Stories of Migration: Investigating Artistic Work to Encourage Social Change

Abstract

This dissertation employed an arts-based research method to encourage shifts in audience member perspectives concerning (im)migration, (un)belonging, space and place. It addressed two central questions: What is the potential of multimedia artistic work to disrupt, unsettle, and transform perceptions and meaning concerning migrants and migration? What art forms can allow the oppressed working class, among others, to transcend de Certeau's sphere of victimization? How can art be politicized by incorporating technology and new media, as argued Walter Benjamin? This exploration matters because art can communicate in ways that words cannot. Overall, I found that visual art, alongside spatialized sound and dance, can transform space on an architectural level, transcending de Certeau's sphere of victimization. I argue that the transformation of space is key to politicizing art, in Benjamin's terms. This type of art provides an experience that affects multiple senses to tell stories. For this dissertation, these were stories of migration. I drew on the work of Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Anja Bieri to argue that multimedia art has the potential to encourage audiences to rethink their perceptions of migrants and migration. This work contributes to existing literature by presenting an arts-based research method that uses artist-scholarship in two ways. First, I used social and architecture theory to consider (im)migration and (un)belonging, weaving arguments from multiple authors and fields into a conversation. Second, I used artistic practice founded on premises drawn from the above authors in an iterative process to produce art. With theory and practice together, with one influencing the other, back and forth, I created audiovisual art via a transdisciplinary collaboration, centered on stories of (im)migration and (un)belonging. Art is one way to build empathy and solidarity and to imagine the future. The paintings that appear in this dissertation are separate from the performance art I created for it and meant to supplement that effort by creating spaces in which readers can reflect on otherwise abstract, but cognate, themes such as movement, borders and belonging.