Presenting Green light – An artistic workshop in the Exhibition Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale together with Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary has provoked many reactions. Some have been positive, others sceptical, and some clearly negative. There have been a lot of questions in the workshop space itself and beyond it, many of which are addressed and considered in depth in a series of essays in the Green light book recently published by TBA21 and Sternberg. Are people who came as refugees from very different countries being objectified when they take part in a transnational workshop at the heart of the biennale? Can the visitors participate actively, rather than remain outside, gazing at the participants from a distance? What is clear to me is that the reactions to Green light inevitably become a part of the project’s social fabric.

The project explicitly invites the general public to join the participating asylum seekers in the workshop, in building lamps and in taking part in the shared learning project – it trusts the point of contact, encourages interaction and collaborative work. Being in the Green light space and actively negotiating one’s role as a spectator or participant is a part of the project, whether one comes from a refugee background or not. I think, however, that not everyone saw that invitation, especially during the opening days of the exhibition.
Bringing Green light to the biennale means working within an exhibition platform that offers great visibility. It has been important to me throughout to actively use this visibility to bring the issues of migration and forced migration not just to those who are already interested in them (preaching to the choir, so to speak), but to everyone passing through the Exhibition Pavilion, since these are topics in the current political landscape that should not be ignored. It is also a means of giving the Green light participants a platform from which they can speak about their concerns.

Above and beyond what Green light communicates to the outside is the role it has in producing an engaged community. Integral to this is the Shared learning platform, an alternative educational programme organised by TBA21, which offers language classes, job training, psychological counselling and legal advice, as well as workshops, interventions, and seminars.
Green light – An artistic workshop presents no solution. It offers no easy ‘fix it all’ strategy. It is a modest attempt at addressing the issues surrounding forced migration and displacement through collaboration, community building, and individual engagement.

"We were making Green lights. And while we made Green lights we talked. I asked them to tell stories about the last cup of tea they had before leaving home. (…) The circle of stories began with halting incomprehension, and ended with a sudden flash of understanding. The borders, the border guards, the endless humiliation of the production of papers and narratives, the violence of waiting—all of these can be suspended in a moment of laughter, or in a random act of generous sharing.

And this is what we learned, again: freedom is like a little green light in a very dark room, that allows you to see yourself, that allows you to see other people and allows you to see the way to the door."

Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Raqs Media Collective, ‘The Light That Says Walk´, from Green light – An artistic workshop, Sternberg, 2017'