Antwerp is preparing for the celebrations of 75 years of liberation and the commemoration of the end of the Second World War. The last witnesses are dying out. But there are also young people in our city who can testify about war, hunger and dictatorship. Newcomers, who have come to our country as refugees. At a time when more is being said about them than with them, their stories are worth hearing.
The Red Star Line Museum sent out ten fieldworkers. Young talents who have little to do with the classical museum sector. But they do have the network and the power of persuasion to win the trust of people who are still looking for their place in our society. Together they recorded forty interviews with recent refugees on camera: conversations about their origin, departure, the road to Belgium and their new life with us. These are stories from all over the world about fear, suffering and danger, but also about courage, resilience, imagination and entrepreneurship.
The autumn presentation in our shed gives an impression of the breadth, depth, humanity and relevance of these stories. Visitors can browse through a selection from the interview records, which are kept by the museum as sources for the future. Central to the presentation is ‘The 32nd Day’, a film that one of the fieldworkers, Andres Lübbert, made for the project. Son of a refugee from Chile in the 1970s, he combines his family story with pieces from the collected interviews into a reflection on the loneliness and alienation of the newcomer. The second eye-catcher is the monumental series of drawings that one of the interviewees, Saïf ‘Dumuzy’ Lama’a, made about his flight from Mosul across the Mediterranean Sea and the Balkan route in 2015.
Practical
from 7/11/2019 to 19/4/2020
free to visit in De Loods
Stichting BMP
Asterweg 19 C7
1031 HL Amsterdam
Tel: +31 20 428 27 28
E-mail: info@speciallyunknown.eu
