you
you
you
you
you
you
My name is Fidel Willowsmith. I'm a photographer filmmaker from
Johannesburg, South Africa. I live in Cape Town and
I'm in Barcelona doing a residency at GWAS because about a year ago I
Applied for a residency award through the Africa Center, which is an organization in South Africa that gives us
12 awards to African artists on a yearly basis for them to attend a residency
for me making neighborhood is the idea of
making
Making a sense of home for yourself making a sense of community
making a sense of belonging
one of the people that I worked with Tumor a
Camerunian man who's lived in Europe for 20 years talks about it quite succinctly in the film by saying that
It what does it mean if I have 3,000 friends on Facebook, but I can't even greet my neighbor
So for me, it's that idea of human physical
Interaction and communication. So my name is Thomas Strickland, and I'm from Montreal, Canada and
I am here. I
Was invited here to work on a project by Giroir
creation in society and
they have proposed a project called making neighborhood and
In general the project sort of looks at ways of making
The people and the neighborhood itself visible as a kind of art practice. So my project is
considering the ways in which people from the LGPB community
People who've migrated here to Barcelona because the countries they come from do not accept their sexual orientation
Or their gender identity. So they have come here to sort of seek safety and protection from Spain
And I'm looking at the ways in which they integrate with the city. The city supports them and
So the experiences they have while they're here one of the important aspects of my project that I'm really interested in is
The the legal status of citizen is such a limited definition of what citizenship is
It's the bare minimum. It's it doesn't talk. It doesn't address the people who are
Citizens it doesn't address the kinds of citizens they are and for me it doesn't address how
Citizenship is performed in the city every day
I
Was quite surprised at how easy it was
For me to work with people that people were so willing to participate because
From South Africa you think African migrants in Europe. They they invisible they us
They prejudiced against they die on the boats. There's horrific things happen
You don't ever hear of the stories of how people are just living like tumor has loads of Spanish friends and plays music with them and
Mamadou, you know, they just have ordinary lives. They're just here a lot of people are migrants here
So that was really nice
Because it kind of confirmed what I was hoping to find
for me one of the important parts of this project is I don't just want to come and sort of
Meet the people and just
sort of create a project that represents or presents to everybody what's happening for them right to kind of just reveal their
There the sort of struggles they're facing
Through it through the process of immigrating because a lot of them, for example, don't have residency status and
And are in the process of hoping to get it
so
For me that the art project has to I want to be sort of
Learn about their lives learn about them
It has to be meaningful for them as much as myself as well as the people who will come to look at the exhibition when it's up
Yena
Very
It's amazing to be able to produce
You know a series of portraits that you're really happy with to get
Photographs back from people that really tell a story to have a film that you're very happy with in the space of about three weeks
You know, it's full-on every day. It's all the time and I think that was that pressure
Makes you produce at a heightened level and that's what's been so great about the residency because everyone's doing
Their own projects related to this theme. We're constantly talking about it
We're constantly bouncing ideas off each other
Maria has been absolutely incredible with providing us with contacts and support
So it's just been full
Okay, so I'm gonna say I'm
Exhausted and very happy
What what it means to them
You
You
