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If All Ears Could Hear
Romani Archives of Tomorrow’s Resistance
Budapest Gallery
1036 Budapest, Lajos utca 158.
16 February 2024 – 7 April 2024
Artists:
DePART Collective (Jonas Baur, Dominik Jellen, Cat Jugravu, Anna Szepes)
Production manager:
Trace Polly Müller
(un)Archiving Lab ambassador:
Bettina Pocsai
Opening:
14 February 2024, (Wednesday) 6 pm
Events:
DePART Collective amongst the winners of the Bertha Artivism Award 2024
Ha mindenki meghallaná | Flaszter I. Budapesti Köztéri Kortárs Művészeti Biennál
2023.október 20-23., 12:00 -18:00
Váradi utca 32, Budapest 1032, Magyarország
"If All Ears Could Hear" is part of the Flaszter I. Budapest Biennale of Contemporary Public Art. The sound installation aims to explore how we can remember Roma individuals who have been forgotten by history, whose lives are only known through their birth and death records, and who are often only remembered as victims of the Second World War. We raise questions about how we can make remembrance personal in these cases and how places of remembrance can be marked.
The artists also question the role of the land in bearing witness to history and the responsibility of historians in relating to the past. They emphasize the importance of active rememberers in giving meaning to memorials, and explore how little-known details of the past can be shared and passed on. The exhibition opens October 20, 2023, and invites viewers to contemplate these themes and consider their own role as memory-keepers.
FLASZTER | Séta a Porajmos (roma holokauszt) emlékezete mentén | Walking Tour of Remembrance
October 21.2023 16:00
DePART's traveling sound installation, "If All Ears Could Hear | Als Alle Ohren hören konnten" is currently located on the soil of the former brick factory barracks on Wiener Strasse in, Obudai District of Budapest. In these barracks Roma and Jewish deportees were interned during the Second World War.
To reach the installation, participants will walk through a section of the Wiener Strasse brickworks and learn about its history, social context, and wartime significance. The walk will also be an opportunity to discuss the memory of Porajmos (the Romani Holocaust) and its contemporary importance and possibilities.
The walk will be led by Bettina Pocsai - Roma activist, and Péter Horvát - Òbudai Museum historian.
Participants are instructed to meet at the corner of Bécsi út and Váradi utca, across from the Váradi utca tram stop. The participation fee is 1,000 HUF per person, and tickets can be purchased online by following the link here or at the Budapest Gallery ticket office during their opening hours. It is important to buy tickets in advance, as they will not be available for purchase on-site.
From February 14th to April 7th 2024, the active-remembrance project continues collaborating with the Budapest Gallery under the title If All Ears Could Hear – Romani Archives of Tomorrow’s Resistance.
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?
The DePART collective is happy to announce that we are part of the Bertha Artivists Cohort of 2024. The support of the Bertha Foundation will enable us to continue our work in Hungary in 2024. We are beyond excited and happy about the news!
‘The Bertha Artivism Awards is an opportunity for activist artists, arts collectives and organizations around the world to use the arts as a Call to Action – to nonviolently instigate measurable change in a community.
Going beyond ‘raising awareness’ Bertha Artivists will empower and mobilize communities in collaboration with social justice organizations, campaigns, or movements to achieve specific and measurable change.’
We are an international interdisciplinary collective of artists and facilitators. We began our collaboration during our MA studies in Applied Theatre - Artistic Theatre Practice & Society at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, Austria. Upon graduating, we continue to work together on a project basis. In choosing our working themes and formats, we emphasise the following:
research-orientated formats
social responsibility
community building
local search for actors and partners
political and social themes and site
It is important for us to challenge and subvert mainstream narratives and historical remembrance. By questioning the dominant narratives that shape our understanding of the past, we can gain a more nuanced and inclusive perspective of history. Mainstream narratives often prioritize certain voices, events, and interpretations while marginalizing others. Challenging these narratives allows us to explore untold stories and forgotten shadow histories, shedding light on the experiences of marginalized communities and challenging the prevailing power structures. By subverting mainstream historical remembrance, we can deconstruct long-standing biases and prejudices, fostering a more equitable understanding of the past and opening up possibilities for a more just and inclusive future.
Be part of HA MINDENKI MEGHALLANÁ and contribute to a network of accomplices engaged in the practice of Active Remembrance.
A DePART társulat (Decentralized Practices of Active Remembrance and Theatricalization) egy olyan hang-installációt dolgozott ki, amely az “emlékezet-őrség” gyakorlatát kínálja résztvevőinek az aktív emlékezés aktusaként:
Az installáció egy művészeti projekt, nyitott archívum és részvételi kutatás. Minden egyes földrajzi helyszínen új roma közösségek hangjait kapcsolja az installációba és személyes hanglevelekben szólítja meg a Porajmos/ Samudaripen helyi áldozatait. Minden egyes résztvevő egy-egy elfeledett életrajz "emlék-őrzőjévé" válik.
Elsa Fernandez, Fragmente über das Überleben.Romani Geschichte und Gadje-Rassismus
'With the transmission and maintenance of 'white knowledge' about Romani people, the strategic violence of ethnologizing science is perpetuated. This historical gadje racism makes it possible to claim almost anything (no matter what) about anyone (no matter who). All the supposedly benevolent discourse about Rom*nja at conferences and conventions, in articles and documentaries, is not just about transgressing boundaries. Rather, it is narcissism, scholastic reproduction, appropriation, usurpation, the establishment of a majoritized 'we' and the buying of innocence.'
Münster: Unrast Verlag 2020, excerpt transl. by DePART.