(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Nitin Sawhney

1. Can you shortly present yourself and what you do.
I’m a research affiliate with the Visual Arts Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also founder of Voices Beyond Walls, a participatory youth media initiative.

2. How would you describe the role a young artist today?
I’m interested in marginalized youth and their struggle for creative expression despite the challenges they face growing up in difficult circumstances – socio-economic and political. Youth in marginalized communities and conditions of conflict have a great deal to tell us about their lives and often their stories and artistic expressions are very powerful, if given an opportunity to be expressed. This has been the focus of our work with Voices Beyond Walls, engaging marginalized Palestinian youth in refugee camps in the West Bank. The narratives, photography and video shorts they’ve produced in our workshops are both remarkable and surprising for their poetic visions, humor and deep emotions conveyed. Hence, these “young artists” serve an important role in highlighting the trauma, conditions, and also cultural identity and joy of living within their own communities and for audiences everywhere.

3. How do see now and how do you imagine cultural collaborations in the Mediterranean in the future?
I believe youth across these marginalized regions, particularly in the Middle East, can gain a good deal by sharing their visions (narratives, photo, films) with youth in the Mediterranean – they share many cultural similarities and in some cases also similar challenges of violence, disenfranchisement and aspirations within their lives. I can imagine joint workshops conducted across regions whereby youth not only present their work to one another in online/physical festivals, but also share ongoing work during synchronous workshops via virtual links, and in the future collaborate on joint projects by visiting each others communities. A regular exchange and learning program to promote youth media across the Mediterranean and the Middle East would be a wonderful outcome, to bridge the cultural and political divides that seem to exist today.

4. Do you think online tools are a good model to start art exchanges in the Mediterranean?
Indeed online tools present an opportunity to initiate exchange, however they are not in themselves sufficient to develop deeper bonds and meaningful collaborations. I believe there is no substitute for face-to-face interactions among youth to develop initial relationships and working projects, which can then be sustained better online with some regular meetings during the year. So while I believe there is great room for innovation in online tools and platforms that specifically cater to youth media exchange, they must be complemented by actual meetings, workshops and festivals where youth can build trusting and lasting relationships with each other.

5. Would you like to give any recommendations to the Emyan network or the activities we are organizing?
I think Emyan is off to a great start and I hope you will continue to focus on youth media, but also begin to address youth in marginalized communities both in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In addition to your online activities, I urge you to consider developing programs that engage youth in more direct ways.