Selfrepresentation of Roma in performing arts

• Applicant: Dr. Lorenz Aggermann
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 426338271

The research project documents and analyses the self-representation of Roma in performing arts. Existing antiziganism research on the discrimination and marginalisation of Roma, as well as recent research on the representation and transformation of the ,gypsy‘-stereotype in history and literature, is thereby complemented with a new perspective on autorship, agency, and strategic competencies in Roma culture. The starting point of the project is the work of roma theatre company Pralipe, which was located at Theater an der Ruhr, Mülheim from 1991 to 2002; further materials include performances of Romani artists from the last three decades. The research is methodologically grounded in a three-fold approach, which combines performance analysis with the analysis of discourses and dispositifs: in a first step, the Roma performances are reconstructed from photographs, reviews, scores, and interviews, before they are analysed with regard to the conceptions of subjectivity involved in them. Subsequently, the deducible modes of self-representation are contextualised with regard to literary and discourse analysis on exoticising Roma presentation; furthermore, in referring to the dialectics of performance and its anti-essentialism, the project accentuates the experimental and ambivalent modes of performative and theatrical self-representation. Finally, the analysis is extended toward the understanding of theatre as dispositif: What I propose to call the ,minor aesthetics‘ of Roma is understood as an answer to an urgent need, that is, to political discrimination and marginalization. In sum, the performances are understood as a strategic referencing and critique of their aesthetic, political and economic contexts.The ,minor aesthetics‘ performed by the widely divergent minority of Roma aim at results, which have not been sufficiently addressed by hegemonial and genealogical discourses on aesthetics and performing arts so far. Therefore, the project offers essential insight into the modes of self-presentation in performing arts practices of this minority. It dedicates its findings to the Roma, who have rarely had the possibility to generate knowledge about their art and lifestyle. With the profound analysis of these ,minor aesthetics‘, their discursive framing, and their surrounding fields, the research project provides productive findings regarding recent changes in performing arts and their socio-political exigencies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants