We want the audio installation to offer its participants and recipients the possibility of active remembrance through the practice of the so-called Erinnerungs-Patenschaften (Memory-Patronage).

Our aim is to mark and reclaim places that have lost their historical significance, where minorities have been displaced, and where events of oppression and violence are obscured. The work is inherently confrontational. It argues that community memory can be strengthened through the voices of those who are fighting today for the advancement of Roma and Sinti rights and by giving a voice to those who continue to suffer oppression today. By countering the past and challenging rigid methods of historiography and memory, we engage in ongoing community work, creating temporary memorials, caring for the past and vowing personal responsibility for the future. 

PAST

ALS ALLE OHREN HÖREN KONNTEN was first exhibited in the summer of 2021, and it focused on land as a 'natural archive', located on the former - now unmarked - Salzburg Maxglan forced labour camp site. Along the course of the local stream (Glan), 50 metal pipes covered with concrete were impaled into the ground, from which the audio letters were sounded. To listen to a letter, visitors have to bend close to the ground, bow to the memory of the past, listen and concentrate on a personal memory written by one individual to another rather than on history as a whole. 

While the letters that made up the original installation were spoken from the ground around the former forced labour camp - the so-called "Zigeunerlager" in Maxglan Salzburg - they commemorated the victims there and focused on the voices and thoughts of Austrian and Eastern European Roma and Sinti artists, activists, academics and social workers; the sound installation has now become a travelling memorial that highlights and focuses on the history of Roma oppression in cities and countries across Europe, with the aim of empowering communities and promoting active commemorative work.