On The Move
odd: label: DESCRIPTION
content: For a third year, the Folklife Festival invited visitors to consider how immigration and migration both challenge and energize culture. The program explores how we experience migration in our everyday lives. This cross-cultural, interdisciplinary space presents discussions, musical presentations, and live interviews by media hosts with local cultural producers, Armenian and Catalan participants, and international artists from related Smithsonian initiatives. Through discussion and performance, they explore how the movement of individuals, families, and even entire communities affects our identities, culture, and everyday lives.

In the discussions, a multitude of questions were touched upon, questions about the meaning of "home" and "belonging", about where we are when we are "away from home". What do we take with us when we move from one location to another? How many diverse cultures are represented in the clothes, food, languages of our daily lives? What is the meaning of "transnational"? What is the role of creativity in making place and community on shifting ground? 

The program addresses how new and changing traditions reflect increasingly diverse communities. By talking about these questions with those who have had to answer them, insight is gained into the complex cultural and social context in which immigration and migration occurs. The concurrent Armenia program featured Cultures of Survival: From Displacement to Resilience, a series which highlighted ways in which individuals surviving genocide or violent conflicts have drawn on their heritage to thrive in new communities.

Partnering with the Smithsonian is the American Anthropological Association's (AAA) initiative World on the Move: 100,000 Years of Human Migration, which strives to promote balanced and nuanced scholarship about migration and displacement. With programs built on multiple platforms, AAA engages the public and policy makers in discussions that incorporate historical and critical understandings of human movements, their causes, and the impact they have on communities and individuals.

PRODUCTION

Curators: Amalia Cordova, Sojin Kim

Project Intern: Ali Smith

Co-Presenter: American Anthropological Association, Ed Liebow, Leslie Walker, Adam Gamwell

PARTICIPANTS

Sounding Memory: Music & Migration Betto Arcos, moderator 

 Arto Tunçboyaciyan 

 Salva Gallego 

Making Meaning: The Economic and Healing Power of Craft Adam Gamwell, moderator 

 Emma Backe, moderator 

 Maral Sheuhmelian-Berberian 

 Houri Iyjian 

 Ayda Sandourian 

Migrating Traditions: from Europe to the Americas Adam Gamwell, moderator 

 Emma Backe, moderator 

 Maral Sheuhmelian-Berberian 

 Houri Iyjian 

 Ayda Sandourian 

Giving Voice: Language and Cultural Survival Mary Linn, moderator 

 Ayda Sandourian 

 Levon Avdoyan 

 Alejandro Santiago González (Maya Ixil) 

 Mercedes M. Say Chaclan (Maya K'iche') 

Sounding Memory: Music & Migration Kumera Genet 

 Arto Tunçboyaciyan 

Taste of Home: Food Enterprises  Andy Shallal, moderator 

 Antranik Kilislian 

 Noobtsaa Philip Vang 

 Liana Aghajanian 

Musical Journeys: Catalonia and West Bengal Daniel Sheehy, moderator 

 Juan Batista Serviole 

 Girish Khyapa 

 Rabi Mondal (Rabi Das Baul) 

 Arpan Thakur Chakraborty 

 Manas Acharya 

 Embodied Traditions, Transforming Communities  Mariano Barolomeu, moderator 

 Catalan tradition of Human Towers 

 Mestre Bomba (Capoeira Barro Vermelho) 

 Soul & Ink Live Silk Screening  Frankie Meneses 

 Sherry Meneses 

 Shani Shih 

 Ameena Fareeda
setName: label: See more items in
content: Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2018 Smithsonian Folklife Festival
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
identifier: label: Identifier
content: CFCH.SFF.2018, Series 4
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials