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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on examples from the co-creation of the exhibition 'On Solid Ground' (art and anthropology), this paper discusses how cross-disciplinary exhibition-making might be used to create room for alternative ways of encountering each other- in research projects about migration and in everyday life.

Paper long abstract:

What might be achieved if anthropologists rethink fieldwork practices through creative interventions as a way of relating with the people who are subject of our research? This paper discusses how collaborative exhibition-making might be used to create room for alternative ways of encountering each other- in research projects about migration and in everyday life. Over the last two years I have worked together with two Syrian artists to create an exhibition about trust, hope, and helping hands in everyday encounters between Syrian refugees in Denmark and other inhabitants of their local communities. Drawing on examples from the co-creation of the exhibition On Solid Ground, this paper discusses the capacities of audiovisual media for understanding and sharing personal experiences with strangers and explores the creative potentiality of open ends, gaps, and resistance in building diversifying, critical anthropological analyses. In a time where new boundaries are drawn politically in Denmark between those refugees who are considered deserving of state solidarity and those who are not, the exhibition is a participatory future-oriented intervention that aims to create an experimental ground for people to meet, wonder, and reflect. Between personal stories about creating a new life, new relationships, and new contexts in Denmark as a refugee, the exhibition invites both its creators and visitors to visit the life worlds of others, but also their own. The exhibition is part of my PhD project, and it has been designed and developed together with the two artist and a range of other research participants.