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PUBLICATION: Dialogues for the Future: Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia

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.

Download free ebook version here

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

KEYNOTE LECTURE at Sarajevo Conference

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.

GoA WORKSHOP in Zagreb on Feminism Between Nation-states and Capitalism

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

GoA LECTURE SERIES at PCAP, Vienna Academy of Fine Arts

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.

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

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.

Online BOOK LAUNCHES

Presentation and discussion with the editors of the three recent publications of the “Genealogy of Amnesia” project research.

All 2020 presentations are held online due to restricted mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Booklaunch Sarajevo

22.12.2020, 18.00h
Association for Culture and Art, Crvena, Sarajevo / ZOOM

Presentations by:
Marina Gržinić, professor, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Jovita Pristovšek, Šefik Tatlić, postdoc researchers, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

The program will be held in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.

Booklaunch Vienna

19.11.2020, 19.00 h
Depot Wien / ZOOM

Presentations by:
Marina Gržinić, professor, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Jovita Pristovšek, Šefik Tatlić, Sophie Uitz, postdoc researchers, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Booklaunch Zagreb

15.10.2020, 19.00 h
Multimedia Institute/MaMa, Zagreb, Croatia / ZOOM
Organized by Lina Gonan and MaMa

Presentations by:
Marina Gržinić, professor, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Jovita Pristovšek, Šefik Tatlić, postdoc researchers, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

The program will be held in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.

Booklaunch Belgrade

29.09.2020, 19.00 h
Centre for Cultural Decontamination CZKD, Belgrade, Serbia / ZOOM
Organized by Aleksandra Sekulić and CZKD  (director: Ana Miljanić)

Presentations by:
Marina Gržinić, professor, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Jovita Pristovšek, Šefik Tatlić, postdoc researchers, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

The program will be held in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.