Crossings

What is home? What gives me the feeling of belonging to a place? Who decides if I belong to a place I’ve chosen, but where I wasn’t born? How does migration affect the sense of integrity and relationships with others? What makes a group of people define themselves as a community, even if they come from radically different backgrounds?

In the framework of the Holland festival, Christiane Jatahy presented in 2024 for the first time her Crossings, an itinerant documentary live installation in public space, focusing on questions of home and identity in specific neighborhoods. In Amsterdam she presented crossings in two public parks of two very different locations – Zuid-Oost and Noord – areas that have gone through profound demographic changements in recent history, through migration or gentrification. Both the protagonists and the audience of Crossings are in the first place the inhabitants of these neighborhoods.

The setup is very simple: a small set with a couple of chairs, two cameras and microphones, where Christiane converses with people from the community, a preselected group that represents its diversity and contradictions – local characters, artists, bar owners, journalists, activists… some deeply rooted in their neighborhood, others newcomers.
These conversations are being edited in real time and transmitted live to a projection screen in front of an audience.

By adding their own questions to the conversation, In turn, audience members become participants as well; and the real time live installation of Crossings becomes an open space to talk, listen, and connect, where people share their life experiences, stories, languages, and origins to establish a common ground. 

Crossings

Installation/performance in situ

Creation dramaturgy and performance Christiane Jatahy

Artistic collaboration Thomas Walgrave

Photography and camera Paulo Camacho

Video conception Julio Pariente

Production and collaboration Henrique Mariano