Staging Difficult Pasts: Of Narratives, Objects and Public Memory
Lead Research Organisation:
Royal Holloway University of London
Department Name: Drama, Theatre and Dance
Abstract
This project examines how theatres and museums are currently shaping public memory of difficult pasts through their staging of narratives and objects. Engaging directly with research partners and major cultural institutions, the project is a collaboration among the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at Royal Holloway, University of London, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of Minnesota, Cricoteka, Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor (Kraków), Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), ESMA Museum and Teatro Cervantes (Buenos Aires), Holocaust Research Institute, Jewish Museum London and Imperial War Museum's Holocaust Gallery. The primary aims are: (i) to analyse how public memory of 'difficult pasts' is being staged in contemporary theatre and museal practices; (ii) to chart how these practices are increasingly informed cross-institutionally; (iii) and to foster transnational collaboration and dialogue to enhance these practices. Through fieldwork (archival research, research visits to museums and theatres, interviews with curators and theatre makers), workshops, public talks, and an international symposium the project team will specifically analyse transnational case studies in Argentina, Lithuania, Poland, Spain and the UK, which will widely extend research on the distinctions and interactions between memory and history specifically through the lenses of theatre and performance studies, visual culture, and museum and curator studies and more broadly through memory studies, history, Holocaust studies, cultural geography and modern languages.
Argentina, Lithuania, Poland and Spain all share highly politicized and extremely divisive debates over their difficult pasts, specifically in relation to authoritarianism, fascism and communism. Theatres and museums have been key sites for these debates, which shape and broaden public memory. Over the past few decades, widespread attempts to expose or reinterpret the public memory of formerly taboo historical narratives have come to public concern through their staging in theatres and museums for live audiences. We have also selected project partners in the UK to establish transcultural research links that will broaden the remit and impact of the research. Staging difficult pasts, theatre makers have innovated narrative forms and reframed theatrical and artefactual objects, while museum curators have increasingly privileged the 'staging' of historical narratives over the display of objects, producing performative encounters as their primary object. Thus, the project's focus will both advance transnational research on the staging of difficult pasts through narrative and object, and the key points of intersection between theatres and museums and their shaping global memory discourses.
Workshops, public talks and the symposium will bring together practitioners and scholars from theatre and performance studies, visual culture, museum and curator studies, history, Holocaust studies, cultural geography and modern languages. Through workshops, we aim to document and analyse current strategies and aims employed by leading theatre makers and curators. Inviting artists to collaborate with institutions outside of their own cultural spheres, we will foster transnational dialogue and provide the opportunities for innovation across cultural sectors. We are inviting theatres and museums to work across their traditional disciplinary boundaries to generate innovation and develop strategies that serve their public aims. Forms of dissemination will have an extensive audience. These include interdisciplinary edited collections, workshops, public talks, learning materials for university libraries, the Routledge Performance Archive and the Holocaust Research Institute, and a project website, and grey literature reports.
Argentina, Lithuania, Poland and Spain all share highly politicized and extremely divisive debates over their difficult pasts, specifically in relation to authoritarianism, fascism and communism. Theatres and museums have been key sites for these debates, which shape and broaden public memory. Over the past few decades, widespread attempts to expose or reinterpret the public memory of formerly taboo historical narratives have come to public concern through their staging in theatres and museums for live audiences. We have also selected project partners in the UK to establish transcultural research links that will broaden the remit and impact of the research. Staging difficult pasts, theatre makers have innovated narrative forms and reframed theatrical and artefactual objects, while museum curators have increasingly privileged the 'staging' of historical narratives over the display of objects, producing performative encounters as their primary object. Thus, the project's focus will both advance transnational research on the staging of difficult pasts through narrative and object, and the key points of intersection between theatres and museums and their shaping global memory discourses.
Workshops, public talks and the symposium will bring together practitioners and scholars from theatre and performance studies, visual culture, museum and curator studies, history, Holocaust studies, cultural geography and modern languages. Through workshops, we aim to document and analyse current strategies and aims employed by leading theatre makers and curators. Inviting artists to collaborate with institutions outside of their own cultural spheres, we will foster transnational dialogue and provide the opportunities for innovation across cultural sectors. We are inviting theatres and museums to work across their traditional disciplinary boundaries to generate innovation and develop strategies that serve their public aims. Forms of dissemination will have an extensive audience. These include interdisciplinary edited collections, workshops, public talks, learning materials for university libraries, the Routledge Performance Archive and the Holocaust Research Institute, and a project website, and grey literature reports.
Planned Impact
Impact Summary
To generate wide-ranging international impact, the project team is working in close collaboration with key international cultural institutions and theatre and museum practitioners. We have identified three main groups to be impacted by the research:
(a) Theatre makers and curators
(b) Public audiences attending museums and theatres
(c) Cultural institutions, including theatres, museums and archives
(a) The project aims to benefit key international theatre makers and curators who are 'staging' difficult pasts. Firstly, by asking them to reflect on their approaches through workshops that respond to our research questions. Secondly, we have requested that they attend or observe each others' workshops and participate in public talks where they will have the opportunity to further reflect on the challenges, obstacles, ethical concerns and examples of good practice that have informed their work and can be shared across national and institutional boundaries. By focusing on narrative forms, public memory, and the reconceptualisation of objects in the staging of difficult pasts, we intend to engage theatre makers and curators in critical self-reflective and transcultural discussions that could lead to an increase in the effectiveness of their creative output and public service and further inter-institutional collaborations in the future.
(b) By examining how difficult pasts are staged, this project will engage museum and theatre audiences in public talks and debates, which is intended to help activate their critical reception of history and memory of difficult pasts and to aid their understanding of the ways in which theatres and museums not only prompt debate but also actively shape public memory. In examining narrative, object and global memory discourses, the intention is to open up wider questions for audiences around their historical agency and their critical engagement with these institutions. These events should expose audiences to new questions around history, memory and social cohesion. By working across museums and theatres, it could also result in the development of new audiences who traditionally only attend one of these institutions. In this way, the project could impact audience experience, engagement and behaviour. The project team will make use of our partners' existing audiences and work with them to develop new publics.
(c) Working closely with our partner institutions, we intend to have an impact on their programming, public engagement and learning aims. We are collaborating with theatre makers and curators who not only devise their own work but who also programme festivals, international exhibitions and theatre repertoires. Not only then will workshops and public talks work as pathways to impact on individuals, there is also the potential that the decisions these theatre makers and curators make as a result of their engagement with the project will have a much broader impact on their home institutions. Furthermore, the project is aimed at enhancing the learning materials institutions use to support their education and outreach programs. The Jewish Museum, ESMA Museum, Teatre Lliure, IWM and Cricoteka all have learning teams that will attend our research events and actively participate in workshops. We will make available recordings of our workshops and public talks to help them develop their current resources and approaches to engaging students with their exhibitions and archives. Grey literature reports will be co-written and distributed to each of our partner organisations to help inform their practice. Partners can use the reports as part of funding applications, institutional and artistic strategy planning, and impact reporting.
To generate wide-ranging international impact, the project team is working in close collaboration with key international cultural institutions and theatre and museum practitioners. We have identified three main groups to be impacted by the research:
(a) Theatre makers and curators
(b) Public audiences attending museums and theatres
(c) Cultural institutions, including theatres, museums and archives
(a) The project aims to benefit key international theatre makers and curators who are 'staging' difficult pasts. Firstly, by asking them to reflect on their approaches through workshops that respond to our research questions. Secondly, we have requested that they attend or observe each others' workshops and participate in public talks where they will have the opportunity to further reflect on the challenges, obstacles, ethical concerns and examples of good practice that have informed their work and can be shared across national and institutional boundaries. By focusing on narrative forms, public memory, and the reconceptualisation of objects in the staging of difficult pasts, we intend to engage theatre makers and curators in critical self-reflective and transcultural discussions that could lead to an increase in the effectiveness of their creative output and public service and further inter-institutional collaborations in the future.
(b) By examining how difficult pasts are staged, this project will engage museum and theatre audiences in public talks and debates, which is intended to help activate their critical reception of history and memory of difficult pasts and to aid their understanding of the ways in which theatres and museums not only prompt debate but also actively shape public memory. In examining narrative, object and global memory discourses, the intention is to open up wider questions for audiences around their historical agency and their critical engagement with these institutions. These events should expose audiences to new questions around history, memory and social cohesion. By working across museums and theatres, it could also result in the development of new audiences who traditionally only attend one of these institutions. In this way, the project could impact audience experience, engagement and behaviour. The project team will make use of our partners' existing audiences and work with them to develop new publics.
(c) Working closely with our partner institutions, we intend to have an impact on their programming, public engagement and learning aims. We are collaborating with theatre makers and curators who not only devise their own work but who also programme festivals, international exhibitions and theatre repertoires. Not only then will workshops and public talks work as pathways to impact on individuals, there is also the potential that the decisions these theatre makers and curators make as a result of their engagement with the project will have a much broader impact on their home institutions. Furthermore, the project is aimed at enhancing the learning materials institutions use to support their education and outreach programs. The Jewish Museum, ESMA Museum, Teatre Lliure, IWM and Cricoteka all have learning teams that will attend our research events and actively participate in workshops. We will make available recordings of our workshops and public talks to help them develop their current resources and approaches to engaging students with their exhibitions and archives. Grey literature reports will be co-written and distributed to each of our partner organisations to help inform their practice. Partners can use the reports as part of funding applications, institutional and artistic strategy planning, and impact reporting.
Organisations
- Royal Holloway University of London (Lead Research Organisation)
- Centre for Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor (Collaboration)
- ESMA Memory Site Museum (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- Freie Universität Berlin (Collaboration)
- Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (Project Partner)
- Cricoteka (Project Partner)
- Imperial War Museums (Project Partner)
- Jewish Museum London (Project Partner)
- University of Minnesota (Project Partner)
- Teatro Nacional Cervantes (Project Partner)
- Teatre Lliure (Project Partner)
Publications
Bryce Lease
(2020)
Der Kirschgarten (The Cherry Orchard)' dir. Yana Ross
in Theatre Journal
Bryce Lease
(2019)
Counterpublics Cause so Much Trouble: Oliver Frljic, Protest & Collectivity
in Critical Stages/Scènes critiques
Bryce Lease
(2018)
BITEF 52, World Without Us: Fascism, Democracy and Difficult Futures
in European Stages
Bryce Lease
(2020)
Tadeusz Kantor.Widma/Spectres
Cecilia Sosa
(2019)
Performing Future Affiliations in Argentine Spaces of Memory
in Mezosfera
Cecilia Sosa
(2019)
Lola Arias: Re-Enacting Life
Cecilia Sosa
(2022)
Fifty Key Figures in Latinx and Latin American Theatre
Cecilia Sosa
(2019)
Desde los ojos del Otro: Lola Arias y el teatro como transformación. Una entrevista con Lola Arias
in Primer Acto. Cuadernos de Investigación Teatral
| Title | "The disappeared from Spain and Argentina: Art, Testimony, and Justice" |
| Description | VIRTUAL MUSEUM VISIT "The disappeared from Spain and Argentina: Art, Testimony, and Justice" Virtual Visit at ESMA Memory Museum in Buenos Aires The Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA (ESMA Museum Memory Site) currently occupies the former Officer's Casino inside the Navy School of Mechanics' premises. This haunted building was the largest of the 340 clandestine detention centres that operated in the country during the dictatorship (1976-1983). More than 5,000 men and women - mostly leftist activists - were held captive and tortured there. Every last Saturday of the month, during the Five O'clock Visit, audiences are invited to tour around the building with guest artists. On 25 July 2020, the visit was organised by 'Staging Difficult Pasts' project and, due to the current pandemic situation, which keeps the museum closed, it had to take a virtual turn. The transnational meeting was entitled "Los desaparecidos y las desaparecidas en España y Argentina. Arte, testimonio y justicia" [The disappeared from Spain and Argentina. Art, Testimony, and Justice] and gathered specialists from Argentina, Spain, and the UK. More than 500 spectators attended the visit through social media and ESMA networks, participating through comments, greetings, and questions. The event included a video essay inspired by El pan y la sal (Bread and Salt, 2015), a verbatim play by Raúl Quirós Molina that draws on the trial against Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón in 2012, and archival footage from Argentine human rights trials. The event was co-hosted by Alejandra Naftal, the director of the Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA, and Cecilia Sosa, postdoctoral researcher on 'Staging Difficult Pasts', and included the following speakers from both the cultural industries, memory politics, and the legal profession: Lola Berthet, Raúl Quirós Molina (Spain), Emilio Silva (Spain), Mariana Tello, Ana Mesutti (residing in Spain), Daniel Rafecas and María Delgado (UK). The event was also supported by: Francisco Pérez Esteban (Spanish Secretary of Internationals of the United Left) and Enrique Santiago (Secretary General of the Spanish Communist Party); ESMA survivors including Ana Testa, Alfredo Ayala, Adriana Suzal, Silvia Labayrú, Lila Pastoriza, Liliana Pellegrino, Graciela Garcia Romero, Liliana Pontoriero, Maria Eva Bernst, and Lidia Vieyra, who also expressed their support for Baltasar Garzón; the members of the Argentine lawsuit against the crimes of Francoism Inés García Holgado and Adriana Fernández; Emiliano Fessia (ex director of the former clandestine center La Perla in Córdoba); Graciela Lois (member of the Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons organisation); Marianella Galli (member of the Secretary of Human Rights and daughter of disappeared activists); Pablo Verna, Liliana Furio, and Mariela Milstein (part of the collective Disobedient Stories, sons and daughters of perpetrators); Stella Segado (former Director of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law of the Ministry of Defense), and Taty Almeida (Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Founding Line), among many others. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | "Staging Difficult Pasts seeks to provide a transnational look at the ways in which contemporary theatre and memory sites deal with conflictive pasts," Sosa observed in the opening panel discussion. She explained that the event is a continuation of the work conducted at ESMA in November last year with the Polish artist, Wojtek Ziemilski. "Maria Delgado saw this piece [El pan y la sal] in Barcelona and noted how much the testimonies of the victims of Francoism resonated with the testimonies of the victims of state terrorism in Argentina." Although a planned reading of El pan y la sal with an accompanying discussion was scheduled to take place at ESMA in April 2020, the impact of Covid 19 led to a reformulation of the event. The pandemic also gave us new opportunities, and one of these involved Sosa and Delgado collaborating with filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky on a video essay. The 18-minute film includes both excerpts from El pan y la sal and testimonies of survivors of state terrorism provided in the ESMA trial, in which those responsible for the crimes committed in the building during the dictatorship are being judged. Argentinean actors Eugenia Alonso, Ana María Castel and Mauricio Minetti read testimonies from Quirós' piece under Rubén Szuchmacher's direction. Haroldo Conti Cultural Center's current director, actor Lola Berthet, highlighted the importance of art in the work of memory construction: "Art and memory work challenges us to build upon justice and testimony. Many times, when justice is not present, the role of culture is essential in demanding memory, truth and justice," she said. While commenting on the process of creating El pan y la sal, writer Quirós Molina stated that the piece arises from failure. "I was working in London with a small Argentine theatre that stages `Theatre for Identity´ pieces [which stage human rights themes in response to the dictatorship crimes]. After seeing those productions, which were sponsored by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo organisation, Quirós wondered why this did not exist in Spain. "Spanish people have never been taught about the Franco era. There is no political awareness that what has happened is a process of genocide," he argued. Thus, Quirós said he wanted to create a theatre for memory "to understand how memory works today, and show what the stories our grandparents told us meant to us." Emilio Silva, founder of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain, whose grandfather was buried in a mass grave, also referred to the difference between the Argentinian and Spanish processes. "No president in the last forty years, since the dictator's death" has referred to memory issues. "The fight is very difficult. Hopefully we could have a space like this [the museum] to visit and teach what the dictatorship was like here in Spain," he said. Mariana Tello, the president of the National Archive of Memory in Argentina, referred to the role of testimony in the process of memory, truth, and justice. "I want to highlight the tenacity of these two countries in insisting on a story that later becomes a testimony. In both cases, testimony has a special power, as resistance, as a political act. In both cases the disappearance has different characteristics. In Spain, it is known where they are, but it is an additional cruelty to know and not be able to bury them properly. The communities are not only deprived of the right to bury them, they are condemned to oblivion, to forced silence." She concluded: "In a country where the dead do not rest, the living cannot rest either." Lawyer Ana Mesutti, who works on the Argentine lawsuit against the crimes committed during Franco's regime, argued: "The introduction of international law rattles national rights. It is the world that has to solve the Nuremberg trials. Those crimes against humanity, as Hannah Arendt noted, explode the limits of national criminal law. The Argentine lawsuit will continue. Let us hope that the stumbling blocks that dogmatic law places on us can fall, and so the walls of impunity can fall." Federal judge in cases against humanity, Daniel Rafecas, spoke about the evolution of the processes of memory, truth, and justice: "We had 17 years of impunity in Argentina. For two decades the establishment built a formidable dam to contain citizen claims [] The slogans were the same that are surely heard in Spain. 'You have to turn the page', 'you have to look forward', 'why are we going to stir the past?'" Rafecas claimed that similar arguments were heard during the 50s and 60s in postwar Germany. "It was part of a state policy of oblivion and impunity." He also observed the difficulties "in building a democracy seriously if we do not bring justice, truth, and reparation for the most serious crimes that can be conceived, such as mass executions, the kidnappings of children, rapes, acts of torture." Considering the current activism in Spain in relation to Franco's regime, he suggested, "perhaps this story is not yet finished." And he posed a concluding question: "What would happen if another brave judge, based on human rights in Spain, decided to pick up and raise Garzón's flag?" In her closing words, Maria Delgado argued that Moguillansky's film highlighted the importance of the act of listening. "All the persons who appear in the film are either giving or listening to testimony - and in all cases this is an active, creative act: a mode of giving voice, of remembering, of inscribing of engaging. Testimony as something that needs to be uttered, to be witnessed, to passed on. Testimony as recognition. The Spanish Supreme Court may have sought to close off the dialogue, but the testimony is heard again on the stage of Alejo's film and demands justice," she concluded. |
| URL | https://stagingdifficultpasts.org/esma-virtual-visit.html |
| Title | Kantor's Influence in Argentina |
| Description | Kantor's Influence in Argentina Editing and English subtitles: El Pampero Cine Producer: Cecilia Sosa Funded by Staging Difficult Pasts and The Polish Cultural Institute, London This short film documents Tadeusz Kantor's impact and influence on theatre makers and visual artists working in Argentina. Includes testimony from: Mariana Obersztern, Rubén Szuchmacher, Marcos Rosenzvaig, Emilio García Wehbi, and Natividad Martone. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | The first documentary on the impact of Tadeusz Kantor on Argentinian artists |
| URL | https://stagingdifficultpasts.org/kantor-s-influence.html |
| Title | Kantor's Influence in Brazil |
| Description | Kantor's Influence in Brazil Editor: Danilo J. Santos Camera: Alan Siqueira, Clayton Lima, Danilo Santos Producer: Michal Kobialka In this short film, theatre director Thiago Reis Vasconcelos discusses the influence of Tadeusz Kantor on his company Antropofágica in São Paulo, Brazil. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | First film on the impact of Tadeusz Kantor on Brazilian artists. |
| URL | https://vimeo.com/459334410 |
| Title | Tadeusz Kantor. Widma / Spectres |
| Description | The world of this exhibition is the world after a disaster materialized here as a heap of scattered objects, machines and costumes from Cricot 2 Theatre productions. The curators, Magorzata Paluch-Cybulska and Michal Kobialka, radically reject the chronological narrative employed in the past displays at the Cricoteka reveal to the cracks in our world and in this museum space. They blur the boundaries of time and create a space open to new interpretations. In the post-catastrophic landscape, accumulated stage objects lose their independent status and develop new meanings. The exhibition's leading theme is the memory of the difficult past in both the personal and historical dimensions, as an idea clearly present in the artist's work. While World War I was only a vague memory for Kantor, one shaped above all by the collective memory, his experience of World War II was fully conscious. It was the time of danger and destruction but simultaneously the time of creation that was forever marked by rebellion against the mechanisms that govern history. The curators of the exhibition explore questions about the influence of history on the artist's work, and on art itself. They ask how art which represents traumatic past or sense of impending danger may implicate the shape of its presentation in museums today. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | This is the first exhibition in the Cricoteka that specifically stages Kantor's works in relation to difficult pasts. |
| URL | https://www.cricoteka.pl/pl/wystawa-tadeusz-kantor-widma/ |
| Description | Through our project, 'We passed just this way', we discovered a mode of sharing artistic strategies for curation and displaying objects across museums, galleries and theatres. This was then developed through our collaboration with ESMA Site Memory Museum in Buenos Aires. |
| Exploitation Route | We will put these findings to use in our scheduled research events and workshops the ESMA Museum and Crikoteka. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | http://stagingdifficultpasts.org/events.html |
| Description | Museums operating in contexts where the recent past has been particularly difficult have often struggled to find inclusive ways to represent their collections and animate their histories. Although theatre has been widely used to represent the past in the heritage sector, it is rarely used in museums dealing with difficult pasts, where it can risk perpetuating nationalistic and exclusionary narratives. Lease's research in Poland and Argentina addressed this problem head-on, finding new ways for people with different affiliations, ethnicities and cultural memories to engage with and commemorate difficult pasts, and introducing new theatrical strategies into museum curation in sensitive contexts. The primary beneficiaries of the impact included the museum curators and theatre-makers with whom Lease co-created workshops, exhibitions and performances; further beneficiaries include cultural institutions, their visitors and the wider public. Lease's research: (i) inspired new collaborations between theatre-makers and museum curators, generating innovations in museum curation and cultural production; (ii) enhanced and diversified the visitor experience at museums of difficult pasts by prompting deeper levels of empathy with historical narratives, objects and sites; (iii) benefited museum collections, leading to decisive changes in the curation of objects and exhibitions; and (iv) informed new approaches to curation in cultural organisations more widely, changing mindsets on how museums can stage difficult pasts. (i) Inspired new collaborations between theatre-makers and museum curators, generating innovations in museum curation and cultural production Museum curators face particularly complex challenges in curating collections related to difficult pasts. In Poland, Holocaust memory is often fraught, confrontational and competitive, involving the attribution of blame; museums are typically dominated by nationalistic and/or ethnographic narratives. Working with curators at the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków, Lease initiated collaborations with performance artists as a way of moving their curated objects out of problematic framings. This was evident in the exhibition 'Widok zza bliska. Inne obrazy Zaglady' (Terribly close: Polish Vernacular Artists Face the Holocaust), which opened at the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków in December 2018, showcasing how local artists in Poland attempted to represent the events they witnessed during World War II. Lease proposed a collaboration with the Cricoteka (a museum dedicated to the work of Tadeusz Kantor) that would offer a new approach to exhibiting the objects by placing them in a theatrical frame in order to work with the concept of 'commemorative extension'. The curators selected an object from the exhibition, a wooden toy in the form of a truck, described as 'truposznica', representing the corpse carrier used to transport the dead Jewish bodies that had been gassed to be cremated. Lease commissioned workshops with a member of the Cricot 2 theatre company (Ludmila Ryba) and collaborated with Polish artist Wojtek Ziemilski to create a commemorative performance action, which consisted of a public procession transporting the 'truposznica' from the Ethnographic Museum to the Cricoteka. Collaborating on this project with museum curators, Ziemilski found that 'This was a completely new way of working'. Curator Erica Lehrer, who had been highly sceptical of participatory theatre in museums, noted the profound impact this work had on her curation practices at the Ethnographic Museum. 'I was a sceptic. But in this performance I was truly unsettled in the most moving way by seeing the audience engage with these objects, pulling them on the street, and the sound of the wheels on the street, and the children and the police presence. It did that unsettling work of performance that we talk about and which looking at the object in the museum does not do. A big impact on me was awakening my sense of the potential of performance as a mode of intervention'. Lease's advocacy of performance in museum curation has had a similar impact in Argentina. In Buenos Aires, curators at the ESMA Site of Memory Museum (a museum dedicated to victims of the 'Dirty War') have struggled to find appropriate ways to curate a room connected to the memory of perpetrators. The museum is on a site that was used as an illegal, secret detention and torture centre during Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship, and is considered one of the most significant museums in the world to 'stage' difficult pasts and engage with fundamental questions regarding human rights. Given the challenge of curating the perpetrator's gaze, Lease proposed theatrical and performative means to curate the space and introduced Wojtek Ziemiliski to an artistic residency at ESMA Museum, which culminated in a public performance on 30 November 2019. This was the first time theatrical performance has taken place on this site, and required the approval of twenty-one members of the board, which includes human rights groups and NGOs directly connected to those detained, tortured and murdered in ESMA. In an interview with one of Argentina's leading newspapers Página 12, the museum's Director Alejandra Naftal said: 'In this space where five thousand men and women disappeared, we are facing a challenge. This performance is a risk that also enables us to rethink and be better.' On the Museum's Facebook page she further wrote, 'We took the challenge of making this performance intervention which created a completely new way of thinking about what happened in this building and what happens in our environment'. (ii) Enhanced and diversified the visitor experience at museums of difficult pasts by prompting deeper levels of empathy with historical narratives, objects and sites Lease's research has changed the nature of the visitor experience in relation to museums of difficult pasts, moving away from the contemplation of objects to a relationship involving performative engagement and historical implication. This has enabled artefacts to be presented to more diverse audiences, allowing people with different affiliations, ethnicities and cultural memories to engage with and commemorate difficult pasts. In Kraków, the public performance moving the 'truposznica' from the Ethnographic Museum to the Cricoteka involved over 120 participants outside the museum walls. Many more members of the public (estimated 350) saw the performance, and over 50 participants attended a public forum in the Cricoteka following the performance to learn more about the object. Curator at the Ethnographic Museum, Erica Lehrer, noted that the performance was the first time she felt she 'shared the burden' of Holocaust memory in the city with non-Jewish local residents. Lease's work thus enabled diverse audiences (Polish and non-Polish, Jewish and non-Jewish) to come together in a performance of commemoration that worked beyond hierarchies of suffering engrained in public memory of the Holocaust in Kraków. In Buenos Aires, the innovations in theatrical and performative modes of curation at the ESMA Museum have enabled its collections to reach new audiences. The performance on 30 November 2019 was attended by over 200 audience members, more than half of whom had never visited the site before, and reviews appeared in the newspaper Página 12. Audience member and renowned theatre director Rubén Szuchmacher told Página 12: 'Until this experience, because I had a family that was a victim of the work of the perpetrators, I could never enter the former ESMA. This experience was very mobilizing'. Adriana Suzaly Néstor Fuentes, a survivor of ESMA, commented: 'This presents a before-and-after of what is now possible to do in this space'. (iii) Benefited museum collections, new insights lead to decisive changes in the curation of objects and exhibitions Lease's research into theatrical strategies in museums of difficult pasts has led curators to gain new insights into their collections and museum spaces, leading to lasting changes in the curation of objects and exhibitions. In Kraków, following the public performance moving the 'truposznica' from the Ethnographic Museum to the Cricoteka, Natalia Zarzecka, Director of the Cricoteka, added this object to the museum's permanent exhibition. This was the first time a non-Kantor object was displayed in the gallery, and thus changed the way the institution curates and understands its museum space. Zarzecka reported, 'Not only does this expand the legacy of Kantor in relation to Polish/Jewish and Holocaust histories, it also changed the emphasis of the gallery from a singular focus on Kantor to wider artistic heritages in Poland'. The Cricoteka then used the documentation of this performance action and the changed permanent exhibition to represent themselves at Kraków Art Week KRAKERS (12 April - 6 May 2019) in a new exhibition 'Skok Pamieciowy' (Memory Leap). The curators who had attended the workshops with theatre-maker Ludmila Ryba (organised by Lease) displayed the copies of the 'truposznica' that Ziemilski created for the performance beside Kantor's 'The Mechanical Cradle'. This has changed the institution's curation of Kantor's 'Bio-Objects' and more explicitly linked his work to Holocaust memory (E7). Zarzecka named the collaboration with 'Staging Difficult Pasts' as one of their significant public initiatives in their successful application for annual public funding from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in 2020. In Buenos Aires, the November 2019 performance at the ESMA Site of Memory Museum changed the curatorial script of the museum, leading to permanent documentary material of the performance in the exhibition. Curator Alejandra Naftal commissioned two films of Ziemilski's performance that are shown once a month in the museum as part of the permanent exhibition. The project team was invited back to apply the concept to digital space for a performance online for the museum during Argentina's Covid-19 lockdown in July 2020. (iv) Enhanced approaches to curation in cultural organisations more widely, changing mindsets on how museums can stage difficult pasts The approaches pioneered in Lease's 'Staging Difficult Pasts' project have influenced wider practices of curation in cultural organisations. Beneficiaries have included Parque de la Memoria Buenos Aires, a memorial to the victims of Argentina's 1976-83 military regime, a period of unprecedented state-sponsored violence. Lease and PDRA Cecilia Sosa worked with Joanne Rosenthal, Chief Curator and Head of Exhibitions at the Jewish Museum London until 2018, to develop a workshop with curators, artists, and human-rights organisations that explored the performative and theatrical curation of absence, trauma, and loss in public museums through spectatorial positioning to and encounters with objects, visual narratives on controversial themes. Florencia Battiti, Chief Curator at Parque, wrote that participants commented on 'its originality and the way in which it triggered new ways of thinking about traumatic past exhibitions'. She further commented: 'From a curatorial perspective, the workshop led me to think that it is very important to expose oneself in the public sphere, to try to put the focus on themes that are out of common knowledge and to take risks by addressing difficult problems which might be even "taboo" for the society in which one is inserted'. Marcelo Brodsky, a member of Parque's board, commented that as a result of the workshop he would be 'more risky' in his programming of public art works dealing with memory of difficult pasts in their exhibition space. This change of attitude led to Holocaust survivor Sara Rus, who attended the workshop at Parque, to share two pots that her mother had kept from Auschwitz-Birkenau and Mauthausen concentration camps with the new Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires (opened one week after the workshop in December 2019). The research developed in 'Staging Difficult Pasts' led to a commission to curate an online workshop on 5-6 October 2020 for the Second World War and Holocaust Partnership Programme (SWWHP), led by Imperial War Museums (IWM) and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF). Project Manager Rachel Donnelly asked Lease to share with their eight museum and university Partners insights into artistic approaches developed in Kraków (moving an object from a museal to a theatrical frame) and Buenos Aires (performative forms of curating difficult spaces) that would help them to engage diverse audiences across the UK with local, often hidden stories related to significant and difficult histories. 27 museum curators and education officers participated from the following organisations: Imperial War Museum, Manchester Jewish Museum, the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums, the Museum of Cornish Life at Helston and Bodmin Keep Army Museum, The Highlanders' Museum, Holocaust Survivors' Friendship Association, and National Museums Northern Ireland. Donnelly acknowledged 'the impact of Bryce's workshop was that the majority of Partners felt inspired by the "Difficult Pasts" project to think about working with an external artist to realise their ambitions to creatively engage new audiences. Other Partners commented on the honesty with which Bryce and fellow contributors spoke about the difficulties of working with external creatives and the often last-minute changes required before an event or exhibition 'goes live'. Since the workshops took place several SWWHPP Partners and external attendees have referenced 'Difficult Pasts' in conversations about the types of creative approaches that might inspire their own work'. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2019 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Policy & public services |
| Description | COA Funding, Staging Difficult Pasts |
| Amount | £5,644 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/V52069X/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2021 |
| End | 07/2021 |
| Description | Global Challenges Research Fund - Follow-On Impact Funding |
| Amount | £4,995 (GBP) |
| Organisation | United Kingdom Research and Innovation |
| Department | Global Challenges Research Fund |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2019 |
| End | 04/2020 |
| Description | SSHRC Partnership Grant |
| Amount | $4,101,929 (CAD) |
| Funding ID | 1106758 |
| Organisation | Government of Canada |
| Department | SSHRC - Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Canada |
| Start | 04/2021 |
| End | 03/2028 |
| Description | Cricoteka |
| Organisation | Centre for Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor |
| Country | Poland |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Staging Difficult Pasts: Objects in the State of Unrest In November 2018, Muzeum Etnograficzne in Kraków opened an exhibition, "Widok zza bliska. Inne obrazy Zaglady", about the objects which tell the story of World War II. One of these objects is called TRUPOSZNICA, Franciszek Wacek's object/corpse carrier from Treblinka that was used to illustrate wartime stories he told to local children. In collaboration with the Cricoteka and curators of the exhibition (Erica Lehrer, Roma Sendyka, Wojciech Wilczyk, and Magdalena Zych), the "Staging Difficult Pasts" research team invited Ludmila Ryba to conduct a week-long workshop with the Kolektyw Kuratorski about objects, based on her experience with the theatre of Tadeusz Kantor (18-22 February 2019). The Kolektyw have carefully researched historical questions connecting the city's topography, the object and the performance sites and have curated a performative intervention in the Kantor Museum. Alongside the workshops, we commissioned Polihs theatre maker and visual artist Wojtek Ziemilski to create a performative action of moving TRUPOSZNICA from the Muzeum Etnograficzne to Cricoteka (23 February 2019), which resulted in a public performance of Holocaust commemoration. We organised a public panel discussion on the workshops and the performative action, with reflections on the function of the object, its objectness, and the staging of difficult pasts across theatrical and museal frames. Panellists will include curators Erica Lehrer and Roma Sendyka, theatre makers Ludmila Ryba and Wojtek Ziemilski, and scholars Katarzyna Fazan and Anna Róza Burzynska. The panel will be chaired by Michal Kobialka. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Cricoteka paid for the insurance for the museum object, transportation and security for the object, Ludka Ryba's flight and all advertisements (pamphlets, etc.). |
| Impact | Performance Workshops Public Panel Publications will follow that should be available in 2020. Disciplines: theatre & performance, museum studies, memory studies, Polish studies, Holocaust studies, curating, Jewish studies |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Staging Difficult Pasts at ESMA Memory Museum in Buenos Aires: "Pasados conflictivos en escena" |
| Organisation | ESMA Memory Site Museum |
| Country | Argentina |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | In a collaboration between the memory institution and the Staging Difficult Pasts research project, on Saturday 30 November 2019 "Pasados conflictivos en escena" was the last edition of the Five o'Clock Visit at ESMA Memory Site Museum. While offering an alternative approach to the building that functioned as a unit of torture during Argentina's last dictatorship (1976-1983), the event included two performance interventions that addressed issues of memory and conflictive pasts through theatrical strategies. The interventions brought together local and international artists who called into question the figure of the perpetrator and discussed issues of justice. More than 120 people participated in the event. It was the first time the one of the museum's 5 o'Clock Visit was organised by a transnational research project. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The work was carried out in full collaboration with the Museum curatorial team. |
| Impact | Performances, public talks, documentary |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | The 30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall |
| Organisation | Free University of Berlin |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Graduate Seminar/Fall 2019 Michal Kobialka, University of Minnesota and Jan Lazardzig, Freie Universität Berlin On the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall, this graduate seminar considered a number of possibilities of how to think about that so-called post-historical condition as well as about the different pathways of how to address the idea of staging difficult past. To accomplish this task, the seminar focused on the performative and historiographic aspects of the commemorations of the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as one the idea of staging difficult pasts on the both sides of the divide. |
| Collaborator Contribution | ARTIST TALK Staging Difficult Pasts: Thomas Heise im Gespräch Vierte Welt (Bezirk Friedrichshain-Kreuzerg, Berlin) Saturday, December 14, 8 pm Filmemacher Thomas Heise spricht in der Vierten Welt über die Kinematographie der "difficult pasts" in seinen Filmen. Von Thomas Heise läuft gerade der vielfach preisgekrönte Film "Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit" (2019) im Regenbogenkino in Kreuzberg. |
| Impact | Graduate seminar, artist's talk, documentary for digital archive |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | "Exhibiendo la ausencia y la pérdida: Objetos, narrativas y trauma" [Exhibiting Absence and Loss: Objects, Narratives and Trauma on Display] |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | As part of Staging Difficult Pasts partnership with the Parque de la Memoria, on 23 November 2019, British curator Rosenthal also led the workshop "Exhibiendo la ausencia y la pérdida: Objetos, narrativas y trauma" [Exhibiting Absence and Loss: Objects, Narratives and Trauma on Display" at the Park's PayS exhibition room. The workshop considered the question of how to display or represent objects and narratives which relate to trauma and loss, particularly in relation to issues of identity, family, sexuality, and kinship. While drawing upon a wide spectrum of international case studies, Rosenthal introduced how museums, curators, and artists have made creative use of the limitations and opportunities involved in exhibiting absence and loss in expanded landscapes. While providing new experimental insights and tools to approach the staging of difficult pasts, the event propitiated a fruitful professional exchange among more than 50 local representatives of museums and human rights activists, artists, curators, intellectuals, survivors, and professionals working at memory sites in Argentina. Nora Hochbaum and Florencia Battiti, director and chief curator at the Park, also participated in the workshop. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | "From Poland to Argentina: Theatre, Memory, Performativity". XXV Jornadas Nacionales de Teatro Comparado. University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Joint presentation with Bryce Lease and Wojtek Ziemilski on the production of the performance action '90/100'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://iae.institutos.filo.uba.ar/evento/xxv-jornadas-nacionales-de-teatro-comparado |
| Description | "La sangre en cuestión: Del Museo Judío de Londres a la posdictatura argentina" [Blood into Question. From the Jewish Museum in London to Argentina's Posdictatorship] |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On Friday 22 November 2019, curator Joanne Rosenthal grave the lecturer "La sangre en cuestión: Del Museo Judío de Londres a la posdictatura argentina" [Blood into Question. From the Jewish Museum in London to Argentina's Posdictatorship] at the IDES. During the talk, Rosenthal shared insights about her experience of conceptualising, shaping, and curating the exhibition "Blood: Uniting & Dividing" at the Jewish Museum London. The critically-acclaimed exhibition, which toured in an expanded form to the POLIN Museum in Warsaw and the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, explored the fluid and paradoxical nature of blood through the lens of Jewish history while considering how blood has been both a substance and a symbol that has united and divided individuals and groups. Rosenthal addressed the current resonances of the exhibition's themes and issues of blood in the context of the aftermath of Argentina's dictatorship. The talk was a joint event organised by Staging Difficult Pasts and the research group Núcleo Estudios de Memoria. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | "Pasados conflictivos en escena" Staging Difficult Pasts at ESMA Memory Museum in Buenos Aires |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In a collaboration between the memory institution and the Staging Difficult Pasts research project, on Saturday 30 November 2019 "Pasados conflictivos en escena" was the last edition of the Five o'Clock Visit at ESMA Memory Site Museum. While offering an alternative approach to the building that functioned as a unit of torture during Argentina's last dictatorship (1976-1983), the event included two performance interventions that addressed issues of memory and conflictive pasts through theatrical strategies. The interventions brought together local and international artists who called into question the figure of the perpetrator and discussed issues of justice. More than 120 people participated in the event. It was the first time the one of the museum's 5 o'Clock Visit was organised by a transnational research project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://stagingdifficultpasts.org/esma.html |
| Description | "Performance and justice: the Baltasar Garzón and la manada (the wolfpack) trials on stage", public lecture at the University of Champaign-Urbana, USA, 9 March 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | In 1784 Schiller wrote of the jurisdiction of the stage beginning 'where the domain of secular law leaves off'. At a time when the faultlines of Spain's young democracy seem particularly exposed and its political parties have appeared unable (or unwilling) to tackle the legacy of a ten-year recession, widescale political corruption and the implications of a transition to democracy that failed to dismantle the structures of sociological Francoism, it has been culture that has attempted to provide an alternative space for justice. In this paper I examine two theatrical pieces, El pan y la sal (Bread and Salt, 2018) and Jauría (Pack, 2019) that have sought to provide public sites for the discussion of two trials that have mobilised public opinion in Spain. First, the 2012 trial of Investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón at Spain's Supreme Court for 'prevarication', accused by a right-wing trade union of intentionally violating a 1977 Amnesty Law that forbids any investigation of crimes related to the Franco regime. Second, the case of la manada (the wolfpack, 2017-19), a group of five men from Seville accused of raping an 18-year old woman from Madrid in the hallway of a building in Pamplona during the San Fermín celebrations. In discussing the ways in which each of these cases has been 'restaged' in the public arena, I will examine the wider implications of their legacy - issues of cultural heritage, accountability and immunity, and questions about constitutional politics and the role culture can play in challenging both a state-endorsed politics of amnesia and the wider nostalgia for Francoism (and its curtailment of civil liberties and equalities) evidenced in the rise of Vox, the extreme right-wing party that at the time of delivering the lecture held 52 seats in Spain's Parliament. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://calendars.illinois.edu/detail/852?eventId=33374160 |
| Description | "The disappeared from Spain and Argentina: Art, Testimony, and Justice" Virtual Visit at ESMA Memory Museum in Buenos Aires, 25 July 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA (ESMA Museum Memory Site) currently occupies the former Officer's Casino inside the Navy School of Mechanics' premises. This haunted building was the largest of the 340 clandestine detention centres that operated in the country during the dictatorship (1976-1983). More than 5,000 men and women - mostly leftist activists - were held captive and tortured there. Every last Saturday of the month, during the Five O'clock Visit, audiences are invited to tour around the building with guest artists. On 25 July 2020, the visit was organised by 'Staging Difficult Pasts' project and, due to the current pandemic situation, which keeps the museum closed, it had to take a virtual turn. The transnational meeting was entitled "Los desaparecidos y las desaparecidas en España y Argentina. Arte, testimonio y justicia" [The disappeared from Spain and Argentina. Art, Testimony, and Justice] and gathered specialists from Argentina, Spain, and the UK. More than 500 spectators attended the visit through social media and ESMA networks, participating through comments, greetings, and questions. The event included a video essay inspired by El pan y la sal (Bread and Salt, 2015), a verbatim play by Raúl Quirós Molina that draws on the trial against Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón in 2012, and archival footage from Argentine human rights trials. The event was co-hosted by Alejandra Naftal, the director of the Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA, and Cecilia Sosa, postdoctoral researcher on 'Staging Difficult Pasts', and included the following speakers from both the cultural industries, memory politics, and the legal profession: Lola Berthet, Raúl Quirós Molina (Spain), Emilio Silva (Spain), Mariana Tello, Ana Mesutti (residing in Spain), Daniel Rafecas and María Delgado (UK). "Staging Difficult Pasts seeks to provide a transnational look at the ways in which contemporary theatre and memory sites deal with conflictive pasts," Sosa observed in the opening panel discussion. She explained that the event is a continuation of the work conducted at ESMA in November last year with the Polish artist, Wojtek Ziemilski. "Maria Delgado saw this piece [El pan y la sal] in Barcelona and noted how much the testimonies of the victims of Francoism resonated with the testimonies of the victims of state terrorism in Argentina." Although a planned reading of El pan y la sal with an accompanying discussion was scheduled to take place at ESMA in April 2020, the impact of Covid 19 led to a reformulation of the event. The pandemic also gave us new opportunities, and one of these involved Sosa and Delgado collaborating with filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky on a video essay. The 18-minute film includes both excerpts from El pan y la sal and testimonies of survivors of state terrorism provided in the ESMA trial, in which those responsible for the crimes committed in the building during the dictatorship are being judged. Argentinean actors Eugenia Alonso, Ana María Castel and Mauricio Minetti read testimonies from Quirós' piece under Rubén Szuchmacher's direction. Haroldo Conti Cultural Center's current director, actor Lola Berthet, highlighted the importance of art in the work of memory construction: "Art and memory work challenges us to build upon justice and testimony. Many times, when justice is not present, the role of culture is essential in demanding memory, truth and justice," she said. While commenting on the process of creating El pan y la sal, writer Quirós Molina stated that the piece arises from failure. "I was working in London with a small Argentine theatre that stages `Theatre for Identity´ pieces [which stage human rights themes in response to the dictatorship crimes]. After seeing those productions, which were sponsored by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo organisation, Quirós wondered why this did not exist in Spain. "Spanish people have never been taught about the Franco era. There is no political awareness that what has happened is a process of genocide," he argued. Thus, Quirós said he wanted to create a theatre for memory "to understand how memory works today, and show what the stories our grandparents told us meant to us." Emilio Silva, founder of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain, whose grandfather was buried in a mass grave, also referred to the difference between the Argentinian and Spanish processes. "No president in the last forty years, since the dictator's death" has referred to memory issues. "The fight is very difficult. Hopefully we could have a space like this [the museum] to visit and teach what the dictatorship was like here in Spain," he said. Mariana Tello, the president of the National Archive of Memory in Argentina, referred to the role of testimony in the process of memory, truth, and justice. "I want to highlight the tenacity of these two countries in insisting on a story that later becomes a testimony. In both cases, testimony has a special power, as resistance, as a political act. In both cases the disappearance has different characteristics. In Spain, it is known where they are, but it is an additional cruelty to know and not be able to bury them properly. The communities are not only deprived of the right to bury them, they are condemned to oblivion, to forced silence." She concluded: "In a country where the dead do not rest, the living cannot rest either." Lawyer Ana Mesutti, who works on the Argentine lawsuit against the crimes committed during Franco's regime, argued: "The introduction of international law rattles national rights. It is the world that has to solve the Nuremberg trials. Those crimes against humanity, as Hannah Arendt noted, explode the limits of national criminal law. The Argentine lawsuit will continue. Let us hope that the stumbling blocks that dogmatic law places on us can fall, and so the walls of impunity can fall." Federal judge in cases against humanity, Daniel Rafecas, spoke about the evolution of the processes of memory, truth, and justice: "We had 17 years of impunity in Argentina. For two decades the establishment built a formidable dam to contain citizen claims [] The slogans were the same that are surely heard in Spain. 'You have to turn the page', 'you have to look forward', 'why are we going to stir the past?'" Rafecas claimed that similar arguments were heard during the 50s and 60s in postwar Germany. "It was part of a state policy of oblivion and impunity." He also observed the difficulties "in building a democracy seriously if we do not bring justice, truth, and reparation for the most serious crimes that can be conceived, such as mass executions, the kidnappings of children, rapes, acts of torture." Considering the current activism in Spain in relation to Franco's regime, he suggested, "perhaps this story is not yet finished." And he posed a concluding question: "What would happen if another brave judge, based on human rights in Spain, decided to pick up and raise Garzón's flag?" In her closing words, Maria Delgado argued that Moguillansky's film highlighted the importance of the act of listening. "All the persons who appear in the film are either giving or listening to testimony - and in all cases this is an active, creative act: a mode of giving voice, of remembering, of inscribing of engaging. Testimony as something that needs to be uttered, to be witnessed, to passed on. Testimony as recognition. The Spanish Supreme Court may have sought to close off the dialogue, but the testimony is heard again on the stage of Alejo's film and demands justice," she concluded. The event was also supported by: Francisco Pérez Esteban (Spanish Secretary of Internationals of the United Left) and Enrique Santiago (Secretary General of the Spanish Communist Party); ESMA survivors including Ana Testa, Alfredo Ayala, Adriana Suzal, Silvia Labayrú, Lila Pastoriza, Liliana Pellegrino, Graciela Garcia Romero, Liliana Pontoriero, Maria Eva Bernst, and Lidia Vieyra, who also expressed their support for Baltasar Garzón; the members of the Argentine lawsuit against the crimes of Francoism Inés García Holgado and Adriana Fernández; Emiliano Fessia (ex director of the former clandestine center La Perla in Córdoba); Graciela Lois (member of the Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons organisation); Marianella Galli (member of the Secretary of Human Rights and daughter of disappeared activists); Pablo Verna, Liliana Furio, and Mariela Milstein (part of the collective Disobedient Stories, sons and daughters of perpetrators); Stella Segado (former Director of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law of the Ministry of Defense), and Taty Almeida (Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Founding Line), among many others. 5 o'clock Visit "The Disappeared in Spain and Argentina" documented via Facebook Live. This video includes on-line commentary and discussion in Spanish. https://www.facebook.com/808007416012602/videos/775900106480246 The following film, directed by Alejo Moguillansky, was produced for the 5 o' clock Visit, 'The Disappeared in Spain and Argentina. Art, Testimony and Justice', and was aired on 25 July 2020. The 18-minute video essay directed by Alejo Moguillansky that opened the 5 o'clock visit on July 25th entered the Museum's collection on 17 October 2020. The film's presence in ESMA's collection offered the opportunity for a number of the participants who engaged in the 5 o'clock visit to comment on what the engagement with Quirós Molina's text alongside the testimony from ESMA's archive had facilitated. Argentine actor-director Rubén Szuchmacher who had taken responsibility for directing the actors via Zoom for the reading wrote of how "weaving together different realities which are united by a common condition is always intense. It helps us to move forward. The testimonies can be considered when they leave the realm of the real in order to enter another level: the realm of art". Now on display with an additional English-subtitled edition on ESMA Memory Museum's network channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDgliZI3888), the Moguillansky's film signposts a first-time collaboration between ESMA and El Pampero Cine, arguably the most important independent film company in Argentina, whose work has been screened at leading film festivals including Cannes, Locarno, Venice and Berlin. Quirós commented that it was the first time that his verbatim play was performed outside Spain. "It was a great honour, certainly, that interest in a play about those who have disappeared and about historical memory, so forgotten in Spain, came about from ESMA, itself a benchmark in the fight for human rights. This has been the first time that I have spoken about this play in a public forum, a forum about art and human rights. This situation is strange and it saddens me, because it [the play] has generated more academic and artistic attention outside of Spain (The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, The University of Lille, ESMA), than inside the country". "Watching actresses and actors from Argentina play the characters of Raúl Quirós Molina's magnificent play, Bread and Salt gave the piece a different meaning. The casting demonstrated once again the shared struggle of these two nations", observed Lola Berthet, Director of the Cultural Centre Haroldo Conti. Reflecting on Moguillansky's film, the Argentine lawyer Ana Messutti who works on the Argentine trial against the crimes of the Franco's regime, the only judicial proceedings against the Spanish dictator, which have, since 2020, been running for a decade, said: "I was able to see images of the victims of the two tragedies superimposed, those of Argentina and those of Spain. I could also listen to the chorus of their voices united as a single choir, in a single tragedy, universalizing the pain, but also the justice. [The event] allowed me to stop experiencing the two tragedies as distinct; I could unite them and feel that what we do for some victims we are also doing for the others. For everyone". Indeed, this was the first time the Museum's 5 o'clock's virtual visit had followed the voices of the victims of both Spain's (1939-75) and Argentina's (1976-83) military dictatorships. Reflecting on this encounter, which exhibited testimony from both Baltasar Garzón's 2012 trial and the 2013 ESMA trials, Alejandra Naftal, Director of the Museum, argued that the transnational meeting "allowed for the exploration of new channels of interpellation and transmission for new audiences. From different perspectives, the place of the victims' testimony was approached as judicial evidence, symbolic reparation and material of artistic inspiration". For the anthropologist Mariana Tello, current director of the National Memory Archive, the event was also "very transformative; it brought together worlds that appear to be separated by spatial and temporal distances". Argentine Judge Daniel Rafecas, who specializes in crimes against humanity, and who Emilio Silva acknowledged as a key figure in the discourse on transnational justice, argued that the film is also vital from the point of view of Justice since it highlights the difference between both countries. "It allows one to notice the importance of the judicial processes surrounding these events and their production of a "truth" (). In the Spanish case, the 'truth' continues to be imposed by the victors, the tyrants, the perpetrators", he said. "It becomes difficult to establish a dialogue, draw up comparisons, share proposals in the face of a supposedly democratic State which, in over forty years since the end of the dictatorship, has not provided Justice, Truth, Reparations, nor Memory", he added, deploying a precise use of capitals in emphasizing his argument. While exposing the case of stolen babies in Spain, the film also reveals connections that have rarely been drawn out between the work of the Argentinean Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Spanish Association for Historical Memory. Both Spain and Argentina have 'stolen babies' illegitimately taken from their mothers - while there are 500 babies estimated to be stolen in Argentina, the numbers in Spain are thought to exceed 30,000 and spilled over into the democratic era. For Maria Delgado, who had been responsible for the dramaturgy of the film alongside Cecilia Sosa, working with Sosa and Naftal on the shape of the visit, "The event at ESMA and the film allowed us to provide another forum for justice that prolongs the circulation of these crimes in the public arena. The performative field provides a further stage for justice that has not been delivered in the Spanish courts." On 18 October 2020, Página 12 published a series of reflections on Moguillansky's film and the wider discussions and impacts generated by the 5 o'clock visit on 25 July, collected by Sosa. Press coverage: Pagina 12 https://www.pagina12.com.ar/280700-los-testimonios-de-las-victimas-del-terror-en-espana-y-argen https://www.pagina12.com.ar/280977-el-recuerdo-de-los-desaparecidos-de-espana-y-argentina Telam https://www.telam.com.ar/notas/202007/493821-derechos-humanos-ex-esma-evento-virtual-testimonios-victimas-del-franquismo-y-dictadura-militar-argentina.html Grupo la Provincia https://www.grupolaprovincia.com/politica/los-testimonios-de-las-victimas-del-franquismo-y-la-dictadura-argentina-en-un-evento-de-la-ex-esma-534544 Perfil https://www.perfil.com/noticias/opinion/arte-para-entender-el-horror-en-tiempos-peligrosos.phtml Cohete a la luna https://www.elcohetealaluna.com/una-conversacion-con-el-pasado/ |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://stagingdifficultpasts.org/esma-virtual-visit.html |
| Description | 'Jauría: A new trial for La manada on the Spanish stage' presented at the EASTAP conference in Lisbon, Portugal on 24 September 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 'The jurisdiction of the stage begins where the domain of secular law leaves off', Schiller observed in 1784. A number of verbatim productions in recent years have offered an alternative space for a discussion of the faultiness and fissures of Spain's young democracy. The most recent of these, Jauría (English title Pack) provides a way of engaging with the one of the most contentious trials of Spain's democratic era - that of la manada (the wolfpack), a group of five men from Seville accused of raping an 18-year old woman from Madrid in the hallway of a building in Pamplona during the San Fermín celebrations. The incident was filmed by one of the men on his phone. The men - who included a serving member of the Civil Guard (Spain's rural police force) and a soldier in the Spanish Army - contested that the woman, who was drunk, had participated in consensual sex. The trial lasted five months, attracted significant media coverage and generated wide protests in Spain's major cities. Found guilty of sexual abuse rather than rape, the men have appealed the verdict and are awaiting a hearing at Spain's Supreme Court. Their cause has been championed by the right-wing Vox, Spain's newest political party, which has campaigned on an anti-feminist, anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ+ platform, gaining 10% of the vote and 24 seats in this year's general election. By exploring the politics and processes of Miguel del Arco's staging of Jauría at Madrid's Pavón Kamikaze theatre, I want to explore how the stage has offered a way of stimulating debates and discussion that have been shut down in the political sphere. The reception of Jauría demonstrates the ways that verbatim theatre in Spain has sought to keep judicial injustices in the public domain, pressing for a space where dissenting views can speak out. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://eastap.com/conference/ |
| Description | 'Lluís Pasqual's In Memoriam: how a nation remembers and what it remembers', part of a panel on 'Staging Difficult Pasts' 2019: 'Lluís Pasqual's In Memoriam: how a nation remembers and what it remembers', part of a panel discussion for the 'Staging Difficult Pasts' project at the Memory Studies Association, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 26 June 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Staging Difficult Pasts: Of Narratives, Objects and Public Memory This panel will analyse and compare international approaches to staging difficult pasts across major theatres and museums, including Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), ESMA Museum (Buenos Aires), and the Cricoteka & Ethnographic Museum (Krakow). Our analysis will chart how these curatorial and theatrical practices are increasingly informed cross-institutionally. We will consider how identitarian myths are given dramatic shape or are performatively confronted by theatre makers and curators primarily through narrative (a spoken or written account of connected events) and object (material things). Staging difficult pasts, theatre makers have innovated narrative forms and reframed theatrical and artefactual objects, while museums have increasingly privileged the "staging" of historical narratives over the display of objects, producing performative encounters as their primary object. Thus, the panel's focus on narrative and object highlights key points of intersection between theatres and museums, while also highlighting their complementary transnational artistic strategies. Chair: Dr Bryce Lease Royal Holloway, University of London Bryce.Lease@rhul.ac.uk Speakers: Prof Michal Kobialka Department of Theatre Arts and Dance University of Minnesota kobia001@umn.edu Of Awkward Objects and Collateral Memories In Winter 2018, the exhibition, "Awkward Objects of Genocide," opened at the Anthropology Museum in Krakow. It showcases how local, "naïve" artists in Poland attempted to represent the events they witnessed during World War II. The objects on display in the Museum, such as for example, a representation of Jewish suffering via symbolic (Catholic) idiom of Pieta or a Nazi crematorium recalling a nativity creche, challenge what is understood as Holocaust art, expand the field of Holocaust memory studies to include "minor," "peripheral," or "awkward" objects, as well as contribute to larger debates about "difficult heritage" or "difficult knowledge". This presentation will use as its point of departure a performative action, organized by Wojtek Ziemilski, a Polish performance artist, of transporting a wooden toy in a form of a car, described as "truposznica" or a Treblinka car used transport the dead bodies that had been gassed to be cremated, from the Ethnography Museum to the Cricoteka, housing the objects and machines associated with the work of Tadeusz Kantor. In this spatial context, I will argue the "truposznica" becomes a "poor object" and that the object's movement between the Ethnographic Museum and the Cricoteka points to the tension (in Poland) between the conflict memories/imaginations at once past and present. To substantiate this point, I will explore "truposznica" as the object in the state of unrest; the object, which is unhoused in being by experience and Logos; and, finally, the object drawing attention to "collateral" memories-memories of the excarnated: those memories made to die so that secularism can be made to live elsewhere as folk art. Dr Cecilia Sosa Royal Holloway, University of London sosaceci@gmail.com Towards a collaborative ethics of staging conflictive pasts This paper explores the possibility of encouraging a transnational experience of collaboration between a contemporary Polish theatre maker, working on the rumination of Holocaust experience, and a particular site of memory located in Argentina, ESMA Memory Museum. During 1976-1983 dictatorship the building of the Casino de Oficiales [Officers' Casino] located inside the premises of the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) was used as a main unit of illegal detention and torture. More than 5000 left-wing activists were held captive on the site, and eventually thrown alive into the river. In 2015 a Museum of Memory was launched in the contested building. Since then, the museum's team has developed a careful curatorial script, which included the necessity of protecting the building currently used as legal evidence during the legal trials. In this context, the project "Staging Difficult Pasts" has invited the Polish director, writer and choreographer Wojtek Ziemilski to respond to a particular difficulty acknowledged by the museum by curating one of the most conflictive sites within the building. This initiative provides a timely opportunity to discuss questions of "transnational memory" (Rigney, 2014), "travelling memory" (Erll, 2011), as well as "multidirectional memory" (Rothberg, 2008), which have become umbrella terms within Memory Studies. On the verge of that collaborative work, this presentation raises key questions about facilitating performative ways of staging the past creatively to address transnational generations, usually considered as non-implicated audiences. Ultimately, I will seek to interrogate the ethical, aesthetic and political challenges that make such transnational collaboration between theatres and museums possible. Prof Maria Delgado Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London maria.delgado@cssd.ac.uk Lluís Pasqual's In Memoriam: how a nation remembers and what it remembers In this paper, I explore a number of ideas relating to Lluís Pasqual's production of In Memoriam: la quinta del bibero, first seen in 2016. In Memoriam constructs an oral history of the Battle of the Ebro, the longest and bloodiest battle of the Spanish Civil War (July to November 1938), from the testimonies of the conflict's youngest conscripted soldiers. Nicknamed 'the baby bottle brigade' because of their youth, approximately 30,000 teenagers, born in 1920, were recruited largely from Catalonia to form part of the campaign to fight on the Aragon front in the hope of defending Valencia. The presentation examines how the production operates in a heightened climate of challenges to Spanish democracy (corruption scandals, separatist debates in Catalonia). I In Memoriam as an elegy to lost youth-90 per cent of the combatants lost their lives in the battle while survivors were imprisoned inhumanely in concentration or forced labour camps-and a mode of countering narratives that present binary histories of the Civil War-Republican good, Nationalist bad (or vice versa)-into which history has to be made to 'fit'. In Memoriam is the oral history of a disappearing generation-of the twelve combatants interviewed by Pasqual in preparing the production, all but two have died since the production first opened, but also a piece of theatre about how a nation remembers and what it remembers-a pertinent issue for Spain, which has grappled with the legacy of the Civil War and its aftermath through much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | 'Performance and justice: the Baltasar Garzón and la manada (the wolfpack) trials on stage', lecture delivered at the University of Madison-Wisconsin |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This public lecture delivered at the University of Madison-Wisconsin had the following focus: In 1784 Schiller wrote of the jurisdiction of the stage beginning 'where the domain of secular law leaves off'. At a time when the faultlines of Spain's young democracy seem particularly exposed and its political parties have appeared unable (or unwilling) to tackle the legacy of a ten-year recession, widescale political corruption and the implications of a transition to democracy that failed to dismantle the structures of sociological Francoism, it has been culture that has attempted to provide an alternative space for justice. In this paper I examine two theatrical pieces, El pan y la sal (Bread and Salt, 2018) and Jauría (Pack, 2019) that have sought to provide public sites for the discussion of two trials that have mobilised public opinion in Spain. First, the 2012 trial of Investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón at Spain's Supreme Court for 'prevarication', accused by a right-wing trade union of intentionally violating a 1977 Amnesty Law that forbids any investigation of crimes related to the Franco regime. Second, the case of la manada (the wolfpack, 2017-19), a group of five men from Seville accused of raping an 18-year old woman from Madrid in the hallway of a building in Pamplona during the San Fermín celebrations. In discussing the ways in which each of these cases has been 'restaged' in the public arena, I will examine the wider implications of their legacy - issues of cultural heritage, accountability and immunity, and questions about constitutional politics and the role culture can play in challenging both a state-endorsed politics of amnesia and the wider nostalgia for Francoism (and its curtailment of civil liberties and equalities) evidenced in the rise of Vox, the extreme right-wing party that at the time of delivering the lecture held 52 seats in Spain's Parliament. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | 'The jurisdiction of the stage: and El pan y la sal (Bread and Salt): Baltasar Garzón's historical memory trial as theatre', Paper for the Modern Languages and Cultures Seminar series at the University of Nottingham, 5 Febuary 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | 40-minute paper 'The jurisdiction of the stage: and El pan y la sal (Bread and Salt): Baltasar Garzón's historical memory trial as theatre' at the University of Nottingham 5 February 2020 Spain has 2,591 mass graves. Over 130,000 corpses - the disappeared of the Civil War and the early years of Francoism - are thought to reside in these graves. Investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón was put on trial at Spain's Supreme Court in 2012 for 'prevarication', indicted by a series of right-wing organisations for intentionally violating a 1977 Amnesty Law that forbids any investigation of crimes related to the Franco regime. As Reed Brody, the counsel for Human Rights Watch observed: "Thirty-six years after Franco's death, Spain is finally prosecuting someone in connection with the crimes of his dictatorship - the judge who sought to investigate those crimes." In this paper, I seek to look at issues related to the edited transcripts of Garzón's trial, presented as a stage work by Madrid's Teatro del Barrio in 2018. El pan y la sal (Bread and Salt) explores issues of cultural heritage, accountability and immunity, asking questions about constitutional politics and the role culture can play in challenging a state-endorsed politics of amnesia. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | 90/100 Performance Action |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We commissioned Wojtek Ziemilski to create a performative action of moving TRUPOSZNICA from the Muzeum Etnograficzne to Cricoteka (23 February 2019) that addressed the project's primary research questions. The project team worked carefully with Ziemilski and both cultural institutions in the creation and execution of the performance. This was a performance that commemorated Holocaust memory in Poland. Close to 120 people directly took part in the walking performance, and hundreds of members of the general public encountered this on the city streets. We imagine many more have encountered this through images and stories shared across social media platforms. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | : 'Historical memory on Trial: Baltasar Garzón and El pan y la sal (Bread and Salt, 2018)', presentation at the International Federation for Theatre Research, Shanghai Theatre Academy, 11 July 2019. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In this paper, part of a broader project on democracy, performance and Spain's difficult past, I seek to look at issues related to Raúl Quirós's edited transcripts of Baltasar Garzón's trial for investigating crimes related to human rights abuses, presented as a stage reading by Madrid's Teatro del Barrio in 2018. El pan y la sal (Bread and Salt) explores issues of cultural heritage, accountability and immunity, asking questions about constitutional politics and the role culture can play in challenging a state-endorsed politics of amnesia. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019 |
| URL | https://www.iftr.org/conference/past-conferences/2010s |
| Description | ARTIST TALK Staging Difficult Pasts: Thomas Heise im Gespräch Vierte Welt (Bezirk Friedrichshain-Kreuzerg, Berlin) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | ARTIST TALK Staging Difficult Pasts: Thomas Heise im Gespräch Vierte Welt (Bezirk Friedrichshain-Kreuzerg, Berlin) Saturday, December 14, 8 pm Filmemacher Thomas Heise spricht in der Vierten Welt über die Kinematographie der "difficult pasts" in seinen Filmen. Von Thomas Heise läuft gerade der vielfach preisgekrönte Film "Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit" (2019) im Regenbogenkino in Kreuzberg. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://www.viertewelt.de/archiv/kleine-formate/2019/staging-difficult-pasts_thomas-heise_2019.html |
| Description | ATHE Annual Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | ATHE Annual Conference Orlando, Florida Wednesday, 7 August 2019, 11:00 am - 12.30 pm Bryce Lease, 'Poor Objects: Breaking the Ethnographic Frame |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Bystanders & Memory: Between the Museum and the Theatre Public Panel: Erica Lehrer, Roma Sendyka, Bryce Lease |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Friday, 18 October, 6 pm In December 2018, the exhibition, "Terribly close: Polish Vernacular Artists Face the Holocaust" (Widok zza bliska. Inne obrazy Zaglady), opened at the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow, curated by Erica Lehrer, Roma Sendyka, Wojciech Wilczyk, and Magdalena Zych. The exhibition showcases how local artists in Poland attempted to represent the events they witnessed during World War II. The objects on display in the museum challenge what is understood as Holocaust art, expand the field of Holocaust memory studies to include "minor," "peripheral," or "awkward" objects, as well as contribute to larger debates about "difficult heritage" or "difficult knowledge". In collaboration with the curators, the Staging Difficult Pasts project team commissioned Polish artist Wojtek Ziemilski to create a commemorative performance action, which consisted of transporting a wooden toy in a form of a car, described as "truposznica" or a corpse carrier used transport the dead bodies that had been gassed to be cremated, from the Ethnographic Museum to the Cricoteka, housing the objects and machines associated with the work of Tadeusz Kantor. This panel will reflect upon the exhibition and the performance action, discussing tensions between representation and performativity, the dynamic relationships between museal and theatrical frames and memory and history. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Career interview with Pedro Costa, 3 March 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This career interview with Pedro Costa began by discussing his most recent film, Vitalina Varela which won the Golden Leopard at the 2019 Locarno Festival. It examined the difficult pasts that the film engages with as well as Costa's work with actors and opened out to look at his entire trajectory. The interview was recorded and features (as requested by Costa) on the DVD release of the film where it has reached a much wider audience. The DVD can be purchased here: https://www.secondrundvd.com/release_more_vitalina.html http://mondo-digital.com/vitalina.html |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2020 |
| URL | https://www.ica.art/films/vitalina-varela-ica |
| Description | Conference presentation on 'Jauria' at the Jornadas de Teatro Comparativo XXV, University of Buenos Aires, 27 November 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A presentation on the trial of la manada and its reworking as theatre (in Spanish) 'The jurisdiction of the stage begins where the domain of secular law leaves off', Schiller observed in 1784. A number of verbatim productions in recent years have offered an alternative space for a discussion of the faultiness and fissures of Spain's young democracy. The most recent of these, Jauría (English title Pack) provides a way of engaging with the one of the most contentious trials of Spain's democratic era - that of la manada (the wolfpack), a group of five men from Seville accused of raping an 18-year old woman from Madrid in the hallway of a building in Pamplona during the San Fermín celebrations. The incident was filmed by one of the men on his phone. The men - who included a serving member of the Civil Guard (Spain's rural police force) and a soldier in the Spanish Army - contested that the woman, who was drunk, had participated in consensual sex. The trial lasted five months, attracted significant media coverage and generated wide protests in Spain's major cities. Found guilty of sexual abuse rather than rape, the men have appealed the verdict and are awaiting a hearing at Spain's Supreme Court. Their cause has been championed by the right-wing Vox, Spain's newest political party, which has campaigned on an anti-feminist, anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ+ platform, gaining 10% of the vote and 24 seats in this year's general election. By exploring the politics and processes of Miguel del Arco's staging of Jauría at Madrid's Pavón Kamikaze theatre, I want to explore how the stage has offered a way of stimulating debates and discussion that have been shut down in the political sphere. The reception of Jauría demonstrates the ways that verbatim theatre in Spain has sought to keep judicial injustices in the public domain, pressing for a space where dissenting views can speak out. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Creative Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Creative Workshop Imperial War Museum London, England October 2020 The SWWHPP is a three year, national initiative led by IWM supporting partners in the cultural heritage and academic sectors to engage with new audiences as they reflect on these significant histories and explore their lasting impacts on our lives, in digital form and public events. The SWWHPP is generously supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Partners are: • National Museums Northern Ireland • The Highlanders' Museum • Aberystwyth University • Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums • Manchester Jewish Museum • Bodmin Keep • Museum of Cornish Life • National Holocaust Centre and Museum, Nottingham • Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre, Huddersfield All the Partners are committed to exploring artistic responses as part of their projects and in October 2020 IWM hosted an online workshop for Partners to develop their ideas, discuss the process of commissioning artists and hear about artistic projects in other organisations. As Project Manager of SWWHPP, Rachel Donnelly asked a group of creative practitioners, Dr. Bryce Lease from Royal Holloway University, curator Joanne Rosenthal, and dramaturg and director Patrick Eakin Young to help Partners consider the challenges in commissioning artistic responses to difficult subject matter such as the Holocaust and the Second World War, as well as giving them tools to help think about what their projects might be. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://stagingdifficultpasts.org/imperial-war-museum-workshop.html |
| Description | David Vilaseca Annual Memorial Lecture at Royal Holloway, University of London, delivered on 12 November 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This lecture examines two theatrical pieces, El pan y la sal (2018) and Jauría (2019), which provide public sites for discussing trials that have mobilised public opinion in Spain: the 2012 trial of Investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón, accused of violating an Amnesty Law forbidding any investigation of crimes related to the Franco regime, and the ongoing case of la manada (the wolfpack), a group of five men accused of raping an 18-year old woman in Pamplona. In considering how these cases have been 'restaged', Prof Delgado explores issues of cultural heritage, accountability and immunity, and the role culture can play in challenging both a state-endorsed politics of amnesia and the wider nostalgia for Francoism. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://intranet.royalholloway.ac.uk/doctoral-school/news-events/event-articles/2019-david-vilaseca-... |
| Description | Guest appearance on BBC Radio 4's 'In Our Time' 4 July 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, who mixed the traditions of Andalusia with the avant-garde. He found his first major success with his Gypsy Ballads, although Dali, once his close friend, mocked him for these, accusing Lorca of being too conservative. He preferred performing his poems to publishing them, and his plays marked a revival in Spanish theatre. He was captured and killed by Nationalist forces at the start of the Civil War, his body never recovered, and it's been suggested this was punishment for his politics and for being openly gay. He has since been seen as the most important Spanish playwright and poet of the last century. With Maria Delgado Professor of Creative Arts at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London Federico Bonaddio Reader in Modern Spanish at King's College London And Sarah Wright Professor of Hispanic Studies and Screen Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London Producer: Simon Tillotson |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006dss |
| Description | International Interdisciplinary Conference: Memory, Trauma, and Human Rights at the Crossroads of Art and Science |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | University of Minnesota October 3-4, 2019 Michal Kobialka: 'Staging Difficult Pasts: Of Awkward Objects and Collateral Memories' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Interview with Pedro Almodóvar on 'Pain and Glory' at the BFi on 9 August 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A public interview following a screening of 'Pain and Glory' at the British Film Institute on 9 August 2019 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.bfi.org.uk/video-pedro-almodovar-pain-and-glory |
| Description | Interview with Spanish filmmaker Isaki Lacuesta on his film 'Entre dos aguas' (Between two waters) at the ICA as part of the 'Frames of Representation' festival on 17 April 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | An interview with Spanish filmmaker Isaki Lacuesta on 17 April 2019 as part of the ICA's 'Frames of Representation' Festival |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Interview with director Eloy Enciso, December 2020 as part of the Frames of Representation Film Festival |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Frames of Representation Film Festival takes place at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) London, annually. The ICA's annual film festival FRAMES of REPRESENTATION's fifth edition featured a programme focussing on the role of spectatorship - a collection of works that explore the spaces between knowledge and participation through the act of viewing. Exploring the spaces between knowledge and participation through the act of viewing, the 2020 festival programme premiered 20 films from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America, as well as discussions and Q&As. Originally scheduled to take place in April, this 17-day programme screened via Cinema 3, the ICA's new online platform. FRAMES of REPRESENTATION was only available to audiences in the UK. Delgado conducted a discussion with director Eloy Enciso about his film Endless Night which deals with how to present Spain's difficult past under Franco as ethical cinema. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.ica.art/films/endless-night |
| Description | Interview with director Miguel del Arco on his production of JAURIA, 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In this interview, Miguel del Arco reflects on the work undertaken in crafting the production of Jauría (English title Pack). Jauría is a verbatim piece based on one of the most contentious trials of Spain's democratic era - that of la manada (the wolfpack), a group of five men from Seville accused of raping an 18-year old woman from Madrid in the hallway of a building in Pamplona during the San Fermín celebrations in 2016. The production has toured both in Spain and internationally, and won a series of awards in Spain. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://stagingdifficultpasts.org/del-arco-interview.html |
| Description | Interview with leading Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa at the ICA, discussing his new film 'Vitalina Varela', 3 March 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | An interview with Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa following the preview screening of his new film 'Vitalina Varela' at the ICA on 3 March 2020. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.ica.art/films/vitalina-varela-q-a |
| Description | Launch of Mezosfera's special issue Past Contemporary: The Politics of Memory in Social Museums and Public Spaces |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of Issue #7 'Past Contemporary: The Politics of Memory in Social Museums and Public Spaces'. Speakers: Eszter Szakacs and Dóra Hegyi (editors) and Cecilia Sosa. The issue includes contributions by Zsófia Frazon - Zsolt K. Horváth, Sara Greavu, Isel Arango Rodríguez, Rose Jepkorir Kiptum, Cecilia Sosa - Philippa Page, and Marta Lança. Mezosfera is an international magazine on art and culture published and edited by tranzit.hu in Budapest. The publishing project is a platform for the sharing of knowledge and the building of solidarity while connecting non-central geopolitical regions, mainly among the art and cultural scenes in Eastern Europe: http://mezosfera.org/ |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://www.ciacentro.org.ar/node/2512 |
| Description | Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, University of Manchester |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama University of Manchester Tuesday, 30 April 2019, 6:00 pm Staging Difficult Pasts Panel with Maria Delgado & Bryce Lease |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Masterclass as part of London Film Festival |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Coinciding with the screening of Theatre of War (2018) at the London Film Festival in October 2018, director Lola Arias delivered a masterclass on her approaches to theatre making with a specific focus on objects, narratives and memory. Arias explained her method of working with objects, assessing how clothes, pictures, magazines, toys or letters, which have a singular, personal and mostly intimate origin, are differently 'charged' through their staging. Within a theatrical frame those objects become vehicles of transition from personal to collective memory, thus making room for new narratives to emerge. Arias discussed the use of objects in Mi vida después (2009) [My Life After], in which six actors born during Argentina's last dictatorship (1976-1983), wearing the clothes of their parents as a 'time machine', re-inscribe their own place in the present. Arias also reflected on valences of the 'real' in her more recent production, Campo Minado/Minefield (2017), where she worked with six former veterans of Malvinas/Falklands War (1982) from Argentina and the UK, as well as a Nepalese Ghurkha soldier. Finally, she assessed the ways in which her productions, typically dealing with very painful and conflicting memories, work within playful or affirmative performance registers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Masterclass at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) with awardwinning Argentina filmmaker Mariano Llinás, 15 September 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A masterclass with leading Argentine filmmaker Mariano Llinás on his award-winning 13+hour film, 'La flor' on 15 September 2019 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.ica.art/films/la-flor-masterclass-with-mariano-llinas |
| Description | Masterclass with Xavi Bobés |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Reflecting on his production of Things Easily Forgotten, which explores familial and cultural memory of Spain in the twentieth century, theatre-maker Xavi Bobés led a masterclass on his approach to objects. Bobés describes the ways in which silence offered him a link to objects, allowing him to translate their objectness in a process he compares to the work of an interpreter. He discusses key texts that have shaped his thinking around objects, including Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude and George Perec's The Infra-Ordinary and Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, and the development of early productions such as The King of Loneliness and Insomni. The masterclass moves through questions of space, time and memory in a theatrical frame. Ultimately, Bobés argues that the expressiveness of the object is discovered through action. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Participation in the 'Representing Memory and Reparation: The Spanish Transition in Global Comparative Perspective' seminar discussion at UCL on 28 October 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Held at the Institute for Advanced Studies at UCL, this panel is organised in response to the film The Silence of Others, which reveals the epic struggle of victims of Spain's 40-year dictatorship under General Franco, who continue to seek justice to this day. We have invited two scholars that work on the representation of memory and reparation in Spain to respond to this film. Two academics from other area studies will respond to their responses. The Silence of Others will be screened on this day at 5pm. Responses to the film The Silence of Others: Jill Daniels (Arts&Digital Industries, UEL) and Maria Delgado (Royal School of Speech and Drama) Responses to the film responses from other area studies: Seth Anziska (Jewish Studies, UCL) and Piotr Cieplak (Media and Film, Sussex) Chaired by Emily Baker (Latin American Studies, SELCS, UCL) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/events/2019/oct/ias-screening-silence-others |
| Description | Performance and Discussion: "Desterrados Ur Ex Des Machine", Gra z Kantorem / Playing with Kantor Cricoteka Kraków, Poland May 31, 2021 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Desterrados Ur Ex Des Machine, created by Companhia Antropofágica (São Paulo, Brazil), was presented in the Cricoteka/Tadeusz Kantor Museum as part of the ongoing program, Gra z Kantorem/Playing with Kantor. Gra z Kantorem, as noted by its curator, Anna R. Burzynska, introduces the Polish audiences to international theatre companies, which, in their works, make use of, critique, or align themselves with theatre practices used by Kantor in his productions. Some of these practices include a performative or a visual arts exploration of the attributes of objects or bio-objects; of memory, history, and myth; or of the concepts of repetition, echo, or the reality of the lowest rank. Companhia Antropofágica is a theatre group founded on the principles of Oswald de Andrade's anthropophagy-a cultural movement articulated in the end of the 1920's in Brazil of ingesting foreign cultures, in order to acquire and invert their characteristics and world-views in terms of the local reality. Throughout Companhia Antropofágica's 19 years of existence, Kantor's work has been an integral part of the group's creative metabolism, as evidenced by the 2015 production of Desterrados Ur Ex Des Machine as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Kantor's birth. It is in conversation with the political dimension in Kantor's work, extracted from the objects and the space itself, as well as from their characteristic theatricality and historical materialism. Burzynska's discussion with Michal Kobialka, professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Minnesota, which followed the screening of Desterrados Ur Ex Des Machine, focused on the creative process used by Thiago Vasconcelos, the director of Antropofágica, and Ludmila Ryba, the actress who worked with Kantor. Although Kantor had never worked directly with the concept of Desterrado, coined by the Brazilian intellectual Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Kantor's productions were charged with the idea that the artist is always an exile, an outcast, in short, a Desterrado. Equally important, the audience was interested in the concepts of anthropophagy, Brazilian modernism, Companhia Antropofágica's place in the topography of the Brazilian avant-garde theatre, and its use of Kantor's notions of memory and history in the process of staging Brazilian difficult pasts-the time of the Colony, the Empire, the Republic, and today's unstable political reality. The audience asked: How does Companhia Antropofágica stage historical narratives of its difficult pasts? How does Companhia Antropofágica offer new insights into the role of objects in representing difficult pasts? How can Kantor (Poland) and Companhia Antropofágica (Brazil) expand our understanding of difficult pasts in a transnational context. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.stagingdifficultpasts.org/playing-with-kantor |
| Description | Public Forum on Holocaust Memory and Kantor |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Staging Difficult Pasts: Objects in the State of Unrest' Public forum on the historical and cultural materiality of objects and their function in theatrical and museological practices. Panellists: Ludmila Ryba (Teatr Cricot 2), Wojtek Ziemilski, Kolektyw Kuratorski, Erica Lehrer, Roma Sendyka, and Anna Róza Burzynska. Panel chair: Michal Kobialka. Location: Cricoteka, ul. Nadwislanska 2-4, 30-527 Kraków |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Public Presentation - Goldsmiths |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | George Wood Theatre, Goldsmiths, University of London Performance Research Forum Tuesday, 12 February 2019, 6:00 - 8:00 pm Affect, Theatricality and Spectacle: Commemoration in the History Museum The Muranów district of Warsaw is a complex palimpsest of pasts and genealogies, a place where for hundreds of years Polish Jews lived and thrived, and where they were later corralled, starved, murdered, and transported to death camps. The newest addition to this memorial landscape, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, has revivified symbolic investments in the district's architectural destruction and the absence of its Jewish populations. Topographically, the significance of the museum is signified through the centrality of its location in the district and its proximity to Nathan Rapoport's Monument to the Ghetto Heroes erected in 1948. In this paper, I will analyze POLIN Museum in its relational engagements with the Rapoport Monument to demonstrate how commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto and the victims of the Holocaust penetrates the entirety of the museum's historical narrative. This museum, I argue, encourages the visitor to honor both the dead and the history of the living, thus making affective modes of commemoration and learning mutually generative. Placing historical consciousness in a commemorative frame that extends memory across multiple ethnic groups, I contend that POLIN Museum offers a shared history, which is constructed through its wider relations to the memorial terrain of the former Warsaw Ghetto and its architectural and design forms. Contrasting POLIN with the Warsaw Uprising Museum, I will consider how a commemorative register can engage with a museum's use of theatricality to activate visitors as historical agents and critical interpreters of the past. In doing so, I will analyse the relationship between affect, theatricality and spectacle in museum spaces that respond to difficult pasts and (competing) narratives of victimhood. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Public Presentation - Tate Liverpool |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | TATE Liverpool BEYOND THESE ROOMS | ANU & CoisCéim's Dance Theatre Thursday, 7 February 2019, 11:00 am - 12.30 pm Panel Discussion: Why Remember?: What place has history in the modern contemporary art space. Object, materials and presentation across art form and culture. Panellists: Louise Lowe (ANU), Lar Joye (Military Curator), Bryce Lease (Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance, Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/tate-exchange/performance/beyond-these-rooms/symposi... |
| Description | Public Presentation - University of Leeds |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | WAYS OF REMEMBERING LAS MALVINAS/THE FALKLANDS: Lola Arias' Veterans, Minefield and Theatre of War School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds Wednesday, 13 February 2019, 4:30 pm Maria Delgado Veterans (2014), Minefield (2016) and Theatre of War (2018) constitute a trilogy of works directed by the Argentine artist Lola Arias where Malvinas/Falklands veterans spectate their own pasts in ways that provide a critical reflection on the ideological construction of official histories. Providing a critical analysis of these works that Arias realised across video art, theatre and film, this presentation discussed how she explores the relationship between experience and fiction), providing a shared site of encounter for those still dealing with the myriad consequences of a conflict with profound implications on the forging of a national consciousness for two nations still negotiating very different postcolonial identities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | ResearchWorks Series: Guildhall School of Music & Drama |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | ResearchWorks Series Guildhall School of Music & Drama Monday, 17 June 2019, 6:00 pm Staging Difficult Pasts Panel with Maria Delgado & Bryce Lease |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Seminar presentation at the University of Oslo |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A presentation on the implications of the reading of 'El pan y la sal' attended by staff and students at the University of Oslo, on 29 October 2019 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Sites of Violence and Their Communities. Critical Memory Studies in the Post-Human Era, Galicia Jewish Museum, Kraków, Poland |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Sites of Violence and Their Communities. Critical Memory Studies in the Post-Human Era Galicia Jewish Museum, Kraków, Poland Wednesday, 25 September 2019, 9-9.30 am Bryce Lease, "Performances and social rites at non-sites of memory" |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Skok pamieciowy - wystawa (Leap of memory - exhibition) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Galeria-Pracownia Tadeusza Kantora ul. Sienna 7/5 Kraków Otwarcie: 12.04, godz. 18:00 Czas trwania: 12.04-6.05.2019 (pt.-pn., 12:00-18:00) Wstep wolny Rozmawiaja/The Converations of: 13 kwietnia, godz. 16:00 - Karina Jarzynska z Norbertem Delmanem April 13, 4 PM: Karina Jarzynska with Norbertem Delman 27 kwietnia, godz. 16:00 - Katarzyna Grzybowska z Mateuszem Kula April 27, 4 PM: Katarzyna Grzybowska with Mateusz Kula 6 maja, godz. 19:00 - Sonia Kadziolka z Lukaszem Surowcem May 6, 4 PM: Sonia Kadziolka with Lukasz Surowiec Kuratorzy: Kolektyw Kuratorski w skladzie: Katarzyna Grzybowska, Karina Jarzynska, Kornelia Kiszewska, Artur Koczon, Wiktoria Koziol, Sonia Kadziolka, Magdalena Machala, Marta Matuszak, Sylwia Papier, Roma Sendyka, Anna Spiechowicz, Maciej Topolski Organizatorzy: Cricoteka - Instytucja Kultury Województwa Malopolskiego Kolektyw Kuratorski, Osrodek Badan nad Kulturami Pamieci, Wydzial Polonistyki Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://cracowartweek.pl/en/741-2/ |
| Description | Staging Difficult Pasts: Of Collateral Archives and Awkward Objects Hörsaal des Instituts für Theaterwissenschaft Freie Universität, Berlin |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | LECTURE Staging Difficult Pasts: Of Collateral Archives and Awkward Objects Hörsaal des Instituts für Theaterwissenschaft Freie Universität, Berlin Thursday, December 12, 6 PM Michal Kobialka ist in dieser Dezemberwoche mit einer Gruppe von Doktoranden in Berlin zu Besuch. Gemeinsam mit Master-Studierenden der FU Theaterwissenschaft veranstalten wir eine Geschichtswerkstatt, die sich aus Anlass des 30. Jahrestags des Mauerfalls den unterschiedlichen Inszenierungen des Mauergedenkens widmet. Abstract: Recent contestations of the archive ask for a practice that exhibits the mediality of the archive-that is to say, an exploration of how the archive has been crafted by a certain experience of time, space, and matter, which are implicit in it, conditions it, and thereby has to be elucidated. On the one hand the encounter with the objects housed in the archive resonates with Walter Benjamin's observation that "the world is present, and indeed ordered, in each of his objects". On the other hand, the encounter with the objects housed in the archive reveals their organization in the form of temporal layers, which have different origins and duration, move at different speeds, have different non-synchronous and asymmetrical depths; as well as their organization in the form of spatial layers, bringing forth contradictions in/within space of their representation (the past) and contradictions of/between spaces of their representation (the past and the present).To substantiate this theoretical discussion, this talk will look at the exhibition, "Awkward Objects of Genocide," opened at the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow in December 2018. It showcased how local, "naïve" artists in Poland attempted to represent the events they witnessed during World War II. The objects on display in the Museum, such as for example, a representation of Jewish suffering via symbolic (Catholic) idiom of Pieta or a Nazi crematorium recalling a nativity crèche, not only expanded the field of Holocaust memory studies to include "minor," "peripheral," or "awkward" objects, but also contributed to larger debates about "difficult heritage" or "difficult past." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | The Past Presented: The Presentation of Narratives, Objects & Public Memory Dublin Festival of History |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Dublin Festival of History The LAB Gallery. Dublin Ireland Thursday, 10 October 2019, 2-4 pm A panel discussion with Bryce Lease, Sheena Barrett (The LAB Gallery), Owen Boss (Co-Artistic Director of ANU Productions), Lar Joye (Director of Heritage, Dublin Port) and Brenda Malone (National Museum of Ireland). This panel discussion explores the experience of the viewer, audience and reader engaging with the past through contemporary artworks. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Theatre Workshop for Museum Curators - Ludka Ryba |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ludmila Ryba, actress in the Cricot 2 Theatre (1979-92), led a week-long intensive workshop on Tadeusz Kantor's approach to objects in his theatre practice. Working with a group of curators (Kolektyw Kuratorski) who were preparing a performative intervention in the Kantor Museum, Ryba introduced Kantor's concept of the actor, burdened not with a role but with objects. Working with Rachel Auerbach's essay 'Lamentation of Dead Things', written in the Warsaw Ghetto, Ryba explored Kantor's vision of the object at the borderline between eternity and the dump. Through a series of exercises and etudes, the curators discovered the specific rules that governed Kantor's practice and the dynamics of creating spacial tensions, a move away from naturalism or illustration to the actuation of metaphor and symbol. The primary focus of the workshop was spatial and visual thinking. The curators were invited to test the materiality of objects, allowing narratives to emerge from the objects themselves rather than being imposed from the outside. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Workshop for theatre directors |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Following his Edward Gordon Craig lecture, Oliver Frljic delivered a masterclass on his approaches to theatre making. Frjlic focused on public and collective memory and countermemory in the Balkans, Poland and Germany. Beginning with Aeschylus' The Persians, he worked through the ways in which the figure of the 'enemy' has been constructed in European theatre history. He then analysed the modes in which he rejects national identity and explores historical narratives that remain unspoken as social taboos in particular cultures. The masterclass concluded with his strategies for deconstructing representation and exploring anti-theatricality and the real. Participants were invited to devise micro-performances using Hamlet and Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine as models for countermemory. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | You May Not See it Triennial of Expanded Media, Belgrade, 10-11 May 2019 TransformArt Gallery |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | You May Not See it Triennial of Expanded Media, Belgrade, 10-11 May 2019 TransformArt Gallery Svetog Save 8, Beograd 11000, Serbia As part of the triennial, this installation is a collaboration between Yoav Galai and Staging Difficult Pasts that interrogates the space of the city of Jerusalem by physically deconstructing an earlier work by documentary photographer Galai. 'Vertical Vista' explores the checkerboard like design of the space of east Jerusalem, in which Jewish settlements were built to break the contiguity of Palestinian villages and towns. This particular landscape exposes the spatial logic of the ethnic construction of the city and contains within it many of the markers that proliferate throughout the city that function as a visual legend to the spatial language of the city. The installation explores ways of making that legend legible by physically deconstructing and reconstructing the printed image along the seams that separate the territories belonging to the communities and by using colour and different techniques highlighting elements that convey the work of political power. The installation allows audiences to directly interact with and disrupt the image with the aim of exposing otherwise invisible political historical fault lines and forms of colonisation in the landscape of the West Bank. Audiences are invited to tear the image apart 'at the seams'. This installation is funded in part by HARI (RHUL). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |