Paper short abstract:

Transnational Migration inevitably challenges realist representations of space and time. This paper explores how video installations might express its micro- and macrolevel dimensions: The grounded reality of migrants` individual ´lifeworld` and the complexities of the ´global system`.

Paper long abstract:

Migration is, without exaggeration, one of the urgent topics of our time. Its representation however poses theoretical, epistemological and methodological challenges. How can we produce knowledge about migration that transcends the hierarchical discourses of those who govern it? How can we explore the compex social realities and relationships it produces? The aim of my paper is to discuss migration as a visual topic that reveals the limits of conventional representation. Global processes like transnationalism and migration happen at more than one place and involve different temporal and spatial scales. For their subjects, they convey an overall feeling of dislocation and asynchronism. How do we engage with the increasing interrelations of peoples, places, political and economic entities within a vast global system? How do we represent the invisible processes that connect them?

Multi-screen video installations can articulate these complex relations by expanding the modernist techniques of montage and juxtaposition into space. I will discuss examples from artists like Ursula Biemann and Multiplicity, as well as a two-screen installation I produced as part of my PhD-project. This work focusses on the border regime separating the French island of Mayotte from its African sister island Anjouan, both geographically part of the Comoros islands. It renders visible the lifeworlds on both islands on two opposing screens. It explores this postcolonial space by giving the spectator access to multiple perspectives.