This summer, Trampoline House is exhibiting art projects, doing performances, and hosting workshops in Kassel, Germany as part of the major contemporary art exhibition Lumbung – documenta fifteen.
For documenta fifteen, we have aimed at creating a conversation, a circle, between Trampoline House and Kassel. With our art projects, workshops, and performances, we want to invite exhibition visitors inside Trampoline House and inside displaced people’s difficult lives in the Danish asylum, deportation, and integration systems.
We hope to create awareness of the Global North’s violent and discriminatory migration policies and to imagine a better asylum system together with the exhibition visitors!
We are contributing with:
The installation “Castle in Kassel” that you can experience in the Hübner venue
The site-specific sound installation “The Walls Have Ears” that you can experience in the pedestrian tunnel Platz der Deutschen Einheit
A series of performances and workshops during the exhibition period that you can read more about below
Installation plan for Trampoline House’s exhibition in Kassel
Dady de Maximo Mwicira-Mitali and Joachim Hamou installing their installation “Silenced bodies – loud images” in Kassel. Photo: Joachim Hamou
Portraits of Trampoline House members produced during the workshop “Massaging the Asylum System, Creative Strategies of Care”, a workshop by Project Art Works at Weekend Trampoline House, Copenhagen, May 20–22, 2022. Photo: Britta Thomsen
Drawing of the ecosystems Trampoline House is part of produced during the workshop “Massaging the Asylum System, Creative Strategies of Care”, a workshop by Project Art Works at Weekend Trampoline House, Copenhagen, May 20–22, 2022. Photo: Britta Thomsen
Sketch for Khalid Albaih’s site-specific installation “The Walls Have Ears” in Kassel
About documenta fifteen
documenta fifteen takes place from June 18–September 25, 2022, under the Artistic Direction of ruangrupa at various venues in Kassel, Germany. The Jakarta-based artists’ collective has built the foundation of documenta’s fifteenth edition on the core values and ideas of ‘lumbung,’ the Indonesian term for a communal rice barn.
Lumbung as an artistic and economic model is rooted in principles such as collectivity, communal resource sharing, mutual care, and equal allocation and is embodied in all parts of the collaboration and the exhibition. Lumbung is the concrete practice adopted by ruangrupa and the Artistic Team, lumbung members and lumbung artists, and all participants on the path towards documenta fifteen in 2022 and beyond.
Easy Read about documenta fifteen
Background
In June 2020, Trampoline House was invited to participate in documenta fifteen by the Artistic Directors, ruangrupa, and their Artistic Team.
The house was invited to join an international lumbung network consisting of 14 collectively organized projects/organizations with roots in art. For two years, the lumbung members have exchanged thoughts, initiated collaborations, and developed projects based on the lumbung principles.
Following the invitation to join the lumbung network, Trampoline House invited members and friends of the house to form an Artistic Team, responsible for participating in the lumbung meetings and for developing lumbung collaborations and projects for the exhibition.
Since January 2022, the team members have hosted different workshops in Weekend Trampoline House in Copenhagen and produced art works and videos documenting life conditions in the Danish asylum, deportation, and integration systems.
Because Danish asylum legislation prohibits asylum seekers from leaving the country while their case is pending – and only allows for rejected asylum seekers to travel back to the country they fled – many of the people who have contributed to the projects we will exhibit in documenta fifteen can't travel to Kassel for the opening.
With the videos and writings, drawings and installations, workshops and events developed for the 100 days in Kassel, we are bringing their calls to action and change to all the visitors!
The Trampoline House documenta fifteen Artistic Team is:
Carlota Mir
Dady de Maximo Mwicira-Mitali
Fedaa Sultan (from Oct. 2020–Dec. 2021)
Helene Grøn
Jean Claude Mangomba
Joachim Hamou
Khalid Albaih
Morten Goll
Muhannad Al Ulaby
Sara Alberani
Shakira Kasigwa Mukamusoni
Tone Olaf Nielsen
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Yong Sun Gullach (from Oct. 2020–Dec. 2021)
Trampoline House’s participation in documenta fifteen has been made possible with financial support from:
The Danish Arts Foundation / documenta fifteen / Goethe-Institut / Institut Funder Bakke / The Italian Council (2022), Directorate – General for Contemporary Creativity, Italian Ministry of Culture / lumbung collective pot
Our live events and performances in Kassel
JULY:
Dady de Maximo Mwicira-Mitali
In a Closed World – Visible and Invisible Walls Kind of Event: Fashion Show
Dady de Maximo Mwicira-Mitali with 40 models will present a collection of 40 outfits inspired by the life and suffering of refugees. The presentation of the collection will be accompanied by a poet-singer who will recount the silent suffering and a contemporary dancer who will interpret with his body the physical and moral suffering of the refugees.
Time & Place:
July 15, 7:30–9 pm: Treppenstrasse, Kassel
AUGUST:
Jean Claude Mangomba
Democracy vs Psychology
This presentation compares the studies of the American psychologist Maslow on human needs with a group of traumatized refugees from Trampoline House in Copenhagen. It will show how the Danish asylum system makes people sick and traumatizes them.
Jean Claude Mangomba s a Congolese human rights activist and poet artist living in Sweden and working with Trampoline House in Copenhagen. He has done more than 40 presentations with students and researchers of different nationalities (US, Canada, Japan, Denmark, etc). He raises up the voice of the voiceless coloured 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, death and so on. He has a Bachelor in English from DR Congo and also studied Business and Entrepreneurship as well as Creative Writing at Trampoline House in Copenhagen, where he also teaches English to refugees and co-organizes the Democracy Class and the Creative Writing workshop.
Time & Place:
August 24, 5–7 pm, Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
Helene Grøn
Writing welcome: responding to stories from Trampoline House
This workshop offers a reflective and creative space for reading and responding to people’s letters, stories and pieces of writing from Trampoline House and the asylum and deportation camps around Denmark. As Alice LaPlante says, ‘good creative writing… is fueled by an urgent desire to understand something that eludes understanding’. Much of the writing we are bringing from the house and the camps are shaped around incomprehension and injustice, documenting what it means to live a life that challenges the inalienability of human rights and dignity. Together, we will think about what it means to write and talk across borders, citizenship status and belonging, and how writing might be a space for hospitality, exploration and creating understanding across categories that seek to divide.
Helene Grøn is a writer and a theatre and refugee scholar, whose output spans from academic writing to plays and fiction. Her work has been produced e.g. by Scottish Opera and Traverse Theatre and been published with e.g. Dark Mountain and Palgrave Macmillan. She teaches writing at the University of Copenhagen and at Trampoline House, and frequently works in the intersection between research, community building and politically engaged creative practices. Twitter: @helenegrn
Time & Place:
August 25, 12–2 pm, Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
Muhannad Al Ulaby
Political incorrectness
Stand-up comedy. Political incorrectness is going to be a place of laughter, joy and fun. Let's tackle a lot of the social and political issues that we have been repeatedly asked to stay away from, complain about them, share our thoughts and impressions, but more importantly, let's make it fun. Here we are telling the truth without makeup, we will be calling shit as we see them and have a blast over it. If you feel like you have a lot of frustration over many things and you want to talk those things out while having fun over it, then join our bunch in Trampoline House’s space in Hübner, Kassel on August 27 and August 28.
Muhannad Al Ulaby is a Syrian filmmaker and visual artist. Muhannad has an academic education in drama and film arts with focus on the visuals. He has been part of multiple film and theatre productions as a writer, cinematographer, lighting designer and dramaturge.
Time & Place:
August 27, 7–8 pm, August 28, 3:30–4:30 pm & August 28, 7–8 pm, all events in Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
SEPTEMBER:
Joachim Hamou
Puppet workshop
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.
Time & Place:
September 10, 11 am–5 pm (lunch break 1–2 pm), Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
CANCELLED: Jean Claude Mangomba
How to Humanize the EU Asylum System
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 s a Congolese human rights activist and poet artist living in Sweden and working with Trampoline House in Copenhagen. He has done more than 40 presentations with students and researchers of different nationalities (US, Canada, Japan, Denmark, etc). He raises up the voice of the voiceless coloured 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, death and so on. He has a Bachelor in English from DR Congo and also studied Business and Entrepreneurship as well as Creative Writing at Trampoline House in Copenhagen, where he also teaches English to refugees and co-organizes the Democracy Class and the Creative Writing workshop.
Time & Place:
September 16, 3–5 pm, Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
CANCELLED: Jean Claude Mangomba
Analysis of Jean Claude Mangomba's Critical Creative Writing
In this workshop, we will analyze two poems by artist Jean Claude Mangomba: “Rejected People” and “Where is my Home?”
Jean Claude Mangomba s a Congolese human rights activist and poet artist living in Sweden and working with Trampoline House in Copenhagen. He has done more than 40 presentations with students and researchers of different nationalities (US, Canada, Japan, Denmark, etc). He raises up the voice of the voiceless coloured 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, death and so on. He has a Bachelor in English from DR Congo and also studied Business and Entrepreneurship as well as Creative Writing at Trampoline House in Copenhagen, where he also teaches English to refugees and co-organizes the Democracy Class and the Creative Writing workshop.
Time & Place:
September 19, 10 am–12 pm, Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
Shakira Kasigwa Mukamusoni
The Chain
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).
Time & Place:
September 20, 2–6 pm, Trampoline House’s exhibition space in the Hübner venue, Kassel
Carlota Mir, Sara Alberani & Tone Olaf Nielsen (Trampoline House) and Kate Adams, Tim Corrigan & Martin Swan (Project Art Works)
Massaging the Asylum System, Creative Strategies of Care: A Joint Workshop by Project Art Works and Trampoline House: Copenhagen’s Refugee Justice Community Center
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.
Carlota Mir is an independent curator, researcher and translator working simultaneously across these fields. She works at the intersection of feminisms, migration, sexual minorities, curating, radical pedagogies and architecture. Currently, Carlota works as a curator for the Danish refugee community centre Trampoline House, a lumbung member at documenta fifteen (Kassel 2022), and she is also a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Other current projects include the volume Propositions for Translocal Solidarity (Berlin: Archive Books/Stockholm: Konstfack), which she is a co-editor of. An art historian, translator and curator by training (BA in Art History and French, University of Sussex, UK/Paris Sorbonne IV) she graduated in 2013 and she holds an MA in Contemporary Art and Visual Cultures (UAM/MNRS, Spain, 2016) and postgraduate degree in Curating (CuratorLab, Konstfack, Sweden, 2020).
Project Art Works is a collective of neurodiverse artists and activists that works with art and care. They are based in Hastings, UK. Project Art Works collaborates with people with complex support needs, families, and circles of support. Like Trampoline House in Denmark and its work for refugee justice, Project Artworks uses art to provide support and public access for neurodiverse people, raise awareness and change the care system in the UK. Read more: https://projectartworks.org/
Sara Alberani is an art historian and independent curator based in Rome. She expresses her curatorial research in socially engaged art practices concerning communities and public spaces, focusing on long-term projects. Since 2019, she has been part as curator and researcher of Trampoline House, and since 2020 she is co-founder of LOCALES, a curatorial platform for the production of site-specific interventions and decolonial practices within the public space of Rome. She is selected curator for the Final Event of the Roma Calling 2021/2022 Fellows at the Istituto Svizzero of Rome. Her projects have been presented in numerous institutions in Italy and abroad, including Biennale Arte e Architettura di Venezia, Centro Pecci, MAXXI, RomaEuropa Festival, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, MANN, Museo Nazionale Romano, Real Academia de España en Roma. She graduated with honors in Art History from La Sapienza University in Rome and was in 2019-20 selected curator for the Curatorlab master’s program at Konstfack University, Stockholm. www.localesproject.org
Tone Olaf Nielsen (born 1967) is an independent curator and Program and communication coordinator in Trampoline House: Copenhagen Refugee Justice Community Center. She graduated from UCLA's Critical and Curatorial Studies Program in 2002 and has since the late 1990s used curating to address the root causes of social, economic, and environmental injustices. Her practice is based on a firm belief in the ability of artistic and curatorial work to contribute to social and political transformation. She is co-founder of the curatorial collective, Kuratorisk Aktion (with Frederikke Hansen), of Trampoline House (with Joachim Hamou and Morten Goll), and of CAMP / Center for Art on Migration Politics (with Frederikke Hansen). www.trampolinehouse.dk, www.campcph.org
Time & Place:
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