Making Places Inbetween (Melanie Garland)

The global border regimes threaten to escalate, and state-controlled refugee camps dominate the discourse while contrary viewpoints seem to be missing. Focusing on autonomous settlements in France, Italy, and Chile, Melanie Garland follows how communities on the move transform so-called non-places into social places through practices of inbetweenness, resisting border regimes and creating sites of belonging and political imagination. Attuned to the oceans connecting these places, her study draws on artistic and multimodal anthropology to develop a holistic approach that combines sensory and affective methods to explore these urban practices. It offers insights for social sciences, the arts, and readers interested in urban future-making shaped by collective agency.

Melanie Garland (Dr.) is an artist, heritage restorer, researcher and lecturer. She earned a PhD from the Institute of European Ethnology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for her multimodal project »Somewhere Inbetween«. Her research topics are postmigrant societies, postcolonial and urban studies, and decolonial practices through artistic-ethnographic methods. She is working at the intersection of art and anthropology through collaborative installation, sound art, and performative and curatorial processes grounded in feminist ethics of care.