Random

    News & Upcoming

    Home News & Upcoming

    Book review by Saša Kesić: Towards Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, and Sophie Uitz (Eds.), Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism: Rethinking the Past for New Conviviality

    By
    GoA
    -
    0

    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 Culture journal.

    Read the full review here.

    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.

    The review was published on May 9, 2021.

    GoA SYMPOSIUM in Vienna: Genealogy of Amnesia – Crushing Silences, Constructing Histories

    By
    GoA
    -
    0
    (image: Christina Jauernik)

    November 8-10, 2018

    A symposium on the silencing of colonialism, anti-Semitism, and contemporary turbo-fascist nationalism in Belgium, Austria, and former Yugoslavia.

    The international and interdisciplinary symposium, open to public audiences, is built as a podium for research and exchange, dissemination of knowledge, and discussion.

    The two-day-long symposium hosted invited speakers that cover the central topics of our research in the three respective territories: memory and history, archives, and the axis of power and knowledge. The general objective of the symposium was to denote gaps between processes of institutionalized silencing, hegemonic processes of oblivion and amnesia, and processes of instituting power through building counter-memory and counter-history projects, interventions, and resistance. The aim was to demonstrate how processes for the establishment of counter-memory and counter-history can open up spaces for new ways of forming radicalized constituent politics. Collective struggles and oppositionality were investigated as the basis of a possible dismantling of neoliberal and necrocapitalist societies by means of re-empowering history that crushes silences.

    For full symposium program and details click here

    Gallery

    LECTURE at Graz Symposion on Photography

    By
    GoA
    -
    0

    Marina Gržinić, Images of Violence, or the Violence of Neoliberal Necrocapitalism

    October 5, 2018

    at Camera Austria Symposion on Photography XXI, 5-6.10.2018,
    Die Gewalt der Bilder / The Violence of Images

    Lecture Summary

    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.”

    EXHIBITION Stories of Traumatic Pasts. Counter-Archives for Future Memories

    By
    GoA
    -
    0

    at Weltmuseum Wien
    October 8th, 2020 to April 3rd, 2021

    Curated by Marina Gržinić, Christina Jauernik and Sophie Uitz

    Trailer-teaser of the exhibition in Weltmuseum Wien

    The exhibition Stories of Traumatic Pasts: Counter-Archives for Future Memories focuses on three European regions, their stories, and their current experiences of collective amnesia in relation to traumatic events from the past: Belgian colonial rule in the Congo, Austria after the “Anschluss” in 1938, and the denial of war crimes since 1990 after the breakup of Yugoslavia.

    Participating artists
    Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe
    Lana Čmajčanin
    Bojan Djordjev
    Dani Gal
    Siniša Ilić
    Adela Jušić
    Martin Krenn
    Monique Mbeka Phoba
    Nicolas Pommier
    Anja Salomonowitz
    Joëlle Sambi Nzeba
    Arye Wachsmuth
    Valerie Wolf Gang

    Posters and works developed by students of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (workshop with Arye Wachsmuth):
    Negra Bernhard
    Henrie Dennis
    Iklim Doğan
    Robert Jolly
    Lars* Kollros
    Shaya Safaisini
    Hiba Shammout
    Sophie Anna Stadler
    Pia S. Weissinger
    Ondrej Zoricak

    The digital archive: COUNTERING THE GENEALOGY OF AMNESIA

    7.10.2020 Opening speeches and performance
    (closed for public due to Covid-19)

    Speeches: C. Schicklgruber (director Weltmuseum Wien), J. Hartle (rector Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), S. Uitz and M. Gržinić (curators). Opening  performance by Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe and  Mani Obeya.

    8.10.2020 Symposium
    (closed for public due to Covid-19)

    Taking part in situ or via zoom:

    Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe
    Lana Čmajčanin
    Bojan Djordjev
    Dani Gal
    Siniša Ilić
    Adela Jušić
    Martin Krenn
    Nicolas Pommier
    Anja Salomonowitz
    Joëlle Sambi Nzeba
    Arye Wachsmuth
    Valerie Wolf Gang
    Lars* Kollros
    Mika Maruyama
    Shaya Safaisini
    Pia Weissinger

    Moderation by Marina Gržinić
    Organisation by Sophie Uitz

    Weltmuseum Wien
    Heldenplatz, 1010 Vienna
    Tel. +43 1 534 30-5052
    info@weltmuseumwien.at
    www.weltmuseumwien.at

    Opening hours
    Open daily, except Wednesdays, 10 am to 6 pm
    Late Fridays until 9 pm: 30 October, 27 November



    PUBLICATION: Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism: Rethinking the Past for New Conviviality, published in 2020

    By
    GoA
    -
    0

    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

    Book cover Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism Rethinking the Past for New Conviviality,  2020. Cover design © Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 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.

    Book Review by Saša Kesić in Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture (May 2021)

     

    Honorary Mention of the 2022 Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity

    By
    GoA
    -
    0

    Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, Sophie Uitz have received the Honorary Mention of the 2022 Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity for their work Digital Research Travelogues through European Archives!

    Digital Research Travelogues through European Archives creates an interdisciplinary platform for art and science to explore the current politics of forgetting in relation to three traumatic events of the 20th century: Belgium (colonialism in the Congo), Austria (antisemitism in World War II and the post-war period), and the former Yugoslavia (turbo-nationalism, Srebrenica genocide). The platform departs from the research conducted as part of the FWF-PEEK project Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality (AR 439). It was presented as a digital format to promote emancipatory politics in the humanities through the 2020-2021 exhibition at the Weltmuseum Wien, Austria. It consisted of 42 interviews presented as 42 posters with QR codes. This part of the exhibition was a unique artistic-scientific and collaborative research work, presented as an interactive digital installation. The 42 QR codes were divided into three sections, each with a description and content, and accessible to the viewer via mobile phone. Each user could listen to the interviews in English. As a second level of interaction, an interactive table was presented in the exhibition space, allowing the viewer to spend hours exploring the connections between the three sections presented in parallel through images and texts, as a kind of double index, footnotes and hypertexts through European trauma histories. 

    Credits: Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, Sophie Uitz, and contributors © FWF-PEEK AR 439, Weltmuseum Wien, 2021/22. In collaboration with: Šefik Tatlić, Valerija Zabret, researchers, artists, activists. With support from: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, various NGOs across Europe

    Workshop, part of 25 years anniversary of maiz, Linz

    By
    GoA
    -
    0

    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).

    The workshop was recorded.

    Book chapter: “Racialized violence in Europe: The Genealogy of Amnesia Project and the immobilization of refugees?” (by Marina Gržinić)

    By
    GoA
    -
    0

    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.

    https://www.routledge.com/Mapping-Deathscapes-Digital-Geographies-of-Racial-and-Border-Violence/Perera-Pugliese/p/book/9781032056579

    CATALOGUE: Stories of Traumatic Pasts: Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism

    By
    GoA
    -
    0

    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.

    12Page 2 of 2