Gesturing Refugees (2017 work in progress): The performance intends to archive latent stories of refugeehood using the bodies of refugee artists and the audience as the main archive, while playing with other archive material, testimonies and imagination. The archives will include present, past and even future stories of refugeehood to try and interrogate collective responsibility and find bridges between the past and present of the West. The re-enactment, transformation and deformation of the alternative and personal memories of refugees by refugee artists will allow the re-appropriation of the narrative of refugeehood and develop a collective gestural identity that might challenge that of passive victimhood to which refugees are often subjected. The performance already faced many obstacles related to visa denial to artists and the impossibility of their physical encounter, which added up another formal layer to the performance.
Gesturing Refugees May 2017 from Farah Saleh on Vimeo.