Dialogues for the Future:Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia, edited by Marina Gržinić and Šefik Tatlić (in collaboration with Valerija Zabret, Jovita Pristovšek, Tjaša Kancler, and Sophie Uitz), Centre for Cultural Decontamination CZKD, Belgrade, Serbia; Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria; Peek Project No. AR 439-G24/IBK, 2020, ISBN 978-86-88001-19-9 (CZKD), 312pp.
The book Dialogues for the Future: Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia arose from the research carried out by the PEEK Project No. AR 439-G24/IBK, whose full title is “Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality.” This is an interdisciplinary arts-and-theory-based research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and developed at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, from 2018 to 2020. During this time, we created an online video archive entitled “Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia.” It consists of seventy hours comprising eighty-two interviews/positions as well as the recordings of the symposium “GENEALOGY OF AMNESIA: Crushing Silences, Constructing Histories” held at the mumok in 2018, Vienna, thus tying together the three sites that constitute the “Genealogy of Amnesia”: Belgium, Austria, and Bosnia and Herzegovina/Croatia/Serbia and “Republika Srpska.”
This book comprises sixty-six interviews in the form of deep reflections concerning territories and histories of genocides, dispossession, racism, antisemitism, turbo-nationalism, discrimination, silencing, oblivion: Belgium, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina/Croatia/Serbia and “Republika Srpska,” Slovenia and Spain.
We hope this book will contribute to establishing links between the antagonization of racism/fascism and the critique of (neoliberal) global necrocapitalism as a colonial, racial system of dominance. It means that we are calling for the severing of ties between Eurocentric epistemology and its monopoly on the definition of class-sensitive, as well as feminist and LGBT*QI discourses.
Centre for Cultural Decontamination CZKD, Belgrade, Serbia Austrian Science Fund (FWF): AR439 Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Online book launch at Centre for Cultural Decontamination / Belgrade, 20.9.2020
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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).