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.