ROMADAY
2022:
Still Hope
In Paradise?

Exhibition, Performance & Discourse
7.4.–1.5.22

Locations:

• ACUD MACHT NEU, Veteranenstraße 21, Berlin
• Maxim Gorki Theater, Am Festungsgraben 2, Berlin
• Grüner Salon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz 2, Berlin
• Berlin public space

Exhibition:

08.04.–01.05.2022
ACUD MACHT NEU

Thu & Fri: 15:00–20:00
Sa & Sun: 15:00–22:00

Free entry
(if not stated otherwise)

Download the full programme (PDF) here ︎︎︎

51 years ago, on 8 April 1971, the foundations of the worldwide Roma emancipation movement were established by the First World Roma Congress in Orpington near London. In 2007, the Venice Biennale hosted for the first time a pavilion organised by Roma themselves entitled Paradise Lost.

In 2022, we have found the lost paradise: Paradise is Now!

The long struggles for equality of Roma, People of Color, queer people and other oppressed groups are bearing fruit. Ten years ago, there was not even a memorial for the Sinti and Roma Holocaust victims, same-sex marriage was not possible in Germany. Most exhibitions, theatre performances and films about Roma were made by white artists. We celebrate our successes – it has never been better!

And yet the situation of people stigmatised as “different” is still catastrophic everywhere. Old threats are joined by new dangers: The Memorial to the Murdered Sinti and Roma of Europe is to make way for a subway, racists are spreading (again) in Germany. The climate crisis has the whole world in its grip, war is raging in Europe and racism does not even stop at the situation of flight and expulsion.

In today's paradise, we therefore ask ourselves: Is there still hope? Where is this paradise, for whom? And for how much longer?


The exhibition and the accompanying programme of performances, lectures, discussions, film screenings and concerts deal in particular:

1. with the intersectional character of oppression and the role of feminism and the queer movement in fighting for paradise,
   
   
2. with social inequality, economic exploitation and its post-colonial, geopolitical dimensions, which are reinforced by globalisation, digitalisation and the use of modern technologies,
   
   
3. with the history of artistic-political self-representation of Roma and other marginalised groups, and with artistic utopias that can be used to counter future pessimism.