The Role of the Creative Industries: Translating Identities on Stages and Visuals

Abstract

Drawing on research on narrative theory (Baker, 2006, 2014) in translation and interpretation studies, on the interdisciplinary relationship between translation studies and the visual and performing arts, and on the principal diversities between media discourse representations and aesthetic constructions on the topic of the migration crisis, this study addresses the issue of transferring cultural difference and language diversity within public and digital spaces through the telling and visualization of authentic stories belonging to migrant people, which contribute to the reversal of anti-refugee media discourses. Against the lens of a political reframing of migrant communities in the arts, translation, in collaboration with the aesthetics of migration, is scrutinised from a non-mainstream perspective that involves acts of interventionism and resistance, collaboration and solidarity, adaptation and performance. Evidence is given by the scrutiny of a corpus composed of visual and performing arts, which includes Queens of Syria, Odisseo Arriving Alone, Project#RefugeeCameras and Porto M.