‘Artists not tourists’: ethical tensions between creative mobility and migration

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the past decade there has been significant increase in artist residencies that provide opportunities for artists to travel internationally, in order to immerse themselves in a place and develop their artistic practice. This essay reflects on a case study of an artist residency program in Berlin, in which 10 international artists were invited to live in a refugee accommodation centre for a month each. Drawing on fieldwork notes, sketches, interviews with participants and the residency facilitators, I reflect on my unease and tensions that this form of creative mobility produces in relation to the visualities of migration. Questions around the role of mobility and exchange for artists, as well as applied mobilities researchers, pose ethical considerations about the privileges of movement and the visualities that such mobility produces. I suggest that the international artist residency model reinforces hierarchies and the injustices of cultural mobilities that are entwined and embedded in elite mobility practices.