– Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal
The Royal Institute of Art and Tensta konsthall are inviting you to a higher seminar and the book launch of Refugee Heritage by DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, on May 24, 2–5 pm at Tensta konsthall within the frame of the group exhibition Hurting and Healing: Let’s Imagine a Different Heritage.
As we have a limited number of places, registration is required for the event. Send an email to: Åsa.Andersson@kkh.se
Starting from the book-dossier and the installation Refugee Heritage at Tensta konsthall, the seminar will revolve around the following fundamental questions: who has the right to define what constitutes heritage? How can modernist and patriarchal conception of heritage be challenged? Are there other forms of heritage outside the nation-state that include all the people who belong to more than one place simultaneously?
The Refugee Heritage book-dossier attempts to deactivate the claims of objectivity and universalism contained within conventions followed by UNESCO in determining World Heritage status; it presents different narratives that do not fit within such statist discourse, reorienting heritage towards non-hegemonic forms of life and collective memory. By reusing, misusing and redirecting UNESCO World Heritage guidelines and criteria, Refugee Heritage challenges definitions of heritage and their colonial foundations, asking instead how architecture is mobilized as an agent of political transformation.
The seminar will be divided into three parts: 1. An introduction of the exhibition Hurting and Healing and the installation on Refugee Heritage by the curators and DAAR; 2. The participants are encouraged to voice shared experiences from refugee heritage; 3. A moderated conversation on refugee heritage. We invite all participants to engage with the dossier prior to the seminar and prepare short statements taking their own experiences and reflections as a point of departure. See below for links to the dossier. You will receive more detailed information about the statements by registration.
About the higher seminar
The higher seminar is a place where we together explore and discuss issues that have emerged through the various artistic research processes that take place at the Royal Institute of Art. Each seminar has a form and content that reflect the specific question and artistic project that we are invited to engage with. The core of the higher seminar is the communal thinking and sharing of methods and experiences in the middle of an artistic research process.
About the book
Refugee Heritage is comprised of the first four parts of the Annex 5 UNESCO nomination dossier for the inscription of Dheisheh Refugee Camp as a World Heritage Site, and an Appendix containing architectural interventions, conversations and responses, produced over the course of the last six years with the participation of organizations and individuals, politicians and conservation experts, activists, and governmental and non-governmental representatives. The publication of this book has been made possible with the generous support of the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm; IASPIS, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists; Van Abbemuseum; Art Jameel in Dubai.
https://artandtheory.org/collections/frontpage/products/coming-soon-refugee-heritage
About DAAR
For almost a decade DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti -, together with the refugee community, heritage experts, activists, artists and researchers, have produced exhibitions, public gatherings, and a book-nomination dossier to confront dominant Western conceptions of heritage and presents different narratives, reorienting heritage towards non-hegemonic forms of life and collective memory. www.decolonizing.ps
About Hurting and Healing
The exhibition Hurting and Healing contains a series of works that present concrete proposals for how new cultural heritage can be imagined. They shift, twist and turn existing perceptions of how the presence of the past works in our time, or might do so in the future. Works address historical colonial exploitation, inequality and the devastation caused by global capitalism.
The exhibition is curated by Charles Esche together with Susanne Ewerlöf and Cecilia Widenheim and produced in close collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum, with generous support of the Mondriaan Fund, the Delegation of Flanders in the Nordic Countries and the Embassy of Belgium.
Links to the book-dossier Refugee Heritage
(Introduction in English)
http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/REFUGEE-HERITAGE-PRELUDE-pp.01-pp45.pdf
(Introduction in Arabic)
http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/REFUGEE-HERITAGE-ARABIC-pp.268-pp328.pdf
Full nomination dossier
https://artandtheory.org/collections/new-releases/products/coming-soon-refugee-heritage