research presentation KASK

Presentation of the research 31/05/2016 @KASK school of Arts, Gent, BE
Elli Vassalou, Autonomous design  Master year 1

This research began as an archiving and documentation of the objects migrating with people in the area of the Aegean sea [sea border Turkey coast- Lesvos island]. It quickly transformed to a more broad research on migration, objects, objectification of migration and more.

The research consists:

1. the web archive. Grigoriadou Sofia & Vassalou Elli [on going]
   Using various sources such as social and mass media, personal and collective archives and in situ observations, we archive stories connected to things in a blog entitled “Object biographies: relocation, reuse, transformation”.
   The blog has been presented in various venues in Greece and Belgium.
2. master project research. Elli Vassalou
   After volunteering in December 2015 and returning to Belgium seeing how the situation is communicated, I decided to full focus my master project in the shifting landscape of Lesvos and the object biographies. Through these, the story of the situation is reflected, not only concerning the refugees but also the locals, the volunteers, the artists, the smugglers, the solidarity movement, the governments, and everybody involved intentionally or not.
   Archaeology of today
   I am interested in researching on this new layer of history in the making. How is weaved through these object biographies that are becoming raw material or new icons in the hands of the locals, migrants, volunteers and activists.
   How the migration flows are not coming to devastate or destroy the place and the identity of the island but to enrich it, add new stories at its history and new folds to its identity.
3. safe passage / safe stay. Elli Vassalou. Photography [December 2015, March 2016]
   In situ documentation at the island of Lesvos. Reuse and transformations of the most common sea migration objects  [life vests and rubber boats] by the safe passage movement. In this series, objects suitable for sea travel transform to objects of building a better living in the refugee camps of the island. Qualities of the objects such as water resistance become extremely useful in the hands of refugees, volunteers and locals, especially for the winter time. Also the way these things are being built is an open source, organic design, where everyone can improve or change the objects using a variety of local natural materials [such as stone and clay], migrating materials and humanitarian aid ones [such as thermal blankets and the big amount of palettes arriving with donations].
4. sensorial activations. Elli Vassalou
   Tryouts of translating the research material in embodied experiences.
   “Changing room“. In PAF, France,  a related participatory event tryout  took place in March 2016. It was inspired by a talk with Alison Terry-Evans of the Dirty Girls organisation about clothing and identity. Participants were called to change their clothes and wear somebody else’s ones. The dressing room was constructed with only reused materials fount in the ex-chapel or around the corridors of PAF.

In the basements of KASK, May 31, I make a new attempt of physical exploration of the “illegal passage“.

shoes

photography project in Calais, by Jeta Bejtullahu

see the project here: http://www.beintheirshoes.com

Most donations are well-meaning but very few shoes that are suited for the conditions. Grande-Synthe camp, Dunkirk, France. December 2015

Shoes of a volunteer who has been running the distribution of the Ashram kitchen in the camp since November 2015. ‘Jungle’ camp, Calais, France. January 2016

A refugee turned smaller sized shoes into slip-ons. ‘Jungle’ camp, Calais, France, January 2016

underwater biographies

Lesvos underwater biographies from elli vassalou on Vimeo.

video by Elli Vassalou
underwater photography by Iasonas Panagos

solidarity products

 

scientists, designers, politicians / profiting from solidarity movements

articles only in greek

Τσάντα από σωσίβιο πρόσφυγα, ωραία ιδέα με πολλά λεφτά

http://www.cnn.gr/premium/story/31731/dyo-neoi-epistimones-dinoyn-elpida-me-ta-sosivia-tis-prosfygias

http://www.mplokia.gr/?p=4700

Πρόγραμμα διαχείρισης και ανακύκλωσης πλαστικών λέμβων και σωσιβίων

smartphones

“See why this phone is so dear? It has everything. All my family, all my world is here. That’s why I’m always holding it. I’m holding onto it like I’m holding on to an adress of my own, to family. This metal device has become my whole world.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/why-do-refugees-have-smartphones-syrian-woman-explains-perfectly-refugee-crisis-a7025356.html

people as commodities

“While a majority of people around the world are supposed to be immobilized by borders, free mobility exists for commodities, capital and jobs. Commodities are free to move. Not surprisingly, travellers without papers are hidden in containers and trucks among commodities, or rather as commodities, to be able to cross borders. They, getting a chance to cross borders, only squeezed between boxes of merchandises, camouflaged as a ‘thinglike’ (Coutin 2005) en route of the global trade structure, depict the paradox of our time; global capitalism stimulates and illegalizes border crossing at the same time.”

Against the motion: Shahram Khosravi
Is a world without borders Utopian?
Dystopia/night dreams

full text here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1070289X.2016.1142879

matter out of place #2

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/disaster-relief-donations-that-dont-bring-relief/
 

photo source: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/09/168946170/thanks-but-no-thanks-when-post-disaster-donations-overwhelm

 

#safe passage #safe stay

DIY reuses of items assuring safe passage for the refugees passing the Aegean sea become objects and symbols of safe stay..
Lesvos, March 2016 – photos from refugee camps of Pikpa, Better days for Moria, Lighthouse, Dirty girls, No border kitchen.

photos by Elli Vassalou

for more see below

the making of an icon

The image of the death of Alan Kurdi as an icon of todays refugee crisis. – the objectification of a dead child.

photos from google search, keyword “aylan”

A man holds a poster with a drawing depicting a drowned Syrian toddler during a demonstration for refugee rights in Istanbul, Turkey, September 3, 2015. The distraught father of two Syrian toddlers who drowned with their mother and several other migrants as they tried to reach Greece identified their bodies on Thursday and prepared to take them back to their home town of Kobani. Abdullah Kurdi collapsed in tears after emerging from a morgue in the city of Mugla near Bodrum, where the body of his three-year old son Aylan washed up on Wednesday. The image of Aylan, drowned off one of Turkey’s most popular holiday resorts, went viral on social media and piled pressure on European leaders. Abdullah’s family had been trying to emigrate to Canada after fleeing the war-torn town of Kobani, a revelation which also put Canada’s Conservative government under fire from its political opponents. REUTERS/Osman Orsal – RTX1QZ10

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Alan Kurdi (Kurdish: Alan Kurdî‎), initially reported as Aylan Kurdi, was a three-year-old Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background whose image made global headlines after he drowned on 2 September 2015 in theMediterranean Sea, as part of the Syrian refugee crisis. Photographs of his body were taken by TurkishjournalistNilüfer Demir and quickly spread around the world, prompting international responses. 

Article on the original photo
Brendan O’Neill,  “Sharing a photo of a dead Syrian child isn’t compassionate, it’s narcissistic” The Spectator, 3 September 2015
“The global spreading of this snapshot … is justified as a way of raising awareness about the migrant crisis. Please. It’s more like a snuff photo for progressives, dead-child porn, designed not to start a serious debate about migration in the 21st century but to elicit a self-satisfied feeling of sadness among Western observers.”
read the hole article here

Also on Ai WeiWeis photshoot for India today: http://conversations.e-flux.com/t/for-photo-op-ai-weiwei-poses-as-dead-refugee-toddler-from-iconic-image/3169

 

 

 

 

 

 

dirty girls

The clothing cycle.

text from dirty girls facebook community:

When the refugees arrive on Lesvos in unstable, overcrowded boats, they are drenched with sea water. They are given new clothes and their perfectly good, but wet clothes, are discarded and have mostly been trashed, therefore adding to the environmental problems of landfill on Lesvos. Now Dirty Girls collect the clothes and have them laundered at a commercial laundry. They are sorted and distributed so that they can be reused.
Because of monetary donations, from people all over the world who want to help, we have been able to recycle many thousands of items of clothing.

#safepassage

Boats, vests and thermal blankets are used by activists internationaly as symbols of solidarity and demand for safe passage to refugees.
These tree items has become global icons of cotemporary migration.

photos posted by Anna Oje in facebook group Information Point for Lesvos Volunteers, Barcelona 27/2/2016

photos posted by Anna Oje in facebook group Information Point for Lesvos Volunteers, Barcelona 27/2/2016

photos posted by Anna Oje in facebook group Information Point for Lesvos Volunteers, Barcelona 27/2/2016photos posted by Anna Oje in facebook group Information Point for Lesvos Volunteers, Barcelona 27/2/2016

photos posted by Anna Oje in facebook group Information Point for Lesvos Volunteers, Barcelona 27/2/2016

read the article of Maria Sarri, ” life vests, thermal blancets and sacred icons [unfortunatly only in Greek]
http://www.hitandrun.gr/sosivia-thermikes-kouvertes-ke-ieres-ikones/

update 20/03/2015

#‎EuropeanBlackDays‬ Brussels

mixing symbols, the EU flag

distorting icons
EU flag, Ode to joy, thermal blankets

‘EU Flag’ (2016) from Mariana Bisti on Vimeo.

video description on Vimeo

‘EU Flag’ (2016)
by Mariana Bisti
4 used aluminium blankets, collected from Lesvos/ Greece
Hand-made metal pole
W 2.40m x D 4m, H 6m
The European Union was formed to share democratic, humanitarian and liberal values. Yet, on today’s real life, Europe’s ideals and values sound like a parody and its foundations look shaky. Several EU states have closed their borders to thousands of refugees and, as Syria’s humanitarian crisis is spinning out of control, more borders are likely to close. Europe is undermining its moral values by turning its back on hundreds of thousands of people who are in despair. In this regard, the making of the ‘New EU flag’ is a means to comment on the death of the European Dream, principles and values.
The raising took place at the Slade School of Fine Art, after an initial request to use UCL’s central pole was rejected. The act attempts to underline how a ‘dream of unity’ has turned into a nightmare. The sound of the ‘Ode to Joy’, EU’s anthem, amplifies the irony in this otherwise dramatic situation.

dismantling boats

video

video Info

Comments

• scavengers dismantling boats to get materials

  by Embassy for the Displaced

   

stealing raw materials

Seven foreign nationals (three Britons, two Americans, a Dutchman and a Cypriot) working for nongovernmental organizations that are providing assistance for migrants and refugees on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos were arrested on Monday, the Athens-Macedonian New Agency has reported.

According to the AMNA, the seven suspects face charges of allegedly stealing 335 life vests from a facility belonging to the Municipality of Lesvos. They are reported to have told police they wanted the life vests in order to construct mattresses for refugees staying at the registration camp in Morias.

However, authorities believe that the suspects intended to stage photographs in which they are seen to be collecting the life vests from the island’s shores for a donation appeal. Police argue that if they wanted life vests for mattresses, they could have collected hundreds that are piled up on the coasts of Lesvos after being discarded by migrants and refugees arriving by boat from nearby Turkey.

 

source: http://www.ekathimerini.com/204983/article/ekathimerini/news/seven-foreign-ngo-workers-arrested-on-lesvos-for-theft

living room

living room made by boats  [plastic and wood] and life vests [stuffing material] parts in Pikpa, Lesvos island

photos from personal archive, december 2015

 

backpacks

design and text by Embassy for the Displaced

Details

Using nothing but materials sourced in Skala Sykamnias, Lesvos, a 50-60lt waterproof backpack was designed and built for the refugees to carry on their journey.

The rubber comes from a dinghy that made the crossing in the first days of 2016, while the straps, clips and shoulder cushions were scavenged from life vests. The backpack is large enough to fit a few pairs of winter clothes, a sleeping bag and a blanket, while it is easily sewn together out of a few boat pieces. One dinghy can produce numerous bags.

It was designed in Athens with the valuable professional help of Three Legs and a Model .

Our thanks and respect go to Platanos Refugee Solidarity, Lesvos for their help towards the completion of this task and their solidarity to displaced people.
We are currently looking into implementing this design on the field, suggestions on how to make this more than a prototype are welcome

article in greek: http://www.lifo.gr/articles/society_articles/86634
article in english: http://neoskosmos.com/news/en/Backpacks-for-the-displaced-platanos-solidarity-three-legs-and-a-model 

Bag for Good

 

 

text and photos copied from Mohajer – Bag for Good facebook page

Bag Mohajer

“Bag Mohajer” is a social project in which young refugees sew bags out of unusable old clothes as well as those rubber dinghies, that brought them in a perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe.

In those dinghies many people, including many minor refugees, dare the crossing from Turkey to Greece. However, the ones who manage to reach Greece despite coastguards and Frontex do neither find protection nor safety: systematic human rights violations, overcrowded detention centers, more than 18 months imprisonment and the lack of a functioning asylum system is here a European reality.

Us refugees – who were in the same situations ourselves years ago – want to build a network of solidarity in cooperation with activists.

With Bag Mohajer, we aim to work collectively to create perspectives. We want to create a safe space for those in need of protection, in which we try to make the flight and the thereby caused separations and losses bearable.
The project brings together people with different dreams but similar fates.
We do not want to give up our dreams and therefore we want to spread a piece of our history through “Bag Mohajer”. We are not allowed to travel but no borders can prevent us from telling our stories.

B .: “Boat bags are made out of the rubber-boats we came with … It is like an extension of our memory … the boats did brought` us here, we are carrying on now ..”

This project started in early 2010 in the 2008 opened “Villa Azadi – House of Freedom”, one of the few accomodations for unaccompanied refugee minors in Greece. Due to the precarious economic situation of the country, the villa was, however, closed in 2014 and the people living there were left homeless. The Villa Azadi was located in the mountains of the Greek island of Lesbos.

Meanwhile, all former Mohajer tailors arrived in northern Europe and and were able to take their first steps into a life in security and dignity. In Greece, the situation for refugees has worsened with the economic crisis. The rapid increase in unemployment in the country hit the undocumented as well as the supporting structures hard. There are hardly any jobs let alone training opportunities for refugees and undocumented migrants.

That’s why we want to continue the project “Bag Mohajer” in Athens. Through our experience we know that it works. We want to jointly set up a sewing workshop for those caught up in Greece, for those who want to build a future and do not want to lose any more time.

* mohajer is the persian word for refugee, traveler

more info: www.betterplace.org

Mattresses

 

Mads Damgaard Peterson (centre), a Danish volunteer, stands in front of a large mattress made from repurposed life-jackets at Moria refugee registration centre on Lesvos. Lifejacket foam is both comfy and insulates against the cold.

Image via Anežka Marie Sokol’s Facebook account

LESVOS, Greece, Jan 14 (UNHCR) – Vast piles of lifejackets clogging the idyllic beaches of the Greek island of Lesvos are testimony to an often harrowing journey made by thousands of refugees and migrants crossing to Europe.

But now in an effort to salvage practical use from the growing eyesore, a small portion of the discarded life vests are being repurposed as insulated mattresses for refugees now facing a bone-chilling winter on dry land.

“We were seeing this enormous problem on the island with all the mess, at the same time as seeing all the refugees sleeping on the ground,” said Mads Damgaard Peterson, a volunteer from Denmark who has given up his time to help refugees who reach the island after a sea crossing from Turkey.

Damgaard Peterson came up with the solution with fellow Danish volunteer Anezka Sokol: re-use the foam inside the life-vests to create insulated emergency sleeping mattresses.

“We were sitting on them because the ground was cold and we thought, ‘let’s make a mattress.’ We had the cable ties already and in five minutes we had a product,” Sokol says, picking up a dozen discarded life-jackets off the beach.

“It’s a closed-cell material, that’s why you can use it in a life-vest. It insulates pretty well because it’s full of air.”

Last year, more than one million refugees and migrants reached Europe by sea, while some 3,735 were missing, presumed drowned, at sea. Nearly half of all the arrivals made landfall on the pebbly beaches of Lesvos.

Most of the hundreds of thousands of lifejackets discarded by them ended up tossed on the municipal dump in Molevos, until the environmentally minded Danish volunteers had their big idea.

They made their first prototype by stringing three life vests together in a row. They made 20 and distributed them at the Moria refugee registration centre where the refugees often have to wait for several days.

“People are staying in tents and have nothing to lie on. It was -6 degrees centigrade the day after New Year’s (day) and you just don’t want to be on the ground,” Sokol said.

The refugees were initially sceptical because the life jackets are a vivid reminder of their torturous journey across the sea, in which an average of ten perished every day in 2015.

The re-use of such mattresses was also a hygiene concern. The team are now prototyping an interlocking design that can be laid underneath the groundsheet of tents, creating a comfy, insulated, fire retardant sleeping surface that can also be wiped clean.

“Inside I’m a big, big environmentalist and it breaks my heart to see so many resources going to waste,” says Sokol.

By Hereward Holland, Lesvos, Greece

source: http://www.unhcr.org/569795c46.html

housing

photo from PIkpa Lesvos facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pikpalesvos/?fref=ts

A young architect 25 year old Jay Mexis (Jai Mexis) who was found as a volunteer in Lesvos with the “social kitchen” found a way to build boats and lifejackets are garbage on the shore while giving solution to the increased needs arising winter capacity building temporary hosting refugees. Together with architect George Mytilini Soft, Jay Mexis started making scenes in the site of the former camp’s medical centers in Naples Mytilene. “There were there, some iron frames of the scenes and I thought that we could” dress “these skeletons and create scenes again. We use everything but the plastic of the boats, wooden or plastic soles, up ropes from boats to tie the materials we collect. With the help of other volunteers in a few days we made ​​six large tents, “he says” News of Lesbos. ” “It’s a way to avoid useless all these materials on beaches. Apart from being exploited and removed from the beaches all these boats and lifejackets, and find solution to the issue of housing these people, “says Mr. George Soft.

source: http://www.healingwiththearts.com/young-architect-in-lesvos-converts-plastic-boats-in-tents-in-red-1055-fm/

greek article: http://www.stokokkino.gr/article/1000000000020014/Nearos-arxitektonas-sti-Lesbo-metatrepei-tis-plastikes-barkes-se-skines

Shower mats

a rubber shower mat made from inner tubes

volunteers cutting up the inner tubes and also ‘knitting’ the mats.

At Pikpa refugee camp, where some of the most vulnerable refugees are housed in what must be the most pleasant camp on the island, there are many projects involving recycling parts of the life jackets and boats discarded after the refugees arrive on the beaches. One of the projects started by a volunteer is making shower mats out of shredded inner tubes. The strips of rubber are ‘knitted ‘ into non-slip mats that are used in the camp’s showers & toilet block.

contribution in text and photos by Clare Heardman, volunteer

knick knacks

 

“Selling ‘hope’ in Molyvos

George Frangoulis from Molivos is using materials from the arrivals of refugees (life jackets, plastic, wood) and makes wonderful decorative boats full of hope …..

These 3 euros (which is the boat’s price) are donated to the volunteers of Molyvos.

All sales income are donated to the organization Starfish Foundation – Help for refugees in Molyvos”

 

translation of a greek article, source: http://www.lesvosnews.net/articles/news-categories/koinonia/poylaei-elpides-sto-molyvo

handbags

see video

source: http://www.ekathimerini.com/204888/article/ekathimerini/community/refugees-turn-life-vests-into-handbags-on-lesvos