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Capacity Building WS

Dance, Archives, Disability and Ablebodiedness

  • Date: 23rd February 2022
  • Time: 10:00-11:30 (UK time) (11-12.30 CET)
  • Venue: Online via Zoom (link sent upon Registration)
  • Language: English

image: Aja Zupanec, Dance Programme, Public Fund for Cultural Activities, CC BY-ND JSKD Dance Department 2012 Aja Zupanec

Archives, dance, disability and ablebodiedness  raises several questions that need to be more  explored in terms of narratives, language and equality.  With this in mind, the COVUNI team has curated a Capacity-Building LabDay where we bring together researchers, artists, archivists and practitioners to reflect on the intersections and challenges of archives, dance and disability, 

Questions being considered include:

  • How can we develop a vocabulary to talk about disability dance and archives? 
  • How can we use that vocabulary as a tool to make disability dance visible in the archive in a way that is not focussed on ablebodiedness? 
  • What can archives do to start to explore these timely questions? 
  • What might artists need to consider when thinking about offering work to archives? 
  • Who has the power to decide which archives/traces/documents of (disability) dance will be preserved for the future in a professional, sustainable way?

Made with Padlet

Staf Vos works for CEMPER, Centre for Music and Performing Arts Heritage (Flanders, Belgium) and likes exploring the many needs and challenges that come up when dealing with ‘heritage’, ‘archives’ and ‘historical research’, both in specific practices and on a policy level. He studied Cultural History (KU Leuven & University of York) and published monographs on music and ideology in early twentieth-century Flanders (2005) and on Belgian dance history 1890-1940 (PhD 2009; publ. 2012). Staf has been Guest Lecturer in Dance History at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp BA Dance programme (2014-2020). He identifies as having a disability, plays the French horn and has some experience as an amateur dancer.

https://www.cemper.be/english


Iris Bouche
 works as an artist within the medium of choreography. As a choreographer, teacher, and performer, she investigates the position of the non-normative dancing body within the contemporary dance landscape. She graduated in 1993 from the Royal Institute in Antwerp. She continued her studies at the Alvin Ailey Dance Center in N.Y.C. and at the Rudra Dance Theater School in Lausanne under the direction of Maurice Béjart. From 1995 to 2001 she was part of the dance company Rosas under the direction of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Since then she has worked as a freelance choreographer, dancer and movement coach on various co-productions for dance and theater. She has worked with Needcompany by Jan Lauwers, Skagen, Olympique Dramatique, De Roovers, Laïka, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, among others.
From 2011 to 2016 she was artistic director of the dance department of the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp. In 2020 she obtained a Master in Cultural Studies at KU Leuven. Currently, she is also working as an artistic collaborator in HETGEVOLG directed by Stefan Perceval. In addition to creating and writing, her teaching includes research in disability art studies and dance studies through workshops with students at universities and art schools. She has invested in collective research projects such as the LABO Inclusive Dance Platform, an educational project for inclusive dance practices.


Jonas Rutgeerts
 is a dance researcher and dramaturge based in Belgium. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Institute of Philosophy (KU Leuven) in 2015 and is currently affiliated as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Arts (KU Leuven). His research explores the importance of dance in the shaping of (sub)cultural practices and its potential to rethink traditional relations between, time and space. He is the author of Re-act: Over re-enactment in de hedendaagse dans (Tectum Verlag, 2015) and Unbecoming rhythms: Performing Temporality in Contemporary European Dance (Intellect books, 2021). As a dramaturge, he worked with Needcomapny, Ivana Müller, David Weber-Krebs and Arkadi Zaides, among others. 

Kate Marsh is a disabled dance artist with over 20 years of experience in performing, teaching and making. Her recently completed PhD focusses on leadership in the context of dance and disability. She is currently a research fellow at C-DaRE (Coventry University Centre for Dance Research). Kate is also co-producer of the Change Maker programme at the UK’s arts organisation “Metal Culture”. Change Maker is a programme funded by Arts Council England, with the aim of increasing the diversity of senior leadership in art and culture by helping to develop a cohort of leaders who are Black, minority ethnic and/or disabled by means of a targeted senior leadership training and development programme.

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WEAVE LabDay

Early Dance Circle Labday 

  • Date: 3rd December 2021
  • Time: 10-11.30 GMT, 11-12.30 CET
  • Online via Zoom
  • Language: English

Image: Screengrab from the CultureMoves Film created for the EDC Baroque Dance Module, courtesy of EDC / C-DARE Coventry University

COVUNI (Centre for Dance Research, C-DaRE) and the Early Dance Circle (EDC) collaborated to organise an Early Dance LabDay to present about the work the charity is doing across the UK, get a sense of the various periods they cover, gain insight into their online activities and also learn more about the content they are providing for the WEAVE project. The LabDay also revisited the EDC Baroque Dance MOOC developed under the CEF CultureMoves project.

For the Early Dance Module where a collaboration with the Early Dance Circle and Chalemie took place, the module provided an introduction to Baroque dance focused on its more formal couple dances, rather than its professional, stage and comedic (more virtuosic) sides, or its rich and various heritage of country dances involving sets of dancers.

The LabDay also explored how the EDC and the content provided to Europeana is opening up a conversation about the importance of historical dance and music  because of its relevance for engagement in historic buildings and other cultural heritage sites. The LabDay offered participants the opportunity to learn more about historical dance and join a conversation on the ways in which archival material can be reimagined in a modern context.


COVUNI, and in particular the Centre For Dance Research (C-DaRE), has long standing collaborations with dance archives, dance associations and artists and will facilitate the aggregation of high-quality curated collections from specific dance communities. Among those collections is the Early Dance Circle (EDC), an umbrella organisation based in the UK whose main aim is to promote the enjoyment, performance and study of historical dance in the UK and beyond, from the medieval period up to the end of the 20th century.

Formed in 1984 and including professional and amateur dance groups, artists and researchers, the EDC aims to make historical dance heritage accessible and has curated and organised many events over the last 35 years. The EDC’s ethos is that a knowledge of earlier dance forms helps enrich the cultural life of the UK and Europe by accessing a heritage of international importance that belongs to us all, but which has, until recently, been largely forgotten. 

In conjunction with the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University, the EDC will broker new connections with the historical and early dance community in the UK and beyond in order to safeguard and promote this marginalized dance heritage. The EDC is keen to aggregate to Europeana a curated selection of their content (historical dance videos), shedding new light on historical dance forms that have often been missing from archives. This is especially pertinent given dance’s traditional ontology as intangible cultural heritage, especially in (dance) performance’s oft-cited ephemerality (Phelan 1993) and in how dance practice and performance might resist and/or enter the archive (cf. Taylor 2003 ; Schneider 2001, 2011; Lepecki 2010, Brandstetter 2015 [1995], 2016). 

In particular, the work in WEAVE aggregating EDC content to Europeana will build on the existing relationship that COVUNI formed with the EDC during the CEF CultureMoves project. For CultureMoves, as part of the ‘Creating a Digital Heritage Community’ MOOC (massive open online course) developed in collaboration with the Kaleidoscope project, EDC collaborated on a historical dance module examining the relationship between early and baroque dance in heritage settings and digital storytelling (using the CultureMoves digital toolkit, and especially the MotionNotes digital annotation tool which will be extended in WEAVE). The partnership between C-DaRE and EDC in WEAVE will build on this exploration of the connections between tangible and intangible cultural heritage first explored in CultureMoves, considering relationships between dance as ICH, historical landmark settings as TCH, and how digital tools can enable deeper interconnections between these forms of ICH and TCH.

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WEAVE LabDay

The Role of Artist Residencies in the Promotion of Roma Contemporary Art

  • Date: 19th November 2021
  • Time: 11:00-12.30 CET
  • Online via Zoom
  • Language: English and Hungarian

For centuries, art-loving benefactors regarded the offering of guest studios to individual artists as a kind of romantic patronage, enabling artists to live and create in bucolic settings. Artist residencies provide artists with the time, space, and materials they need to create new work or to focus on their artwork-related research. Moreover, residencies are important career boosters because they provide artists with the opportunity to form relationships with their peers and receive mentoring from influential artists and industry professionals.

The vast majority of Roma artists, however, lack the prerequisites to be invited to many artist residencies. This system tends to exclude self-taught artists, artists who have not graduated from arts programmes at elite white institutions, and artists who do not have powerful advocates. The consequence of so many Roma artists being shut out of higher tier residencies is that they remain with lower industry status, receive little publicity, achieve fewer museum acquisitions, and their work is sold at lower price points.

Since 2020, the joint programme of Villa Romana Florence and ERIAC has been the premier residency for artists of Roma descent. During our webinar, we will discuss the role of art residencies in advancing individual careers and the promotion of marginalised cultures. The cultural managers behind the trailblazing initiative, Angelika Stepken of Villa Romana and ERIAC’s Timea Junghaus was joined by the 2021 artists-in-residence L´uboš Kotlar and Norbert Oláh, to discuss the pros and cons of this kind of positive action targeting ethnicity in the field of arts and culture.

This webinar is organised within the framework of WEAVE – Widen European Access to Cultural Communities Via Europeana and RomaMoMA, a project of IMEI – International Membership Engagement Initiative.

Panel speakers: Timea Junghaus (ERIAC Executive Director), Angelika Stepken (Villa Roma Florence Director), Norbert Oláh (Artist in Residence, Villa Romana Florence, 2021), L´uboš Kotlar (Artist in Residence, Villa Romana Florence, 2021), Selma Selman (Artist)

Moderator: Katarzyna Pabijanek

Discussion held in English with Hungarian interpretation.

The ERIAC WEAVE LabDay aligns with the WEAVE capacity-building strand of the work, which explores the ethical dimension of the project in relation to representation. Within WEAVE, we carry out several capacity-building activities to develop a closer connection between cultural heritage institutions (CHIs), minority cultural communities, and Europeana. These pillars of the WEAVE project link directly to safeguarding principles that allow for critical reflection on ethical principles, in terms of space, access and the “effects” of a lack of access to certain residencies. Ironically, another kind of tension emerges when there is an “active invitation for underrepresented communities” – through which the residency or call becomes merely an exercise that ticks all the right boxes and appears to be inclusive, yet is removed from valuing the individual artist. Perhaps this perspective of the paradox and tension reveals the need for generating a space where Roma artists are valued and respected.

Other complex issues that emerge for Roma artists concern the application fees and processes, the gender dimension that may be tied to caring responsibilities, and the way artists are expected to navigate digital platforms and have a strong digital presence. Within this framework, the third ERIAC LabDay explored the above context and invited our guests to reflect on their own experiences, while also offering possible alternatives and solutions.


Agenda

11:00 – 11:10 Welcome and Introduction

Katarzyna Pabijanek, moderator, Project Manager of RomaMoMA

Rosa Cisneros, WEAVE – Widen European Access to Cultural Communities Via Europeana

11:10 – 11:30 Presentations

Timea Junghaus, Executive Director ERIAC

Angelika Stepken, Director Villa Romana

L´uboš Kotlar, Artist in Residence, Villa Romana Florence, 2021

(Norbert Oláh, Artist in Residence, Villa Romana Florence, 2021

Selma Selman, Artist who has taken part in many international residencies, currently at Rijksakademie Amsterdam

11:30 – 12:10 Discussion

12:10 – 12:20 Q&A

12:20 – 12:30 Final Remarks

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WEAVE LabDay

Castellers in the world

  • Date: 24th November 2021
  • Time: 15:00 CET
  • Online via Zoom
  • Language: English, Catalan

Image: «Diada castellera».Credit: Aniol Resclosa (CRDI). 1st November 2012. At the moment the human tower goes up, the group members have to push together to strengthen the structure they want to erect.

Traditional Catalan music accompaining the Castelles performances

CRDI, the Centre for Image Research and Diffusion in Girona, owns a large Image Archive that holds a wealth of materials reflecting different aspects of daily life in Girona and its rich cultural heritage. For WEAVE CRDI has curated a collection of 6.500 photographs and 186 videos about castellers (human castles). It has also curated a collection of daguerreotype photographs and plans to digitise more than 100 in 3D and aggregate them to Europeana.

CRDI is a Department inside the Record Management, Archives and Publications Service of Girona City Council . It is a member of Photoconsortium Association and very involved in different international initiatives regarding Photography Heritage. Its mission is to know, to protect, to promote, to offer and to disseminate the Image Heritage of Girona. The main services it provides are: preservation and conservation; on-site and online consultation: reproduction of original images; advice on the organization and management of fonds and collections; assessment and selection; implementation of technologies; management of intellectual property rights; guided tours for schools and specialists, and collaboration on outreach and training activities in connection with images.

The content it provides to the project are relevant for the cultural communities represented, that is: castellers (human castles) and communities linked to early photography. Regarding castellers it must be taken into account that in 2010 UNESCO approved the inclusion of castellers in its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In this way, castells acquired a universal status, with the highest possible recognition to which a popular culture element can aspire. After a long selection process, the final decision was made in Nairobi (Kenya) on the 16th of November 2010. In its decision, among other elements, the Committee highlighted that: “Human towers are recognized by Catalan people as an integral part of their cultural identity, transmitted from generation to generation and providing community members a sense of continuity, social cohesion and solidarity”.


This introductory panel about Castellers Culture explained the values implicitly involved in this activity. This is something very specific to Catalan culture, although Castellers groups exist around the world. In this LabDay we connected with Castellers’ associations in different countries and share experiences and points of view. The aim was to explain the phenomena of the Castellers and mainly focuses on these values:

  • Amateurism. Human towers are an entirely altruistic activity. The recompense is the satisfaction of self-improvement and achieving challenges.
  • Family leisure. It is an activity the whole family can enjoy.
  • Teamwork. In human towers, glory always belongs to the group.
  • Associations are open and inclusive: there are men and women of all ages, from children to older people, from all social classes and origins.
  • Inclusion and integration are essential.
  • By definition, human towers show solidarity: everybody gives the group his or her effort, suffering, courage, time, etc.
  • They are an open, plural and democratic model of association.
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WEAVE LabDay

Safeguarding Our Romani Language

On November 5, the World Day of Romani Language, the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) organized the Second International Conference “Safeguarding Our Romani Language”, in partnership with the Council of Europe and the University of Graz. The conference is organized in the framework of the International Membership Engagement Initiative, financed by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, in connection with WEAVE (Widen European Access to Cultural Communities Via Europeana) LabDay series.

Our goal is to establish cooperation for language harmonization at an international level, to design future strategies for preserving the language heritage, and to fulfil the general need in Europe for Romani language education.

The conference brought together experts, practitioners and legislators who participate in the protection and promotion of the Romani language. The aim of the event was to oversee the status of Romani, to discuss the issues of language preservation, the topic of transnational harmonization, as well as the practices in Romani language education.

This year we put special emphasis on the theme of heritage preservation involving digital tools, thanks to the connection with the WEAVE project, that is extremely relevant and coherent within the scope of the conference, as it aims to develop a framework to link the tangible and intangible heritage of cultural communities, safeguarding the rich and invaluable cultural heritage which they represent via digital cultural heritage promotion.

The conference was held online, providing a platform for international participants from various countries. Special significance was given to the use of Romani during the event.

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WEAVE LabDay

Portuguese Dances Workshop at 3rd edition of Festival Desdobra-te’21

  • Date: 27th November 2021
  • Time: 15.00 pm (Portugal time zone)
  • Duration: 1 h.
  • Online via Zoom
  • Language: Portuguese

WEAVE project is organizing a series of LabDays to engage communities with their tangible and intangible heritage. The second PédeXumbo’s LabDay is dedicated to the portuguese dances of Porto de Mós (Portugal).

On this Labday we learned traditional dances with “Aire”, a Portuguese group of musicians and dancers created by Marisa Barroso to give musical structure to the “Pilot Project for the Safeguarding of Traditional Portuguese Dances”. These are dances inspired by the winds and dry stone walls of the Serras de Aire e Candeeiros, in the municipality of Porto de Mós, such as “Raspa” and “Bate do Reinadio”, “Sapateia da Choutice” ou “Vira ao contra par e ao par do Fadinho”.

This LABDAY takes place in the 3rd edition of Festival Desdobra-te, a festival of dance and other arts, organized by PédeXumbo, in Évora (Portugal). This activity was also broadcast via zoom, within the scope of the European project WEAVE.


Portuguese Dances Workshop is dedicated to the repertoire from North to South of Portugal (vira, corridinho, malhão, chula, chotiça, fado batido, etc.), taking participants to dance in circles, pairs and squares. It was a relaxed moment of practical learning of steps, rhythms and spatial structures of different dances that are part of the tradition of dancing in Portugal.

This workshop had a strong practical component accompanied by moments of sharing information about the contexts where certain rhythms are danced.



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WEAVE LabDay

Poetry and Photography

Date: 17th November 2021

Time: 10.00am-13.30pm GMT

  • Part 1: 10.00-11.30 am
  • Part 2: 12.00-13.30 pm

Venue: Online via Zoom

Language: English

In preparing the content materials for the aggregation to Europeana, TopFoto referenced its inaugural writer-in-residence, Rommi Smith and her residency-collaboration with musician and composer, Christella Litras. This residency, TopFoto’s expertise and its collaboration with artist-researcher, Rommi Smith, has led to the planning of a LabDay that is geared towards artists, researchers, archivists, CHIs and other key stakeholders that engage with photographic content. This LabDay also features contributions including from John Balean, Operations Manager at TopFoto.

This exclusive, critical-creative, practice-based event took place before a brand-new exhibition, curated by Smith, of residency-related photographs at the North Wall Gallery, Oxford, 10-29 January 2022.

The TopFoto Poetry and Photography LabDay comprised two parts:

Part 1: A critical-creative talk led by Rommi Smith. The LabDay incorporated moments of practice-related insights from artists Rommi Smith and Christella Litras. Litras, a musician within the residency, playing her keyboard. This first section also incorporated: the remote performance of extracts of creative work from the TopFoto residency; a three-way, interdisciplinary conversation between Smith, Litras and WEAVE convenor, Rosa Cisneros – concluding with a Q&A where audience questions are welcomed.

Part 2: A generative workshop utilising a selection of photos from the TopFoto archive as a starting point for short poems, monologues and short stories. Participants discovered and utilised some of the methods Smith utilises in her own creative process as the inaugural writer-in-residence for TopFoto. Litras supported the workshop, performing improvised music to inspire the flow of words and narratives.  The workshop space was open to everyone, regardless of prior creative writing experience.

 


Rommi Smith is the inaugural writer in residence for the TopFoto archive, one of the world’s leading independent photographic archives. With a passionate interest in the archive’s photos documenting Black British life across the last two centuries, Rommi took a short selection of TopFoto’s historic photos as muse for seven original pieces of work. The resulting works (which include poem-monologues, sonnets, ghazals and redactions of original archival texts), fuse research facts with fiction in response to absences in the archive. This creative work draws on the critical work in Smith’s own doctoral research; research in dialogue with texts including: Osthoff (2009), Rosello (2010) and the work of Claudia Rankine.

The resulting texts are set to music by musician, composer, arranger and producer Christella Litras. The resultant works are performed by Rommi Smith, Christella Litras and the actor Lladel Bryant, with a contribution from Clinton Cameron, who is part of what is termed “the Windrush Generation.” Rommi Smith’s short residency is made possible via the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, awarded to TopFoto from the Cultural Recovery Fund.

Residency Outcomes include three of the seven key photographs and poems that are explored in short video form:

  • The Ballad of Judy Johnson’s Blues – photographer unknown, London
  • Ghazal 1948, Eileen Johnson, aged 24 – photographer unknown, Tilbury Docks
  • Sonnet Variation for the man whose name I cannot trace – photographer Roger Bamber, Leicester

The videos can be found at add https://vimeo.com/topfoto and all the works can be enjoyed on https://soundcloud.com/topfotoarchive



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WEAVE LabDay

Mastros Tradicionais, a cultural practice from Odemira (Portugal)

This LabDay was composed of three parts dedicated to the practice of Mastros Tradicionais,  a cultural practice from Odemira, Portugal

  • conversation with the research team and presentation of the documentary “Da Terra ao Céu
  • presentation of PédeXumbo’s Brochure Collection “Para Conhecer e Fazer“, dedicated to Mastros Tradicionais, with hands-on activity
  • Paper Flowers workshop: How to Make Paper Flowers

Session 1

The LabDay dedicated to the practice of Mastros Tradicionais, a cultural practice from Odemira (Portugal), started with a conversation with Marta Guerreiro, Leonor Carpinteiro, Rui Cacilhas and Pedro Grenha, who did the research work for the documentary “Da Terra ao Céu”. The documentary “Da Terra ao Céu” is a film by Pédexumbo, directed by Pedro Grenha and Rui Cacilhas and is also a journey through the municipality of Odemira. A film that we started to imagine in 2017, filmed in 2018, premiered in 2019 and just released in June 2021, in Book/DVD format. This research work allowed us to discover all the lands and places in the municipality of Odemira, while we were looking for someone who could tell us about Mastros Tradicionais.

Session 2

The second part of the Labday presented the nº 1 of PédeXumbo’s Brochure Collection “Para Conhecer e Fazer”, dedicated to Mastros Tradicionais. This is a collection of publications in the form of handcrafted brochures where the aim is to provide information on specific techniques and objects related to traditional dance and music, in an informal, simple and visually attractive way. These brochures are dedicated to themes that rarely appeared in the past in written form, thus contributing to an enrichment of the literature dedicated to techniques and practices of traditional Portuguese music and dance combined with objects and knowledge. These publications, which are not intended to be boring or academic in content, are intended to provide the reader with a brief contextualization, description of the practice and instructions on how to experiment by doing it. This collection also intends to reaffirm the importance of the production of small editions in series of handcrafted publications (using the silkscreen printing method), as a fast means of disseminating knowledge and, simultaneously, of an object with artistic value.

Session 3

In the third activity of the day, we offered a hands-on activity: a paper flowers workshop starting from a pratice in the brochure “Para Conhecer e Fazer – Mastros Tradicionais”, to show how to make paper flowers and to teach some folding techniques of traditional paper flower designs.

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ERIAC conference

Safeguarding Our Romani Language

  • CONFERENCE
  • Date: 5th November 2021
  • Time: starting from 10:00 CET
  • Online via Zoom
  • Language: English, Romani

On the occasion of the World Day of Romani Language, on November 5th, 2021, the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) organized the Second International Conference “Safeguarding Our Romani Language”. In the framework of the conference, a special track and discussion of the WEAVE LabDay series was embedded, dedicated to the Roma community and their heritage.

The conference brought together experts, practitioners and legislators who participate in the protection and promotion of the Romani Language as one of the historical and minority languages of Europe.

The aim of the event is to oversee the status of the Romani language, to discuss the issues of language preservation, the topic of transnational harmonization, as well as the practices in Romani language education. This year a special emphasis was put on the theme of heritage preservation involving digital tools, especially for improving language education.


The conference provided an overview of the contemporary status of Romani language; current practices in Romani language education; Romani language teaching/re-learning initiatives; transnational development of Romani language and culture; the future of Romani language education.

Departing from the notion that Romani language heritage is at risk, the conference aims to establish cooperation for language harmonization at international level, designing shared ways and future strategies for preserving our language heritage, and to fulfill the general need in Europe for Romani language education tools. Invited speakers included academics in the field of language teaching and linguistic research, Roma political leaders advocating for the visibility of the Romani language heritage, as well as representatives of the European Parliament involved in the preservation of minority languages.

Speakers: 

Jeroen Schokkenbroek, Dieter Halwachs, Evelin Hust, Professor Vesna Crnic-Grotic, Kimmo Granqvist, Marcel Courthiade, Helena Sadikova, David Little, Ahmet Murat Kilić, Zemfira Kondur, Delia Grigore, Szilvia Lakatos, Natali Tomenko, Gheorghe Sarău, Cristian Padure, Mihaela Zatreanu, Diana Kirilova, Kirill Kozhanov, Saimir Mile, Ian Hancock, Thomas Acton, Hristo Kyuchukov, Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka, Veljko Kajtazi, Erika Godlova, Zuzana Bodnarova, Melinda Rézműves, Timea Junghaus 

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WEAVE LabDay

Roma Self-representation in the history of the Venice Biennale

In this LabDay organized by partner ERIAC, a discussion was launched to promote a more permanent exhibition of Roma art and heritage in the context of the prestigous Venice Contemporary Art Biennale. The event allowed participants to ask questions directly to the panellists.

In the past there have been various exhibitions of Roma culture at Venice Biennale, in 2007, 2011 and 2019, which represent the greatest efforts ever made by Roma to present Roma art in an international stage in the center of contemporary cultural diplomacy. But in the lack of collecting, archiving and museum institutions to house artefacts once these Roma exhibitions are dismantled, their histories become vulnerable and their achievements carry on only as interpersonal – and later transgenerational knowledge, which slowly – with the means of digital remembrance – constitute a new form of intangible cultural heritage. The Roma exhibitions are not connected to the prestigious locations, and known spaces of the Venice Biennale, but to the non-spaces of digital-discussions, oral histories, letter and in-person exchange, archival documents and digital exhibitions.

The “Exhibition” of the largest European minority is considered a “collaborative event”, and not a national pavilion. Roma do not have a national pavilion/building/space, while being the largest national minority to many of the exhibiting national representations. As a consequence, the precarious Roma minority’s presence at the Biennale is possible only if Roma pay the entrance fee as a collaborative event (30,500 Euros) to the Biennale Office, in addition to spending to rent the exhibition space in Venice. In these circumstances, the chance for permanent, tangible representation of Roma in the most prestigious European art event is unimaginable.

The Labday discussion mitigates the need for a permanent Roma Pavilion as the place to motivate the development of innovative projects and experimental cross-disciplinary work of Roma. In the context of the Venice Biennale, the Roma Pavilion has the potential to become the safe space won by the Roma struggle, a place of intuition, new ideas, discourses, and trends in European contemporary art.

Agenda

14:00 – 14:10 LABDAY INTRODUCTION

Dr. Rosa Cisneros, Coordinator of Activity 1 WEAVE, dancer and choreographer, dance historian and critic, Roma scholar, sociologist, flamenco historian.

14:10 – 15:05 PRESENTATIONS of PANELLISTS

Luisella Pavan-Woolfe, Host, Head of Office, Council of Europe representation in Venice, supporter of ERIAC’s initiatives for cultural inclusion, e.g. FUTUROMA Exhibition in 2019, the 2022 exhibition

Timea Junghaus, Art historian, contemporary art curator, Executive director of ERIAC, curator of the Roma Exhibition PARADISE LOST at the 52nd Venice Contemporary Art Biennale (2007)

Prof. Dr. Ethel Brooks, Associate Professor at Rutgers University (U.S), School of Arts and Science, and Chair of Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Research interests: Visual Cultures, Artistic Practice, Camps and Encampment, Digital Media and Belonging, Nationalism, Post-colonialism and Critical Race Theory

Daniel Baker, artist of Call The Witness Exhibition at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); curator of the FUTUROMA Exhibition at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Jury of Roma Exhibition Venice Biennale (2022)

Miguel Ángel Vargas, Art historian, theatre director, Flamenco researcher, member of Factoría Cultural – Polígono Sur, Institute for Culture and Arts of the Council of Seville and Jury of Roma Exhibition Venice Biennale (2019 and 2022)

Ilina Schileru, graphic artist, cultural manager and curator of Eugen Raportoru: The Abduction From The Seraglio & Roma Women | Performativity and the Politics of Healing and Listening at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022)

Eugen Raportoru, painter, visual artist, selected artist of Roma Exhibition at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022)

15:05 – 15:35 DISCUSSION

The discussion will unfold around three topics:
1. Lessons Learned
2. Difficulties of Establishing a Roma Pavilion
3. Solutions and Future Scenarios

15:35 – 15:50 Q&A

15:50 – 16:00 FINAL REMARKS


Speakers’ biographies:

Daniel Baker (1961, United Kingdom) is a Romani Gypsy artist, researcher, and curator. Originally from Kent, and currently based in London, his work is exhibited internationally and can be found in collections across the globe. Baker earned a PhD in 2011 from the Royal College of Art, with his dissertation, “Gypsy Visuality: Gell’s Art Nexus and its Potential for Artists”, after previously earning an MA in Sociology/Gender and Ethnic Studies from Greenwich University, and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Ravensbourne College of Art and Design. Baker has contributed to numerous exhibitions, held various residencies, and curated several commissions. He previously worked as an exhibitor and consultant for the first and second Roma events at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia – “Paradise Lost” and “Call the Witness”, which took place during the 52nd and 54th International Art Exhibitions of La Biennale di Venezia, respectively. For more information about Baker and his revolutionary work, visit www.danielbaker.net

Prof. Dr. Ethel Brooks is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology at Rutgers University. She has conducted research on a host of sites around the world including in London, Istanbul, Fall River, San Salvador, Dhaka and York City. Brooks is the author of Unraveling the Garment Industry: Transnational Organizing and Women’s Work (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) which received the award for Outstanding Book for 2010 from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the co-editor of the special issue of WSQ on “Activisms.” She has contributed articles to a number of academic journals, including Nevi Sara Kali and International Working Class History, as well as book chapters in Sweatshop USA: The American Sweatshop in Historical and Global Perspective, Eds. Daniel A Bender and Richard Greenwald, (Routledge, 2003) and Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas, Eds. Judith Gerson and Diane L. Wolf (Duke University Press, 2007). Professor Brooks is currently working on two book projects: Disrupting the Nation: Land Tenure, Productivity and the Possibilities of a Romani Post-Coloniality, and (Mis)Recognitions and (Un)Acknowledgements: Visualities, Productivities and the Contours of Romani Feminism, both of which focus on political economy and cultural production and the increasing violence against Romani (Gypsy) citizens worldwide. Her op-eds on the expulsion of Romani people in various European countries have recently appeared on “The Guardian”. She is also writing an article on “Missing Pakistanis: Gender, Citizenship and the Muslim Everyday,” on the limits and possibilities of writing about Pakistanis in the wake of the war on terror. In 2011 Prof. Brooks was awarded a prestigious Fulbright-University of the Arts London Distinguished Chair Award and she spent the academic year 2011/2012 at TrAIN, the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation. Part of the award supported Prof. Brooks’ delivery of a lecture series in conjunction with the Tate Gallery, London.

Dr. Rosa Cisneros is a dancer and choreographer, Dance Historian and Critic, Roma Scholar, Sociologist, Flamenco Historian and Peace Activist who graduated from UW-Madison and went on to complete her Master’s in Dance History and Criticism from UNM-Albuquerque (USA). Her PhD is in Sociology with a focus on Roma women, intersectionality, dialogic feminism and communicative methodologies. Rosamaria is a professional dancer, choreographer, curator and qualified teacher, who has lived and danced in various parts of the world and collaborated with many Flamenco greats and other leaders in the Dance field. She has taught throughout Europe and the US at places like UW-Madison, UIUC, Boston Conservatory, Brown University and at various other places in Germany, Spain and Turkey. She is a dance writer who makes regular contributions to Bachtrack Magazine and Flamenco News having also danced with Protein Dance Company in the UK. Rosamaria is involved in various EU funded projects which aim to make education accessible to vulnerable groups and ethnic minorities and sits on various Boards: Roma Coventry Project (UK), Drom Kotar Mestipen Roma Women’s Association (Spain) and the Early Dance Circle (UK). At the moment she is a Research fellow at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research based in the UK. She is also an independent artist, dancer, curator and teacher who has organised various festivals and exhibitions. Her dance films have screened in the UK, US, Colombia, Mexico, Greece, Cyprus and Germany and her latest documentary won best documentary from the UK in 2016. She has started her own production company, RosaSenCis Film Production Co., which worked on the Society for Dance Research Oral History Project. The company aims to create dance films and documentaries that capture stories and reflect embodied traditions that might otherwise be lost. She has also managed major EU-Funded projects and local City of Culture Partnership projects. Rosamaria collaborates closely with the University of Barcelona’s Community of Researchers for Excellence for All (CREA). She sits on academic Journals as an editorial assistant and those include the Journal for Embodied Practices and International Journal of Romani Studies.

Timea Junghaus is an art historian and contemporary art curator. She started in the position of Executive Director of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture in September 2017. Previously, Junghaus was Research Fellow of the Working Group for Critical Theories at the Institute for Art History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2010-2017). She has researched and published extensively on the conjunctions of modern and contemporary art with critical theory, with particular reference to issues of cultural difference, colonialism, and minority representation. She is completing her Ph.D. studies in Cultural Theory at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest. In recognition of her curatorial activities, Junghaus received the Kairos – European Cultural Price from the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S., in 2008. Her curatorial works include the Roma component of the Hidden Holocaust- exhibition in the Budapest Kunsthalle (2004), Paradise Lost – the First Roma Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Contemporary Art Biennale (2007), the Archive and Scholarly Conference on Roma Hiphop (2010), The Romani Elders and the Public Intervention for the Unfinished Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered Under the National Socialist Regime in the frame of the 7th Berlin Biennale (2012), the (Re-)Conceptualizing Roma Resistance – exhibition and education program in Hellerau, Dresden (2015) and the Goethe Institute, Prague (2016). She is the curator of the Visual Arts Section for RomArchive – Digital Archive of the Roma, funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes (2015-2018). Junghaus was the founding director of Gallery8 – Roma Contemporary Art Space (www.gallery8.org) in Budapest (2013-2017), the winner of the 2014 Catalyst Contemporary Art Award (of Tranzit Hungary) and the 2014 Otto Pankok Prize awarded by the For Roma Foundation of German writer and Literary Nobel Laureate, Günter Grass.

Luisella Pavan Woolfe was born in Trieste, Italy and graduated in Political Science magna cum laude from the University of Padua. Here she subsequently became assistant professor of Anglo-American law. As an official of the European Commission for over thirty years, she developed new policies and legislation in the areas of environment protection, equality between women and men and people with disabilities. She also managed funds which support vocational training, employment and education in the European Union. She was the first Director for Equal Opportunities to be nominated by the European Commission. As such she was responsible for the European Union’s policy developments in the area of gender equality and fight against all forms of discrimination. In 2007 she was appointed Representative to the Council of Europe. Subsequently as staff of the European External Action Service, she opened the European Union Delegation to the Council of Europe. She worked in Strasbourg as the first resident EU Ambassador to the Council of Europe and head of delegation from 2010 to 2014. Her mandate covered human rights and democratic governance in wider Europe. In September 2014 she became Principal Advisor Global Issues in the European External Action Service, with special responsibility for food security. From July 2015 she is the director of the Council of Europe office in Venice. She is the author of several articles on European matters. She has written a book on the interrelations between employment policy and social issues in Europe. She was awarded the 1998 European prize by the Bellisario Foundation for Women Entrepreneurs.

Eugen Raportoru (b. 1961, Bucharest) visual artist with a specialization in painting. Eugen Raportoru has a masters degree at the Bucharest National University of Arts, Department of Painting, and is the only Romanian artist of Roma origin to have exhibited his works in London at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Vatican under the aegis of UNESCO, and in Scandinavia at the Ethnic Museum in Oslo and through the Roma Party in Stockholm. The artist has exhibited in galleries and exhibitions throughout Romania, where he made his debut at the age of 14 at Grivita Cinema in Bucharest. In Romania’s capital, Raportoru has exhibited at the Palace of Parliament, in the Brâncuşi Hall, at the Simeza Gallery, at Art House, at GoldArt, but also in the cities of Sibiu and Sinaia. He has been a member of the Romanian Union of Plastic Artists since 2010.

Ilina Schileru Bucharest University of Arts, completed in 2010. She is a member of UAP Romania and the founding director of EBienale (in association with the Festival and George Enescu International Competition between 2011 and 2015), an international contemporary art event of three editions in the frame of the George Enescu International Music Festival, which reunited over 150 artists from Romania, Germany Switzerland, Sweden and the USA, taking place in parallel insix art galleries in Bucharest. Within EBienale, she developed a program of “invited curators-run􀍟, enabling artists to curate: Mihai Zgondoiu (Timon Botez / Galateca / 2013), Ioana Sisea (Alex Gâlmeanu / AnnArt 2015, Roxana Gibescu / Vlad Țenu / Romanian Athenaeum / 2013, Frédéric Liver, Victoria Art Center / 2015). From April 2021 Schileru is the program coordinator of MNTRplusC, a contemporary artist-run space program of the National Peasant’s Museum. The MNTRplusC program showscases international collaborations between Romanian local and foreign fellow artists and curators. Among them, special invitees are curator and an art historian from John Cabot University, Cornelia Lauf, and Piotr Armianovsky, featured artist in the 2019 edition of La Biennale di Venezia. She also specializes in working with NGO’s on integrating immigrant and refugee children through art programs she develops in collaborations with museums (Museum of Recent Art, MNAR etc.) She has collaborated with various galleries and artist-run spaces in Bucharest (AnnArt, 418 Contemporary, ETAJ, Galateca, Artmark), where she works and lives. She writes for ARTA Magazine, Propagarta (Romania) and No Niin (Helsinki, Finland).

Miguel Ángel Vargas, Art Historian and Theater Director (1978) Spain. As independent researcher and artist, Vargas combines flamenco, theater and Romani history as experienced-based themes of his artistic and academic inquiry. He has worked internationally as an actor, director, set designer, production manager and even opera technician among other roles in performing arts during his 20 years of career. He has collaborated with several academic institutions such as Central Saint Martins College of Arts of London, as coordinator of the work experience of their Performing Arts MA; member of Pendaripén, interdisciplinary research group on History of the Romani People, of the University of Seville and has participated in several seminars on Critical Romani Studies of Central European University.