Contemporary witnesses: Ibraimo Alberto, Richardo Bacallao, Teresa Casanueva

This workshop foregrounds the liberatory aesthetics of storytelling by leveraging visual storytelling practices such as graphic novels, comic books, and poster art among others. Critical thinking is thereby facilitated by situating individual and collective experiences in their particular socio-cultural contexts by means of intermedial connections. In his analysis of comics and graphic novels, Adam Turl references seminal graphic novels that focus on the working class and socio-historical events, and posits that graphic novels are ‘an avenue of expression that often allied itself with the liberation struggles of the time’ (Adam Turl, ‘A Worker Reads Graphic Novels’, Red Wedge, January 2020). Through raising awareness, they create an alternative language capable of retelling the history and memory of a working class scarred by exile and migration. In this process of rethinking the past, they generate transformative memories, and narratives of resistance and liberation.

The workshop in Berlin is mentored by visual storyteller Hamed Eshrat and moderated by Thu Hoài Trần. It brings together former contract workers or foreign students who spent time in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), themselves artistic practitioners, so that they can engage with younger generations. Their narratives explore histories and archival material to unearth forgotten stories. The workshop welcomes participants with a strong interest in the topic and a desire to create artistic work who would like to listen to the narratives of these contemporary witnesses and translate them into collective visual narrative formats such as graphic novels, artworks, or posters.

With contributions from:

Hamed Eshrat, Thu Hoài Trần, Teresa Casanueva, Ricardo Bacallao, Ibraimo Alberto