by Tim Shaunnessey

Contributing Writer

The London-based art organization motiroti, whose mission is to overcome immigration conflict through the arts, made its Chicago debut at Columbia Nov. 15 in a series of workshops and activities titled “Potluck: Chicago.” Potluck’s focus was on promoting collaboration and diversity in the arts world, and the programs served to introduce motiroti to the Columbia community. The group is this year’s artist-in-residence for Critical Encounters, whose theme is “Rights, Radicals and Revolutions,” which aims to explore ways that art and media can directly affect individuals, collectives and institutions.

Motiroti is an art organization that focuses on issues inherent in diversity, as well as tensions stemming from immigration and migration. It employs a number of technological methods and art forms to address those issues, as well as foster an online community via its website and blogs, according to founding members Ali Zaidi, artistic director, and Tim Jones,

executive director.

“We work with artists, neighboring communities and the public to help communities experiencing migration in a broader sense tell their stories in the ways that they want to, to give

them voice,” Jones said. “We put participation at the heart of what we do.”

Motiroti’s first workshop on Nov. 15 acted as a type of “skills assessment” for the group to determine their respective artistic strengths and the direction collaborative work might take.

The group also conducted a series of workshops involving community activist projects already based in Chicago, including the Hull House, En Las Tablas and a branch of the Rebuild Foundation called the Dorchester Project.

“They are the divides we [in Chicago] experience—east to west, north to south— and they model the segregation that also mars our city,” said Amy Mooney, associate professor of art history and Critical Encounters Fellow.

Such tensions are the type of issues that motiroti looks to address through its work. The group’s event on Nov. 16 saw Zaidi and Jones offering an overview of its practice to the audience, as well as reinterpreting the classic concept of the “Stone Soup.”

The “Stone Soup” is a notion derived from a parable that involves a group of starving villagers who transcend their differences by concocting a soup from the different ingredients that the culturally varied individuals offer. The potluck event recreated the story by asking each participant to contribute an ingredient.

“Ali’s artistic practice has a significant strand of work [regarding] food and migration identity,” Jones said. “It’s using food as currency for exchange of understandings around migration and cultural similarities, cultural difference, notions of authenticity, and how different cultures and ethnicities present themselves. [There is] also the fact that food is something that everybody likes.”

La Keisha Leek, junior art and design major,  attended the event and was part of a group of 15 Columbia students and alumni interacting with motiroti throughout

the week.

“The dialogue was really amazing,” Leek said “Everyone was jumping in when they wanted to, challenging each other’s ideas.”

She noted the difference between the group dynamic in the context of the workshop as opposed to the occasionally binary dynamic of a classroom setting.

Motiroti will be returning to Chicago and Columbia during the spring 2012 semester for the second portion of the project.

“The core group of people who are working on this with us have a huge interest in doing something toward leaving a mark in the city in a very different way,” Zaidi said. “It’s about seeing how can we work in a collaborative way, where we give voice to others and do something constructive with it.”