All events will be held in English. The events will take place online! Registration: info@weltmuseumwien.at
Adela Jušić in conversation with Marina Grzinić Friday, February 19, 2021, 04:30 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rom, Stockholm, Wien
Adela Jušić was born on 1982 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Jušić has exhibited in more than 100 international exhibitions (Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain; Videonale, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Image Counter Image, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, Balkan Insight, Pompidou Center, Paris). In 2010 she won Young Visual Artist Award for the best young Bosnian artist in 2010, Henkel Young Artist Price Central and Eastern Europe in 2011, and Special award of Belgrade October Salon in 2013.
Martin Krenn in conversation with Marina Grzinić Tuesday, March 16, 2021, 07:00 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rom, Stockholm, Wien
Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe in conversation with Marina Grzinić Tuesday, March 30, 2021, 07:00 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rom, Stockholm, Wien
Adela Jušić and Marina Grzinić , zoom 19.2.2021
Adela Jušić and Marina Grzinić, zoom 19.2.2021
Adela Jušić, Marina Grzinić and Sophie Uitz, zoom 19.2.2021
Marina GRŽINIĆ: Racialized violence in Europe: The Genealogy of Amnesia Project and the immobilization of refugees? In: PERERA, Suvendrini (ed.), PUGLIESE, Joseph (ed.). Mapping deathscapes : digital geographies of racial and border violence. London; New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. 148-162, ilustr. Routledge research in digital humanities. ISBN 978-1-032-05657-9. DOI: 10.4324/9781003200611-15.
Book Description
This volume offers a critical and creative analysis of the
innovations of Deathscapes, a transnational digital humanities project
that maps the sites and distributions of custodial deaths in locations
such as police cells, prisons and immigration detention centres.
An international team of authors take a multidisciplinary approach to
questions of race, geographies of state violence and countermaps of
resistance across North America, Australia and Europe. The book
establishes rich lines of dialogic connection between digital and other
media by incorporating both traditional scholarly resources and digital
archives, databases and social media. Chapters offer a comprehensive
mapping of the key attributes through which racial violence is addressed
and contested through digital media and articulate, in the process, the
distinctive dimensions of the Deathscapes site.
This interdisciplinary volume will be an important resource for
scholars, students and activists working in the areas of Cultural
Studies, Media and Visual Studies, Indigenous Studies, Refugee Studies
and Law.
The art-research project “Genealogy of Amnesia” (FWF-PEEK Project, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) in cooperation with Österreichisches Filmmuseum andkulturen in bewegung, an initiative by VIDC, Vienna, announces a collaborative two days of screenings, lectures, performative lab situations onto the topic of evaluating film and video languages to oppose discrimination, epistemic violence, invisibilized realities, lost memories, and closed archives. The two days lab situations will be going on with filmmakers, curators, students, and the younger generation of film and video artists and Viennese activist communities. New film languages will be discussed through processes of changing established narratives and imperial knowledge.
Nevline Nnaji
Presentation by Nevline Nnaji
Tjasa Kancler
Presentation Tjasa Kancler
Sasa Kesic
Presentation Sasa Kesic
Iklim Dogan
Presentation Iklim Dogan
Mai Ling
Mika Maruyama
Presentation Mai Ling
Presentation Mai Ling
Christoph Kolar
Presentation Christoph Kolar
Marina Grzinic
Marissa Lobo
The first part is a two afternoons Digital LAB/Zoom-presentations by Tjaša Kancler (Barcelona), Saša Kesić (Belgrade), Christoph Kolar (AT), İklim Doğan (Turkey/AT), Mika Maruyama (Japan/AT) and Mai Lin (AT), Marissa Lobo (Brazil/AT) and Nevline Nnaji (USA/Germany).
The second part is a two-night screening program at Österreichisches Filmmuseum with films by Selma Doborac (AT), Nevline Nnaji (USA/Germany), and Morgan Quaintance (UK).
Trailer of the Performative Digital LAB (2020). Talk with Nevline Nnaji at performative film lab on November 12, 2020 on her feature-length documentary Reflections Unheard: Black Women in Civil Rights (US, 2013, 81 min.). Nevline Nnaji is a film director, pole dancer and multi-media artist from Northampton, MA., US.
The collaborative film program presents a coming together of several partners: the Österreichisches Filmmuseum,the project “Smashing Wor(l)ds: Cultural Practices for re/Imagining & un/Learning Vocabularies,” supported by Creative Europe and led by kulturen in bewegung, an initiative by VIDC, and the art-research project “Genealogy of Amnesia” (FWF-PEEK Project AR 439, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna). It will be two days of intensive encounters of inspiring program of experimental, profoundly defiant film practices that oppose injustice, xenophobia, and systematic racist exclusions. (M. Gržinić)
October 12, 2019 Linz Workshop: 25 years anniversary of maiz
WORKSHOP, PART OF 25 YEARS ANNIVERSARY OF MAIZ
Where: Altes Rathaus, Linz
Date: 12.10.2019
Taking part in the discussion: Rodrigo Cesar Benedetti, Chiara Benedetti, Michaela Lehofer, Nadja Meisterhans, Ursula M. Lücke, and Rubia Salgado
WORKSHOP TITLE: Fighting racism, deconstructing white privilege-cultural interventions, artistic projects, political strategies
Marina Gržinić in collaboration with Tjaša Kancler trans*activist, researcher
In the workshop, we depart from the research we did, Tjaša Kancler trans*activists and me, on questions of knowledge resistance and trans*. Therefore in the first part of the workshop, I presented artistic projects that have contributed historically and currently to the production of discourses, activities, politics, labor, education in order to combat racism and structures of power. In the second part of the workshop, we discussed formats of racism, the processes of enduring racialization and modes of empowerment.
Marina Gržinić is a philosopher, theoretician, and artist. Since 2003, she is Professor for Post-Conceptual Art Practices at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. She did a series of collaborative projects with Tjaša Kancler, trans* activist, artist, researcher, and associate professor at the University of Barcelona. Kancler is a co-editor of the journal Desde el margen (www.desde-elmargen.net).
In the time of neoliberal global necrocapitalism we are increasingly confronted with a political and social amnesia that profits without the past, producing more and more processes of de-historicization and de-politicisation. Central to these processes is the logic of (neoliberal) repetition that produces at least two different procedures of (de)historicization. On one side we have the logic of the neoliberal Western world that works as a pure trans-historical machine, and on the other, in the East and in the South of Europe, we detect forced techniques of embracing historicization as totalization. In both cases the result is a suspension of history that works with a primary intention to dispose of any alternative within it! My idea is to provide some examples, and, more, to try to define these processes on a much wider scale in order to see their political, social and cultural consequences.
The presentation is based on the new insights provided by the research project I am in charge of at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, with the title “Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality” (funded through the Programme for Arts-based Research PEEK, by the FWF, Austrian Science Fund, in the period from 2018 to 2020).
Marina Grzinic and Adla Isanovic, Memory and History and the Act of De-Historicisation
June 28, 2018
Three-Day Conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 27-29.6.2018, Ruins, Remains, and Reconstructions
Lecture summary
In the time of neoliberal global necrocapitalism we are increasingly confronted with a political and social amnesia that profits from the forced erasure of the past producing more and more processes of de-historicisation and de-politicisation. Central to these processes is the logic of (neoliberal) repetition that produces at least two different procedures of de-historicisation. On one side we have the logic of the neoliberal Western world that works as a pure trans-historical machine, and on the other, in the regions of the (former) East and in the South of Europe as well as in the zone of “Western Balkan,” we detect forced techniques of embracing historicisation as totalization. In both cases the result is a suspension of history that works with a primary intention to dispose of any alternative within it! The idea of the lecture is therefore to provide at first the conceptualization of the main notions, to what will follow the elaboration of some selected examples. Through the analysis of examples these processes will be defined on a much wider scale in order to see their political, social and cultural consequences.
Therefore, after the first part elaborated by Grzinic, Isanovic will continue with critically reflecting on some concrete examples, such as the events organized to mark the centenary of the First World War in Sarajevo in 2014, in order to elaborate not only on silences about the past (such as the WWI, the 1990s’ war crimes and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.) and the misery of the present, but primarily, to contextualize and repoliticize current practices and forms of knowledge production and of visibility, both in relation to local specificities and global phenomena. This includes also a reflection on tactics of de-historicisation and humanitarianism. Therefore, such “exemplary” acts of remembering / forgetting are approached as a symptom of the effect of the current state of necrocapitalism, its practices of coloniality and racialization. More precisely, the dominant and systematic de-contextualization, de-historicisation and de-politicisation of racism, and cultures of remembrance, are in service of the normalization of death, the ongoing coloniality and growing fascist elements of politics that are at the core of the global neoliberal governmentality today.
The presentation will as well incorporate some new insights provided by the research project at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with the title “Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality” (funded through the Programme for Arts-based Research (PEEK), inside the FWF, Austrian Science Fund, in the period from 2018 to 2020). Grzinic is the leading and Adla Isanovic is the affiliated researcher to this research project.
Marina Grzinic is a philosopher, theoretician and artist from Ljubljana, Slovenia. She serves as a professor and research adviser. Since 2003, she is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. She publishes extensively, lectures worldwide, and is involved in videofilm productions since 1982. Selection of books: M. Grzinic and Rosa Reitsamer, New feminism: worlds of feminism, queer and networking conditions, Vienna: Löcker, 2008; M. Grzinic and Sefik Tatlic, Necropolitics, Racialization, and Global Capitalism. Historicization of Biopolitics and Forensics of Politics, Art, and Life, US: Lexington books, 2014; M. Grzinic, ed. Border Thinking, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Sternberg Press, 2018.http://grzinic-smid.si
Adla Isanović, is an artist and researcher who lives and works in Sarajevo. Currently, she is an associate professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of the University in Sarajevo, where she teaches multimedia. She holds a PhD from the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia (doctoral program Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures) where she finished her doctoral thesis on the theme of databases and art in the function of knowledge production in the digital age. She completed MA in “New Media” and MA in Research-Based Postgraduate Program “Critical, Curatorial, Cybermedia Studies” at the Geneva University of Arts and Design, Switzerland. She did her undergraduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Sarajevo. Her previous engagements include work as a researcher at Mediacentar Sarajevo, as well as being a visiting lecturer at the International University Sarajevo, the Academy of Performing Arts Sarajevo, the School of Arts of the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia and Gray’s School of Art of the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, United Kingdom.
March 11, 2019 – March 26, 2019 Vienna Workshop: on Hannah Arendt’s political thinking
Workshop with Ruth Kager and the students of the Art Studio for Post-conceptual Art Practices (PCAP) and the students in general of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, at AkBild, Vienna.
Hannah Arendt’s political thought centers around a political space that draws on common action. Starting from this insight, each session of the workshop is dedicated to one of Arendt’s basic notions: the public realm, the societal and the private, action, power and judging. Building on these notions, the workshop investigates the constraints and potentialities of politics as thought by Arendt.
The contents are elaborated interactively, based on the sources below. The following questions will guide, amongst others, plenary discussions and group activities.
11/3/2019 // INTRODUCTION // THE PUBLIC REALM What is the public realm? Sources: Arendt, Hannah (1973) [1958], The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 50-57. Arendt, Hannah (2010) [1960], Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben (München: Piper), 62-73.
12/3/2019 // THE SOCIETAL AND THE PRIVATE What are the relations between the social, the private and the public realm? Sources: Arendt, Hannah (1973) [1958], The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 68-72. Arendt, Hannah (2010) [1960], Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben (München: Piper), 81-89.
18/3/2019 // ACTION What are the characteristics of action? How is action connected to politics? Sources: Arendt, Hannah (1973) [1958], The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 175-180. Arendt, Hannah (2010) [1960], Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben (München: Piper), 213-222.
19/3/2019 // POWER What is the difference between power and violence? How is power connected to different forms of government? Sources: Arendt, Hannah (1973) [1958], The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 199-206. Arendt, Hannah (2010) [1960], Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben (München: Piper), 251-262.
26/3/2019 // THE DESTRUCTION OF POLITICAL POWER // JUDGING How is political power destructed? What is judging? Sources: Arendt, Hannah (1951), The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace), 123-134. Arendt, Hannah (2014) [1955], Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Antisemitismus, Imperialismus, totale Herrschaft (München: Piper) 286-307. Arendt, Hannah (1961), “The Crisis in Culture. Its Social and Its Political Significance”, in: ibid., Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking), 217-226. Arendt, Hannah (2012) [1960], “Kultur und Politik”, in: dies., Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft. Übungen im politischen Denken I, herausgegeben von Ursula Ludz (München: Piper), 296-302.
Edited by Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, Sophie Uitz, and Christina Jauernik
Hatje Cantz, Berlin, Germany; Weltmuseum Wien, Austria; Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria; Peek Project No. AR 439-G24/IBK, 2020, ISBN 978-3-7757-4884-1, 204pp.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Stories of Traumatic Pasts: Counter-Archives for Future Memories, at Weltmuseum Wienfrom 8 October 2020 to 3 April 2021.
About the catalogue
Belgian colonialism in the Congo. Antisemitism in Austria. Turbo-nationalism
in former Yugoslavia. Over the last two centuries, these three historic lines
of violence and annihilation (re)enforced a process of oblivion that to this
day prevents a processing of the genocides they caused.
Today
involuntary or performed amnesia again threatens to destroy what has already
come to a point of possible coexistence.
We go back to these traumatic events in history and the recent past, which had such a violent impact on communities and people, states and territories, and confront them with a system of interventions. The scars that remain after atrocities, although hidden and obliterated, are recovered through artistic, scientific, and political reflections.
MONIQUE MBEKA PHOBA will present an overview of her 17 masterclasses on the
subject of the taboo of colonization in the Belgian cinema of the last 40 years. The
masterclasses have been presented from 2015 to 2017 in a quite various places: festivals, training institutes as cultural or associative centers (Brussels African Film Festival / FIFAB, BOZAR, Pier 10, women’s film festival, “They spin,” BE-PAX, Point-Culture, Pianofabriek, Ghent Sint-Luca Art Institute, Mission Local of Molenbeek, ULB, Congolese associations etc.).
LAURA NSENGIYUMVA will talk about her project PeopL. This work addresses the figure of Leopold II in the public space of Brussels. And more generally, she refers to his phantasmagorical presence in the Belgian consciousness: in official celebrations, in folklore, in language (he is seen as the king “Builder”). The figure of the King Leopold II becomes theinstrument of a biased patriotism. The king becomes “Builder,” despite the immense destruction of which he was the author. He is the figure of a cynical patriotism, which cannot function without a cruel but indispensable blindness. The project aims to the decolonization of the public space.
WOMBA KONGA known by his artist name PITCHO will present 2 projects: a multidisciplinary festival “Congolisation” and his latest theater/perfomative play with the title “Kuzikiliza.” The term Congolisation is a contraction of the words “Congo” and “Colonisation.” The idea of the festival is to focus on the contribution of the Congolese diaspora in the Belgium cultural landscape. The theater/performance play “Kuzikiliza” that translates in Swahili as “to be heard”—is a plurilingual and interdisciplinary performance that makes communication and its mechanisms to vacillate. Pitcho Womba Konga in this play departs from Patrice Lumumba’s speech at the ceremony of the Proclamation of the Congo’s Independence on June 30, 1960. Pitcho exposes the actuality of Lumumba’s speech today and questions how to reconcile past and present, while the process of decolonization is still fully underway.
A series of three lectures by Marina Grzinic and Sophie Uitz is held during the summer term 2018 at the Post-Conceptual Art Practices study programme (Vienna Academy of Fine Arts). Each of the lecture includes a screening of documentary film and introduces one of the three research territories of the “Genealogy of Amnesa” to the students.
Part I Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
23 April 2018, 4-7 PM
Presentation of the research project “Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality”, by Marina Grzinic and Sophie Uitz.
Introduction, screening and discussion of “King Leopold’s Ghost” (2006, 108min, documentary) by Pippa Scott and Oreet Rees – a documentary about the exploitation of the Congo by King Leopold II of Belgium, based on the book by Adam Hochschild King Leopold Ghost from 1998.
Part II The Yugoslavian War
14 May 2018, 4-7 PM
Introduction, screening and discussion of Valentini Areh’s documentary “Radovan Karadzic’s Secret Plans” (2016, 51min, documentary for television).
The TV film shows newly retrieved materials and accounts obtained at the trial of Radovan Daradzic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Hague Tribunal. The documentary was premiered two days before the final sentence to Karadzic at the Haag Tribunal, 24 March 2016. Karadzic was sentenced to fourty years for Srebrenica genocide in BiH, Amont other criminal acts.
Valentin Areh is a Slovenian journalist, war correspondent and writer. He participated in 1991 as a soldier in the short Slovenian war for independence. He subsequently attended Ljubljana University, studying history and sociology. Areh has fiftenn years of experience as a war correspondent in places such as Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. He was one of the few journalists to remain in Kosovo during the Kosovo War of 1999 and he survived a tortuous escape out of the country during NATO’s war to expel Serbian forces.
Part III Remembrance and oblivion of Nazi crimes in Austria
4 June 2018, 4-7 PM
Screening of “Night and Fog” (French original title: Nuit et brouillard; 1956, 32min, documentary short film). Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The title is taken from the notorious “Nacht und Nebel” (German for “Night and Fog”) program of abductions and disappearances decreed by the Nazis on 7 December 1941.
Screening of “East of War” (German original title: Jenseits des Krieges; 1996), a film by Ruth Beckermann (cinematography Peter Roehsler, editing Gertraud Luschützky).
White-tiled rooms, neon lighting; on the walls black and white photographs documenting the atrocities committed by the German Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in WW2. Against this background former soldiers talk about their experiences beyond the bounds of “normal” warfare. An uncompromising film on remembrance and oblivion. Ruth Beckermann’s film doesn’t duplicate the exhibition, but begins where it ends: in a commentary. Its subject-matter is less about history than remembering, less about the past than the present.
