Join ROMAMOMA to Fight Institutional Racism
RomaMoMA – A European Manifesto for Roma Cultural Inclusion
Where are the transnational spaces and institutional infrastructures for Roma cultural production? How will the Roma people and the Roma contributions become recognized in the (art-) history of Europe? Where are the institutions for whom diversity means true cultural inclusion of the largest minority in Europe? The RomaMoMA Manifesto addresses the vicious circle that paralyzed Roma arts for over a millennium, prohibiting a truly diverse European cultural scene, and hindering the development of democratic societies.
Status quo
Roma are the largest and at the same time most vulnerable minority of Europe (10-12 million people). The social inclusion of Roma is impossible without cultural inclusion, yet the more than a millennium long cultural contribution of Roma to European societies, and national cultures is denied. Roma arts and culture have been misinterpreted and racialized as ethnic, naive and primitive. Roma cultural heritage is inaccessible and in -danger – stored in basements, archives and storages – without presentation and preservation strategies. To this date, European majority institutions failed to include Roma arts and culture into their permanent programming. This cultural exclusion, and the missed opportunity of recognizing the vast contribution of Roma to European life and history has long lasting and devastating results: It relegates Roma people to the deprived – social, economic, political, and cultural periphery of Europe.
A change in cultural policy and practice is overdue. The transformation – as many times in history – must begin in the cultural field:
Alliance of Institutions for European Roma Cultural Inclusion
ERIAC is launching an Alliance of Institutions for European Roma Cultural Inclusion to conduct a policy change. We invite all public institutions in Europe working with arts and culture – museums, concert halls, academic institutions, cultural decision-makers, to reshape museum protocols and join the Alliance of Institutions for European Roma Cultural Inclusion! Start the change within your own institution/ organization! Join the alliance and commit to an institutional operation and programming that ensures the long-term cultural inclusion of Roma first into our culture and then into our societies. See the list of public institutions who ERIAC has already partnered with in the past for Roma cultural inclusion and contact ERIAC (eriac@eriac.org) with your institution`s Roma inclusion policy to receive the certification, the membership package and the expertise you need (if any).
Performing a Roma Modern and Contemporary Art Museum: RomaMoMA
RomaMoMA is a transnational, collaborative and discursive art project of the European Roma Institute of Arts and Culture (ERIAC) and OFF-Biennale Budapest. It is a platform to envision and discuss the possible forms of a Roma museum of modern and contemporary art that will spread in time and space through a series of exhibitions, discussions, and art projects. It will invite Roma and non-Roma artists, cultural experts, scholars and civil society. RomaMoMA is to perform an institution which, hopefully one day, materializes into a cutting-edge agent of the contemporary arts and culture scene. RomaMoMA is guided and supported by the think-tank, which is assembled of experts of various fields of art and the humanities, in order to exchange ideas on the necessity and possible roles of a transnational museum of Roma contemporary art, and to come up with a collective proposal for the institution of such a museum.
Join the alliance
fill out the inquiry form and commit to institutional operations and programming that ensure the long-term cultural inclusion of Roma – first into our culture, and then into our societies. Please do not hesitate to reach out (eriac@eriac.org), with your institution’s Roma inclusion policy, to discuss uncertainties, questions and future strategies, and to receive the certification, membership package, and any expertise you might need.
Members of the RomaMoMA Think-tank
Kader Attia (artist and scholar), Ethel Brooks (Professor at Rutgers University, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies), Rashida Bumbray (curator, Director of Culture and Art Program of the Open Society Foundations), Julia Ferloni (Curator, MUCEM, Marseille), Robert Gabris (contemporary artist), Ian Hancock (Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Department of Linguistics), Jana Horváthová (Director, Museum of Romani Culture-Brno), Tímea Junghaus (art historian, curator, Executive Director of ERIAC), Angela Kocze (Director of Romani Studies Program, Central European University), Delaine Le Bas (artist), Maria Lind (curator, writer, educator, Cultural Counsellor at the Embassy of Sweden in Moscow), Vera Marusic (Curator, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Köln), Achille Mbembe (Professor at University of Wits Witwatersrand, Institute for Social and Economic Research), André Jenő Raatzsch (artist, Documentation and Cultural Centre for German Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg/RomArchive project), Emilia Rigova (artist, head of Roma Arts and Culture Department at University of Matej Bel, Slovakia, Banská Bystrica), Selma Selman (contemporary artist), Nanette Sneop (Director, Rautenstrauch-JoestMuseum in Köln), Denisa Tomkova (art historian, scholar, curator)
ERIAC has already partnered with the following institutions for Roma cultural inclusion
Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin
Volksbühne, Berlin
Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Köln
Villa Romana, Florence
Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm
MUCEM, Marseille
Stiftung Kai Dikhas, Berlin
Supported by ERIAC, OFF-Biennale and European Cultural Fund (ECF)