Memory Matters: Fragility, Resistance, Adaptation

Panel discussion focuses on the issue of memory and a number of related topics and dimensions, among which (1) memory fragility used by repressive ideologies to feed misremembering, (2) affective component of memories and its role in struggle, hope and trauma (re)consolidation, (3) memory «care» and counter-memory activism in art, archive work and forced migration. The discussion will be led in English by Branislava Kuburovic (researcher, lecturer, author) and Olga Bubich (journalist, photographer, critic, lecturer and curator) in conversation with Dr. Cathrine Bublatzky.

Branislava Kuburović is a writer and researcher working in the fields of performance and live art. She holds a PhD from the University of Roehampton in London. Her PhD thesis argues for an ethical shift in the notion of witness in performance through traumatic “wit(h)nessing” (B. L. Ettinger), a form of co-being which Branislava engages to theorise profound changes in temporal and representational dynamics in contemporary performance and live art practices. Branislava is based in Prague, Czech Republic, where she is currently Programme Leader of MA in Fine Art at Prague City University, part of Teesside University UK, and Visiting Lecturer, MA in Object and Devised Theatre, Prague Theatre Academy.

Olga Bubich is a Belarusian journalist, photographer, lecturer and curator. She is the author of three books with the latest one decidated to the topic of memory and memory censorship. Her articles and essays were published in Stern, Eurozine, Versopolis, Blaetter, Die Presse, the IWPR and other European media. She is currently an ICORN fellow, based in Berlin as a writer in exile.

Dr. Cathrine Bublatzky, an anthropologist, historian, and photographer specializing in visual anthropology, earned her Magister degree in Anthropology from Heidelberg University in 2008. Since then she has been a member of the Cluster ‘Asia and Europe in a global Context. The Dynamics of Transculturality’ and is currently working as assistant professor to the Chair of Visual and Media Anthropology at the Cluster. Her extensive work in Visual and Media Anthropology includes notable ethnographic projects on contemporary art from South Asia. Dr. Bublatzky is actively involved in various interdisciplinary networks and assumed the role of co-speaker for the Visual Anthropology working group of the German Anthropological Association in 2021.