Learning is a constantly evolving process at People Beyond Borders. Our amazing South-Asian representatives from the German team, Prerna (India), Shakila (Bangladesh), and Ahmad (Afghanistan) were invited to attend and learn from a highly intriguing research project, Residenzpflicht, at one of Berlin’s community-run refugee camps.

This project utilised a varied range of artistic viewpoints to temporarily open up a self-contained refugee shelter to modern art methods and advances, allowing artists and refugees to build interactions grounded in everyday life. It permitted on-the-spot interactions of diverse cultural ideas and perspectives, which were then disseminated.

As part of their RESIDENCE DUTY (Residenzpflicht) initiative, the artist collective msk7 has been offering ten scholarships to artists for one-month work stays in Berlin lodging for refugees since 2019. The scholarship recipients are housed in a mobile residential studio that is centrally located in each of the ten nearly identical refugee accommodations. The programme sees itself as an artistic intervention designed to promote the exchange of culturally diverse ideas on the spot. The project explores the semantic ties between the concept of an artist in residence and the German term RESIDENZPFLICHT, which refers to mandatory residence in a certain location in the context of asylum legislation. This two-fold play on words picks up on the special nature of flight and the need to be in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people, shining a light on these experiences as entailing both losing and gaining freedom and security.

In this context, RESIDENZPFLICHT is envisaged as an artistic intervention. In places that highlight societal shifts, open procedures are established and co-designed, with the project acting as moderator.

If you would like to know more about Residenzpflicht, click here.