The Politics of Migration and Mobility in the Art World: Transnational Baltic Artistic Practices across Europe

By Emma Duester

While Eastern European migration is predominantly seen as one-way, permanent, for economic reasons and as going bilaterally from East to West Europe, this book investigates alternative patterns of migration and mobility across Europe.

This original new book explores how visual artists take part in regular cross-border mobilities, onward migrations and transnational communications across Europe for work and the effects of this on their feelings of home and belonging. It assesses how far there is a culture of mobility amongst visual artists from the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, for whom a combination of onward migration and regular cross-border mobilities is a necessity for career progression. This is due to the ‘glass ceiling’ in the Baltic States with regard to a lack of local art markets, few dealers buying art and governments not providing enough funding.

How then do artists from the Baltic States get onto the global art market in the face of such barriers? This is a particularly important question, as these artists come from a region where migration, mobilities and cross-cultural exchanges were not freely available during the Soviet Union. This transdisciplinary investigation into visual artists’ working practices, ways of moving and placing dwellings addresses this issue.

Mobile working practices have an impact on artists’ feelings of home and belonging, which can be seen in their artworks that compare different cultures. This is a result of their particular combination of onward migration and regular mobilities, the multiple flows in and out of the home cities and the workings of the global art market within which these artists are operating. Nevertheless, these movements are determined by the forces of the global art world, whereby a particular politics of migration and mobility is experienced by artists from the Baltic States wanting to ‘make it’ in the global art world.

With its focus on Baltic artists and their mobilities, the scope and space explored is the whole of Europe and the mobilities explored in this text are crucially enabled by the freedom of movement in the European Union. 

The book is multidisciplinary and at the intersection of art, geographic mobility and creative practice. It combines visual cultures and social sciences in order to answer questions more thoroughly as well as to contextualise an analysis of artworks in a conversation with the artists themselves.

This topic is current, with the situation of the ‘refugee crisis’ and Brexit that has created a culture of anti-immigration and resurgence in anti-Eastern European sentiment in government, mainstream media and society.

The book discusses the implications of these complex itineraries on the conventional sociological notions of home, mobility and diaspora. The author argues that artists form a ‘diaspora of practice’ rather than of ethnicity, their homes are multiple as are the directions of their settlement.

Primary appeal will be to artists and art professionals; scholars working and researching on mobilities and migration issues; those working on the concepts of belonging and home; sociologists; anthropologists; those in the fields of cultural studies and European Union studies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Jan 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781789383423

Emma Duester

Dr Emma Duester is associate professor at the USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. Previously, Emma has been a lecturer in the School of Communication and Design at RMIT University (Vietnam). Emma was principal investigator of a funded research project entitled ‘Digitization of art and culture in Vietnam’, carried out from January 2020 until June 2023. Emma is part of a DFAT grant project entitled ‘Investing in women’ across Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. Emma has worked with government and national media to lobby for cultural development in Vietnam. She is the author of The Politics of Migration and Mobility in the Art World: Transnational Baltic Artistic Practices Across Europe, published by Intellect in 2021. She is the author of Digitization and Culture in Vietnam, published by Routledge in 2023. Emma received a Ph.D. in media and communications from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2017, after undertaking an ESRC-funded doctoral research project on transnational artistic practices across Europe. Her areas of research interest include digital culture, creative industries, transnational communication, migration and mobilities. Contact: USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, A7-A8 Building, 155 Tanjiatang Road, Minhang District, Shanghai, 200241 People’s Republic of China.

Book preview

The Politics of Migration and

Mobility in the Art World

Eva Vevere, Poetic Robotism, 2009. Interactive installation at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, in Riga. Light and dark blue movable boxes.

The Politics of Migration

and Mobility in

the Art World

Transnational Baltic Artistic

Practices across Europe

Emma Duester

First published in the UK in 2021 by

Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2021 by

Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,

Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas

Copy editor: Newgen

Production managers: Emma Berrill and Sophia Munyengeterwa

Typesetting: Newgen

Cover image: Denial, mixed media, Laura Põld, 2020

Print ISBN 978-1-78938-340-9

ePDF ISBN 978-1-78938-341-6

ePub ISBN 978-1-78938-342-3

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This is a peer-reviewed publication.

Contents

List of Figures

Introduction

1.Researching the Baltic States and Its Mobile Professionals: Context and Methodology

2.Cross-Cultural Exchange and Cultural Transition in the Baltic Art Worlds

3.The Nature of Artists’ Work: Getting onto the Global Art Market

4.Artists’ Homescapes and ‘Homing Aesthetics’

Conclusion

Appendices

Appendix A: Interviewing Artists and Culture Professionals

Appendix B: Artists’ Biographies, Contact Details and Consent

References

Index

Figures

1. Kostas Bogdanas, Identification: The Father and the Son, 2000.

2. Ieva Epnere, Mikrorajons, 2007.

3. Ieva Epnere, The Green Land, 2010.

4. Eglė Budvytytė, Choreography for the Running Male , Vilnius, 2012.

5. Eglė Budvytytė, Choreography for the Running Male, Sydney , 2014.

6. Krišs Salmanis, North by Northeast , 2013.

7. Laura Põld, A Study of Homes , 2012.

8. Laura Põld, Unörte , 2013.

9. Laura Põld, Himmelblau , 2013.

10. Eva Vevere, Poetic Robotism, 2009.

11. Vineta Kaulaca, Pātrinājums II (‘Acceleration II’), 2010.

12. Vineta Kaulaca, Go with the Light, 2011.

Introduction

Transnational Artistic Practices of Migration and Mobility

This book explores how visual artists take part in regular cross-border mobilities, onward migrations and transnational communications across Europe for work and the effects of this on their feelings of home and belonging. It assesses how far there is a ‘culture of mobility’ amongst artists from the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, for whom a combination of onward migration and regular cross-border mobilities is a necessity for career progression. This is due to the ‘glass ceiling’ in the Baltic States with regard to a lack of local art markets, few dealers buying art and governments not providing enough funding. In addition, Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius art scenes have had relatively little time to develop as independent capitalist art scenes, in comparison to established art scenes such as Paris or Vienna, as they had to be rebuilt during the 1990s due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This means there is an unanswered question on how visual artists from the Baltic States get onto the global art market amidst these barriers. This is important as these artists come from a region where migration, mobilities and cross-cultural exchanges were not freely available in the Soviet Union and where permanent migrations were prevalent until European Union (EU) accession in 2004. Investigation is required in the Baltic region, in particular, in order to understand how the transition of these art scenes is happening as a direct result of the increasing mobilities of people, communications, artworks and skills in and out of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. A transdisciplinary investigation is required into artists’ differing practices, ways of moving and placing dwellings, as well as cultural comparisons, in artworks as a result of their particular type of combination of onward migration and regular mobilities, the multiple flows in and out of the home cities and the workings of the global art market within which these artists are operating.

The removal of borders across Europe has facilitated an intensification of travel across European nations. The existence of the European Union and the Schengen Zone means that there are no physical borders, checkpoints or document checks for European Union citizens. As the European Commission (2014: 1) states, ‘[o]‌ne of the fundamental objectives of the European Union is to create an area without internal borders where people may move, live and work freely, knowing that their rights are fully respected and their security ensured’. However, the juxtaposition of European Union member states with economic, political or cultural disparities creates new reasons for travel and a politics of mobility where there is pressure to go to certain places and where flows are centred in some places, yet bypass other places. While Thompson (2013) argues that travel within the EU has to do with economic disparities, this book argues that visual artists’ mobilities and migration patterns also have to do with the power relations of the global art market. Even though artists are often seen as a ‘highly skilled’ privileged elite (Burton 2007; Marche 2015) who can migrate and move across European borders with ease, there are elements of control and restriction. This is what I call compulsory mobility associated with the geoeconomics involved in precarious labour. There are specific economic, career-related, networking-related rationales behind the direction and duration of artists’ mobilities and settlements. There is also pressure to be highly mobile, to be international and to follow the global art market that is itself mobile, multisited and has a particular global circuit of flows.

As a result, the global art market determines the location of art centres vis-à-vis art peripheries and the direction of flows of money, people and artwork. This book will show how mobilities, both material and digital, become a necessity due to pressures of the global art market. Certain places (i.e cities across Europe) are more desirable and some artists will overcome financial or language barriers in order to make a place their home if, for instance, they know it will be beneficial to their career. This relates to how the broader system of the global art market affects individuals’ lifeworlds, to paraphrase Marcus (1995), in terms of how and where artists move and make homes as well as how they subsequently feel about movement and home. This adds to migration and home literatures (Blunt and Dowling 2006; Boccagni 2017), by showing that there is often a politics and geoeconomics behind artists’ placement of homes across Europe.

Visual artists must move across Europe ‘in tune’ with the economic and cultural flows of the global art market as well as the circuits of art fairs, biennales and shows that are part of the art world. Becker (1982: x) describes the art world as ‘the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that [the] art world is noted for’. Thornton (2014) argues it as a loose network of overlapping subcultures held together by a belief in art. They span the globe but cluster in art capitals like New York, London, Los Angeles and Berlin. However, the art market denotes the arena of buyers and sellers of artworks, including dealers, auctioneers and auction houses. It is a marketplace and encompasses the economy. Unlike other marketplaces where value and/or price of goods depends on supply and demand, the art market includes additional factors such as perceived cultural value, past value and potential future value. In this book, I will discuss both the art world as well as the art market across Europe. In contrast, I will discuss the opportunities and restrictions of the Baltic art scenes that are becoming more international and professional as well as the fledgling art markets being developed in the Baltic States, taking place through the work of returnees who harness their transnational networks, which have been developed while abroad.

Visual artists’ mobilities across Europe have changed dramatically since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the EU-27 accession in 2004, which included Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Artists from these states have travelled not only west but also east, south and north across Europe. Furthermore, artists have not only travelled outwards, as other European citizens have, but also migrated to the Baltic region in order to carry out their artistic practices. This shows Eastern Europe has by no means been only sending countries. German and Polish artists were living in Lithuania during the First World War and just afterwards (Rėklaitis 1957). This is also happening today; I argue that it is important to shed light on flows going into these states, contrary to their ‘image’ and reputation as only so-called ‘outmigration countries’ (Galgóczi and Leschke 2009; OECD 2013; Sakkeus 1994). There have been reciprocal flows of artists, art and culture professionals across the European Union since its inception in 1993. The freedom of movement and the right to work in any EU member state makes Europe a conducive space for transnational practices.

The ability for European citizens to exercise their right to free movement and work in any member state influences the nature of transnational practices, whereby there is a ‘culture of mobility’ in which regular movement across European borders can become a way of life for a whole group of people. Short-term, regular mobilities are evermore prevalent across Europe (European Migration Network 2011), and this demonstrates the changing nature of how people are moving and working.¹ Furthermore, many artists use a combination of mobilities – of their person, of their artwork and of their communications. One of the reasons for this is the prevalence of temporary work contracts across Europe that has reduced the amount of permanent migration (EMCC 2014; Haug and Diehl 2004) while increasing the need for other sorts of movements, such as onward migrations and regular mobilities. This is reflected in how Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian governments and European funding are also increasingly providing short-term grants which incentivize artists not only to travel and ‘move on’ regularly throughout their career but also to return to their homelands regularly rather than to permanently migrate.²

Due to the freedom of movement and (largely) unrestricted border controls across Europe and the Schengen Area, human cross-border mobilities can be ‘a life-long process’ rather than ‘a single event’ (Castles 2000: 15–16). Even if these artists return to their homeland, this is not a ‘backwards’ movement as they use transnational networks to move regularly and connect digitally across Europe. These types of movements that many artists take part in over the course of their careers are distinct from shuttle, circular or permanent migration patterns (Kahanec and Zimmerman 2009; King 2002; Martiniello and Rath 2010). Instead, artists’ movements include onward migrations, relocations and resettlement alongside continual mobilities to shows, exhibitions or meetings, which result in the formation of transnational homes.

However, visual artists have had transnational practices and have travelled across borders for work throughout history.³ The fact that artists migrate and travel regularly for work is not a new phenomenon. However, it is important to look at this now because transnational artistic practices are different today in three respects. The first distinction is the changes in Europe with increased protectionist, anti-immigration policies that are at odds with transnational practices. The second distinction is the extent to which mobilities and migrations are facilitated and orchestrated through digital transnational networks, which enable connections to continue during and after travel so that artists can be ‘present’ simultaneously across multiple locations and maintain multiple homes. The third distinction is the increasing barriers for artists from Eastern European nations who are often misrepresented as post-Soviet artists or as unskilled economic migrants who are longing to ‘go home’.

Creative European Mobilities and Migrations

This book goes against news media that discusses Eastern European migrants in a negative light in order to highlight alternative types of movements, such as regular mobilities and onward migrations, which flow out of and into Eastern Europe as well as criss-cross Europe. These types of fluid movements can, instead, be considered as creative mobilities and migrations. These reciprocal flows can be positive for home and host countries as well as Europe more broadly. The aim here is to provide a counterargument to news stories on unskilled migrants moving from Eastern to Western Europe due to economic disparities between member states. Such examples in the British press include The Guardian’s headline: ‘New wave of east Europeans’ (Travis 2015), as well as the increasing amount of anti-immigration news media across Western Europe, with Eastern European nationals framed as unwanted and jeopardizing culture or economics in host countries. Other examples of news stories on Eastern European nationals published in the United Kingdom include: ‘New wave of migrants from Africa, Asia and east Europe exploiting the Syrian crisis’ (Gutteridge 2016) and ‘69,000 more East Europeans working in the UK than in 2014’ (Drury 2015). These news stories have fuelled anti-immigration sentiment in the United Kingdom, which also escalated as a result of the European migration crisis.

This is a time when governments and mainstream media are creating narratives that suggest ‘migrants’ should ‘go home’. Such narratives have triggered claims of racism present in the British media, in government discourse and amongst the general public:

[P]‌oliticians and the media made us hate immigrants [...] 31% of headlines and 53% of text about asylum across all newspapers has negative connotations. Language used to describe immigration is highly hostile across all newspaper types, with ‘illegal’ and ‘bogus’ the most commonly used terms to describe immigrants and asylum seekers.

(Nagarajan 2013)

Particular words and language have been used in the British media in order to frame these migrants in a certain way, which has impacted public opinion. This framing of migrants in the media has only been exacerbated by government drives to send migrants home, as with the British Home Office’s Operation Vaken and the controversial vans that traversed the United Kingdom with the slogan ‘In the UK Illegally? Go Home or Face Arrest’, dubbed as the ‘go home vans’, asking illegal migrants to willingly ‘go home’ or face arrest in the United Kingdom (Home Office 2013).

This anti-immigration sentiment has impacted on the reactions to Eastern European nationals living across Europe and has impacted their feelings of belonging. This book goes against the ‘go home’ narratives circulated by the British press, which understands the meaning of home as being associated with an ancestral homeland, as this conception of home is associated with homeland and is essentialized in this way. Making a new home for those fleeing war is vastly different to mobile skilled professionals, such as artists from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, who are, relatively speaking, privileged, as they are able to ‘go home’. However, this does not mean that these artists can easily move without facing different types of struggles, barriers and restrictions. On the contrary, many artists from Eastern Europe face language and economic barriers as well as issues of misrepresentation in other European cities, which can prevent them from feeling at home. This means there is a culture of mobility that is specific to artists from Eastern Europe – due to the specific histories and current situations in home countries as well as how these Eastern European nationals are received in host countries. Moreover, the history and current geopolitics of Baltic States are germane to how artists work today.

This book counters these deep-seated stereotypes by relating to the wider inquiry of the changing nature of contemporary European migration. This includes the breaking down of and the more recent erecting of borders across Europe as well as increasing anti-immigration rhetoric that affects Eastern European nationals’ experiences in host countries. In order to counter this, the book charts artists’ mobilities out of the Baltic States, across Europe and back into the Baltic States in order to highlight the positive impacts of skilled mobile professionals on multiple ‘host’ and ‘home’ countries. These transnational artist diasporas present myriad ways of travelling and dwelling, whereby each artist has different kinds, speeds, directions, rhythms and amounts of roots and routes. The particular characteristics, reasons for and effects of artists’ movements from the Baltic States require investigation.

I argue that these artists’ transnational practices across Europe have an effect on their physical placing of homes, their feelings of home as well as their physical homelands in terms of the transformation of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius art scenes. I argue that regular mobilities means artists have to make several homes, both immediately and throughout their career. This often means their understanding of home becomes more mobile and something that is spatial – attached to several places as well as people and practice. This will help to show the notion of home is not only fixed, while the notion of mobility is not only about being uprooted. Even after multiple cross-border mobilities, these individuals still have ‘homing desires’ that are not only necessarily to their homeland. These types of regular mobilities can heighten understandings on what the notion of home means, and these transnational positions are often negotiated in creative ways in their artwork. I wish to explore these issues with one main question: how do transnational art practices have effects on artists’ placing of and feelings of home?

Moving Beyond the Binaries of Migration Literature

This section considers some of the arguments presented in the literature on East–West migration across Europe (Dietz 2002; Kussbach 1992; Manfrass 1992). This is important to redress the work on unskilled economic migrants from Eastern Europe, as existing research (Dietz 2002; Kalter 2011; Kussbach 1992; Manfrass 1992) predominantly conceives migration as one-way, final and portrays Eastern Europe as only sending countries. One alternative example that breaks with this archetype of East–West migration research is Baganha and Fonseca’s (2004: 7) study on migration from Eastern to Southern Europe, which they conceived at the time to be a ‘new migration flow’. However, this is approached from the bilateral perspective of there being one sending and one receiving country. Furthermore, contrary to theory on the so-called sending countries of Eastern Europe (Hunter 2012; Robila 2009; Ziemer and Roberts 2013) that focuses on East–West migration (Passerini et al. 2010; Shulvass 1971; White 2010), I uncover multidirectional, ongoing movements of skilled professionals from Eastern Europe, whereby movements help to increase the flows of people, artwork and communications out of Eastern Europe, across Europe and back into Eastern Europe.

As well as seeing migration as one-way and binary, this set of migration literature (Dietz 2002; King 2001) discusses migration between countries, territories or regions, for example, the migration patterns between Turkey and Germany (Ceasar 2013; Klasen 2015). These examples focus on the nation state and the idea of crossing the border between these two countries. However, this overlooks more fluid movements that cross between subnational entities such as cities, which is especially the case across the European Union for those with the right to free movement. For example, one can move from Vilnius to Oslo or from Berlin to Vienna to Ljubljana, returning to some or all of these regularly or living in one and making trips to the other cities, all without requiring a passport or work permit. Furthermore, there is a great deal of research on Eastern Europe, arguing that the region includes only sending countries (Praszałowicz cited in Ziemer and Roberts 2013; Romocea cited in Ziemer and Roberts 2013). An example of this is Mandel’s (2008) work on the Turkish diaspora in Germany or Burrel’s ([2009] 2016) work on Polish migration to the United Kingdom. However, this means reciprocal flows that go into Eastern Europe are overlooked. Yet, this is important because west-to-east flows show how there are widespread reciprocal flows to and from many European nation states and, more importantly, into Eastern Europe which is transforming the places into hubs of connections.

While there are some examples that look at the mobilities and transnational migration of Eastern European nationals that portray more fluid conception of mobilities, nevertheless, the literature often views Eastern Europe as inclusive of only sending countries. However, there are some exceptions. Morokvasic (2003: 101) looks at gender and mobility from post-Soviet states, arguing that there has been a lot of shuttle migration since 1989 compared to only traditional labour migration before this. As Morokvasic (2003: 102) argues,

mobility plays a part in the strategies of these migrants. Rather than trying to migrate and settle in the target country, they tend to settle within mobility, staying mobile as long as they can in order to improve the quality of life at home […] Migration thus becomes their lifestyle, their leaving home and going away, paradoxically, a strategy of staying at home and, thus, and alternative to emigration.

While Cresswell (2010: 17) explores a ‘politics of mobility’, which has to do with the ‘rhythm, route, speed’ of how people move, this book looks at how political–cultural geography plays a part in determining artistic geographies in everyday life and throughout artists’ careers. This is important because there needs to be more analysis on the reasons and motives behind these types of mobilities and how these mobile lifestyles can produce multiple meanings of the notion of home and can often produce contradictions and tensions in understandings of the meaning of home. This connection constitutes a renewed ‘mobilities paradigm’ outlined by Hannam, Sheller and Urry (2006) that has not adequately addressed the power relations behind these types of movements. This is what I call a ‘culture of mobility’, which is also about the hidden power relations behind the factors of geography and economics and how these have effects on the motives, experiences, speeds, rhythms and routes of people with mobile lifestyles.

More broadly, Iglicka (2000) is key to these debates by making a distinction between shuttle migrants (who stay for less than three months), short-term migrants (who stay more than three months but less than one year) and long-term migrants (who stay for more than one year). Alongside this, there has also been research conducted into transmigrants and the transnational circuits they create (Odem and Lacy 2009; Rouse [1991] 1996; Basch, Schiller and Blanc 1994; Thieme 2008) that link them to their homeland as well as host country, which shows they are not uprooted.

Also, Martiniello and Rath (2010: 126) argue that

since 1989 there has been a sharp rise in cross-border shuttle migration across the eastern frontier of the EU; this has tended to replace the mass East-West migrations originally feared by the West as soon as the Iron Curtain was dismantled. Although some instances of cross-border shuttle migration are long standing (e.g. of Slovenians in Trieste), others rose with dynamic new rhythms during the 1990s, for instance the migration of Poles to Germany.

I argue these new rhythms rose after the 1990s for Baltic artists, who could have a transnational practice because it was politically and legally possible to criss-cross Europe. Since the EU accession of the Baltic States in 2004, though, this has increased because movements are much cheaper and no visa or work permit is required.

While there is a set of literature on the push and pull factors created by the demands or shortages of labour markets and associated economic migrants (Kahanec and Zimmerman 2009; King 2002), there are alternative types of movement, of which this book is an exemplary example, which should be foregrounded in order to reconsider the binaries of a set of literature on push/pull economic migration from East to West Europe. Artists’ movements can be explored to show this, as they are not as linear and are more multidirectional in comparison to the ways in which migration is theorized in this particular set of literature. Literature on other types of movement, such as shuttle, circular and return, can be used to redress the binaries in this set of migration literature. As King (2002) argues,

seasonal and shuttle migration of a to-and-fro kind (weekly, monthly, occasional) must also fit into the continuum, blurring the distinction between migration and other forms of spatial mobility which, although they may not be regarded as ‘conventional’ migration, nevertheless carry similar sorts of motivation (for instance, economic) and intentionality.

While this deals with labour mobility where movements are based on economic push/pull factors, it is useful here in order to highlight the need for work that combines migration and mobility literature, and the need for research that can overcome the disconnections between the two distinct sets of ideas, theories and concepts. This is important because many skilled mobile professionals, such as artists, use a combination of migration and mobilities throughout