The aftermath of
Genealogy of Amnesia.
Rethinking the Past for a Future of Conviviality
interdisciplinary, arts and theory based research project
FWF PEEK AR 469
2018 – 2021
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
15.-17.9.2023
Participation at interdisciplinary symposium Whether or how to document a self-dismantling archive?
Counter-Archives, Historicized Memory and Aesthetics
Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek
The project team of Genealogy of Amnesia (FWF PEEK AR 469) participated in an interdisciplinary symposium on “Whether or how to document a self-dismantling archive?” held in the former library of the old University of Economics in Vienna on September 17, 2023.
We presented an overview of the project and its results: Symposium, books, exhibition, exhibition catalog, digital archive, i.e. the elements created during the project. In the presentation, we discussed the logic of the counter-archive as conceived in our project Genealogy of Amnesia and contextualized it within the genealogy of discourses around amnesia, aphasia, seizure, collective memory (Maurice Halbwachs, 1925), post-memory (Marianne Hirsch, 1992-93), multidirectional memory (Michael Rothberg, 2009), implicated subject (Michael Rothberg, 2019), and death of an aesthetic of imperialism (Dionne Brand, 2018; Rizvana Bradley, 2019) in relation to traumatic events in history.
Symposium participants:
Rosemarie Brucher (Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien) – Wolfram Dornik (Stadtarchiv Graz) – Knut Ebeling (Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee) – Marina Gržinić und Jovita Pristovšek (Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien) – Roland Innerhofer (Universität Wien) – Helmut Neundlinger (Universität für Weiterbildung Krems) – Lukas Schmutzer (Universität Wien) – Sven Spieker (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Im Rahmen von Dismantling the Archive – The Art of Disappearance Das Verschwinden des Archivs (FWF / PEEK-Projekt AR 626).
30.9.2022
Participation at Workshop for Networking and Exchange: (Post-)Yugoslav History, Society and Culture
Fakultätszentrum für transdisziplinäre historisch-kulturwissenschaftliche Studien, Universität Wien
This one-day workshop aims to bring together researchers from different disciplines and institutions based in Vienna who work on (Post-)Yugoslav history, society or culture for a lively exchange on their respective projects.
1.7.2022
Honorary Mention at Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity by the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs
Digital Research Travelogues through European Archives
(Marina Gržinić, Jovita Pristovšek, Sophie Uitz)
Digital Research Travelogues through European Archives creates an interdisciplinary platform for art and science to explore the current politics of forgetting in relation to 3 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 3 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 3 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
29.3.2022
FROM AMNESIA TO CONVIVIALITY. Presentation and artist talk.
Prof. Marina Grzinic (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) with invited artists and guest speakers Joëlle Sambi Nzeba and Nicolas Pommier (Brussels)
L’Annexe, Rue du Chevreuil 24l, 1000 Brussels
Presentation and celebration of the international group exhibition “Stories of Traumatic Pasts: Counter-Archives for Future Memories” (Weltmusem Wien, 8 October 2020 – 3 April 2021; curated by Marina Gržinić, Christina Jauernik and Sophie Uitz), which focused 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.