Edited by Nicolaus Schafhausen, Mirjam Zadoff (2021)
Tell me about yesterday tomorrow: About the Future of the Past
Historical events and our knowledge of them mould our understanding of today’s world. The interdisciplinary authorship of this volume focuses on the connection between past and future. A bold and unusual publication whose approaches and themes extend from biographical experiences via intergenerational exchange to the discussion of current social phenomena.
With contributions by M. Czollek, C. Deliss, S. Denny, G. Diez, B. Draney, L. Gillick, M. Gržinić, A. Huyssen, I. Küpeli, D. Lesage, C. Lorch, S. Lütticken, K. Müller, V.J. Müller, A. Pető, M. Rinck, D. Rupnow, P. Rypson, Ph. Sands, N. Schafhausen, D. Schöne, G. Schwarz, N. Sternfeld, N. Wahl, M. Zadoff.
A book review on the edited volume “Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism” was published on May 9, 2021 by Saša Kesić in the Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culturejournal.
Saša Kesić is an art teacher and independent researcher from Belgrade. He received his PhD in 2016 from the Department of Theory of Arts and Media, University of Arts in Belgrade. In 2020, he published the book That’s How the Queer Grew… in Contemporary Eastern European Art and Culture, in which he connected queerness, performativity and presentation.
“This volume provides a very comprehensive analysis of what was going on in former Yugoslavia, before the 1990s, in the time of the Balkan war, and after the 1990s. This is a very brave and difficult task as it is not possible to rely solely on the historical distance, as well as on the archives and documents of the past. This is the first time that such an analysis is put in parallel with the two other genocides. Furthermore, a very detailed analysis is presented regarding the changes in Europe at the fall of the Berlin Wall and then in the 1990s until today. The post-Srebrenica genocide time showed an even more bestial situation: that the Serbian society and “the Republika Srpska,”5 instead of reflecting on what happened, pushed a new dimension of amnesia. What we learn is that in Serbia oblivion changed into the glorification of the genocide. This is supported by hyper-populist and monstrous political’ nomenclature all the way to our present day when this volume is published. In the meantime, the same glorification is central for the imperial global capitalist forces – Trump is a very good case. Former Yugoslavia, in its belatedness, is another case, as it repeats on a smaller scale the Trump model. The politicians from Serbia to Slovenia (Aleksandar Vučić and Janez Janša) are such two cases.”
Excerpt from the conclusion of Saša Kesić’ review of “Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism: Rethinking the Past for New Conviviality” (Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, and Sophie Uitz (Eds.), 2020); https://identitiesjournal.edu.mk/index.php/IJPGC/sasakesic.
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.
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.
organized by Piotr Piotrowski Center for Research on East-Central European Art
Lecture Summary
The postsocialist and postcolonial conditions as features of a conceptualization of a “new” geography
The proposal is to rethink geography as a process that comes out from the post-1989. Why? At that moment we have the appearance of two conditions, of two posts that coincide largely speaking geographically in Europe and that can subsumed, according to David Harvey writings in the 1980s, as “urbanization of capital and urbanization of consciousness.” This double process is vital to capitalism’s survival as a dominant mode of production and consumption. Let’s state that this urbanization is a perverse cosmopitanism that Piotr Piotrowski (Piotrowski, “From the international to the Cosmopolitan” (2012)), sees as the possible approach to East and Central Europe today. Therefore my proposal claims that geography can better be captured as the joint process of these two conditions postsocialist and postcolonial than divisions we used for the last decades in the former Eastern European context: East-West, center-periphery, etc. As well the question that we will enter is how the postcolonial enters the post-socialist of the East-Central Europe geography of today. My question is how these traumatic nodal points produced, executed and governed by and within Europe transform the perception of art, geography, topography, memory and history in the present moment. The elaboration is based on the new insights provided by the research project I am in charge 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).
May 27, 2019 Zagreb Workshop: Feminism Between Nation-states and Capitalism
Workshop with Marina Gržinić, Šefik Tatlić, and the participants of the module Feminism Between Nation-states and Capitalism at Centre for Women’s Studies, Zagreb, Croatia
Centre for Women’s Studies Zagreb is the first non-institutional educational center in Croatia. It was founded by a group of feminists, theorists, and scholars, peace activists, and artists in 1995. The Centre provides an interdisciplinary program and expert knowledge on women’s issues and is a meeting point for academic discourse, artistic practice, activist engagement. The Centre’s publishing program is focused on publishing the results of Croatian feminist research and theory, as well as translations of selected key feminist texts. Until today they have published more than 50 titles. The Centre’s feminist theoretical journal Treća – [The Third] was launched in 1998 and has been published annually ever since.
The main quality of the Women’s Studies educational program is its interdisciplinarity and integrality. The program offers an insight into the diverse themes of feminism and gender studies, women’s culture and history, women’s rights and gender equality. During its 20 years of work, the Centre has seen more than 600 participants complete the educational program, and more than 1000 participants involved in various specialized programs.
Module: Feminism Between Nation-states and Capitalism
It is clear that what global capitalism brings in front of us is a necessity to revisit globally racist, homophobic, and discriminatory processes, not as simple identity differences but as processes that are entangled with capital, new media technology and with the change of the mode of life under capital’s brutal modes of racialization and exploitation.
Lectures:
Marina Gržinić
State nation, feminism, capitalism, memory, history
Feminist perspective: from former Yugoslavia turbo fascism to neoliberal postmodern fascist Europe
Šefik Tatlić
Nation-state, feminisms, capitalism
Political analysis of memory and history in the space of former Yugoslavia
Images with violent content are always historical, as what is seen as violent is constructed and is violently managed; therefore nothing is natural in relation to violence. What will be defined as violent is always an outcome of violent hegemonic processes. Seeing images of killings can provoke our rebellion and our insurgencies, unless we are paralyzed by our normativized occidental lives. Europe and the global neoliberal capitalist system in general are well attuned to the hierarchization, control, and management processes of the present neoliberal capitalist states. Especially under attack are migrants and all those not considered to be “natural” parts of the neoliberal capitalist national body in the West: asylum-seekers and refugees escaping war-torn parts of the global world (the Middle East, Africa), from conflicts induced by capital and imperial management.
On the other side and at the same time, we can see, for example, the last election campaign in Austria, with posters by the Freedom Party (FPÖ) containing blatantly racist and fascist slogans and images. My interest is to connect racism with visual narratives, “trophy” artifacts, and culture. I will look at racism from a historical perspective, showing a horrifying trajectory of structural racism that reproduces itself almost always circularly from a pseudoscientific (biological) racism, “progressing” toward “cultural racism” to “return” again to “scientific racism,” though then coined “intellectual racism.”
Venues: Schillerplatz Park in front of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz, 1010 Vienna Studio for Post-conceptual Art /IBK (Atelierhaus, Lehargasse 8, 1060 Wien, 1. OG Atelier Süd) Performative Lab “Smashing Wor(l)ds–Summercamp”
Project by the Studio for Post-conceptual Art /IBK, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, in collaboration with “Conviviality as Potentiality,” funded by Austrian Science Fund FWF (AR 679), and the project “Smashing Wor(l)ds” supported by Creative Europe and led by kulturen in bewegung/VIDC, Vienna.
Participants: Asma Aiad, Rawan Almohamad, Arabina Amedoska, Rui Bai, Victoria Eliseykina, Arno Gitschthaler, Felix Huber, Robert Jolly, Munar Khalid Biiq, Ali Kianmehr, Aaron Kimmig, Nathalie Köbli, Cathérine Lehnerer, Mika Maruyama, Lieber Michael, Mirjana Mustra, Mohammad Numan, Valentin Pfenniger, Jovita Pristovšek, Sisanmi Schuller, Timotheus Ueberall, Imrich Veber, Kyra Sophie Wilhelmseder, Ju Yoo, Tino Zimmermann
EXHIBITION: DIE SICHTBARKEIT DES UNSICHTBAREN // THE VISIBILITY OF THE INVISIBLE //
Date: 23.06.2021 – 28.06.2021
Venues: Schillerplatz Park in front of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz, 1010 Vienna Studio for Post-conceptual Art /IBK (Atelierhaus, Lehargasse 8, 1060 Wien, 1. OG Atelier Süd)
Exhibition and perfomative lab from students of the studio for Post-conceptual Art at the Institute of Fine Arts in cooperation with the“Smashing Wor(l)ds” project.
Participants: Asma Aiad, Rui Bai, Victoria Eliseykina, Arno Gitschthaler, Felix Huber, Robert Jolly, Ali Kianmehr, Aaron Kimmig, Nathalie Köbli, Valentin Pfenniger, Timotheus Ueberall, Imrich Veber, Kyra Sophie Wilhelmseder, Ju Yoo, Tino Zimmermann
1 Opening by Marina Grzinic, Marissa Lobo, The Visibility of the Invisible, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
2 Opening by Marina Grzinic, Marissa Lobo, The Visibility of the Invisible, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
3 Asma Aiad, report at the police station, Vienna 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
4 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Invisible Women, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
5 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Invisible Women, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
6 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Because I am the Thunder, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
7 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Invisible Women, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
8 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Invisible Women, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
9 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Invisible Women, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo R. Bai
10 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Invisible Women, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
11 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Invisible Women, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
13 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Because I am the Thunder, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo M. Grzinic
14 Ju Yoo, Asma Aiad, Because I am the Thunder, Schillerplatz 25 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
Venues: Schillerplatz Park in front of theAcademy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz, 1010 Vienna Studio for Post-conceptual Art /IBK (Atelierhaus, Lehargasse 8, 1060 Wien, 1. OG Atelier Süd) Kleine Stadtfarm am Schillerwasser, Naufahrtweg 14a, 1220 Vienna
“Smashing Wor(l)ds–Summercamp” is a
gathering of the Austrian partner organizations with Afro Rainbow Austria
[ARA], Queer Base, Silent University Graz and the Students of the Studio for
Post-conceptual Art Practices [PCAP] at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Performative Labs & Artistic
Research
In a multi-format event with workshops and lecture
performances, the results of the artistic research within the project “Smashing
Wor(l)ds: Cultural Practices for re/Imagining & un/Learning
Vocabularies” will be presented. The focus is on artistic work with
vocabularies of resistance, from queer and anti-racist perspectives – revolving
around language, fashion, translation and much more.
Participants: Afro Rainbow Austria [ARA], Asma Aiad, Rawan Almohamad, Arabina Amedoska, Rui Bai, Victoria Eliseykina, Arno Gitschthaler, Felix Huber, Robert Jolly, Munar Khalid Biiq, Ali Kianmehr, Aaron Kimmig, Nathalie Köbli, Cathérine Lehnerer, Mika Maruyama, Lieber Michael, Mirjana Mustra, Mohammad Numan, Valentin Pfenniger, Jovita Pristovšek, Queer Base, Joëlle Sambi Nzeba, Silent University Graz, Sisanmi Schuller, Timotheus Ueberall, Imrich Veber, Kyra Sophie Wilhelmseder, Ju Yoo, Tino Zimmermann
1 Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp, Kleine Stadtfarm am Schillerwasser 26 06 2021 Photo M. Grzinic
2 Opening by Marissa Lobo, Marina Grzinic, Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp 26 06 2021 Photo R. Bai
3 Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp, Kleine Stadtfarm am Schillerwasser 26 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
4 Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp, Kleine Stadtfarm am Schillerwasser 26 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
5 Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp, Kleine Stadtfarm am Schillerwasser 26 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
6 Speech by Vivi, Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp 26 06 2021 Photo M. Grzinic
7 Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp, Kleine Stadtfarm am Schillerwasser 26 06 2021 Photo M. Grzinic
8 Asma Aiad, Ju Yoo, Statement_Invisible Women, Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp 26 06 2021 Photo R. Bai
9 Asma Aiad, Ju Yoo, Statement_Invisible Women, Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp 26 06 2021 Photo M. Grzinic
10 Mohammad Numan, Intervention_Push-Backs and Realities of Refugee Life, Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp 26 06 2021 Photo J. Pristovsek
11 Mohammad Numan, Intervention_Push-Backs and Realities of Refugee Life, Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp 26 06 2021 Photo R. Bai
12 Mika Maruyama, Jovita Pristovsek, Statement_Editing Wor(l)ds, Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp 26 06 2021 Photo R. Bai
13 Smashing Wor(l)ds Summercamp, Kleine Stadtfarm am Schillerwasser 26 06 2021 Photo M. Grzinic
Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism:Rethinking the Past for New Conviviality Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, and Sophie Uitz (editors), 578 pp., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2020
The volume is an outcome of the art- and theory-based research project Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality. It is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) through its Programme for Arts-based Research (PEEK). The research is developed at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, from 2018 to 2020. The volume focuses on collective amnesia in regards to traumatic events of the European past and the ways in which memory and history are presented for the future. It gathers together reflections on racism and nationalism, empowerment and futurity. As the subtitle indicates, ultimately this volume is about achieving a future conviviality. On this festive occasion, the editors of the book will present its content, structure and contributors.
Contributors: Jamika Ajalon, Ruth Beckermann, Elisabeth Brainin, Véronique Clette-Gakuba, CMCLD/Collectif Mémoire Coloniale et Lutte contre les Discriminations, Nejra Nuna Čengić, Matthias De Groof, Nicole Grégoire, Marina Gržinić, Adla Isanović,Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, Geneviève Kaninda, Hikmet Karčić, Kasereka Kavwahirehi, Sophie Lillie, Michael Loebenstein, Nikita Mazurov, Berthold Molden, Pedro Monaville, Sir Geoffrey Nice, Jovita Pristovšek, Markus Rheindorf, Drehli Robnik, Tony Kokou Sampson, Birgit Sauer, Max Silverman, Kalvin Soiresse Njall, Shirley Anne Tate, Šefik Tatlić, Claudia Tazreiter, Nevenka Tromp, Hedvig Turai, Sophie Uitz, Tanya Ury, Gloria Wekker, Renée Winter, and Ruth Wodak.
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)
