New Research

Abstract

Abstract The refugee experience is exacerbated by hostile receiving environments, out of which have developed an essentialized refugee imaginary. Media reporting has evidently been rife with documentation of anti-immigration political rhetoric and prejudice toward refugees. In this article we employ a framework of migrant-directed artistic programming to examine the experiences of refugees hosted in Malawi, United Kingdom, and India as curated in their visual, literary, and performance artworks. We interrogate context, meaning, and practice for the annual Tumaini Festival at Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi; Refugee Week Festival, United Kingdom; and the recently published collection of artistic works from India Why did I become an illegal migrant? Tamil refugee students and youth on citizenship. Our examination pays particular attention to the dynamics and interplay of refugees’ individual and collective agency and the paternalistic oversight of their host communities. The distinct and overlapping experiences of refugees in the three countries echo the salience of the resulting power relations in society. This article highlights the agency and tactful resistance of refugees across communities in three different countries. Using thoughtfully curated artwork and related experiences, the refugee communities highlighted in this article begin to remold the layperson's understanding of the refugee experience. Our article contributes to the growing body of literature on refugee experiences and underscores the importance of elevating the voices and perspectives of marginalized migrant communities. Following the author's experience of the performance SÅLE at the 2022 Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival in Norway, this article argues that the concept of curating as deployed in contemporary music must be expanded beyond an understanding of the authorial individual carried over from the figure of the composer. Using Aneta Szyłak's (2013) concept of curating context, the text argues that a more open-ended understanding of the term will allow practitioners organizing musical events to think beyond this narrowly delimited role and engage in new ways with the organization and constitution of musical events. The text then addresses organizers of contemporary music events directly to detail what this wider view of the curation of musical context could entail for their practices, while speaking to the specificities and challenges of musical curating specifically. The article concludes by suggesting that an expanded notion of working with musical context facilitates the inclusion of new people and perspectives into contemporary music and serves to better frame and value the work of many people already working in this musical genre whose labor does not fit into established notions of musical work. This article questions the potential of pre-enactment to embody prototypical counter- strategic forms in artistic and curatorial practices, within the European context, in light of a resurgence of authoritarianism, political populism, and the presence of various conflicts, migratory phenomena, and environmental crises. Pre-enactment has been characterized, for example, in certain works of the duo Hofmann & Lindholm, the Public Movement and Interrobang collectives, and the director Milo Rau. According to Friederike Oberkrome and Verena Straub in the introduction to their book (2019), pre-enactment is the invention of hypothetical scenarios, speculations on possible futures, and the experimentation of fictitious times and spaces order in to act on the present. This article approaches pre-enactment from the perspective of performative action-exercises based on three examples: Training for the Future (2019–) by Jonas Staal and Florian Malzacher, la facultad (2021–) by Myriam Lefkowitz and Catalina Insignares, and The Truth Commission (2013–) by Chokri Ben Chikha and his company Action Zoo Humain. Festivals and their arrangements illuminate aspirational, economic, and aesthetic questions of societies and their citizens. However, to what extent do festivals reflect or represent the crucial concerns of the community they are a part of? This article addresses negotiations in the curatorial process of various festivals, while unraveling the layers of identity formation maneuvered through historical dance narratives. It addresses concerns about how festivals or cultural events become “sites” of curation that can speak to power. The attempt is to define the politics of curation and the need for “curation as a strategy of critique” for the existing presentation of “national” culture and its performance (display) in India. Considering the massive expansion of festivals in artistic arenas, national marketplaces, the international cultural industries, and scholarly programs in festival studies, this article tries to map out the historical context of the dance (performance) festival culture that exists in India.