ThisPlace – Stories of displaced people in Chernihiv, Diyarbakır, and Porto
11.2021 - 11.2022

In November 2021, Porto Hub integrated the already defined articulation between Diyarbakır II (Turkey) and Chernihiv (Ukraine), in the project ThisPlace - Stories of displaced people, with the proposal of continue the colonial and afro-descendant heritage theme in the city of Porto, already developed in phase 1 of the project, this time with a focus on the Riobom neighborhood. In February 2022, this initial proposal needed to be altered from the moment that Russia's war against Ukraine began, and our Ukrainian colleagues found themselves in a situation of displacement.

At first, the INSTITUTO team proposed to provide support with our human and technical resources, on video and images edition and organization that the Ukrainian team had already collected about the conflict. While the other members of the Porto Hub, would continue the project about Porto.

INSTITUTO’s members, Lara Ferreira (from april to november 2022) and João Costa (from april to august 2022) accompanied the development of the Chernihiv Hub work, dialoguing directly with Olena Rosstalna of the Youth Drama Theatre AmaTea.

Participation in the definition of the general idea of a series of 4 short videos about Chernihiv, storytelling, elaboration of texts, frames and images used in the videos, and suggestions on the drafts of the videos throughout their editing, those were the direct contributions of the INSTITUTO in the Chernihiv Hub’s collaboration.

ThisPlace project was presented on November 19, at Rampa’s gallery in Porto. The 3 Hubs, presented videos as well as 3 photo series on the theme developed by each Hub. The Chernihiv Hub presented a series of 4 videos, about 4 different places of the city affected by the war, and their relation with the displacement of its residents.

The project was developed within the scope of VAHA, an initiative of Anadolu Kültür and MitOst, funded by Stiftung Mercator and the European Cultural Foundation. VAHA (meaning “oasis” in Turkish) was a two-year programme made with and for the empowered voices of independent arts and culture spaces, advocating for public discussion and dialogue in cities across Turkey, Europe, and their neighbouring countries. VAHA partner consortium is in a collaboration with the iac Berlin to implement a series of thematic workshops and network meetings.