Seminar on 'Reenactment' as an Artistic Strategy

• Date: 15 October
• label.tijd 15:00 - 18:00
• Location: Stroom Den Haag

Starting point for this program is the presentation of the new video work grounds for denial by Anna Dasovic, momentarily on view at Stroom Den Haag. The work is part of Dasovic' Srebrenica series (2015 - currently), in which she focuses on rhetorical structures that make genocidal violence visible and invisible. The seminar Reenactment attempts to contextualize these events within contemporary developments and reflections since then: the legacies of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the future of NATO's influence in the region, and the relationship between the passivity of the international community and the Russian war on Ukraine.

Reenactment in itself is a method that recreates a past event in order to better understand it, and to imagine the conditions necessary to effectuate a different outcome. As an artistic strategy, reenactment can aid in shaping an alternative to a perceived lack of political agency. It can radically reimagine the past to realise the conditions that can give way to an alternative future. This strategy resonates with a sense of isolation and disconnection wrought by the covid-19 pandemic and has furthered a desire for embodiment of historical events that can seem distant and abstract.

The seminar at Stroom Den Haag explores reenactment as an artistic strategy, particularly in relation to the staging of acts of state violence. It seeks to bring together artists and cultural practitioners who are working on reenactment of historical events, in order to exchange knowledge and tools.

The program will feature the following contributions:

• Film Disturbed Earth* by Didem Pekün addressing the ineffectiveness of the diplomatic and military apparatus at preventing the massacres at Srebrenica;
• Staged reading by Bassem Saad and Sanja Grozdanic, who revisit monumental historic accounts such as those of the International Criminal Court and NATO;
• Presentation by Maksym Rokmaniko from the Center for Spatial Technologies on their current investigation reconstructing the moment of the missile hit of the Mariupol Theater on 16 March 2022.

* Stroom would like to voice its concern for the freedom of speech of independent storytellers whose lives and livelihoods are at risk, by dedicating this program to Turkish journalist and filmmaker Cigdem Mater, co-producer - with Didem Pekün - of 'Disturbed Earth'. 

This program is made possible by the generous support of the City of The Hague. The presentation of 'grounds for denial' is a collaboration with the Hartwig Collection| Presentation Fund.

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