Lecture Maria Bassermann ? Tahrib

Guided tour at 5pm
Lecture (in English) at 6pm

In context of the exhibition Mario Garcia Torres – An Arrival Tale Maria Bassermann shares the findings of her research on issues of migration within a lecture held at TBA21-Augarten’s KIOSK. The lecture will be accompanied by a guided tour through the exhibition starting at 5 pm. Both the lecture and the tour will be free of admission.

‘Illegalised travellers’ from the Horn of Africa usually become visible to the European public when entering the territory of the European Union. For the most part, their experiences ‘en-route’ remain unknown. But what are the mobile and immobile externalities shaping the journey north from the Horn of Africa towards the ‘better life’? What are the risks and how do those affected by these movements assess them in connection to their journeys? During an eleven months research project in Uganda and Germany culminating in her masteral theses, social anthropologist Maria Bassermann investigated the perils and hopes connected to a journey her Somali respondents came to call ‘Tahrib’ – a “shortcut through hell’. At the same time ‘Tahrib’ was described as an act of becoming mobile and navigating thereby through dangerous pastures in order to be able to create a better future. Unfolding upon complex networks of actors, institutions, intentionalites and biographies, the act of becoming-mobile functions to improve the living situation and to take again a more active role in one’s own life.