Insomnia was an exhibition of visual art, performance and writing, organised on behalf of the British Red Cross to coincide with and as part of Refugee Week 2005.
The content of the exhibition
Using insomnia as an analogy for the inability to access a place of security, rest and recuperation, the exhibition aimed to provoke thought and discussion around refugee experiences by presenting sculptures, photographs, video and sound installations, texts and poems on insomnia. Alongside the 17 static exhibits is a series of performance pieces, discussions and readings.
Many of the artists, performers and writers were refugees or had experienced a sense of displacement and loss. Texts and poems were submitted from writers including authors Louise Doughty and Bel Mooney plus many more from refugee organisations who take issues of exile and immigration including insomnia as themes.
The exhibition took place at the Bargehouse, OXO Tower on Londons South Bank.
Click here to see texts from the Exhibition
Click here to see the Exhibition Flyer
Click here to see the Exhibition Catelogue
The Concept behind the exhibition
The main aim of this project was to highlight and celebrate the contribution that refugees make to the UK through exploring new ways of seeing and relating to their experience. Led by the idea that art is one of the most powerful tools which various individuals and groups have used across the globe and throughout centuries to reinvent collective and individual identities and fight against colonialism, racism, and demeaning stereotypes, this project reinforced the idea that art is not a by-product or a way of reflecting society, as it is still often assumed, but an integral part of social, political and cultural construction. By bringing together the works of a number of refugee and non refugee artists and writers operating within different cultural contexts and artistic forms, the exhibition attempted to further problematize the traditional representations of refugees, as well as to offer new ways of reinterpreting and placing their (own) identities in the social, political and cultural context of the UK.
The basic concept of the “Insomnia” – defined here as the inability to access a place of rest, safety and recuperation - stems from the experience of many asylum seekers and refugees who have supported or received support from the Red Cross throughout the years. By using Insomnia as a title for this show, the intention was to create a space where some of these and similar stories could be materialised and through their different forms hopefully receive a wider resonance and recognition. It was also hoped that by creating a thematic framework that does not necessarily insist on the political, it would, first of all, enable artists and participants to define their “status” in their own terms, and secondly, encourage new audiences to use their own experiences in order to relate more closely and empathically to the experiences of refugees.
Theoretical background for this project lies in the influential writings of Emmanuel Levinas, a Lithuanian born philosopher, who started developing an interest in themes such as insomnia, persecution and responsibility for the other while imprisoned in a labour camp during the Second World War.
In his highly complex analyses that deliberately evade any simplification (especially the following one), Levinas describes insomnia as those certain times when the boundary between what is inside and outside ourselves disappears, and that which we experience we are no longer able to internalise, control or make sense of. Although terrifying as it is, this experience also makes us aware of a reality – Infinity - that spills over our consciousness and refuses to be assimilated by our understanding.
The state of insomniac vigilance or wakefulness Levinas also likens to the experience of meeting a new person - the other, a face. He claims that through encountering the other we become exposed to their past that we cannot grasp, to their unknowable difference, to an indefinable Infinity whose traces we discern in their face. Like that insomniac reality that keeps refusing to fit into our frame of understanding, their face awakes from our subjectivity; it exposes us to our vulnerability but also invites us to an opportunity to grasp the foreign reality that it hides.
However, if we respond to our desire to explore the promise of this Infinity, we need to accept that the other cannot be encompassed and objectified by us. To do this would be to persecute them. Instead, we need to realise that their difference is what makes them unique, which at the same time brings us to the realisation of our own uniqueness. It is only when breaking out of our world and awaking from our subjectivity that we can truly move toward encountering the other and letting them encounter us. It is only when face to face with our equal other that we can truly move toward reaching the only absolute value within the human possibility - of giving the other priority over oneself. And this, as Levinas keeps warning, is where our mutual and irreducible humanity lies and which is our greatest potential and responsibility.
The idea that in order to secure our identity we need to start outside ourselves, seems particularly daring in our society where there is so much emphasis on self sufficiency, autonomy and individualism. In the context of the exhibition, it could be argued that the echoes of Levinas’ themes mentioned in this text, particularly the idea of the outward movement, can be found in almost all presented works. Whether coming from refugee or non-refugee backgrounds, the participating artists have expressed through their works a desire to open up toward the other, to move into that space where we meet face to face.
In their (insomniac) exploration of the ideas of belonging, displacement, powerlessness, isolation, loss etc, the artists and writers have invited us to learn how to lament over what we don’t feel closely connected to; to quickly pack our previous lives into a suitcase; to fix our gaze on the less visible; to relate our own traditions and histories to those of the others; to wander through the lost geographical and imaginary spaces where now unrealised dreams, fears, insecurities, hopes and memories unfold…
Seen as such, all the presented works, in spite of a great diversity of the used mediums and involved issues, fit into the definition of art as a reality check apparatus. They provoke our understanding of social, political and cultural reality in a way which can challenge our own perception, undermine the stereotypes of objective reality, prompt our creative re-cognition, and gratify us with the experience of difference. Our task is now to combine the presented works with our own experience and creativity in order to piece together a defence against the powerful urge to close our eyes and turn away.
