SITES OF VISIBILITY Conference on the self/representation of contemporary Roma visual arts
The conference is in English.
→ SITES OF VISIBILITY
Conference on the self/representation of contemporary Roma visual arts
17 April, 2010
11am – 6pm
Venue: Roma Parliament, Budapest
1084, Tavaszmező u. 6
Sites of Visibility is the first stage in a long-term collaborative project addressing issues of contemporary minority representation in relation to established contemporary art and culture. Due to the lack of fluent communication between academic discourses and the contemporary need for a reflected representation and understanding of minority cultures, the project aims to open up questions of cultural visibility and agency as well as to seek for theoretical and practical inspirations that challenge our understanding of the canon(s) of contemporary art, its institutional system and the role of mediation.
In the midst of the increasing violation of human rights and anti-gypsyism in Hungary and other European countries, the main objective of the conference is to raise awareness and reconsider the cultural representation of Romani people.
The conference titled Sites of Visibility is the opening event of Context, Identity, Representation – a collaborative project between the Institute of Art History Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest; Institute of Art and Communication, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest, Royal College of Art, London, Curating Contemporary Art and Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Art History Institute, Curatorial Practice and Theory.
11.00
Welcoming Speech
11.10
Angela Kóczé: From Silence to Voice: Can we Take Positions in the Canon Making Machine?
What can the critical-theoretical framework of postcolonial studies offer to the study of contemporary Romani oppression? Can postcolonial theoretical framework used as an analytical support to expose the racialized social, economic and political hierarchy in Europe? Does postcolonial theory about ‘whiteness’ and ‘race’ offer a deeper understanding of the complexities of Romani emancipation in the multiply colonised space of the region? I attempt to reflect on all these questions meanwhile explore how diverse Romani communities through centuries have been constructed as colonial subjects.
Angela Kóczé is a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She is former director of the European Roma Information Office (ERIO) in Brussels, as well as the former director of the human rights education programme at the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) in Budapest, Hungary. She is active in the movement for the emancipation of Roma in Europe, and has a particular interest in issues of women's political representation and social justice.
12.00
Tímea Junghaus
The term “Contemporary Roma Culture”- suggests a post-territorial concept of identity, it embodies the Ideal of Europe; it is transnational and innovative. Contemporary Roma Culture has the promise of taking Roma out of the conceptual ghetto. - We may all agree.
The miserable situation of Roma representation and its struggle with cultural oppression was exposed and analyzed, nevertheless it remained the same.
In lack of real space, without a building to walk in, without storage rooms and archive boxes, without rooms, spaces, and objects, without any kind of physical, material embodiment, Roma minority culture is now requested to proceed in the domain of the virtual, and the virtual only...
Tímea Junghaus is an art historian and cultural activist. She consulted exhibitions and conferences on Roma culture internationally since 2003. She is author and co-editor of the first comprehensive publication on European Roma visual art, Meet Your Neighbours - Contemporary Roma Art from Europe (OSI Publication, 2006). Tímea Junghaus was the curator of the First Roma Pavilion in the history of the Venice Contemporary Art Biennale. The exhibition entitled Paradise Lost featured the work of sixteen contemporary Roma artists representing eight European countries. Junghaus is currently finishing her doctoral degree at the Film, Media, and Cultural-theory Department at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest.
12.50
Suzana Milevska: Call the Witness “In my presentation I want to reveal the first curatorial steps of the interdisciplinary collaborative curatorial team “Call the Witness” that was recently appointed to curate the 2nd Roma Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale in 2011. The project Call the Witness is imagined as an exhibition to result from a multilayered and cross-disciplinary collaborative research undertaken by the four members of the team. Consisting of curators, researchers, art managers and artists the project’s team will address several interrelated issues concerned with the potential roles of contemporary Roma artists within and outside their communities. Rarely accepted and included within the official art structures (museums, galleries, biennales, art history, art encyclopaedias) Roma artists sometimes get excluded from their own communities for giving away the inside knowledge on traditional rituals, customs and rules. We aim to present various formats of collaborative productions and art works created by Roma artists that address the issue of being a witness, conveyor and translator of different knowledges from within their own community and vice versus, from the outer world to the more traditional and closed communities. The concept that the contemporary Roma artists are the instantaneous witnesses of their time who act not as passive viewers but rather as active participants in solidarity with the events and people that provoked his/her art work is the impetus behind this project’s concept. “
Suzana Milevska is a curator and theorist of visual culture based in Skopje. She is currently teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje. Since 2006 she has held a PhD from the Visual Culture Department of Goldsmiths College, London, where she taught in 2003-5. In 2006-8, she was Director of the Visual and Cultural Research Centre in Skopje. Currently she is a co-curator of the 2nd Roma Pavilion to be presented in Venice in 2011.
14-15h
Lunch Break
15.10
Presentation by Delaine Le Bas
My works explore the experience of intolerance, misrepresentation, transitional displacement and homelessness which continue to be a daily experience for many in the world within which we live. Containing political and social comment on these issues and their wider and long term social consequences. Working with installation which is multi media including collaborative sound pieces and performance, the works are produced to be a multi sensory experience. My presentation will contain film footage of my most recent project Witch Hunt and the problems associated with prejudicial viewpoints.
Delaine Le Bas is an Artist based in the UK. Represented by Galleria Sonia Rosso, Turin and Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin. Recent solo exhibition Witch Hunt, exhibited at ASPEX, Portsmouth.U.K, Chapter, Cardiff, UK continuing to Context, Derry, July 2010. Group exhibition Foreigners Everywhere with Claire Fontaine, Karl Holmqvist and Damian Le Bas, Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv Dec 2009 - Jan 2010 continues at T293, Naples, May 2010. Included in the recent publication Sixty: Innovators Shaping Our Creative Future by Thames and Hudson
15.50
Presentation by Lisl Ponger The presentation of a number of staged photographs dealing with the artist’s position in relation to the post-colonial discourse as it relates to minorities. The problem of representation. A description of a multi-group, multi-event art project with minority participation (Remapping Mozart / Hidden Histories). The resulting multimedia, multi-lingual DVD as a political strategy for the dissemination of information.
Lisl Ponger’s works concern stereotypes, racism and the construction of the gaze. They are located at the interface between art, art history and ethnology in the mediums of photography, film and installation. She has taken part in many different international exhibitions and film festivals including documenta 11, 2004 and documenta 12 (film programme) in 2008. Lisl Ponger lives and works in Vienna.
16.30
Presentation by André J. Raatzsch and Emese Benkő (Culture&Development · Team for Emancipation of Roma): Rewritable Pictures
In the scope of introducing our project: Rewritable Pictures, the presentation will address photo archives and their use, touching upon the Arab Image Foundation initiative, artist and critic Allan Sekula’s essay on Leslie Shedden’s photographs, and the critical work of Edward W. Said. Since the digitization of archives and their integration into search engines, artists have extensively been concerned with the institution of archive and the related practices, explains Ines Schaber, guest lecturer at the Berlin Universität der Künste. These practices involve questioning the systems according to which pictures are organized into archives, singling out documents that do not match the prevailing formats, or creating their own archives.
How does the use of archives alter their interpretation? What actions are involved in specific pictures being included in or excluded from an archive? How does systematization affect the pictures? What is visible in an archive and what remains invisible?
André J. Raatzsch is an artist and cultural theorist working in Berlin and Budapest. His work includes performance and socially engaged art practice. He focuses on fields of cultural mediation and deals with the role of art in emancipatory processes, particularly of the Boyash-Roma. He is currently working both on his PhD and Master`s thesis and the realization of an art academy in Berlin with the objective to attend and promote young Romas on their way to college.
Emese Benkő is a cultural mediator working on artistic linguistic and literary projects with a special focus on the mediation, research and interpretation of the language and literature of the Hungarian Boyash. Presently she is initiating the first intercultural Boyash-Roma Forum in Berlin.
17.10
Discussion
The project Context, Identity, Representation is supported by:
Decade of Roma Inclusion, Tópark Kultúra Nonprofit Kft.
