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Border Elegies Symposium October 25-26, 2018

Posted by on Tuesday, October 16, 2018 in News and Events.

Border Elegies: Refugees, Migrant, and Contemporary Art and Literature
October 25-26, 2018

Vanderbilt University Department of Art
E.Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center
1204 25th Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37240

Our twenty-first century has witnessed a tremendous rise in refugees and migrants. Whether they escape war, violence, persecution, poverty and economic exploitation, or the precarious effects of climate change – more than 68 million people around the world today have been forced to leave precarious homes and search for safer havens. Half of them are under the age of 18, more than 10 million are considered stateless and have no access to basic rights of education, healthcare, employment, and freedom of movement. While many efforts have been made to address and accomodate the plight of today’s migrants and refugees, we at the same time observe widespread desires to erect metaphorical and physical walls to keep unwanted bodies at bay and protect the presumed integrity of sovereign nations and ethnic identities. Almost thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the call for new walls, divisions, and fortifications has become the order of the day.

image credie: Guillermo Galindo, Angel Exterminator/Exterminating Angel, 2015. Courtesy of the artist, photo by Richard Misrach

Organized in honor of Guillermo Galindo’s month-long residence at Vanderbilt University in October 2018, this symposium explores different artistic responses to the flow of refugees and today’s politics of enclosure. Following the lead of Galindo’s work as a composer and installations artist on the European refugees camps and the US-Mexican border wall, the speakers will review different aesthetic strategies to represent the current migration crisis; discuss how contemporary artists address the human rights implications of recent border control policies; and explore how poetic texts reflected on the migration of Cubans via sea to the US since the 1990’s.

This event is made possible with the generous support of the Center for Latin American Studies, the Department of Art, the Blair School of Music, and the Program in Comparative Media Analysis and Practice (CMAP), all at Vanderbilt University.

For questions, please contact: lutz.koepnick@vanderbilt.edu

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