Horniman Project: A Tale of Displacement
Updated: Jan 23, 2020
Our installation is a hand-built tent, made of wooden branches and spare fabrics. The dimensions are 1.80m x 1.40m x 1.20m. It represents the environmental migration through a child’s perspective. The invitation to enter is a wooden sign with a child’s handwriting. We aim to recreate a child refugee’s tent, which will contain a sleeping bag, some damaged toys, clothing and camping lights.
There will be a pair of headphones that play a sound piece of a child’s voice imitating sounds of natural disasters. Erkan Özgen’s interview with a mute and deaf child is our inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDYhYdgNsSs&feature=youtu.be
The sound will sync with a projection from above the tent displaying moving images of the natural catastrophes [see MP4 for moving image sample].
The perfect location for this piece is the Oceania square in the Human History room.
We are speculating on a future where climate migrants are multiplying quickly. Humans are losing their power against natural catastrophes. The Horniman Museum originated from someone’s travels through the world; in the future that we envision people travel for survival reasons due to the natural catastrophes destroying their homes. The Oceania square is the most appropriate for our installation, as we are speculating on the future of humanity and some Oceanian islands in the Pacific are now threatened to disappear.
We aim to make the audience acknowledge the alienation that climate migrants feel and to experience it themselves by inviting them into someone else’s space, which might feel like an unusual and uncomfortable living condition. What should be intimate and safe, like a child's hand-built tent, is now public domain and placed in a museum. The tent should be experienced alone (it only fits one person). The experience is multi-sensory; the visitor will hear, see and touch. There will be a poster in the tent with facts about current and future environmental migration and the purpose of our project.
We are borrowing the fictional Monster called Cthulhu from H.E. Lovecraft’s writing as a metaphor for the inevitable destruction of humanity. We have taken quotes from The Call of Cthulhu to make the sign using a child’s tone, and the monster´s presence can also be found in the sound piece.
Our work blends the present, the possible future and a surreal, fictional scenario of the power of nature.
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