society, a small bridge of understanding is developed, thereby facilitating integration in the long run.

These bridges are being built not only from people who are currently fleeing their homes but also from former refugees who have arrived at their destination. Through organizing galleries centered on the topic of migration, publishing art online, and giving media interviews about their work, their art helps in raising public awareness.

The most famous example of this is the renowned artist Ai WeiWei. Growing up as a refugee himself, he centers a lot of his pieces on the topic of migration to showcase the ‘narrow-minded’ attempts used to ‘create some kind of hatred between people’. He also produced the feature ‘Human Flow’ to inform his viewers of the global refugee crisis.


More Info:

The Syrian Refugee Art Initiative

Janso Isso’s Story – A Kurdish Artist in Canada

Ai Weiwei’s Art Pieces about Refugees

“The refugee crisis is not about refugees. It is about us.” – Ai Weiwei

Shergo – An Artist’s Path to Europe

Shergo – An Artist’s Path to Europe

Day 02, Germany

Last weekend we had the pleasure to spend a whole afternoon with Shergo and his family. Do you remember them? We met in 2016 in a refugee camp in Gevgelija near the Macedonian/Serbian border. When getting to know each other in the camp, Shergo showed us his drawings tucked away in the container where he lived for the time being. While we went through his artwork in awe, his daughter Avin told us that the camp feels like a prison to her because nobody was allowed to leave.

Now, the family lives together with eight other families in a house in Germany, where they are waiting for the result of their asylum procedures. When we asked them to compare their situation now to their life back in the Macedonian camp, Shergo said he felt as if not much had changed yet; their physical journey may be over but they’re still waiting to restart their life. They left Syria back in 2014, so it has been five years now without a proper place that they can call home.

Timo and me were not only invited to two rounds of tea, but Shergo also played some music and his wife prepared a huge meal that we were invited to. Over dinner, Shergo’s daughter Avin shared some great news with us. She married last year and now calls a very fine man by the name of Hussein her husband. They lived in the same village back in Syria and met again by chance here in Germany. They’re also expecting a son in April.

And Shergo kept on drawing. He was proud to show us over 150 of his art pieces. According to him, making art has helped him to keep a clean and happy heart throughout his journey. All his emotions and events are processed on paper. He is looking to share his drawings with a wide audience and would love to be invited for an art exhibition.

One of our most memorable moments during our visit was when we asked them about their home in Syria. Unfortunately, a recent video of their home on Shergo’s phone showed us all but a bunch of gravel. A prayer rug woven by Shergo’s mum is the single item that the whole family still owns from their home. Everything else of their original material possessions is gone.

Despite these emotional stories and experiences, Timo and I felt as welcome as in the house of long-lost relatives. They were very glad to see us again and treated us very warm-hearted. We left after food, music, tea, and stories, and already made plans to see each other again soon. Timo is also currently working with Shergo to look for alternative venues to publish his art work. We will keep you posted!

Read up on our initial meeting with Shergo and his family here: http://blog.refugeeroads.com/blog/the-mother-theresas-of-macedonia/

From the road,

Florian

Refugee Roads: The Journey Continues

Refugee Roads: The Journey Continues

Day 01, On a Train

Hello. Welcome back. Timo and I are on the road again. We just started traveling again last Saturday. No bikes this time around and more weekend trips. Still, same route all the way until Lesvos. Same equipment, just two small cameras. Different issues, same story. And it has been almost three years since our first journey. What has happened since then? What didn’t happen? How did the places and the people that are a part of Refugee Roads since 2016 develop? These are the topics that Timo and I want to explore during the upcoming month.

What happened to the makeshift barbershop in the Calais “jungle”, where Timo got a haircut, after its inhabitants were forcefully removed in 2017? Does the barkeeper from the restaurant Habibi & Hawara in Vienna feel like he settled in (whatever that really means)? We heard our artist friend from Syria who got stuck in Macedonia now plans his own art exhibition in Germany – how did he get there? How did the situation in the transit zone between Hungary and Serbia change? Do refugees arriving to Lesvos experience the same kind of welcome they did in 2015-16? How does their onward movement look like?

Whatever new information we find will also become a part of the final web series, which will be released this summer. In short, it’s time to catch up! We hope this second journey will allow you to reflect on the developments of the past three years – the ever-changing stories that we captured in 2016. In any case, the people behind those stories have not disappeared. And some of them are still waiting for their case to be heard.

We will take you along as best as we can in the next couple of weeks. With the usual blogposts here on our website and with updates on our Facebook page. Please send us questions you have about the project or the current situation on the Balkan Route and we will do our best to look for answers. Thanks to the NRW Film and Media Foundation for making this second journey possible. And thanks to you as a community for still being here.

From the road,

Timo & Florian

Search and Rescue while Controlling Borders – Frontex’ mission on Lesvos

Search and Rescue while Controlling Borders – Frontex’ mission on Lesvos

Frontex has, first of all, a very long official name: ‘European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union’ And secondly it functions for many within the topic of migration as the symbol for EU border protection. We used our time on Lesvos and focused on exploring the daily operations of this organization.

To start off, we interviewed Izabella Cooper over Skype. Due to her role as a spokesperson of Frontex, she was able to give us an overview of the structure and the mission of Frontex. Instead of being responsible of the European borders per se, they much rather exist to assist border authorities from different EU countries in working together.

“Frontex promotes, coordinates and develops European border management in line with the EU fundamental rights charter applying the concept of Integrated Border Management.” (Frontex website)

Then we had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Giertsen. He is the Commander of the Norwegian Frontex mission in Mytilini on Lesvos. He and his crew use the vessel Peter Henry von Koss to patrol the maritime border between Greece and Turkey. Tom and two other policemen from Norway are responsible for the operation. Captain Lars Helminsen and his two crew members take care of the vessel. In conjunction, they are stationed in Lesvos to control the external maritime border even though, according to Tom, 90 Percent of their work consists of searching and rescuing refugees in Greek waters. Since the start of the mission, which was last fall, they rescued over 5500 people from rubber dinghies and handed them over to the Greek authorities in Mytilini. When patrolling, Tom and Lars have to stay out of Turkish waters since Frontex has no jurisdiction there. Rather, when they spot a suspicious dot on their radar which has not passed the border yet, they inform the Turkish coastguard which then takes care of identifying the object.

Besides the interview, we also requested to join the crew on one of their nightly patrols in order to see for ourselves how the on-the-ground work of Frontex unfolds. However, initially, Tom denied our request. Last time he took a journalist on board he had to bring him back ashore after an hour or so, as it turned out that this journalist was drunk and thus endangered the mission.

Nevertheless, two days after our interview Tom called us and told us how impressed he was with our work. His crew agreed with him when he proposed to take us along. Thus, he asked if we wanted to join them for the upcoming night shift. And obviously, we rescheduled everything else and boarded the vessel the next day!

So on the night of August 8, we charged our cameras, prepared some midnight snacks and then went aboard the boat. We received a safety briefing, the crew welcomed us, and they informed us what to do in case of a pickup. We then sat on the bridge behind Tom and Lars at 22:00 hours when they left the port. For twelve hours we patrolled along the Greek-Turkish maritime border in the south of Lesvos. Tom answered our countless questions with much patience. He explained their two radars and in which way they help them to spot rubber dinghies. The crew showed us their night vision equipment and the machinist even went down to the massive engines in the morning to explain their functioning. Long story short, we got a full overview of how, where, when and first and foremost why the crew does the work that they do. And no, they did not spot a single suspicious dot during the shift that we accompanied them. In fact, they haven’t had a single pickup the three days before either. However, as we learned later on the Portuguese crew in the north of Lesbos did indeed pick up migrants. And the numbers have indeed increased, at least since the EU-Turkey deal seemed uncertain to continue further given the developments after the recent coup attempt in Istanbul.

Yes, Timo and I wondered if we should feel like ‘we missed out on the action’. However, we came to the conclusion that, frankly speaking, we shouldn’t be. Our journey is in the end about depicting reality on the ground and the reality in that night was that there weren’t any refugees out in the south of Lesbos. Our documentary will not include any pictures from capsizing boats and desperate people wearing life vests. We know these realities all too well… After the EU-Turkey deal was signed in late February the number of pickups from the Norwegian crew, as noted in their logbook, went to zero overnight and stayed at a minimum low for weeks to come. Lately, they went up again to about 150 per week. Just keep in mind that this number only concerns the Norwegian vessel. Arrivals in Lesvos overall total at about 60 per night.

Being constantly on the lookout and preparing for the worst while watching the Hellenic and Turkish coast guard play their cat and mouse game along the border (who can cross it briefly without being caught by the other side?), noticing a breathtaking sunrise behind the Turkish coastline and receiving radio messages from the German warship that operates in the area under the flag of NATO is also part of the crew’s job. Nonetheless, since no one knows what the future may bring as there is no comprehensive EU solution in sight, the work of Tom and his crew won’t stop and they will continue to go out on the ocean every night. And if it is ‘only’ to ensure that ‘just’ a few hundred people per month will receive temporary assistance and do not have to risk their lives when crossing Greek waters in unstable rubber dinghies. All the while the pictures that this produces have ceased to be extreme enough to be covered by many international media outlets.

“Work goes on regardless of outer circumstances. We must focus on rescuing the people out there in the sea, not the politics that bring them there in the first place.” – Tom Giertsen

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To be continued…