Janine

Reflections: Home and “Hart Boven Haat”

If there is one thing to take away from the whole research seminar experience, it was the recreation of ‘home’—something quite unthinkable given the situation that a) Europe can be daunting for a first-timer, and b) you can barely find ‘home’ or ‘comfort’ in something so tedious as an academic pursuit. But home was in the process of bringing together like-minded people, sharing the same common research interests and being with actors that value ‘family’ not only as a concept but as a lived experience, as a way of navigating through the challenges of being displaced and finding a sense of belonging in a society that can be cruel to the unfamiliar, to what is different. That was me—I was as different as the migrants we encountered. And that is what the research seminar did: we found commonality in our differences.

The recreation of home did not mean bringing back the sun and the palm trees, or the way you can take siestas while snacking on dried mangoes in the late afternoons. Those are utopian dreams, scenes of home which some of the migrant artists we interviewed nostalgically reinterpreted in their artworks. Home meant getting into trains together, having coffee with the artists and staff of Globe Aroma, coming to a sea of protesters campaigning against the violent police raids during the #OneAlarmManyVoices. Home was getting stickers from the protest that say: “Hart Boven Haat”, and with a bit of Google translate arriving at what for me is the essence of art in dissent—heart above hatred. Home was realizing that peacefully responding to a violent situation can be made possible through music, poetry, reading of diary excerpts, solidarity messages and free food that perfectly encapsulates the essence of Globe Aroma—a family that is safe and inclusive and that will stand firm during these trying times. Home was being with the right people at the right place at the right time… plus the free food.

As an artist, I had qualms on theorizing something so abstract and elusive as the artistic experience, let alone expect the actors to articulate or ponder on their work and the way they see the world. Because if one would ask me what I do or how I do it, I’d just say: “I don’t know. Art just comes to me like divine inspiration.” But within the context of the migration crisis, of displacement, of marginalization, of violence, of the Canal Plan and of creation, the artists and the staff of Globe Aroma had so much to say beyond their works the strongly echoes themes of ‘family’ and ‘resilience’. Even during the protests, the messages from the Globe Aroma community were not solely directed at the powers-that-be, but at the victims and the would-be victims who are in fear of being marginalized, criminalized, deported and stripped of their dignity. The message was clear: it’s time the migrants fight, and it’s comforting to know they have each other’s back while at it.

For the brief time we immersed in Globe Aroma, I realized what “hart boven haat” meant. Hatred can be countered by instrumentalizing something as affective as art because art does the trick in bring the heart into it. Music, poetry, paintings and other forms of art create its own transgressions, but not in the similar way as dehumanizing physical violence. We can theorize art and its agency through Gell’s notion that art is the index of the creator’s agency, or through Benjamin’s claim that the authenticity of art and its democratization allows for it to be political. But being in Globe Aroma was a testimony to the agency of art rooted in the affect—we are moved because what was created is something that makes us feel. The message cuts across because we can relate to it on a very fundamental level and it speaks certain truths about the society we currently live in. And that is how art serves its function, by possessing what Adorno would refer to as the ‘truth content’ that challenges the given situation by reflecting it, while being grounded on truths that carry the weight of the matter. It can be in forms of music, poetry, painting or an excerpt from a diary of one of the detained artists, but as long as art moves us, art can be an impetus for even bigger social movements.

And because art is one of the main themes of our research, we were made to feel things in the process of unpacking it and in the process of trying to understand it from the point of view of the artists we were involved with. If you ask me what the research seminar made me feel, I have a few words to simplify the complexity of it all:

It made me feel at home during the brief moment we were all working on it as a family.

PS.

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank the Research Seminar Family: Bas, Cindy, Jen, Karen, Sebastian, Trevor and our dedicated tutor Rowena :)