Paper short abstract:

The shaping of collective memories and forms of representation of a stateless nation, dispersed over many countries, has many challenges. With an arts-based and community participatory approach it is shown how existing multimedia archives of Kurdish everyday culture can be presented in public.

Paper long abstract:

For stateless nations like the Kurds, who have experienced a plethora of wars, displacements and migrations the shaping of collective memories and the elaboration of forms of representation are highly challenging. This presentation is based on a running project entitled ZOZAN, in which the team investigate various forms of migration through art interventions and art-based research.

Starting point are two comprehensive multimedia collections, depicting Kurdish everyday life in rural and urban settings in Turkey for more than five decades (1967 – 20019). The majority of the materials will be digitized and made available open access as a form of restitution.

Enormous transformation processes have happened in this period, ranging from civil war like situations, extreme state violence, huge dam projects leading to refuge and forced migration.

In this community-participatory approach we “study what we co-create” (Michaela Schäuble). Various transnational encounters are organized as art-interventions in which questions of cultural heritage of stateless, marginalized societies, of individual and collective memories, of identity processes, forms of belonging or the role of archives, among others are discussed.

In various Kurdish transnational settings, together with artists and participants we elaborate on forms of artistic representation, to integrate personal and group experiences of displacement and violent developments, to find forms of representation.

In this presentation I will also focus on methodological questions and discuss the necessity to creatively elaborate new methodic approaches.