Dialogues for the Future: Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Dialogues for the Future: Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia Austrian Science Fund (FWF): AR439 Dialogues for the Future: Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia Edited by Marina Gržinić Šefik Tatlić In collaboration with Valerija Zabret Jovita Pristovšek Tjaša Kancler Sophie Uitz 2020 Dialogues for the Future Table of Contents 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Marina Gržinić 09 INTRODUCTION Marina Gržinić and Šefik Tatlić 11 Contents Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia PART I GENOCIDES Collectif Mémoire Coloniale et Lutte contre 23 les Discriminations 4 May 2018, Brussels, Belgium Jasenovac Memorial Site 27 29 May 2019, Jasenovac, Croatia Prijedor: White Armband Day 30 31 May 2019, Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina Mauthausen Memorial 35 11 October 2019, Mauthausen, Austria PART II 5 WORKSHOPS Memory/History: The Power of Decolonialization, 42 Art and Interventions 3 May 2018, leSpace, Brussels, Belgium Post-War Nationalism, Memory and History 56 18 May 2018, Centre for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD), Belgrade, Serbia Feminism between Nation-States and Capitalism 61 27 May 2019, Centre for Women’s Studies, Zagreb, Croatia Fighting Racism, Deconstructing White Privilege and 65 Cultural Interventions, Artistic Projects, Political Strategies On the occasion of 25 years of maiz 12 October 2019, Altes Rathaus, Linz, Austria Contents Dialogues for the Future PART III INTERVIEWS Belgium Anne Reijniers and Rob Jacobs 72 Gert Huskens 76 Laurent Licata 80 Austria Anton Pelinka 84 Éva Kovács 88 Gerhard Baumgartner 92 Georg Hoffmann 96 Heidemarie Uhl 100 Rudolf “Rudi” Vouk 104 Ljiljana Radonić 108 Lukas Egger 112 6 Assimina Gouma 117 Benjamin Grilj 122 Bernhard Weidinger 126 Faika El-Nagashi 130 Maria Pohn-Lauggas 135 Tanja Prušnik 140 Oliver Rathkolb: Part 1 144 Oliver Rathkolb: Part 2 148 Luzenir Caixeta 153 Christian Dürr 158 Rubia Salgado 162 Luana Hansen 167 Serbia Tanja Marković 171 Srđan Hercigonja 175 Aleksandar Kraus 180 Dušan Maljković 184 Dragomir Olujić Oluja 188 Marija Perković 192 Contents Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia Bosnia and Selma Hadžihalilović 196 Herzegovina Mario Hibert 200 Adela Jušić 205 Elma Hodžić 209 Hikmet Karčić 213 Nevenka Tromp 217 Dražen Crnomat 221 Leila Šeper 225 Kosovo Vjollca Krasniqi 230 Besa Luci 235 Shkëlzen Maliqi 240 7 Croatia Tvrtko Jakovina 244 Katarina Peović 248 Ivo Goldstein 252 Hrvoje Klasić 255 Tomislav Medak 259 Ivo Pejaković 264 Lina Gonan 268 Sara Lalić 272 Slovenia Boris Hajdinjak 276 Irena Šumi 280 Miha Marek 284 Spain Diego Falconí Trávez 289 María Ruido 293 Esther (Mayoko) Ortega 297 Bibliography 302 Biographies of Editors and Researchers FWF PEEK (AR 439) 305 Contents Dialogues for the Future 8 Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to extend our gratitude to the Academy of Fine Arts Vien- na, Johan F. Hartle, the Rector of the Academy, and Michaela Glanz in charge of the research administration at the Academy. I would like to extend our gratitude to the FWF PEEK Project No. AR 439-G24/IBK for support in all the segments of the three-year-long research project. I would like to thank Ana Miljanić, the director of the Centre for Cul- tural Decontamination (CZKD), Belgrade, Serbia, and our close partner at the CKZD Aleksandra Sekulić that actively supported the project from 2018 onwards. I would like to thank Saša Kesić, Belgrade, for his strong and dedicated support at all times during the project. I would like to emphasize the work of Valerija Zabret, numerous record- ings and dedicated editing; transcription of the interviews coupled with 9 an enduring research done by Šefik Tatlić; the organizational manage- ment for the interviews during 2018 in two different places by Sophie Uitz; the recording and editing work done by Tjaša Kancler; the drafting of the concept for the book publishing proposal for the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna by Christina Jauernik; and the copy editing of the whole manuscript by Jovita Pristovšek. I would like to thank Dušan Grlja for the English editing and Meta- klinika Studio for the design. Our biggest thanks goes to all those who we have spoken to, the ones that accepted our invitation, shared with us the most vivid and firm beliefs, memories, histories and knowledges. Without them none of this would be possible. We would also like to thank all the spaces throughout Europe that provided us assistance in our work. Marina Gržinić Acknowledgments Dialogues for the Future 10 Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia INTRODUCTION The book Dialogues for the Future: Countering the Genealogy of Am- 11 nesia arose from the research carried out by the PEEK Project No. AR 439-G24/IBK, whose full title is “Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality.”1 This is an interdisciplinary arts- and-theory-based research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and developed at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, from 2018 to 2020. During this time, we created an online video archive entitled “Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia.” It consists of seventy hours comprising eighty-two interviews/positions2 as well as the recordings of the symposium “GENEALOGY OF AMNESIA: Crushing Silences, Con- structing Histories” held at the mumok in 2018, thus tying together the three sites that constitute the “Genealogy of Amnesia”: Belgium, Austria, and Bosnia and Herzegovina/Croatia/Serbia and “Republika Srpska.” This book comprises sixty-six interviews in the form of deep reflec- tions concerning territories and histories. 1 See Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality (website), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, accessed 8 June 2019, https://archiveofamnesia.akbild.ac.at. 2 See “Archive,” Genealogy of Amnesia: Rethinking the Past for a New Future of Conviviality, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, accessed 11 June 2020, https://archiveofamnesia.akbild.ac.at/?page_id=17. Introduction Dialogues for the Future The book consists of three parts. The first part presents four sites of genocide. First we take a look at present-day Brussels, the capital city of Belgium, still heavily adorned with reminders of its colonial past. The rule of King Leopold II of Bel- gium, who acquired his own private Congo region in Africa and perpe- trated one of the bloodiest colonial genocidal extractions of wealth in the last few centuries, seems to have been erased both from the “city’s memory” and its monuments. King’s monuments are still present all over the city. In Austria, we examine the Mauthausen Memorial,3 a Nazi concentra- tion camp from World War II period, whose sub-camps were spread throughout the country. It was a place of forced labour, extermination and horror. We also researched the Jasenovac Memorial Site. Jasenovac was a camp run by the Ustasha, the Croat collaborators of the Nazis in World War II, and it was the largest concentration and extermination camp complex in Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hr- 12 vatska, NDH). At least 83,145 people were killed there.4 Former Yugo- slavia during the 1990s is defined by the Srebrenica genocide of 1995. Additionally, there are hundreds of other genocidal sites in the terri- tory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, locations where the systematic killing of Muslims (men, women, and children), rapes and other atrocities oc- curred. We visited Prijedor in “Republika Srpska,” where the genocide of Muslim children was committed by the Serbian paramilitary forces of “Republika Srpska.” The second part presents a series of workshops that we organized and conducted in all three territories. Finally, the third part consists of interviews. The interviews are divid- ed into four sections: the majority are those covering the territories of Belgium, Austria, and the former Yugoslavia, as well in relation to Spain. 3 “About Us,” Mauthausen Memorial, accessed 1 April 2020, https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/ About-us/Organisation. 4 “List of Individual Victims of Jasenovac Concentration Camp,” Jasenovac Memorial Site, accessed 11 July Introduction 2020, http://www.jusp-jasenovac.hr/Default.aspx?sid=6711. Countering the Genealogy of Amnesia These interviews were carried out in the form of collaborative dia- logues; forty-five were conducted by Marina Gržinić and Šefik Tatlić, twenty by Marina Gržinić alone, three by Tjaša Kancler and one by Šefik Tatlić. Knowing their activist, decolonial, and trans* position, we asked Tjaša Kancler to conduct three interviews in Spain. Francoist Spain, or the Francoist dictatorship, named after Francisco Franco (1892–1975), a general who ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975 (the period from the Nation- alist victory in the Spanish Civil War until his death), was also one of the leading anti-Communist figures in the world during the Cold War. His regime was supported by the West, especially by the United States. After World War II, several Nazi collaborators, including Ante Pavelić, the fascist leader of the NDH and Jasenovac concentration camp, found asylum in Francoist Spain.5 After Franco’s death, a cultural movement called La Movida Madrileña, along with the growth of the gay rights movement in the rest of Europe and the Western world, played a sig- nificant role in creating the Spain of today.6 13 Muzaffer Hasaltay made the recordings in Belgrade, Serbia and Brus- sels, Belgium in 2018, Zlatan Filipović, Adnan Peco, Haris Sahačić made the recordings of the interviews in Sarajevo, the interviews in Kosovo were recorded by Matko Bulent, Ivana Jandrić recorded the workshop in Zagreb at the Center for Women’s Studies, and then Valerija Zabret took over the recordings. The three interviews in Spain were recorded and edited by Tjaša Kancler. The editing of seventy-nine digital units was managed by Marina Gržinić and Valerija Zabret. Each dialogue-interview is edited as a text, with sub-chapters and notes. The digital archive enables cross-referencing and offers links to the re- lated materials, allowing access from different perspectives and points of departure: territorial, personal, and topical.