The Refugee Memorial
There are currently more than 60 millions of refugees on the globe, people who left their home country in order to escape war, persecution and murder, but also poverty and the lack of any perspectives.
People in Europe speak currently of the “refugee crisis”, as if the streams of refugees would come by coincidence. In fact, Europe and the old European colonial superpowers , eg Great Britain and France, and on a smaller scale Spain and Portugal prepared the fertile soil for all current conflicts, wars and civil wars in Middle East, Asia and Africa. When the colonial powers left the stage, after World War II other imperial powers – like USA, Sovjetunion, but currently also China – were replacing them and continued again the powergames at the expenses of the local people anywhere. They were feeding the current local Islam dominated powers in Middle East, for instance, and their main tool to maintain and expand power, the terrorism. But a big share of all the millions of refugees worldwide are forced to leave the home country due to the changing climate caused by the global warming. The effects on the living habitat is already dramatic in South America, Africa and Asia. More and more people will start migrating to regions on the globe promissing better conditions for a survival.
Even if the current refugee crisis can be considered to be the biggest since World War II, the transmigration of people does not represent a new phenomenon in the history of human civilization, but it was even an essential condition for the development of the human species. The phenomenon of transmigration was always initiating a new era, a renewal and an important step forward to a next level of human civilization. So, what will come next?
The Refugee Film Collection including videos by 70 artists, initiated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, the Cologne based media artist and curator, is focussing on the human dimension, since the refugees are human individuals who are forced to leave their home countries in order to get shelter, protection and perspectives for survival elsewhere. Do or did they find the “promissed land” – temporarily or for sure?
Artists and video makers from all over the world spotlight this human dimension and the diversity of reasons and motivations to become a refugee. The collection will be presented individually – in total and in parts – in the context of the major exhibition project-
The Refugee Film Collection
Participating artists
Ulf Kristiansen (Norway) – Lisi Prada (Spain) – Irene Curik (Croatia) – Sonia Guggisberg (Brazil) – Carles Pamies (Spain) – Christian Wodstrup Christiansen (Denmark) – Hamza Kirbas (Turkey) , Zlatko Cosic (Bosnia/USA)The Unstitute (UK/Spain) – Ma Kapoka (Italy) – Kalli Paakspuu (Canada) – Susan Bruce (Australia) – Abdoul-Ganiou Dermani (Togo) – Enoh Lienemann (Germany) – Piotr Filipiuk (Poland) – Elsa Trzaska (Finland), David Gutema Gamatchis, Gabin Cortez Chance (USA), Gabriele Stellbaum (Germany), Oksana Chepelyk (Ukraine), Monika Zywer (Poland), Lucija Konda Labas (Croatia), Nenad Nedeljkov (Bosnia), Les Riches Douaniers (France)(Gilles Richard & Fabrice Zoll), Yovista Ahtajida (Indonesia), Selene Citron/Luca Lunardi (Italy), Mohamed Thara (Morocco), Stephen Chen (Canada), Virginia Eleuteri Serpieri (Italy), Florentia Ikonomidou (Greece), Jake Martin Graves (UK), Elena Knox (Australia), Grace Graupe-Pillard (USA), Daniel Wechsler (Israel), Jana Wisniewski (Austria), Johannes Christopher Gérard (Ger), Mo’ Mohamed Benhadj (Algeria), Daniela Lucato (Italy), Silvia de Genero (Italy), Maria Korporal (NL) , Isabel Perez de Pulgar (ES), Simone Stoll (D), Masha Yozefpolsky (Israel), Sean Burn (UK), Sana Ghobbeh-Silvia Amancei-Bogdan Armanu, Anna Faroqui & Haim Peretz (Germany), Paolo Bandinu Italy), Aline Biasutto (France) , Inês von Bonhorst (Portugal) , Quentin Bruno & Clé Hunnigan (Belgium), C Campos (Ruy Cézar Campos Figueiredo)(Brazil) , Cristobal Catalan (Spain) , Zlatko Cosic (Bosnia) , Manuel Granados (Spain) , Stephan Groß (Germany) , Farid Hamedi (Rohina) (Iran) –, Samantha Harvey (UK) , Beate Hecher/Markus Keim (Austria) , Paul Heintz (France) , Amir Kabir Jabari (Iran) , Haleh Jamali (UK) – , Panagiotis Kalos (Greece) , Anni Kaltsidou (Greece) , Fenia Kotsopoulou (Greece) , Anna Knappe (Norway), Mariken Kramer (Norway) , Hermes Mangialardo (Italy), Miss Muffett aka Lisa Seidenberg (USA), Brigitte Neufeldt (Germany) , Marc Neys (Belgium) , Pekka Niskanen (Finland) , Nelton Pellenz (Brazil) , William Peña Vega (Colombia), Maciej Piatek (Poland) , Rrose Present (Spain) , Mauricio Saenz (Mexico) , Ausin Sainz (Spain), Ayelet Salter (Israel), Gabriele Stellbaum (Germany) , George Symeonidis, Artemis Stathakou (Greece) , Jan Szewczyk (Poland), Karin Till (Australia), Theodoris Trampas (Greece), Aliénor Vallet (France), Parya Vatankhah (Iran/France).