April 2020 Volume: 17, No: 2, pp. 249 – 256 ISSN: 1741-8984 e-ISSN: 1741-8992 www.migrationletters.com Copyright @ 2020 MIGRATION LETTERS Transnational Press London First Submitted: 14 May 2019 Accepted: 23 December 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.33182/ml.v17i2.895 Vulnerable Spaces of Coproduction: Confronting Predefined Categories through Arts Interventions Marit Aure 1 , Anniken Førde 2 , and Rebekka Brox Liabø 3 Abstract Collaboration between researchers and artists is often held as particularly promising to enhance cross- cultural understanding. In this article, two researchers and an artist reflect on the potentials, as well as the pitfalls, of art-based interventions in integration of migrants. Through the performing arts youth project Here I Am, we discuss coproduction methodologies. We emphasize the discomfort in confronting the stereotypes inherent in our perspectives and categories. Exploring how various encounters among the researchers, artist, and participants in the performing arts project challenge the prevailing perspectives, we argue that art interventions have the potential to bring knowledge production beyond predefined categories and explanations. This requires moving beyond our comfort zones and entering vulnerable spaces of improvisation, where new understanding and “grammars” can be coproduced. This article shows how the reflections of such spaces alter the research project and the aims of the art intervention, including our understanding of integration. Keywords: arts interventions; coproduction; discomfort; encounters; youth integration. In the first meeting with the migrant youths in Here I am (Hær e æ), I find that I am unable to reset myself and leave them to be who they want and become what they want. I forget to try. I don’t see youths engaged in fashion, music, friends, family, drawing, film and dance. I forget to see those who enjoy talking loud about their whereabouts, who are insecure, happy, hyper or calm. I see them coming—crawling directly from the TV news, from a boat crossing the Mediterranean: It is 2015 and Europe is facing the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War. 300,000 people travel the deadly route across the Mediterranean to Europe. I am an artist working in Tromsø, and I want to engage with the youths who have crossed the Mediterranean and arrived in Tromsø. The youths carry stories; they carry all the pain. I have been so sad reading about and watching the crisis on TV. Meeting the youths, I become even sadder. It also feels good, good to be embraced, allowed to contribute, and comfort. I want to make theater based on their stories. But this is not what the youths want. I ask a boy to tell me, I ask, and I ask. He wonders where he might get a job. He doesn’t return to Here I am. I have to try again. How can I meet the youths on their own terms? Rebekka Brox Liabø, artist and partner in Cit-egration 1 Marit Aure, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway. Email: marit.aure@uit.no. 2 Anniken Førde, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway. Email: Anniken.forde@uit.no. 3 Rebekka Brox Liabø, Snakk for deg sjøl AS, [Talk for yourself Ltd.] Norway. Email: rebekka@snakkfordegsjol.no.