If All Ears Could Hear. Romani Archives of Tomorrow's Resistance

16.02.2024 - 07.04.2024

Budapest Galéria Kiállítóháza, Magyarország

Using the gallery space, the artists’ collective DePART (Baur, Jellen, Jugravu, Szepes) focuses on broader accessibility, sustained development and sharing of the working processes behind the practice of active-remembrance: emerging strategies for visualising and publicising the fragmented past and exchange with|within Roma communities. By using remembering soil and audio letters, as non-traditional methods to document and share the fragmented WW II history of the Roma people, the collective breaks down barriers, challenges established narratives and promotes broader engagement with these histories.... The DePART Collective understands this as an (un)archiving process. Both as archiving in the true sense of the word and as a questioning of traditional archiving practices (which are often biased and restrictive).

On the ground floor, visitors can immerse themselves in the audio installation If All Ears Could Hear. Approx. forty iron columns will voice recorded personal letters of remembrance.

The upper floor or the (un)Archiving Lab serves as an open forum with usage in multiple ways: as a stage, a workshop space, and a writing room. It’s a dynamic area which encourages dialogue, research and the co-creation of new narratives. With the (un)Archiving Lab, DePART extends an invitation to already collaborating and new institutions and local partners to occupy a public space and showcase socio-cultural and activist work and discourses within|with the Roma community. The space is an opportunity to illuminate shared needs, to actively engage in commemorating the past, and to lay the groundwork for a resilient future.

This ever-growing letters collection aims to reinforce Romani historical narratives of resilience and resistance against forgetting and oppressive powers. The DePART Collective offers the archive to the gallery space as a starting point for dialogue and research: How to gently recover, restore, rewrite lost and hidden (his)stories of Porajmos victims? Why is there a need to generate a shared and accessible database of personal acts of contemporary Romani resilience?

[Quelle: https://web.archive.org/web/20240501065613/http://www.depart.community/]