The Migrant Assembly
The Migrant Assembly is a device for encounters that articulates people, projects, spaces and temporalities for opening up and making visible to the community the experiences and realities of migrants. Devised by the artistic duo Bobrikova & de Carmen together with Maria Alejandra Gatti, this work of collective participation questions and problematizes concepts such as border, identity, territory and community.
The Migrant Assembly was developed as a continuation of the larger project Outsider. Nomadic in nature, its format moved through the city of Oslo through four assemblies that occupied, intervened and activated the public space of the city during 2021.
The assemblies were organised by four invited projects, Verdensrommet Network, Reunion, Njokobok and Oslo Street Ping-Pong who participated in diagram specific dynamics for each assembly. The events included days of talks, debates and readings that explored forms of collective self-organization, community integration and collaboration in situated contexts. To provide shelter for these meetings, we made four mobile structures that were temporarily located in places with symbolic meanings: the square in front of the parliament, an unfinished bridge, an immigrant neighborhood in the process of gentrification and the ping pong courts on the Schous Plass.
Based on the idea of movement, The Migrant Assembly proposed a choreographic dimension that operated in two directions: outwards, unfolding through the city, appropriating public space, and inwards in a temporal arc that extended into the four assemblies to open future horizons, recover and gather memories, and for the participant place themselves in a present that demands attention.
After the first edition of the project we published a book that not only gathers the experiences of the assemblies but also functions as a living archive that reactivates the spirit of each collaboration. Within the framework of Momentum 12 biennale in Moss in 2023 and in collaboration with Gudkitchen, we hold a meeting around the book, getting together again and sharing a moment with local and international audience.
Text published in the book:
