Can Art Narrate Silenced Narratives: Staging Oral History Interviews at the 2024 Venice Biennale

• In Event: Accessing Socialist and Post-Socialist Memory through Oral History

Abstract

In this presentation, I will discuss an oral history methodological intervention (critical immersion) based on my interviews with survivors from Bulgaria’s socialist-era forced-labor camps and prisons. I will present a range of creative possibilities to bring these stories and experiences to light with a focus on my collaborative multimedia installation, The Neighbours, featured at the 2024 Venice Biennial. The Neighbours is an interactive multimedia installation created by Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, and is the result of 20 years of historical and artistic research. The installation partially recreates the survivors’ homes in which the meetings and conversations with them unfolded. Staged within these private spaces are fragments from oral history interviews conducted by the artists, field recordings and videos from two former camp sites—Lovech and Belene. My presentation probes the possibility for contemporary art to reimagine scholarly narratives.

Author

• Lilia Topouzova, U of Toronto (Canada)