Uncertain States migration-audio-archiv.de – Facets of Migration

The migration-audio-archiv is a collection of migration stories and narratives of the history of migration. This is the best form of oral history – history to listen to. The steadily growing archive preserves stories of migration and the histories of migrants and makes them publicly available.

The narrators recount the various reasons and motives, economic, political and personal, for their migration – or their flight. What notion of Germany did the early narrators have, those women and men in the “Gastarbeiter” generation from 1955? What were their first impressions, where did the children go to school, what were their jobs, where did they live and go shopping, and what kind of contact did they have to the German population …? How did the younger generation experience migration and flight, either their own or that of their parents?

In the “Denkraum” of Uncertain States, the migration-audio-archiv is presenting, as part of the exhibition, an interactive compendium of narratives dealing with the chances and free spaces allowing and preventing migration, of new challenges and challenges always remaining the same.

The migration-audio-archiv initiators are Justus Herrmann, Cologne, designer, radio author and producer of radio features and sound art works, as well as Sefa Inci Suvak, Cologne, journalist and cultural editor for the WDR radio broadcaster.