Ainslee Alem Robson

What does it mean for ‘home’ to be constructed immaterially via fragments of culture and oral history distorted by the filters of time and migration? Can a diasporic identity tied to nostalgia that is at times real and at times fabricated out of necessity ever be ‘real’? Memory can be a site of resistance as well as reclamation, its canvas a space of potential, a tool for counter-imagining the present and reconstructing reality to liberate oneself from the burden of otherness.
Ferenj is an experimental form of emancipatory thinking, reclaiming Robson’s Ethiopian–American mixed-race identity, and redefining boundaries between fragmented memories and the digital imaginary. Using crowdsourced videos, processing them with photogrammetry, results in irregular fragments with missing pieces. The technology’s inability to portray reflective surfaces reflects Robson’s own experience of simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility stemming from her multilayered identity. Ferenj’s fragments form a curated collection of reconstructed memories portrayed as digital artefacts spanning impossible geographies.

Technical collaborators
Installation production: Kidus Hailesilassie (Fabrication); Siddharth Hosamath (Fabrication Assistant); Amarech Chiko, Fitsum Wubeshet (Netela Fabric Sourcing)
Photogrammetry production: Sofonias Solomon, Nahom T. Haile, Senait Shiferaw Robson, Wilbur Kosart, Anwar Kedir, Kidus Hailesilassie, Carl A. Robson (Crowdsourced visual & sound archive); Alexey Marfin, Tobias Heinemann, Memo Akten, Kidus Hailesilassie (VR graphics development)
Team
Installation Design: Kidus Hailesilassie, Ainslee Alem Robson
Film production: Ainslee Alem Robson (Director), Domo Jones (Cinematography), Sarah Ibrahim (Sound Designer), Mildred ‘Miv’ Robson (Super8 Reel)
Photogrammetry production: Ainslee Alem Robson (Artwork and Graphics)
Cast: Tewabech Belachew, Melkamayehu Belachew, Betelhem Shiferaw
With special thanks to
Senait Shiferaw Robson, Carl Robson, Liam Young, Empress Taytu Ethiopian Restaurant
With the additional support of
African Futures Institute