English project description
RomArchive is devised as an international digital archive for art of the Roma – a constantly growing collection of art from all fields, enhanced by scholarly texts and historical documents. Roma will shape the archive in all positions of responsibility – as curators, artists, scholars, and members of the project’s advisory board. The curators will determine the content
s of the archive: on the basis of their curatorial principles, they will select and gather works of art from the fields of film, photography, visual arts, theatre, music, dance and literature. Intelligent contextualisation and scholarly articles will provide background information, help understanding of complex interrelations, and thus ensure nuanced readings of the works on display. While “hegemonic” archives have almost exclusively portrayed Roma in stereotypical ways, RomArchive focuses on their self-representation. This way, the project seeks to counter persistent stereotypes and deep-seated prejudices. RomArchive is thus addressed not only to Europe’s largest minority, but also to Europe’s social majorities. An international team of curators will be responsible for the design and contents of RomArchive’s individual sections. In addition to the art sections another section of RomArchive will hold scholarly articles on the Roma’s art, culture, and history as well as on the politics of their representation. An international advisory board will support and advise the curators and determine strategic project guidelines. Its members are individual artists, scholars, and activists. The German Federal Cultural Foundation supports RomArchive with 3.75 million euros since 2015. RomArchive will go online in 2018. Until then, the curators’ work and the overall development of the project can be tracked on a blog, on Facebook (facebook.com/romanoarchive), Twitter (twitter.com/romarchive), or (in the analogue world) at supporting cultural events in various European cities. The main channel of communication before the launch of RomArchive will be the blog, where in-depth multimedia documentaries, reports, interviews, debates, essays, and other pertinent material will be published. It will be launched soon. The German Federal Cultural Foundation supports RomArchive with 3.75 million euros. This is a clear statement: one of Europe’s largest public foundations attends to Europe’s largest minority, acknowledges the wealth of their centuries-old culture, and makes it better known. The fact that a German federal institution embraces such a project is of further significance in view of N**i Germany’s genocide of the Roma, which claimed 500,000 of their lives. The European Roma Cultural Foundation and the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma have acted in an advisory capacity from the initial stages of planning. The Goethe-Institut and the German Federal Agency for Civic Education also support RomArchive. RomArchive intends to secure additional third-party funding. The Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek has been entrusted with the technical implementation of RomArchive. For international accessibility, the archive will be set up in several languages. The project executing organisation during the set-up phase of RomArchive is "sauerbrey raabe gUG”. After the five-year project duration, the project initiators Isabel Raabe and Franziska Sauerbrey will transfer the Archive to a European Roma organisation. To ease this transition, the German Federal Agency for Civic Education has already pledged to ensure editorial maintenance of RomArchive for an additional five years, beginning in 2020. Curators:
Isaac Blake, dancer, choreographer and director of the Romani Cultural & Arts Company in the UK is curator for dance. The film section is curated by the filmmaker Katalin Bársony, director of Romedia Foundation, a Hungarian Roma NGO. The Austrian literary theorist Beate Eder-Jordan is curator for literature. The US-based Czech ethnomusicologist, musician, and Roma activist Petra Gelbart curates the archive section music. Curatorial responsibility for the theatre & drama section lies with Miguel Ángel Vargas Rubio, a Spanish theatre director, actor, Flamenco singer and guitarist, and the singer and KAL-bandleader as well as researcher of Romani Theatre Dragan Ristić as co-curator. Tímea Junghaus, art historian and curator of the international Roma Pavilion ‘Paradise Lost’ at the 52nd Venice Biennial, is responsible for the visual arts section. The archive section Politics of Photography is curated by the photographer and curator André Raatzsch. An additional section – under the responsibility of scholars Thomas Acton, Angéla Kóczé, Anna Mirga and Jan Selling – will hold scholarly articles on the civil rights movement of Roma in Europe; it will also present early first-person testimonies of Roma persecuted under the National Socialist regime, gathered by historian Karola Fings in the context of her project “Voices of the Victims”. RomArchive as a whole receives scholarly guidance by Markus End on issues surrounding antiziganism. Members of the advisory board:
Gerhard Baumgartner, historian, Austria; Nicoleta Bitu (Chair), Romano ButiQ, Romania; Klaus-Michael Bogdal (Deputy Chair), literary theorist, Germany; Ethel Brooks, sociologist, USA; Pedro Aguilera Cortés, political scientist, Spain; Ágnes Daróczi, activist, Hungary; Merfin Demir (Deputy Chair), Amaro Drom – Interkulturelle Jugendselbstorganisation von Roma und Nicht-Roma, Germany; Jana Horváthová, Museum of Romani Culture, Czech Republic; Zeljko Jovanovic, Roma Initiatives Office, Hungary; Oswald Marschall, Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, Germany; Moritz Pankok, Gallery Kai Dikhas, Germany; Romani Rose, Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, Germany; Riccardo M Sahiti, conductor, Serbia / Germany; Anna Szász, European Roma Cultural Foundation, Hungary. Contact persons:
Project Initiators / Direction
Isabel Raabe ([email protected])
and Franziska Sauerbrey ([email protected])
Press & Communication
Denhart v. Harling ([email protected])
Digital Communication
William Bila ([email protected])
