Fields of Resistance - Romani Archives of Tomorrow's Remembrance

Fields of Resistance - Romani Archives of Tomorrow's Remembrance

This participatory and transdisciplinary project centers the practice of active remembrance. It has been developed by the DePART collective in collaboration with international partners at the intersection of art in public space, community work and the politics of memory. Based on the concept of critical fabulation, in which buried biographies come alive through imagination, a responsible, devoted culture of remembrance is being investigated. In the installation, audio columns grow out of the soil and play personally addressed letters to Rom*nja and Sinti*zze whose lives were taken in the Porajmos (genocide committed against Rom*nja and Sinti*zze people by the National socialists). These are gentle yet angry, loving and empowering counter-narratives to erasure and forgetting.

The project opens up spaces for mourning and encounter, reactivates historical places of the community, but also uncovers places of oppression. Through active listening, the festival audience becomes “an accomplice” in the fight against ongoing oppression and takes personal responsibility. A non-auditive access to the letter will be provided.

An accompanying walking tour will explore sites linked to Vienna's forgotten urban Nazi camp structures and confront them with the resistant realities of young Rom*nja and Sinti*zze. The closing performance stages the poetics of Romani remembrance – celebrating the tales of queer and trans* Romani kin.

Credits

Artists: DePART Collective (Jonas Baur, Dominik Jellen, Cat Jugravu, Anna Szepes)

Production: DePART Collective (Trace Polly Müller)

Tour Guide: DePART Collective (Bettina Pocsai)

Music: Marcos Vivaldi

Graphic Design: Zoltán Visnyai

Collaborators: OABYTE, QUEERDOS Kollektiv Berlin

Special thanks: to all our authors; to the experts contributing to CORE; Experimental Setup – Bosko Gastager; Clara Jacquemard Andrei Raicu, Cristina Milea, Pieter Defraene