Irene de Craen, editor-in-chief and founding director of Errant Journal will be introducing the journal and speaking about its freshly published 4th issue “States of Statelessness”. She will be joined by Michał P. Garapich who contributed to the current issue with “Of ‘gypsies and skinheads’ – why we need Roma more than ever“ (co-written with Elżbieta Mirga-Wójtowicz).
Errant Journal is a cultural/political publication loosely inspired by Édouard Glissant´s notion of the Poetics of Relation in which he opposes ideas of centers, linearity, roots and dichotomy. Errant, meaning both ‘deviating from an accepted norm’ and ‘wandering’, represents a way of breaking free from the idea of identity based on origin and the possibility to possess a totality of knowledge. By being a ´journal´ we mimic the academic standard, while our content aims to stretch the limits of how knowledge is ´officially´ and ´correctly´ produced. Although our background is in art, we do not see art as a special or separate category of human knowledge and production but rather as one of many options to consider our worlds. Our journal therefore plays on the phonetic of an errant journey: a kind of wandering that is neither aimless nor directed at a clear goal or on a well-defined path.
Errant Journal’s latest issue tackles the imaginary nature of the nation state, and looks into alternative forms of solidarity, community and belonging that are disconnected from or even antagonistic to this form of governance and in which a migrant or otherwise marginalized position can be seen as one of power and resistance.
“States of Statelessness” delves into the diverse manners in which people respond to their precarious relations to nation and nationality in practical, poetic and community-based ways. But more than that, this issue is a celebration of the ways in which people are able to stand their ground, to exist in fluidity, and a commemoration of those before us that have shown that other ‘states’ are possible.
Irene de Craen is an art historian who works with text as a writer and editor. She is the founding director and editor-in-chief of Errant Journal. Between 2014 and 2018 De Craen was the artistic director of Hotel Maria Kapel, an artist-in-residence, exhibition space and cinema for contemporary visual art in Hoorn, and in 2011 and 2012 she was co-organizer and curator at FATFORM, an interdisciplinary and experimental art platform in the Southeast of Amsterdam. As researcher and board member, De Craen was part of Platform BK (Platform for Visual Arts) between 2013 and 2019, which helped establish the guideline for artists’ fees in the Netherlands in 2017.
Michał P. Garapich is an anthropologist, Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton and Research Fellow at the Centre for Migration Research, University of Warsaw. He is the author of over fifty publications in English, Polish, French and German and an award-winning monograph using intimate ethnography. Michał specializes in the issues of migration from Poland, transnationalism, heritage, post-memory, far-right radicalisation, resistance, homelessness, nationalism, politics of diasporic engagement, Polish Roma, and intimate ethnography. He has carried out fieldwork in Britain, Poland and Peru.
Errant Journal is a concept by Irene de Craen, realized in collaboration with Framer Framed, an Amsterdam-based platform for contemporary art, visual culture, and critical theory & practice. Errant is published twice a year, supported by a programme of public events and podcasts.
Lecture and Talk
in English and as hybrid event
Join us on Zoom here