To One’s Name: The name Roma as agency
Exhibition, seminar, workshop
Curator: Suzana Milevska
Assistant Curator: Patrick Kwaśniewski
Participants: Saša Barbul, Marika Schmiedt, Alfred Ullrich and others
What does it mean to belong to Roma community and to be called by this name, and what
really belongs to Roma and to the mere name of the Roma people in historic, cultural and
socio-political terms, are only few of the entangled and reciprocally related issues that are put
in the focus of this project. The artists, activists and theorists contributing to the project
address the urgency of openly challenging the misunderstandings, stereotypes and
controversies surrounding the names used for addressing Roma people, as well as the
relevance of the meaning of the term “Roma” and the reasons for the reluctance towards its
use among both non-Roma and some of the Roma communities. The project also ponders the
power of naming and its potentiality for empowerment by a seminar and workshop that will
discuss various aspects of inclusion of Roma through “inscribing” Romani names in public
space.
The project is invested in investigating of the problems with deciding who has the right to
determine and decide the position towards the name Roma from which Roma could utter their
statements of belonging or non-Roma could act as agents of empowering and solidarity with
Roma. The problems as not having agreed on one single official Roma language and other
insignia not only are challenged by pushing for some concrete critique of the derogative and
pejorative terms as “Gypsy”, “Cigani”, “Zingar”, “Tsigane”, or “Zigeuner“ that mostly
function rather as stigma than as proper ethnic names, often overburdened with anti-Roma
sentiments due to the strengthening of racist right-wing politics across Europe (such was the
recent case of the official initiative for reversing the established name Roma to Tigan in
Romania) 1 but also are proceeded with proposals how to include the presence of Roma in the
public space.
The arbitrariness behind the term Roma was actually one of the first widely-agreed political
decisions and actions in the history of Roma activism.2 This event is directly or indirectly
related and addressed in the art works of the exhibition, in the discussions during the seminar
and also as a part of the initiative for naming one street in Vienna after the name of agreed
important personality from Roma history and culture. The reference to the lack of presence
of Roma names and images of Roma personalities in public places and to defamatory images
of Roma and use of derogative names correspond to the visual culture arguments about the
profound impact of the proliferation and general distribution of images with problematic
content in public spaces (in the works by Marika Schmiedt and Alfred Ullrich) but also is
used as a platform for calling for claiming and allocating evident social presence to a larger
extent for relevant references to important Roma personalities (in Saša Barbul’s work). What
better way for doing this but to memorise the past and contribution of Roma to Romani and
Austrian culture and history through including their names in a form of public sculptures,
street names and other form of presence in public?
1 “Romania's government has caused outrage among Romany — or Gypsy — communities
and organizations after it asked Parliament in Bucharest to accept a proposal to change the
official name of the Romany from Roma, which means "man" in the Romany language, to
Tigan, which comes from the Greek term for "untouchable." See: Rupert Wolfe Murray,
“Romania's Government Moves to Rename the Roma”, Time, Bucharest Wednesday, Dec.
08, 2010, Last accessed 30 April 2013,
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2035862,00.html 2
? The term “Roma” (or according to some linguist more appropriate transliteration of the
sound of Romani language “Rroma”) was widely accepted after 1971, when during the first
truly transnational Roma congress, which took place in Orpington (near London), the present
Roma activists agreed on the term in order to circumvent the derogatory connotation of the
labels “Gypsy”, “Zittan” or “Tzigani.” Today it serves as an umbrella term for many different
names that various Roma communities use for self-designation due to the lack of common
language and other authentic common term. The fact is that the term “Roma” is not accepted
by all of them because of different cultural background and legacy that differ from one
country to another (e.g. the Spanish culture is often understood as a more tolerant and
integrative towards Roma), it simply means “man” in all Romani dialects and is particularly
problematic from the feminist critique’s perspective.
One of the most obvious questions to be asked here is: Who has control over the naming and
renaming or how this power can be used to reproduce and distribute certain dominant cultural
and moral principles? The internalization of derogative names as bearers of the regimes of
representation, identification, self-essentialization, and self-racialisation create a threatening
vicious cycle, from which one most urgently needs to seek a way out. in the view of
Deleuze/Guatari, the first moment of giving/receiving a name is in itself “the highest point of
depersonalization” because it is here that we acquire “the most intense discernibility in the
instantaneous apprehension of the multiplicities” belonging to us. 3 Therefore the project puts
under pressure the hegemonic regimes of representation present and enduring through
arbitrary chosen names as well as by internalized strategies of self- representation that are
imposed upon individuals through nominal structures.
The curatorial concept of this project attempts to rupture such closed circle of only critiquing
the perpetuation of stereotypical representations and the continuation with ambivalent
practices of marginalisation of Roma presence in public space. Although some aspects of the
project were incited by the urgency to address recent cases of individual and collective
displacements, evictions, and deportations of Roma citizens from their homes in many
European countries these events are addressed in the art works only indirectly via irony and
satire.4 In light of the current neoliberal capitalist advance and its thirst for cheap or even free
land, the political manoeuvres are reversed by the proposal to push for a more obvious
presence of Roma in the public space. Therefore the presence of Roma names (and not
“Gypsy” or “Zigeuner“) in public spaces may serve as a reminder to the unique moment of
self-aware decision made by perhaps a limited number of advanced leading Romani activists
of the time who actually paved the way to the first political initiative and attempt towards
social change and rapture in the long-existing practice of undermining and humiliating Roma
3 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, tr. Brian Massumi, University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996, p. 40.
4 The controversial expulsions from France of nearly 1000 Roma to Romania and Bulgaria
provoked significant international criticism and were seen by many as a severe breach of
international human rights laws on discrimination. See Kim Willsher, “Orders to police on
Roma expulsions from France leaked,” guardian.co.uk, 13 September 2010, online at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/sarkozy-roma-expulsion-human-rights.
in public, or simply against the perpetual ignoring of the presence of Roma and different
Romani lives.
There is still a great population of individuals (citizens and non-citizens alike) who are made
invisible and are silenced by isolation and the violation of their basic human rights. 5 Even if
one may not be capable of transcending racism 6 and thus cannot justify the concept of post-
racial society, or may not be capable of unravelling all inherited contours and inflexions of
representation, one should take on board the responsibility to speak up against injustice and
discrimination from the past and the presence. The problem how to represent or get away
from representation of traumas from the past start again with the nominal structures and, as
Eduard Freudmann would argue, it is not by accident that Roma have not yet reached
agreement on the Roma term for the Holocaust. 7
The greatest challenge that Roma activists face in the contemporary society full with
contradictions in regard inclusion, emigration laws, labor and housing policy affecting Roma
is to balance the need to create greater communal political cohesion and to enhance the
credibility of those who claim to speak in the Roma name, whilst also attracting support from
the wider society, as is mostly in the case of the situation with Spanish Roma, as it will be
contested through the research of the Spanish activist Pedro Aguilera Cortés. 8
5
? Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Making Visible, 28th of May 2011, symposium curated by
Birgit Lurz and Wolfgang Schlag at the Architektur Zentrum Wien, related to the exhibition
"Roma Protokoll", curated by Suzana Milevska. Last accessed: 30 April 2013,
http://igkultur.at/projekte/romanistan/making-visible 6 Arun Saldanha, “Reontologising race: the machinic geography of phenotype,” Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 24, no. 1 (2006), pp. 9 –24.
7 There is certain disagreement about the use of the Romani term Porajmos (Romani:
/pʰo.ɽaj.mos/ (also Porrajmos or Pharrajimos) for the Roma Holocaust during the Third
Reich, because it means devouring or destruction. However, for example when in 2003 the
Alliance Taskforce awarded the Sinti Roma Hugo Höllenreiner with the Austrian Holocaust
Memorial Award the term “Pharrajimos survivor ” was used without any mention of this
disagreement.
Distinctions between different historic, political and cultural conditions of different Roma
communities have to be made, as well as
Distinguishing between [historic sic.], official, scientific and everyday racism is
helpful, but one must be aware that in reality – transcendentally, so to speak – all
racisms collapse into one. Deleuze finds an appropriate formulation of this
essence of racism in the testimony of Auschwitz”. 9
Therefore the role of the contemporary Roma artists, researchers and activists in the
exhibition and in the other related events is not limited to uttering anti-racist testimonials and
highlighting injustice, but the project’s strategy also suggests that various new paths and
expressions are needed as a kind of agency that, as once was the role carried by the term
“Roma”, should play the role in inflicting social change both within the artists’ own
communities and in the wider context of the art and political institutions and in the general
public space. In the struggle to right the racial bias, social inequalities, and
(mis)representations that characterize our world today artists’ role is seen as both to unravel
these mechanisms (often by ironize or over-identify with them) and to counteract them by
positive actions. Thus to recognise and point to the urgent need to decipher and unsettle new
instances of racism, in all its disguises; and to denounce them loudly but also to use any
possibility to call for a radical action that affirms solidarity in difference and cohabitation in
communal public space is the aim of this project.
Suzana Milevska
Marika Schmiedt, Thoughts are free - Anxiety is Reality for Roma in EU-rope, 2013
40-50 Posters, A0 format
artistic interventions in the medium of digital collages, montages or confrontages.
8 Andres Cala, “Spain's Tolerance of Gypsies: A Model for Europe?” Time, Madrid Thursday,
Sept. 16, 2010, last accessed 30 April 2013,
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2019316,00.html
9 Suzana Milevska and Arun Saldanha, “The Eternal Return of Race: Reflections on East European Racism” Deleuze and Race. Edited by Arun Saldanha and Jason Michael Adams, Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2013, 240.
Marika Schmiedt’s work is primarily concerned with the history of the persecution of Roma,
with a particular emphasis on the relations between "then and now", between the Second
World War (that caused the systematic killing of 70-80% of Roma, including the ethnic
Roma population in Germany and Austria, as well as her own family) and today’s racism and
pogroms against Roma throughout Europe. The artist tackles the EU policies of Roma
inclusion and by overidentification enhanced by the medium of confrontages she points to the
most sensitive issues that are usually supressed and disguised in the contemporary European
societies and hypocritical and hegemonic visual regimes of representation.
According the artist’s research little has changed considering the language and use of hate
speech and the prevailing silence or indifference of the major public. She is particularly
interested in breaking this silence and to counteract the verbal and visual discrimination by
exposing the visual culture of racist mechanisms to an extent of a radical satire. By taking
into consideration that a recent study has shown that one in five young adults (18 to 30 year-
olds) did not know what “Auschwitz” means, did not know that the name stands for the
concentration and extermination camps of the Nazi period, according to the artist there is an
acute and urgent need for a thorough and critical discussion of the relevance of names and
naming as well as the danger and potentiality of renaming.
“Today's racism is especially prevalent in media communication fields visible and accessible
on the Internet and in widespread social Internet platforms such as FACEBOOK and
TWITTER. Racism within these communication fields is expressed in many forms, relying on
various degrees of in/visibility and connotative meanings derived from merged verbal and
visual forms. Racist and anti-Semitic symbols and phrases (such as swastikas, flags,
expressions like “Gypsies to the gas chambers” and “being gypped,” etc.) are widely used to
convey opinions and information and are commonly ignored; they remain without
consequences. With this project, I seek to explore these different views and expressions,
laying bare their symbolic and historical content, especially in conjunction with a pointed
comparison to the visual and verbal rhetoric of the Nazi period. Through this confrontation
of the alleged "past" racism with the existing -but mostly obscured -racism today, my work
seeks to create a space for discussion, dialogue and critical awareness. I believe that my
artistic interventions as a woman and Roma may bear long-term effects that -in part -can
contribute to the prevention of a dangerous repetition of history in our times (and the
future).” Marika Schmiedt
Alfred Ullrich, On the Move (2009-2013)
Alfred Ullrich’s work On the Move (2009-2013) is a spatial installation that creates a certain
surreal living room, an environment that only on first sign follows the private space of a
Roma home. The installation actually includes different elements and works that the artist
created through the long process of research and acting towards demounting the signs
LANDFAHRERPLATZ KEIN GEWERBE in the area Grosse Kreisstadt Dachau. The
project addresses one of the most pertinent stereotypes about Roma people that always
already excludes Roma simply by denying them the choice of sedentary way of life as if
nomadism is predestined and assigned to Roma by some archaic order (which even
historically is not necessarily correct for all regions and for all ethnic communities). The
vicious circle of the assumption of nomadic determination and preference have caused many
misunderstandings and restrictions in the past and remain at present.
For example, Ullrich’s installation includes the correspondence between the Chairwoman of
the Künstlerverinigung Dachau and the Mayor of the GROSSE KREISSTADT DACHAU
about the signs LANDFAHRERPLATZ KEIN GEWERBE and the video installation "Crazy
Water Wheel". “Crazy Water Wheel” consists of two videos. The first one is showing only a
loop of a turning wheel of a watermill that lies in vicinity of the Nazi extermination camp of
Dachau so the wheel also refers to the eternal recurrence of racism. Side by side with the
watermill wheel there is a documentary showing an informal private performance of the artist
commenting on the traffic signs Landfahrerplatz kein Gewerbe warning that itinerants are not allowed
to trade or peddle in the area. Such signs are still in use in Bavaria but in the work the inscription is
crossed out.
This simple action high- lights how seemingly neutral regulations in fact enforce the
segregation of Roma travellers from others. The artist is recorded how he questions and crosses
out the inscription on the street sign with holding three signs one after another: a question mark, a
cross and a sign suggesting a new term: simply saying “Rastplatz” instead of the old one thus pointing
to the relevance of each term and name that, as the wheel itself perpetuates the same old stereotypes.
Thus discrimination on the basis of ethnicity is preserved through language and visual public
memory, something that gives way to reinforcing the already existing stereotype of Roma
people as “exotic” creatures that are always “on the move” that might be true but this work
points to the fact that this has not always been their own choice of way of life.
Saša Barbul, Roma Boulevard, 2013, video installation
Saša Barbul’s video installation presents the video documentary that is the result of the
artist’s research about the case of the monument dedicated to the late Romani singer Šaban
Bajramović. Bajramović who was one of the most famous Roma personalities in Serbia was
honored by the citizens of his home-town Niš (Serbia) with erecting a unique monument
dedicated to him after his untimely death. He was one of the rare celebrities in ex-Yugoslavia
who was highly appreciated and famous for his music regardless to his Roma origin. At the
same time the film speaks of shame, discrimination and intolerance towards the singer when
the initiative to name a boulevard after him followed the enthusiasm surrounding the raising
of the statue. Deleuze pointed out to one link between racism and shame in Primo Levi’s
account of his Auschwitz’s experience, what he called “grey area”. 10 In the documentary
different activists and researchers discuss the background of the hate speech and
stigmatization of Roma that is present in the sound of old “names” for Roma. The artist also
conducted a research on the sentiments prevailing among Vienna citizens towards a
possibility or raising a similar statue or naming a street after a famous Austrian Roma that
will be also presented as a video recording of the poll.
NOTES
10 “I was very struck by all the passages in Primo Levi where he explains that Nazi camps have given us ‘a shame at being human.’ Not, he says, that we’re all responsible for Nazism, as some would have us believe, but that we’ve all been tainted by it: even the survivors of the camps had to make compromises with it, if only to survive. There’s the shame of there being men who became Nazis; the shame of being unable, not seeing how, to stop it; the shame of having compromised with it; there’s the whole of what Primo Levi calls this ‘grey area’”. See: Gilles Deleuze, (1995), ‘Control and Becoming’, Negotiations 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, 172, qtd. also in Milevska/Saldanha 240.