Cultivating Connections: Open Class with Ana Dević
Master Class 1: Art and Memory in Practices of Commemorations after Mass Atrocities.

Saturday, 19 October 2024, at 18:00.

Venue: Hivzi Sylejmani Library, Qafa, UÇK 27-1, Prishtinë
Location on Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZURNHi3ykJji1EHr6

Stacion – Center for Contemportary Art Prishtina is pleased to announce the Open Class with Ana Dević, part of the Master Class 1: Art and Memory in Practices of Commemorations after Mass Atrocities.

The Open Class aims to include the wider public in the class with Ana Dević and create space for further discussion about the issues addressed and discussed in Master Class 1: Art and Memory in Practices of Commemorations after Mass Atrocities, which is part of the project Cultivating Connections: Empowering Youth through Intercultural Learning on Power-Sharing, Art and Memory and Cultural Conflict in Public Sphere.

The class discusses the role commemorations play in constructing collective memory in places afflicted by extreme war violence. How do different forms of commemoration create or hinder inclusive remembrance of the violent past? What happens, for example, when a village house of culture becomes a place of torture and detention and is then abandoned, keeping the traces of extreme violence and yielding only traumatic memories?

The master class further investigates how such memories can be re-integrated within the social life through commemorative practices, zooming in on several sites of extreme war atrocity in the post-Yugoslav spaces, and focusing on artistic and performative memory activism - the visually striking, also virtual tools of approaching memory, focusing on artists and citizens-viewers as actors, on communal and broader mobilizations, and significance in reclaiming spaces of war atrocities as inclusive places of memory. With the specific post-Yugoslav focus, the course will be placed in a comparative context, discussing conflicting memory-scapes of extreme atrocities in Europe and elsewhere. This class has the potential to inspire transformative change in our understanding and approach to memory and commemoration.

Dr Ana Dević is a historical-political sociologist. She is currently a senior researcher at Aix-Marseille University, where she conducts research on alternative and artistic commemorations of collective violence in comparative perspectives. Ana obtained her PhD from the University of California at San Diego and is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Bologna.

Cultivating Connections: Empowering Youth through Intercultural Learning on Power-Sharing, Art and Memory and Cultural Conflict in Public Sphere is a project by Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina in partnership with Rex Cultural Centre, Belgrade, supported by RYCO/ Regional Youth Cooperation Office and the Municipality of Prishtina.