As part of Re-framing Migrants in the European Media Programme, Beyond the Now ran a series of Collaborative Incubators hosting conversations with investigative journalists, socially engaged artist and digital activists.
Incubator 1 included investigative journalist, Ismail Einashe, socially engaged artist, Dana Olarescu and digital activist, Hossein Derakhshan.
We are currently in the process of editing the conversations for a larger publication – here are some of the questions posed to the three practitioners.
Ismail Einashe – Investigative Methods and Ways of Working
- What is your first instinct when you begin a project – how do you begin to move into a ‘story’ – how would you describe your way of working (method). Do you draw on ‘instinct’ or ‘research’. How do you move into and orientate yourself to the people and the place where you think the potential storylines or situations lie?
- As an investigative journalist, you often work alongside and with communities and people who are vulnerable and in some instances traumatised because of displacement. How does an awareness of human trauma play a conscious part of your method and mode of storytelling?
- As an investigative journalist, do you think you have anything to learn from and share with methods practiced by socially engaged artists and digital designers and activists?
Dana Olarescu – Place-based, Socially Engaged Artist and Designer
- What is your first instinct when you begin a project – how do you begin to move into a ‘place or anticipated story’ – how would you describe your way of working (method). Do you draw on ‘instinct’ or ‘research’. How do you move into and orientate yourself to the people and the place where you think the potential storylines or situations lie?
- As a socially engaged artist, how do you define the notion of ‘place’ when working with and alongside people and communities who have been displaced? As an artist working in a socially engaged context and methodology, what is the relevance (or not) of place and ‘displacement’ in your work?
- As a socially engaged artist, do you think you have anything to learn from and share with methods practiced by an investigative journalist or digital designer?
Hossein Derakshin – Artist, Researcher, Information Designer
- What is your first instinct when you begin a project – how do you begin to move into a ‘place or anticipated story’ – how would you describe your way of working (method). Do you draw on ‘instinct’, ‘or research’. How do you move into and orientate yourself to the people and the place where you think the potential storylines or situations lie?
- What role does the investigative method play in raising the invisible storytellers? And how do you re-gain a sense of identity in a colonized space – both virtual and non-virtual? How do you bring a sense of place into your practice?
- As an artist, researcher and information designer, do you think you have anything to learn from and share with methods practiced by an investigative journalist or socially engaged artist?
Keywords: migration; decolonising; displacement; place; memory; trauma; systemic; reparation; invisibility; investigative; digital; identities; democracy; public; truth-telling; amplification; history; archives; reparative; ethics; curation; storytelling.
Re-framing Migrants in the European Media – comprises a cluster of media practitioners, activists, digital researchers and foundations: including, Here to Support (Amsterdam); Zemos98 (Madrid); Gazeta Wyborcza (Warsaw); Eticas (Barcelona); European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam) and Beyond the Now (Berlin, London, Brussels/Beirut, Dublin).
Supported by the European Cultural Foundation and the European Union
