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

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



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.

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

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

(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