Islands of Time is a long-term research trajectory that explores the relationships between the formulation of intangible feelings of belonging and the construction of geographical identity. The project attempts to transcend linear conceptions of time and instead approach issues such as memory and movement by considering past, present, and future as deeply entangled within a global geopolitical context. It examines collective memory and the archive as a representational construction with a view to weaving new historical textures. To do this, the project draws upon diasporic archives to develop a series of multidisciplinary visual/cinematic experimentations. It seeks to provide a vehicle for observing tangible and intangible migratory processes, mappings, and traces in relationship to borders and colonization, together with the economic and political forces that have imposed precarious labor conditions and attenuated other histories.

Under the support of the Miller-Zillmer foundation of Berlin, the research includes on-site field research phases into different locations, which are all situated in geographical borders, borders of migration and/or political displacements:

Location 01 – El Boujdour Refugee camp (MA/WS), Western Sahara territories – November 2019. In collaboration with Escuela de Formación Audiovisual Abidin Kaid Salehand and the Resistance Sahara Documentary by Sidal Ergüder – Zero state productions Ltd.

Location 02 – Genoa (IT) – February/March 2021. In collaboration with: Associazione Culturale MIXTA, Divago Biennial Festival, Palazzo Ducale fondazione per la Cultura and Comitato Amici di Via del Campo.

Location 03 – Aeolian Islands (IT) – April/May 2021. In collaboration with Associazione Culturale Amanei, Salina(IT).

Location 04 – Buenos Aires (AR) / Argentina – October/December 2021. In collaboration with Curator Renata Zas, Pablo Caligaris / La Ira De Dios, AOS Residency and MUNTREF – Museo de la Inmigración Buenos Aires.

Location 05 – Ventimiglia (IT) / Mentone (FR) – February/March 2022

Location 06 – Viseu Dão Lafões/ Portugal(PT) – October 2022. In collaboration with Binaural – Associação Cultural de Nodar (PT).

A central part of the research involves the utilization and manipulation of both found migratory archives and living archives. This process encapsulates a spectrum of different artistic approaches to existing archives, systematic archives, unclassified archives, new archives, incomplete archives, hidden archives, and personal or third-party archives. Given the role of ethnographic practice in the creation of archives, and by extension the way in which a state controls narratives relating to diasporic cultural identity, memory, and experience. This research, which offers as a tangible representation of the idea of a border within the context of understandings of culture in motion, investigates the formation processes of different “confined” geographical areas, and in doing so, generate speculative hypotheses regarding the construction of memory and creation of myths. This process involves visual experimentation divided into acts of existence, in turn aiming to create an analogy for the action of remembering and mapping movements. During the project’s unfolding, moving images serves as a tool with which to generate awareness of the real through the imagined. It is therefore a journey to investigate the interplay of feelings of belonging and not belonging—all as part of an attempt to emphasize the inherent weightlessness and instability of any memory or un-recollection. The final outcome will seek to identify a movement towards temporality—as if a specific location, memory or thought could serve us as a metaphor for existence itself.

Islands of Time is part of the 2020/22 Global Exhibition Program / Project Anywhere, an exhibition model for art at the outermost limits of location-specificity. Project Anywhere works as a vehicle for illuminating artistic research and projects that take place outside traditional exhibition circuits. At the cessation of Project Anywhere’s annual global exhibition program, all hosted projects will be presented at Anywhere and Elsewhere’s biennial conference at Parsons Fine Art in New York City. More infos: http://www.projectanywhere.net/islands-of-time/

More infos: https://islandsoftime.miller-zillmer.foundation/

Video exctract: https://vimeo.com/604690818/787e34eadf