Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

In concurrence with the special focus of the conference, Subjectivities of Globalisation this paper explores the contemporary circulation of visual and literary texts that attempt to approach and represent subjective migrant and refugee stories in Western Europe. It compares the work of the ‘Refugee Tales’ group based in the U.K., a multi media platform and pressure group who walk with refugees and publish their stores via one-to-one interviews with well known writers, with work by international Artist Ai Wei Wei in sculpture, film and photography, and Black British film maker John Akomfrah whose two recent film installations Vertigo Sea and Purple both address Globalisation, the refugee crisis and contemporary ecological anxiety. They have all addressed the contemporary plight of the refugee from different aesthetic and political positions. By juxtaposing literary, documentary and fine art/film texts both written by writers from host countries and those who are undergoing forced migration, this study seeks to articulate the different modes of representation that concern those subjects and their experiences from vastly different and positions of power and with differing apprehensions of history and migration.