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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



Honorary Mention of the 2022 Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity

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

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


GoA WORKSHOP in Brussels on The Power of Decolonialization, Art and Interventions

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May 03, 2018, Brussels Workshop
Memory / History: The Power of Decolonialization, Art and Interventions

Workshop with Monique Mbeka Phoba, Laura Nsengiyumva, Womba Konga aka Pitcho, open to the public, at LeSpace

Info WS Bruxelles (French) (PDF)
Info WS Brussels (English) (PDF)

MONIQUE MBEKA PHOBA will present an overview of her 17 masterclasses on the
subject of the taboo of colonization in the Belgian cinema of the last 40 years. The
masterclasses have been presented from 2015 to 2017 in a quite various places: festivals, training institutes as cultural or associative centers (Brussels African Film Festival / FIFAB, BOZAR, Pier 10, women’s film festival, “They spin,” BE-PAX, Point-Culture, Pianofabriek, Ghent Sint-Luca Art Institute, Mission Local of Molenbeek, ULB, Congolese associations etc.).

LAURA NSENGIYUMVA will talk about her project PeopL. This work addresses the figure of Leopold II in the public space of Brussels. And more generally, she refers to his phantasmagorical presence in the Belgian consciousness: in official celebrations, in folklore, in language (he is seen as the king “Builder”). The figure of the King Leopold II becomes theinstrument of a biased patriotism. The king becomes “Builder,” despite the immense destruction of which he was the author. He is the figure of a cynical patriotism, which cannot function without a cruel but indispensable blindness. The project aims to the decolonization of the public space.

WOMBA KONGA known by his artist name PITCHO will present 2 projects: a multidisciplinary festival “Congolisation” and his latest theater/perfomative play with the title “Kuzikiliza.” The term Congolisation is a contraction of the words “Congo” and “Colonisation.” The idea of the festival is to focus on the contribution of the Congolese diaspora in the Belgium cultural landscape. The theater/performance play “Kuzikiliza” that translates in Swahili as “to be heard”—is a plurilingual and interdisciplinary performance that makes communication and its mechanisms to vacillate. Pitcho Womba Konga in this play departs from Patrice Lumumba’s speech at the ceremony of the Proclamation of the Congo’s Independence on June 30, 1960. Pitcho exposes the actuality of Lumumba’s speech today and questions how to reconcile past and present, while the process of decolonization is still fully underway.

Workshop impressions