Research seminar: 14h00-16h45 at S.S.209 ARIA attic, Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp
Film screening RIDING (Veronika Barnaš) and Quartier Nomade (Alexandra Rice): 17h15-20h at De Cinema, Maarschalk Gérardstraat 4, 2000 Antwerp
Target audience: junior academic and artistic researchers
Join us for a seminar on Oral History in Circus and Fairground Communities, featuring two speakers: Veronika Barnaš and Véronique Faber. They will share their research on the history and experiences of travelling showpeople in Austria and the funfair culture in Luxembourg. Afterwards, join us for a film screening of RIDING and Quartier Nomade at De Cinema, followed by a Q&A with the directors - more information can be found here.
Counter narrative: Interviews with and private sources of Travelling Showpeople (Veronika Barnaš)
Veronika Barnaš will introduce her project on counter narratives and show how artistic and ethnographic methods can reveal the working and living conditions, memories, and identity of Austria’s travelling showpeople, who have been largely ignored by official historiography. She will also present some self-testimonies from a rare private family archive and a documentary film she made.
Interviewing the Past: how the present affects what you hear (Véronique Faber)
Véronique Faber will discuss how oral history interview techniques and collective happenings can help reconstruct the funfair of the past, incorporating both factual information and emotional connections people have to those experiences. She will also discuss how nostalgia and current reflections influence the recollections of people who experienced the funfair in the 1960s.
Preparatory reading:
- Lee, Jo and Tim Ingold. "Fieldwork on Foot: Perceiving, Routing, Socializing", in Locating the Field: Space, Place and Context in Anthropology, edited by Simon Coleman, and Peter Collins, Palo Alto CA, Ebrary, 2006, pp. 67-86.
Optional reading:
- Abrams, Lynn. Oral History Theory. 2nd edition, Routledge, 2016.
- Perks, Robert and Alistair Thomson, eds. Oral History Reader. 3rd edition, Routledge, 2016.
Veronika Barnaš is an independent artist and researcher based in Vienna. She is pursuing her artistic-scientific PhD in Cultural Sciences at the University of Art and Design Linz, where she also worked as a university assistant and lecturer. Her research focuses on the mobile practice of travelling showpeople of Austria, using artistic and ethnographic methods. She is currently an IFK_Junior Fellow/ Abroad in Vienna. You can find more about her work on her website: www.veronikabarnas.net.
Véronique Faber works at the University of Luxembourg’s Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) and will study the intertwining of the national, transregional and transnational in popular fairground culture in Luxembourg, using the example of the Schueberfouer, as well as how this intertwining changed in the period from 1945 to 1975. This empirical case study is part of the “Popular Culture Transnational - Europe in the Long 1960s” project. She holds a M. Phil. in Social Anthropology and African studies from the University of Vienna and a Higher Diploma in Arts Administration from the University College Dublin. Her interests are cultural practices, socio-economic and political influences on culture and society.