Rita Ferreira – Coral

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What is stored in the archive and what is exhibited in museums and collections determines what is part of our cultural memory. With their focus, their way of making things visible, archives and collections always have the power to interpret what we make our cultural identity. With her work Coral, Rita Ferreira is creating an alternative archive of the experiences of migrants in Berlin. Eleven migrants told Ferreira their stories and experiences in Germany, each in their native language. The uncut audio recordings can be listened to in the Fresh A.I.R. scholarship exhibition. They are archived under the first names of the speakers.

Another part of the work is an alternative cartography of Berlin, a cartography that visually depicts the experiences and adventures of migrants in the city. Ferreira notes the dates and districts of her encounters on a map with eleven panels that is available for all exhibition visitors to take away. An abstract shape is drawn underneath each panel with a black marker. This shape represents the places chosen by the storytellers as meeting points. The shape also reflects how Ferreira perceived the urban space they explored together. Despite their abstraction, the lines reveal an alternative cartography when viewed together. The geographical space, which is often depicted with the paradigm of neutrality, is thus expanded to include a psychological and social dimension. On the back of each individual urban space mapping, Ferreira describes her encounters, memories and feelings while exploring the city together with these people.

A recurring theme during the walks is language: what it is like to express feelings and thoughts in one’s mother tongue and what the peculiarities and challenges are of living in a city where the language is sometimes incomprehensible, where some words and feelings cannot be expressed. Ferreira gives the partakers the freedom to talk about their experiences in Berlin in the language they prefer. They are therefore not subject to any regulations that they have to comply with for the recording. It becomes clear how Ferreira creates space and trust in the personal encounter. Both enable these “strangers“ to open up and tell their stories. The recordings are conveyed with the help of a system of signs that is as personal as it is abstract, allowing the urban space to be imagined as a space of encounter and exchange. In this way, the graphic designer creates both an alternative archive to stories of migration and an alternative cartography of the city. The artist realises her time in „Bülowstraße – Zietenstraße“ with the same visual means. On one canvas, Ferreira depicts an oval shape with a small loop pointing inwards. The quote from R. Murray Schafer „The eye points outward; the ear draws inward“ on the canvas once again emphasises the two essential aspects that Ferreira brings together in her alternative archive and her alternative cartography of Berlin. By merging both archives, Ferreira is able to convey migration and make it tangible.

Text: Dr. Silke Förschler

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Rita Ferreira

Rita Ferreira is a designer and a publisher from Portugal. Her work is focused on an editorial practice, from content editing to graphical conception. Amid her editorial work, she serves as the editor of an independent newspaper documenting her neighbourhood in Porto, “O Bomfim”, by sharing stories and portraying the people she encounters in her daily life. Ferreira is also an activist for SOS Racismo, a Portuguese NGO dedicated to combating racism, and is involved in curating films for the MICAR (In-ternational Anti-Racist Cinema Festival).

Instagram: @lindo_navio

Portfolio: http://gigante.com.pt