Mnemopolitics. Mnemotopias. Mnemopoetics
3-6, June 2010, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
Venues:
etc. gallery
Kateřinská 20, Prague 2
http://www.etcgalerie.cz/
Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes
Siwiecova 2, Prague 3
http://www.ustrcr.cz/
KC ZAHRADA
Malenická 1784, Prague 4
http://www.kczahrada.cz/page/jak-k-nam
Kino SVETOZOR
Vodičkova 41, Prague 1
http://www.kinosvetozor.cz/en/
Thursday, June 3
KC ZAHRADA, Malenická 1784, Prague 4
Entrance free
15.00 – 15.30
Presentation and introduction to KC Zahrada.
15.30 – 16.00
Sonja Leboš (initiator of the project):
Mnemopolitics. Mnemotopias. Mnemopoetics – About normativity of truth
16.00– 16.30
Round table
Moderator : Igor Marković
coffee/tea break
17.00 – 17.30
Monika Bregović:
presentation of the paper
Performing National Identity: The Clash of Social Memory and Trauma in German Documentary Theatre
cinema SVETOZOR, Vodičkova 41, Prague 1
Admission: 100 Czech crowns
20.30
Film projection: LUNCH WITH GRANMA (author: Barbara Blasin, 8 minutes)
Croatian with English subtitles
In the presence of the author.
Film projection: GHOSTS OF ZAGREB (author: Jadran Boban, 52 minutes)
Croatian with English subtitles
In the presence of the author.
Discussion with authors.
Friday, June 4
Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Siwiecova 2, Prague 3
Entrance free (registration for this part of the programme obligatory at office@uiii.org)
10.00 – 13.00
Barbara Kopecká:
Guide through the Institute
Presentation of the project Memory of Nation
Discussion
13.00 – 16.00
lunch break
etc. gallery, Kateřinská 20, Prague 2
Entrance free
16.00 – 19,30
Klára Mišunová: Presentation of the Feste Theatre project BE FREE!
Joanne Richardson (in absentia) : IN TRANSIT (film projection)
Barbara Blasin – Talk on the film LUNCH WITH GRANNY
Jadran Boban – Talk on the film GHOSTS OF ZAGREB
DISCUSSION with refreshments
Saturday, June 5
10.30 – 13.00
Mnemotopias: Remembrance in Public Space
Walking up Prague's Yugoslav Partisans' Street
Meeting point: Monument to the Czechoslovak Soldiers who fought in the WWII (at Vitezne Namesti, next to Buzulucka St, Metro A, Final Station - Dejvice)
13.00 – 16.00
lunch break
etc.gallery, Kateřinská 20, Prague 2
Entrance free
16.00 – 19.30
Barbara Blasin&Igor Marković: Presentation of the project Women's Guide through Zagreb
Joanne Richardson (in absentia) : Letter from Moldova (film projection)
Sonja Leboš: Mnemotopias - Remembrance in Public Space
Presentation – Memorial Culture Then, Now, Here, There
DISCUSSION with refreshments
Sunday, June 6
KC Zahrada, Malenická 1784, Prague 4
Entrance free
10.30-11.00
Gathering and informal discussion
11.00 -12.00
Michaela Strumberger: Presentation of the film THE LAST DANCE
12.00-13.00
Discussion and closing session
Active European Remembrance: Further Steps
(Moderators: Sonja Leboš, Igor Marković)
13-16
Lunch break
16-18.30
Mnemotopias: Remembrance in Public Space
Visiting Olbram Zoubek's Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Prague Ujezd Street (Trams No 6, 9, 12, 20, 22, 23 stop ” Ujezd”)
Meeting point: Tram stop Ujezd
http://www.prague.net/memorial
Encounters ACTIVE EUROPEAN MEMORY: What does it stand for?
Mnemopolitics. Mnemotopias. Mnemopoetics are held in English and Czech language.
Concept, production, organization:
Association for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Research (AIIR)
office@uiii.org
We would like to kindly thank to: Joachim Dvorák, Barbara Kopecká, Jiři Skála, Jiři Sulženko, Markéta Vinglerová
Co-funded by:
City of Zagreb – Office for Education, Culture and Sport
Ministry of Culture – Republic of Croatia
In cooperation with:
Austrian Cultural Forum in Prague
etc.gallery
Institute for Studies of Totalitarian Regimes
KC ZAHRADA
KINO SVETOZOR
About the programme
Lunch with Grandma
(2001, 8')
Director, writer, cinematographer, editor: Barbara Blasin
In documentary video form, through the grandmother's portrait, Lunch with Grandma builds a portrait of a women born in the first half of the past century.
Through the grandmother's family album, author is bringing to the spotlight women's interpretation of public and private sphere coming together, encroaching at the same time into history of her everyday life through ritual activity – preparation of lunch.
Family (photo) albums are spaces of our hidden past; once opened, they reveal ways of archiving memories while scoring events on the back of the photographs (or in accompanying notes), not necessarily connected with personal moments captured in frame.
Barbara Blasin
graduated at School of Design, Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb. Besides design, she practices photography and contemporary art. She participated in many international exhibitions and festivals, and received several awards. She is a member of Croatian Association of Artists of Applied Arts.
Zagreb Women's guide
Barbara Blasin and Igor Marković
(street action, exhibition, book, 2002-2006)
Zagreb Women's guide is a continuous research-artistic project started in 2002/03, for the first time presented to the public at the UrbanFestival in September 2002 and continued with an exhibition at the Galerija Nova and on the streets of Zagreb in October 2003. The most important aim of this project is to save from obscurity of the past, but also of the conformism of history, contribution, influence and lives of women who had participated in the creation of Zagreb or were "merely" a part of its everyday life. Forgotten, anonymous, often surpressed female history is symbolically represented with a selection of "anonymous" biographies illustrating the time in which they had lived.
Igor Marković
Currently formalising his out-of-academy education at the Department of Cultural Studies, University of Rijeka. He is editor of Cyberfermizam [ver 1.0] (Centre for Women Studies, Zagreb, 1998) and co-author (with Barbara Blasin) of Zagreb Women’s Guide (B.a.b.e. & Meandar, Zagreb, 2007). He is co-editor (with Aljoša Pužar) of Limen – journal for theory and practice of liminal phenomena, and editor of several magazines and journals, including Ubiq i LibraLibera. He is co-founder and member of Croatian Society for Cultural Studies and Croatian Sexological Society.
The Ghosts of Zagreb
(2009, 52')
Director: Jadran Boban; Writers: Edin Tuzlak, Jadran Boban; Producer: Kristijan Kaurić; Cinematographer: Jadran Boban; Editing: Jasmina Špićek
This film is a parallel journey through streets of Zagreb and memories of five surviving members of one of the strongest illegal anti fascist movements in ocuppied Europe during World War II. They describe those times as horrifying and terrible, but also as the most romantic period of their lives. While the sentiments for Nazi - aligned regime was reviving in contemporary Croatia, they were facing depression and disappointment, revealing fears and reviewing decisions they once made. This documentary becomes a travelogue through a hidden world of spirits that is still present in foyers and yards, on the stairs and in the passages of the old Zagreb, which, just like the men and women who witnessed its history, disappear every day.
Jadran Boban
http://www.jadranboban.com/
(Zagreb, 1969)
Historian and archaeologist, MA ( Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb). Works as a free-lance graphic designer and illustrator. Author of video and animation on a few theatre projects. He attended Motovun Film School, in the class of Srđan Karanović and Pjer Žalica.
The Ghosts of Zagreb is his first feature movie.
Performing National Identity: The Clash of Social Memory and Trauma in German Documentary Theatre
After Zero Hour, both German states excluded their Nazi past from social memory to forge a new national identity and state. War and the Holocaust slowly fought its way back into public spaces of memory in the 60s, once the economic and political equilibrium was restored. The German documentary theatre played a crucial role in the process: aiming to subvert historical grand narratives, dramatists worked with documents which store “alternative memory” (Burke). Fighting amnesia meant reaching for documents such as Holocaust survivor testimonies, which encompass their traumatic memories. Based on examples from the key works of documentary theatre (Der Stellvertreter by Rolf Hochhuth and Die Ermittlung by Peter Weiss), and drawing on theories of social memory (Burke, Assman, Nora) and trauma (Caruth, Laub, LaCapra), this paper seeks to describe the dialectics of social and alternative (individual, traumatic) memory that can be detected both on the national level, and in the documentary plays themselves. Working with documents which entail alternative versions of the past, the documentary theatre subverted the discourse once needed to support national identity, which is a non-essential, performative construct. The second part of the presentation elucidates the relationship that the plays establish with the historical context they emerged in, and the way the past is brought up to comment on some contemporary issues. The “obscenity” of literary and theatrical representation of Holocaust (Lanzmann, Caruth, LaCapra) raises some aesthetic issues as well.
Monika Bregović
(1984)
MA in Comparative Literature and English Language and Literature (Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb). Currently enrolled in the PhD programme of Literature, Culture, Performing Arts and Film at the same university. She works as a literary translator and occasionally contributes articles and book reviews to literary magazines.
Mnemopolitics. Mnemotopias. Mnemopoetics – About normativity of truth & Memorial Culture
Manipulating collective memory, inscribing a certain dominant narrative in an official national historiography, and then into space, often leads to political theatre that strives for shaping future by charging it with historical substance. We are interested in how mnemo-topias emerge, which are goals of mnemopolitics, as much we are interested in the possibility of appropriating a politicized ‘theatre of memories’ in order to transform it into transnational poetics of artistic medium.
Sonja Leboš
http://www.uiii.org
(Zagreb, 1967)
MA in Cultural Anthropology (University of Zagreb). SL has created various interdisciplinary research methods and platforms for articulation of multilayered aesthetical, ethical, ecological and sociological issues, cooperated with different societal organisations and studied manifold cultural forms. By her initiated recent on-going projects include: promotion of the publication ‘Space of Identity, Space of Interaction, Space of Alteration’, an interdisciplinary study of Zagreb city district Maksimir; 'Cybercine', media – archaeology and networked live-stream platforms; 'Mnemosyne-Theatre of Memories', research and building platforms for analysis, contesting and envisioning diverse cultures of memories.
BE FREE!
Language barrier-free theatre performance BE FREE! portrays displacement of ethnic Germans from Brno that took place on May 31, 1945. 25,000 to 30,000 people were forced out of Brno and its surrounding under the violent supervision of Czechoslovak partisans and Soviet soldiers. Up to 6,000 former residents of Brno died on the way to Austria. This is the sixth project within Feste Theatre 'Identity' serial. Project BE FREE! tackles German-Czech relationships, a taboo that has not been dealt with much even after 1989.
Feste Theatre (Brno)
Run by REPT o.s., based on idea of open society, social art and art aiming at cultural and sociopolitical education. Klára Mišunová is the Feste Theatre producer.
In Transit
(30’, 2008.)
Romanian with English subtitles
A diary of a journey through space and time, made up of subjective impressions and childhood memories. While traveling across Romania in the year of its EU accession, the monologue reflects on the re-writing of history and the relation between images and memory, tackling also the role of Romanian state in WWII.
&
Letter from Moldova
(28’, 2009)
A travelogue made up of ten letters that reflect on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the proximity between post-colonialism and nationalism. On another level, the film highlights the problematic nature of the tourist gaze and the mechanisms through which it constructs images of the other.
Joanne Richardson
(Bucharest/New York/Berlin)
Artist and media theorist working on the borders of documentary film, visual art and political activism. Her videos reflect an interest in post-communism, colonialism and nationalism, and manifest a critical perspective on the relation between images, history and memory.
The Last Dance
(53’, 2002)
German/Croatian with English subtitles
Following a family retracing its path of expulsion, The Last Dance captures the last flicker of the Danube Swabians – ethnic Germans interned in concentration camps and driven out of former-Yugoslavia after WWII.
Michaela Strumberger
http://www.michaelastrumberger.com/
MA in set-design (University of Yale). This Austrian artist has had her residence in Berlin since 2000. From 1997-2003 she worked as a set-designer and director on various productions (Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, NewYork, Paris, Salzburg). Besides being theatre artist, she is also video and film-maker. Since 2004. she has been dedicated to visual arts.