Screening:
WESTERN UNION: Small Boats

SALT Beyoğlu, Walk-in Cinema

Isaac Julien, 2007
Without dialogue, 18’
November 17 (All day looped)

WESTERN UNION: Small Boats (2007) concerns journeys made across the seas of the Mediterranean. The journeys and stories of so-called “clandestines” who leave Libya, escaping wars and famines. They can be seen as economic migrant workers, along with certain Europeans – Angels in Walter Benjamin’s terms – who bear witness to modernity’s failed hopes and dreams, and who now travel across oceanic spaces some never to arrive or return.

Expanding the themes of voyages, excursions and expeditions, WESTERN UNION: Small Boats is being produced at a time when advances in global telecommunications and new technologies are continually celebrated. One of the major questions arising from this development is the part individuals may play in this flow of information. Questions surrounding the circulation of human lives, the movements of bodies, and their personal stories, are timely when immigration policies generate controversy on a daily basis, and the relationships between nations are the source of much debate.


Europe (to the power of) n is a transnational project of the Excellence Initiative of the Goethe-Institut. It is a collaboration of the Goethe-Institut in Munich and the Regional Goethe-Institutes in Central and East Europe, South-East Europe, North-West and South-West Europe and East Europe/Central Asia, in Belgrade, Brussels, İstanbul, Warsaw, London, Minsk, Vilnius, Oslo, Beijing and Madrid with institutions in and outside the European Union. Europe (to the power of) n is coordinated by Sabine Hentzsch, Goethe-Institut in London. Artistic Director is Barbara Steiner.

The external partners are: Co-Organisers: Curating Contemporary Art Programme / Royal College of Art, London; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden / Oslo; Associated Partners: Contemporary Art Study Centre / European Humanities University, Vilnius; Novaja Europa Magazine, Minsk; Galerie Y, Minsk; SALT, Istanbul; Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, Novi Sad; Sint-Lukasgalerie, Brussels; Taipei Contemporary Art Centre, Taipei; Vitamin Creative Space, Beijing / Guangzhou; San Telmo Museoa, Office for European Capital of Culture 2016, both Donostia-San Sebastián

Curated by Esra Sarigedik Öktem
Coordinated by Lara Fresko

In collaboration with SALT



With the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union