The Train Track and the Basket: Interpreting transmigration within a site-responsive practice
By
Claire Barber
2019
This is a commissioned piece of writing titled The Train Track and the Basket: Interpreting transmigration within a site-responsive practice for the first of ‘Anchovy’ issue of The Critical Fish, an artist led project which promotes critical but accessible research led writing. The commissioners were Lauren Saunders and Jill Howitt and the project was supported by Arts Council England and Hull City Council. The article is accessible from https://issuu.com/thecriticalfish/docs/fish_-_v3_issuu
The full citation is: Barber, C. (2019). The Train Track and the Basket: Interpreting transmigration within a site-responsive practice. In The Critical Fish: Beneath the surface of art and visual culture, 1 (1), pp. 44-49. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/thecriticalfish/docs/fish_-_v3_issuu
Abstract: In this article I will be looking at the two objects conjoined in my title; whereby multiple photographs taken while walking systematically along train tracks are combined with the tools and skills of basket-making to become fibres in the story of transmigration. I will also observe a small collection of actual baskets once used by mainland European migrants on their journey to the US, exploring the nature of the engagement with these artefacts through the glass of a display case at Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, New York, US. I will conclude by returning to Hull, to discuss the artwork The Train Track and the Basket.
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