Romanistan

1 ECHOES

Berlin

The issue of restitution of art and artefacts of looted or appropriated objects and cultural heritage as well as political and cultural retribution is a burning issue of contemporary ethnography, of the cultural scene and of museum studies as well. But what do we do when the institutional framework is not available because the community/ies have no nation state, nor a claim for such, where the restitution and the restoration can take place. This is one of the burning issues of the contemporary Sinti and Roma cultural scene operating on a transnational level. The idea of 'Romanistan' has been an attempt or Romani intellectuals to address this issue, by creating a space not bound to land but more to networks, interpersonal relations, exchanging ideas and the shared cause of fighting against racism and oppression of the Romani people all over the world. National cultural politics however pose a challenge to similar transnational initiatives, but technology opens the doors for the realization of these spaces not only on meta levels, but on the level of (virtual) reality. The project Romanistan museum aims at presenting the alternative reading of items, objects and subjects of cultural restitution currently exhibited in various ethnographic and historic museum all over Europe. By connecting 3D physical objects to their decolonial interpretations and readings, an actual space for a transnational Roma museum or the RomaMoma can be created, where interacting with the Roma artefacts or works of art and learning about their colonial background from Roma cultural experts and artists becomes possible for Roma and non-Roma regardless of where they are based ar. This project would like to support and complement the RomaMoma initiative, a contemporary art project initiating a forum for collaborative reflection on a future Roma Museum of Contemporary Art, run by ERIAC with an interactive geo-located map, locating and recurating the Sinti and Roma tangible and non-tangible cultural heritage, using the tool of Augmented Reality.