To Be Here - Film

To Be Here - (film 2016) is a single film work that grew out of a project focusing on the long-term displacement of Sahrawi refugees living in camps in the Sahara desert region of Algeria (one of the longest refugee crisis to date). The first iteration of this project, focused on the interior spaces of the camp, staged as an immersive multi-channel video and sound work. This was commissioned by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, USA, and presented in April - November 2016.Further work was commissioned by the museum, with support from the Michigan State University's (MSU) Visiting Artist fund, to create additional short films featuring the exterior of the camps, this in collaboration with writer, Ben Rawlence (City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp, 2016), supported by the US national One Book, One Community initiative. These works were sited in numerous locations beyond the museum's walls -within the MSU campus and beyond - as outreach to the broader community. On completion of the To Be Here exhibition both interior and exterior works were combined to create a new, single channel version of the film that subsequently toured throughout Europe as part of Después del Futuro/After the Future, ARTIfariti, Western Sahara, returning to the camps at the end of 2016. In 2018 it screened at the Biennial of Moving Image, Buenos Aires in 2018 and won the AHRC's Research in Film Award.