Welcome to the inaugural session of the online space of Migratory Times, “Translating Geographies of Displacement.” This session, co-organized by Dalida María Benfield and Annie Isabel Fukushima, addresses questions of voice, nation, migration, race, gender, gentrification and property. The session also frames a constellation of events that inaugurated Migratory Times in December 2016 and January 2017. These include Geographies of Displacement, a panel discussion at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery organized by at land’s edge; Translating Geographies of Displacement, a workshop organized by Jane Jin Kaisen and Dalida María Benfield at Sörte Firkant, Copenhagen; For More Than One Voice, a performance by Jane Jin Kaisen and Stina Hasse Jørgensen, also at Sörte Firkant, Copenhagen; and Displacing Geographies, an online salon held in January 2017 with the collective @criticaldias (Diasporas Críticas). This session also features writings and artworks by Alanna Lockward and Patricia Kaersenhout, Tara Daly, Choralyne Dumesnil, Annie Fukushima, and Rolando Vázquez. Each of these works elicit a further interrogation of the terms of transnational mobilities and immobilities in relation to gender, race, class, property, and nation.

Migratory Times was launched in 2016 as a series of pedagogical and artistic interventions addressing situations of global migrations and displacements. The initial organizing team of Migratory Times was Damali Abrams, Dalida María Benfield, Michelle Dizon, Annie Isabel Fukushima, Jane Jin Kaisen, and tammy ko Robinson. Collaborating artists and researchers (2016-2018) included: Clara Balaguer, Kiri Dalena, @criticaldias (Diasporas Críticas), Renan Laru-An, Guston Sondin Kung, Pedro Pablo Gomez Moreno, and Camilo Ontiveros, and events occurred in New York, Detroit, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles, U.S.A.; Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Jeju and Seoul, S. Korea; Mindanao and Manila, Phillipines; and Bogotá, Colombia. Documentation of the previous Migratory Times series of interventions will be published here on an ongoing basis, along with newly commissioned works and archives of related essays and artworks.

Submissions of writings and artworks related to gender, race, geopolitics, and global migration are welcome on an ongoing basis, and should be addressed to the editorial collective at instituteofimpossiblesubjects@gmail.com. The editorial collective will respond to submissions, if accepted for future publication, within 30 days.

We dedicate this first session to our compañera Alanna Lockward (1961-2019), whose spirit sustains us.