October: Research travel to Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sarajevo-Srebrenica-Konjic-Mostar
Author: Cecilia Sjöholm
Events: Workshop
20 april Workshop at Södertörn University, held by the project group “Distrusting Monuments” in collaboration with CBEES
Struggling with the authoritarianisms: New art, new histories.
The recent rise of rightwing populism, authoritarianism and even fascism has come to place foucs on the relations between the scene of contemporary art, memorial culture and politics. There is a global tendency, encompassing Eastern Europe, to contend the new forms of politicization of the writing of history in the spheres of cultural representation, memory and heritage. Crossing the distinction between regional and transnational, artistic practices can dispute simplified notions of nationalism and heroism, as well as the symbolisms of identification and belonging that are often the proponents of rightwing populism, authoritarianism and fascism.
Today, the issue of history writing engages a transnational community of contemporary art and critical theory overall. The question of what we are to remember, and how, involves a wide array of agents, materials and forms of expressions. This workshop engages artistic and philosophical perspectives into the politics of aesthetic historicizations, with a special focus on former Yugoslavia and other countries in former Eastern Europe. What does it mean to remember, what does it mean to forget? What are the tools used by nationalist memorial cultures? What are the methods and aesthetic expressions counteracting rightwing populisms? What is the space for official memory and for counter-memory?
Speakers include Mladen Dolar, Rebecka Katz thor, Gal Kirn. Tora Lane, Marcia Cavalcante Schuback, Johanna Mannergren Selimovic, Cecilia Sjöholm.
“Memory Culture in Flux: From Post-Yugoslavia to Conceptual Problems”
On the 15-16 September we organised a symposium “Memory Culture in Flux: From Post-Yugoslavia to Conceptual Problems”. It took place in Ljubljana, at ZRC SAZU and Faculty of Arts, and was organised by Gal Kirn and Ana Hofman (1 day), researchers in the project “Protests, artistic practices and culture of memory in the post-Yugoslav context”; supported by ARRS (Slovenian research agency), and also together with Cecilia Sjöholm and Rebecka Thor (2 day), supported by Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies.
What role has memory, memorial and historical revisionism played in the postsocialist transition, in creation of new nation-states in (post)Yugoslav context? If new official state memory, founded on nationalist glories and victimhood, overwritten the former official state memory, traces of alternative remainders and nostalgic reactions and structural feeling evidently resurfaced in multiple collective practices? Due to a strong and negative orientation towards Yugoslav socialist and revolutionary legacies, the persistence of more progressive and nostalgic structural feelings among the wide population across ethnic borders points to a deep disagreement that carries political, and economic, and not only cultural implications. Invited papers will address diverse topics that deal with the official discourses and counter-hegemonic practices, both its emancipatory potentials and its limits, exhaustion in the deepening of social and economic rifts across the post-Yugoslav region.
The workshop included a day on “Memory culture in flux — conceptual workshop.” Memorial culture has become a question of politics, ideology, perspective, and aesthetic means, involved in antagonistic struggles. But the construction of memorial culture is also a process in flux — what is it, who has the “right” to it, and what impact does it have?
Can critical practices help construe new forms of memory culture, disputing simplified narratives of nationalism and heroism? The workshop focused on concepts that are at sway not just with regards to the cultural and critical production surrounding the war in former Yugoslavia, but in memory culture at large, presenting some of the key concepts in focus for contemporary discussion.