Short description of the workshop in accessible Trampoline House English.
Published in Trampoline House networks and channels. May 2022
Together, we want to explore the relationship between our community, people’s needs as they seek asylum and try to rebuild their lives in Denmark, and how different systems, from the state to Danish society, may or may not support these needs. We will also look at Trampoline House, what the house does with people, and what the asylum system should learn from the house.
Through shared time and creative action, we will massage the asylum system - yes, massage, like a real massage - so that it can become softer and more humane. Through spending time together and using some tools like drawing or writing, we will get a really useful picture of the asylum system that comes from everyone’s experiences. Using this shared knowledge, we will be able to think about ways to understand and stand in the system, to challenge it, to channel anger, to feel less vulnerable and alone, to be heard in it, and eventually, to change it.
This system works by creating sad emotions, sad feelings. This is essential to the exercise of power; and rage is a consequence of that. It separates people from the capacity to act. Feeling rage doesn’t depend on the will or personal faculties or people, we know that. Instead, it is linked to conditions of oppression in society. Positive feelings coming from relationships, joy, creative work, access to social life, therefore have to do with the possibility of acting. So, which creative processes can we take up to face a violent system? We want to get creative to face this system, connecting our bodies to our ability to act.
Trampoline House and Project Art Works are working together because we think that our communities have things to talk about: because often, the State doesn’t care about the wellbeing of our communities, and people have a really hard time accessing public spaces in society and being heard. We hope that by sharing the stories of our communities and their struggles in the world, we will be able to make an impact.
About Project Art Works
Project Art Works is a collective of neurodiverse artists and activists that works with art and care. They are based in Hastings, UK. Neurodivergent artists and people see the world differently to what society thinks is ‘normal’. Like Trampoline House in Denmark and its work for refugee justice, Project Art Works uses art to provide support and public access for neurodivergent people, raise awareness and change the social care system in the UK.
Harvestors:
Video: Muhannad + Yaser (confirmed)
Photo: Britta (Friday - confirmed), Megumi (Sunday - tbc)
Photo: Britta (Friday - confirmed), Megumi (Sunday - tbc)
Circle IV. Cosmologies of Asylum
Harvest of the workshop Massaging the Asylum System: A collective exploration. Trampoline House, Copenhagen, 20-22 May 2022. Curated by Carlota Mir and Sara Alberani. With Project Art Works.
The workshop ‘Massaging the Asylum System’ is a collaboration between Trampoline House and Project Art Works, a collective of neurodiverse artists based in the UK and it is curated by Sara Alberani and Carlota Mir as part of the participation of TH and PAW in documenta fifteen.
‘What is really interesting about the camp cosmology we made is that whereas in the original ones for the UK system there is a maze of bureaucracy and institutions, in the freedom cosmology everything stays in the first circles, and there are a lot of voids. And you can see that’s because basic human needs have been denied.
Tone Olaf Nielsen, Sobat Sobat preparation, 27 May 2022.
Participants (Approx. 10 per day):
Nabila and Tone from Trampoline House will invite 10 users of Trampoline House to join both days. If some can only make it on Friday, other users are welcome to join on Sunday.
Anita (rejected single mom asylum seeker accommodated in Departure Center Avnstrup)
Shakira (single mom with temporary residence permit after 10 years in the asylum system)
Nabila (single mom with temporary residence permit after 12 years in the asylum system)
Reza (rejected asylum seeker accommodated in Departure Center Avnstrup with his wife and two kids)
Ali (rejected asylum seeker accommodated in Departure Center Avnstrup with his wife and two kids)
Kristina (refugee from Ukraine awaiting their with residence and work permit under the Special Act for Ukrainians)
Vlada (refugee from Ukraine awaiting their with residence and work permit under the Special Act for Ukrainians)
Mahmoud Almohamad (refugee status but fighting for other Syrian refugees under paragraph 7.3 who are experiencing having their temporary residence permits evoked because Damaskus is deemed 'safe')
Shala (rejected asylum seeker accommodated in Departure Center Avnstrup with her husband and two kids)
Hana and Huda (twins in the asylum application processing phase (phase 2)
"I’ve lived in refugee camps for seven years. The meaning of freedom when I lived in that situation was getting out and start my normal life."
"Freedom means bodily autonomy and the ability to make choices about what happens to our bodies, what treatments we choose to seek."
The asylum system in Denmark is like a “chain”: this means to be stuck in a legal grey zone, neither detained nor free, and without prospects of pursuing a future life in Denmark or in Europe. 'The chain' is a structurally violent strategy of exhaustion.
The workshop is an adaptation of Cosmologies of Care, a method that Project Artworks has been working with for some time. Project Art Works and Trampoline House are collaborating partners in documenta fifteen, an international art exhibition that takes place in Kassel, Germany, in the summer of 2022.
