Project team
Project leader: Univ. Prof. Dr. Marina Gržinić (download CV) is a full professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, head of the Studio for Post-Conceptual Art Practices (PCAP, IBK). She is principal investigator of the art-based research project “Conviviality as Potentiality” (FWF AR679, 2021–25) and the Citizen Science project “Citizens’ Memories and Imaginaries” (FWF TCS 119, 2022–23). She holds a PhD in philosophy and is an artist with a career spanning over forty years. She was the principal investigator of the research project “Genealogy of Amnesia” (FWF AR439, 2018–21). Her areas of specialization include contemporary philosophy, contemporary art, the study of coloniality and decoloniality, transfeminism, the analysis of racism, antisemitism, nationalism, and the study of memory and history in relation to resistance. She co-edited with J. Pristovšek and S. Uitz the volume Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism: Rethinking the Past for New Conviviality (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020). She is co-curator of the international group exhibition “Stories of Traumatic Pasts: Counter-Archives for Future Memories” (with S. Uitz and C. Jauernik, Weltmuseum Wien, 2020–21).
Postdoctoral researcher (2021–2025): Dr. Sophie Uitz (download CV) is a theoretician and researcher who specializes in political and social theories, decolonial theories, comparative cultural studies and contemporary aesthetics. She has a PhD in political science from the University of Vienna and has worked as a lecturer for political theory. Since 2018 she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the arts- and theory-based research project “Genealogy of Amnesia” (FWF PEEK AR439, 2018–21), the Citizen science project “Memories and Imaginaries” (FWF TCS 119, 2022-2023), and the the arts- and theory-based research project “Coniviality as Potentiality” (FWF PEEK AR 679, 2021-2025). Her postdoctoral expertise includes editorial and curatorial work, organization of and participation in international academic and artistic events.
Postdoctoral researcher (2021–2025): Dr. Jovita Pristovšek (download CV) holds a PhD in philosophy and an MA in fine arts. She has over ten years of experience in teaching art and theory practice, and was a postdoctoral researcher in the Citizen Science research project “Citizens’ Memories and Imaginaries” (FWF TCS 119, 2022–23), and the FWF-PEEK project “Genealogy of Amnesia” (AR 439, 2019–21). She is a writer, teacher, and editor. Her research areas include the relationship between aesthetic-public-political, epistemology, decoloniality, racial studies, politics of representation and knowledge production.
Postdoctoral researcher (2023-2024): Dr. Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur holds a PhD in political science from the Howard University in Washington, US. She is co-founder of Pamoja. Movement of the Young African Diaspora in Austria and the Research Group on Black Austrian History. She has worked as a community and cultural worker and “racism-critical” activist in Vienna. In 1999 she was an active part of the Network of African Communities, which focused on mobilising community protests against institutionalised racism and police violence in Vienna. Her transdisciplinary work deals with intersectional, resistant diaspora politics and the “decolonising art of (embodied) memories”. In parallel to her teaching at Howard University in Washington DC, Dr. Johnston-Arthur joined for a year the team of the research project “Conviviality as Potentiality” as a postdoc from 1 June 2023.
Predoctoral Research (2024-2025): Asma Aiad, BA MA is an artist, curator and activist. She completed her Masters at the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of Vienna to the topic Islamic Feminism. She is currently doing her PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where she is part of the research project “Conviviality as Potentialtiy”as a praedoc. Asma Aiad is also co-founder of Salam Oida, an initiative that celebrates diversity in art and culture, and is the initiator of the multidisciplinary festival Muslim*Contemporary. Her activism and artistic work address issues of racism, feminism and the deconstruction of stereotypes. In various artistic projects such as “This is not a headscarf” and “(Un)Seen Sacred Spaces” she explores her Muslim identity in Austria and Europe as well as Muslim aesthetics in art and culture.
Predoctoral Research (2024-2025): Anahita Neghabat, MA is a social anthropologist, artist and activist. She completed her Masters at the Department for Cultural and Social Anthropology and the University of Vienna on the racialization of Muslim identities in feminist movements and studied Gender Studies at Central European University Budapest (Erasmus+). She is currently a praedoc at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where she is part of the research project “Conviviality as Potentiality.” Since 2019 Anahita has been using memes as a medium and tool for satirical political commentary on Instagram. She has worked as a researcher-in-residence at KinderKunstLabor St. Pölten where she worked on materiality, co-creation and art education with children. Her work as researcher and artist is concerned with critical meme studies, (anti-)racism, specifically anti-Muslim racism, and postmigrant identities.
Affiliated researchers
Dr Tjaša Kancler is an activist, artist, researcher, and Serra Húnter Professor of Media Arts and Gender Studies at the Department of Visual Arts and Design, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Barcelona. They are a co-founding member of t.i.c.t.a.c. – Taller de Intervenciones Críticas Transfeministas Antirracistas Combativas and co-editor of the journal Desde el margen. Their recent publications include Arte-Política-Resistencia (Barcelona: t.i.c.t.a.c., 2018) and articles on global capitalism, borders, zonification, trans* imaginaries, decolonial feminisms and struggles.
Dr Šefik Tatlić holds a PhD in sociology and is a theorist in the fields of political philosophy, decolonial theory, and cultural critique. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 2019 to 2021. His recent publications include “Atavistic Core of Postmodern Totalitarianism: Depoliticization of Death and the Sovereignty of Capitalism” (AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, Belgrade, 2017) and “‘New’ Fascism: The Aftermath of the Europeanization of the Western Balkans and the Necropolitics of Historical Revisionism” (in Opposing Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Turbo-Nationalism, 2020). He lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.
Dr Saša Kesić is an art teacher and independent researcher from Belgrade, Serbia. He received his PhD from the Department of Theory of Arts and Media, University of Arts in Belgrade in 2016. In 2020, he published the book Tako se kalio kvir… u savremenoj istočnoevropskoj umetnosti i kulturi (That’s How the Queer Grew … in Contemporary Eastern European Art and Culture), in which he connected queer, performativity and presentation. In 2022 he has been awarded a one-year (01.07.2022 to 30.06.2023) Scholarship of the Scholarship Foundation of the Republic of Austria Postdoc, by Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation (OeAD), for the research project “Conviviality of the Queer Community Austria-Serbia: Learning from the Austrian Practice”, which he currently does at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien), in the Post-Conceptual Art Studio, Prof. Marina Gržinić, Institute of Fine Arts.
Documentation
Valerija Zabret, MA (known professionally as Valerie Wolf Gang) will document and as well research visual and sound documentation (podcast elaboration). She holds an MA in media arts and practices and has three years of experience as a professional associate in arts- and theory-based research (PEEK AR439, 2018–2021). In the project, she will use her professional technological, innovative, and artistic expertise to achieve high-quality technology implementation and documentation for the project, working with the team core members.