The Other Us/Ceilalți Noi
workshop on re-imagining identity
20 November - 9 December, 2012
Platforma, Bucharest.
On the verge of the re-emergence of nationalisms due to recent geo-political changes, the Other Us is an attempt to draw a critical political position towards national identity. Organized through an open call to participation, the workshop gathered about 40 participants including about 10 facilitators. The program included artists, social scientists and activists that engaged in various forms of discursive exchange with the participants and public. By reconfiguring identity politics and through a practice of active critique, the participants of the workshop engaged in a process of re-imagining national identity and the politics of art in the makings of this identity.
The workshop was composed of three slots: 1) a program of lectures and debates, 2) a performance with alternative (other) flags created by participants and 3) an exhibition open to the public consisting of interventions and resources developed throughout the duration of the workshop.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Debates and lectures program
Program synopsis
The
Circle for Feminist Readings
(Cercul de Lecturi Feministe) inaugurated the workshop with an open
session on „What
is the nation?” starting from a reading of Nira Yuval-Davis'
Gender
and Nation
and developing the inherent genderized structure of the nation-state.
Irina
Costache's
intervention, “The Fathers of the Nation: the European dimension of
attempts to limit access to abortion” effectively illustrated the
real anti-women consequences of nationalism. The role of affect and
the genderized affective roles in the “Love for the Nation” were
explored by Florin
Poenaru.
Ovidiu
Tichindeleanu
outlined the possibilities of linkage with the local Romanian context
of post- and anti-colonial concepts and struggles for creating a new,
emancipatory “Us”, situated in a geo-political context. Through a
visit to the National Military Museum organized by the Fan-club
of Romanian Successes
(Fan-Clubul
Reuşitelor Româneşti), the contemporary institutional textures of
nationalism were explored in the historical representation of the
military men of the nation. A historical approach was also conceived
by Cristian
Cercel
with his analysis of the foundational text of the Romanian
Proclamation of Independence, the same text that marks the 1st
of December, the nowadays national day. Ovidiu
Pop
together with Veda
Popovici
sketched a portrait of the national subjectivity by investigating its
creation by 19th
century scholars and revolutionaries. The status of the national day
was problematized by Marian
Ursan
as he talked about the difficulties encountered by AIDS activists
such as himself in the Romanian context because of the coincidence of
the AIDS international day with the Romanian national day. The
position of the “Other” was also tackled by Mihai
Lukacs and
Ovidiu
Anemţoaicei
in a theoretical approach on the body and bodies of Self and the
Other. The debates and lectures series of the workshop ended with a
lenghty discussion on the political potential of art and its relative
harmlessness in the context of national identity formation (with
Simona
Dumitriu, Alice Monica Marinescu, Veda Popovici and
David
Schwartz).
Below: mind map created during the workshop by the contribution of all participants.
