It is the gaze that determines whether and how we see migration. It is the perspective of the nation that makes the people who cross the border into the others: Strangers who must be explored and understood, repelled and controlled, used and integrated. Whether with empathic attention, economic pragmatism or racist exclusion: the nation needs the others to put itself at the centre. This is how the narrative of the majority and its minorities comes about.
The “Project Migration”, initiated by the Federal Cultural Foundation, stands for the attempt to reverse this view and make migration visible as a central force for social change.
The Kölnischer Kunstverein is the sponsor of the project. Project partners are DOMiT, Documentation Centre and Museum on Migration in Germany e.V. for the perspective of social history, the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Frankfurt/Main and the Institute for Theory of Design and Art (ics, HGK Zurich) for the perspective of science.
