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ACT - part IV
Misplaced Women? Marking the city
by Tanja Ostojic
outdoor performance and lecture in collaboration with IMER, University in Bergen (UiB) as part of their 15 year Anniversary Conference.
curated by Malin Barth and co-curated by Pia Torgersen
10.11.11 19:00

“At approximately 1:00 a.m. on 8 March 2002, Mr Mogos’s 49-year-old wife Anisoara and their 16-year-old daughter Dorina were also expelled to Romania and joined the family in detention at Otopeni Airport. According to Ms Mogos, at the airport in Germany, she was handcuffed and bodily searched by female officers while fully naked, and was also only allowed to use a toilet with the door open. On 8 March 2002, at approximately 8:30 a.m., the Mogos family was transferred to a building in the Transit Zone at Otopeni Airport. The Mogos family has refused to accept Romanian citizenship and lived in the transit zone of the Otopeni Airport beginning in March 2002. They were still living in the transit zone of Otopeni airport as of December 2003.” (…)  (From “Naked Life” video performance by Tanja Ostojic, Text resource: Written Comments of the European Roma Rights Centre Concerning Germany For Consideration by the United Nations Human Rights Committee at its 80th Session, March 16, 2003­ – April 3, 2004).

Misplaced Women? Marking the city is a series of performances, interventions and delegated performances in the public space in beginning of November 2011 and with artist presentation on the 10th of November.

In this project, Tanja Ostojic enacts and delegate to others an everyday life activity that signifies working mobility, and displacement as common to transients, migrants, and refugees, as it is to the itinerant artist travelling the world to earn her living. Ostojic’s street performance continues themes of migration, desired mobility, and relations of power and vulnerability in regards to the mobile female body, found in much of her previous work as context Looking for a Husband with EU Passport (2000-2005), Illegal Border Crossing (2000), Waiting for a visa (2000), Naked Life (2004/2008), Integration Impossible? (2005/2010), Sans Papiers (2004).

Tanja Ostojic: “Are we getting used to the situations in which we are deprived for the sake of security procedures, such as taking off our boots, our suits, belts, pullovers, scarves, our heats, taking out entire content from our pockets and from our suitcases and from our handbags out?  We are finding our selves more and more often in the situation resembling “suspicious migrants” on the border and homeless people who are on daily base deprived in the public space.  I’m interested to try to reconstruct some of those situations in the public space. As a migrant women my self I can most profoundly talk from my own perspective (that includes certain gender, race, passport). Certainly the body and the condition of women are more vulnerable in the migration context than of the men, if we just think of leaving children behind, forced marriages, pragmatic marriages, sexual workers, and women trafficking.”

Program:

Wednesday November 2nd
A series of delegated performances and interventions
in public space.
12:05 Ankomsthallen, Bergen togstasjon
ca 12:20 Utlendingssaker, Bergen sentrum politistasjon
ca 12:35 BIKS, Bergen internasjonale kultursenter
ca 12:55 Western Union, Olav Kyrres gate
ca 13:10 Skoleporten, Nygård skole
Local participants:
Kwestan Jamal Bawan, Gillian Carson, Mahlet Ogbe Habte, Karen Kipphoff, Pavana Reid

misplacedwomen.wordpress.com

Tuesday November 8th
Performance by Tanja Ostojic
ca 13:40 Arrival Hall Bergen Airport /
Ankomsthallen Bergen lufthamn, Flesland

Thursday November 10th
Artist presentation and lecture “Crossing Borders”
by Tanja Ostojic 19:00 at Stiftelsen 3,14

MIGRATION, GLOBALIZATION AND NEW SOCIAL FORMATIONS IMER/UiB
(the International Migration and Ethnic Relations Research Unit at the University of Bergen)
15 year anniversary conference
Bergen, 9-11 November 2011

A combination of international and local scholars will in the course of the seminar, discuss how IMER researchers deal with issues such as migration, globalization and transnational movements - how they examine 'culture', ´politics´, ´space´, ´gender´, ´media´, ´government´ and ´law´ - through the prism of International Migration and Ethnic Relations.

International migration and attendant processes of globalization, both as social phenomena and in efforts at theorization, have become especially critical for the development of social theory and analysis, notably by challenging some of the fundamental questions of the social sciences. If one wishes, as Georg Simmel did, to answer the question "How is society possible?", one cannot take for granted that the relevant object is defined within the parameters of the nationstate, nor by those of ´ethnic groups´ or ´cultures´.

In a recent evaluation report on Norwegian sociology research, it is stated that ´[t]he key question to be explored by sociology today is not, perhaps, how society is possible, but rather how to study social processes and changes at local, national and global levels (Sociological research in Norway:
An evaluation, p. 17). Across the social science disciplines, it now seems impossible to imagine place, society and culture without the mobilities of people, goods and information - thus recasting questions exploring e.g. social stratification, scale, space, media and politics.

The Conference is organised in collaboration with Uni Rokkan Centre, Dept. of Social Anthropology, Dept. of Sociology, Dept. of Geography, Dept. of Comparative Politics and SKOK, University of Bergen.

To view full seminar program go to:
http://org.uib.no/imer/conferences/index.htm
Conference fee @ IMER:
Nok 500,- for two days (includes lunch)
Students: Nok 300,-
REGISTRATION to Hanna Skartveit by 20 October 2011.

Performance lecture with artist Tanja Ostojic: "Crossing Borders" at 3,14 is free.
Refreshments will be served.