📣 Are you in Kassel in the coming weeks to see the groundbreaking documenta fifteen exhibition before it closes on September 25, then Trampoline House would be very happy to see you to one of our events about the global north’s dysfunctional asylum policies and how to imagine asylum differently. All events are free and conducted in English. Read more below 👇👇🏽👇🏿
📍Saturday, September 10, 11 am–5 pm:
PUPPET WORKSHOP – a kid friendly workshop by artist Joachim Hamou
@ Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
During Spring 2022, Joachim Hamou initiated a series of puppet workshops in the refugee community justice center, Trampoline House, and in different deportation camps in Denmark. The idea was to enable many of the Trampoline House users who are not allowed to travel and have been stripped of their rights and identity cards in the Danish asylum system, to represent themselves through masks and puppets and bring those representations to Trampoline House’s documenta fifteen installation.
During the process, many of the workshop participants were forcibly deported or moved to other centers and were therefore not able to finish their masks. So techniques were developed that allow for accurate but speedy representations of the participants.
In the workshop in Kassel, we will work with the same techniques and make the same fast representations of the participants: ghost masks, masks that are never finished. The workshop is kids friendly but only for children 7 years old and up who are accompanied by an adult.
Joachim Hamou is an artist, mostly making videos and performances with a social agenda. He has initiated and collaborated with a large number of collective and activist projects, including: tv-tv, Rio Bravo, and Trampoline House, and castillo/corrales and Paraguay Press in Paris. Hamou currently lives and works in London, UK.
📍Friday, September 16, 3–5 pm:
HOW TO HUMANIZE THE EU ASYLUM SYSTEM – a presentation by human rights activist and poet Jean Claude Mangomba
@ Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
This presentation will discuss how the EU asylum system is failing by not taking into account the needs of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants.
Jean Claude Mangomba is a Congolese human rights activist and poet artist living in Sweden and working with Trampoline House in Copenhagen. He raises up the voice of the voiceless colored people, supporting asylum seekers, refugees, forced displaced people and undocumented migrants, discussing critical issues such as lack of democracy, isolation in the asylum centers, long waiting time through immigration procedures, imprisonment, clandestinity, deportation, racism, and death.
📍Monday, September 19, 10 am–12 pm:
ANALYSIS OF JEAN CLAUDE MANGOMBA’S CRITICAL CREATIVE WRITING – a workshop by human rights activist and poet Jean Claude Mangomba
@ Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
In this workshop, we will analyze two poems by artist Jean Claude Mangomba: “Rejected People” and “Where is my Home?”
Jean Claude Mangomba is a Congolese human rights activist and poet artist living in Sweden and working with Trampoline House in Copenhagen. He raises up the voice of the voiceless colored people, supporting asylum seekers, refugees, forced displaced people and undocumented migrants, discussing critical issues such as lack of democracy, isolation in the asylum centers, long waiting time through immigration procedures, imprisonment, clandestinity, deportation, racism, and death.
📍Tuesday, September 20, 2–6 pm:
THE CHAIN – a workshop by refugee rights activist and artist Shakira Kasigwa Mukamusoni
@ Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
In this workshop, participants will write and perform theater sketches about life in the European asylum system. Shakira will also do a presentation of the video and theater projects she has done with teenagers from Danish deportation centers in the Spring of 2022. Projects that communicate what the teenagers are passing through in the camps and how the camps make them depressed, stressed, and anxious. All the teenagers dream of leaving the camp system and getting a residence permit, which will give them the same rights to safety, development, and education as children with citizenship. But they find themselves stuck in a discriminatory camp system, which feels like a chain around their neck; constantly living with the fear of getting deported.
Shakira Kasigwa Mukamusoni is a refugee from DR Congo, who after ten years in the Danish asylum system finally got a residence permit in Denmark. She is a long-time member of Trampoline House in Copenhagen and has contributed to the house’s Women’s Club, the catering service Sisters Cuisine, and the social movement “People’s Movement for Asylum-seeking Children’s Future” (www.asylboernsfremtid.dk). She is a refugee rights activist, focusing on human rights for women and children seeking asylum. She has been active in many different NGOs and cultural projects, among others Black Lives Matter Denmark and The Bridge Radio (thebridgeradio.dk).
📍Friday, September 23, 12–4 pm @ Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel & Saturday, September 24, 12–4 pm @ Project Art Works’ space in Fridericianum, Kassel
MASSAGING THE ASYLUM SYSTEM, CREATIVE STRATEGIES OF CARE – a joint workshop by Carlota Mir, Sara Alberani & Tone Olaf Nielsen (Trampoline House) and Kate Adams, Tim Corrigan & Martin Swan (Project Art Works)
The aim of this two-day workshop, which is hosted by the Project Art Works collective and the refugee justice community center Trampoline House, is to imagine what asylum could look like. Bringing together people with flight or migration experience and documenta fifteen visitors with an interest in migration and asylum policies, the workshop takes its starting point in four questions: 1) How did you expect to be received in Europe after having fled your country of origin?, 2) How are/were you treated by the European migration or asylum authorities?, 3) How would you have liked to be welcomed?, and 4) How can we together imagine asylum differently?
The workshop merges Project Art Works’ method of visualizing the systems of care that people with complex support needs are dependent upon with Trampoline House’s practice of creating spaces for equal participation and empowerment of displaced people. During the first day of the workshop, we will convene in Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue in Kassel to discuss the EU’s failing migration model and make different ‘cosmologies of care’ based on key aspects of participants’ experiences of migration and asylum, ending with a new model that can provide protection for everyone seeking safety in Europe. On the second day, we will move to Project Art Works’ installation in the Fridericianum and work together with Project Art Works artists, participants and audiences to imagine asylum through a final drawing within the cosmologies of care installation that has been evolving over the 100 days of documenta 15.
The workshop succeeds two workshops in Trampoline House in Copenhagen. In May 2022, Project Art Works visited the house to facilitate the workshop “Massaging the Asylum System”, where members of Trampoline House having fled to Denmark created drawings of the asylum systems of control they are administered by. In September 2022, a group of Trampoline House members with flight experience developed a series of recommendations for a better and more humane refugee policy in Denmark together with a group of immigration lawyers, migration researchers, and asylum activists.
The fruitful collaboration between Project Art Works and Trampoline House is the result of the lumbung network initiated by ruangrupa for documenta fifteen that both organizations were invited to join.
CONTEXT:
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, European states and leaders have welcomed Ukrainian refugees with open arms, and the European Union has been applauded for quickly adopting a number of measures that grant Ukrainian nationals safe passage and residence permits with access to health, school, and work in EU’s 27 member countries for up to three years. In other words, the EU has proven that creating a better asylum system is possible.
At the same time, people seeking safety in the EU from other parts of the world are not given the same welcome, but continue to face highly restrictive border policies, denial of assistance, and criminalization. NGOs across the globe have criticized the EU for applying ‘double standards’ on migration and not granting the same rights to everyone seeking safety in Europe, regardless of race or nationality.