The Archive of Refuge was created as a digital memory site where (hi)stories of flight and displacement to Germany in the 20th and 21st century are preserved and reflected. Both East and West Germany (and the relationship between them) were influenced from the outset by the experience of people who had left everything behind and found refuge there.
I believe that the main motive shared by these four exhibitions, focusing on different sequences of the long history of migration from Turkey to Germany on different occasions, is a semantic bridge. While visiting the exhibitions, the reactions of new generations with migration background suggest that they have developed a new understanding of a time that is now long gone yet determined [shaped] their own existence.
Migration is one of the main building blocks of societies. The fact that people have to leave their homes, sometimes alone or in groups, to go to other places leaves deep traces both in the communities of destination countries as well as in the countries left behind. In recent decades, as political and economic upheavals have deeply impacted the entire planet, forced migration movements have become even more significant.
I began my research from an expanded notion of “exile” as a special though ostracized position to be in, particularly for an artist, that allows for reflection on altering value systems in different national and urban contexts, be it politically, socially or artistically.
Thanks to Manifold, about a year and half ago, I became aware of the Sıla Gurbet project, and since then have been closely following some of its productions. Concepts of space, home, migration, belonging, language, harmony, memory, emotion and body form the backbone of the project. Undertaken by Sema Aslan and Seçil Yersel, the project seeks to find an answer to the question of what kind of space a name creates – as an element of identity – in the company of these concepts.
What type of experience, do you think, would make an individual consider leaving the country they were born and brought up in? Whose language they spoke? Where they had friends and knew every corner by heart?
As red-thread.org, we participated in Archiv der Flucht with a workshop hosted by Depo and supported by the Goethe Institute Istanbul Branch, and following this workshop, we prepared the special dossier you are reading on our website.
