Activating The Classroom through History Lessons

UE: During the course of the exhibition, the museum will be hosting four history lessons as a part of the museum public program. Can you tell us about the thinking behind organizing these history lessons?

KR: The classroom is the installation, but the crucial point (is) that it has to be activated. So it’s very performative in a shape that we present in the gallery, but also the idea is to activate it always through the presence of the people — those who are watching, going through the desks, sitting at the desks — but also through new ideas of the teachers who are giving special lectures.

So basically, we are inviting people who can share their knowledge from Ukraine, from Hungary, from Ljubljana, and sharing their stories that reflect on what is in the archive, but also what issues we are facing as queer people nowadays in these countries that are like Ukraine under the war, or Hungary with Orban and hard laws against… targeting LGBT+ people.

So they will visit. In every few weeks there will be some special events where those speakers will be invited to give a special talk, lecture, or a so-called “history lesson.”

So the classroom — to activate it when there is no history lessons with a real figure or person invited — there will be constant, almost half an hour record of selection of interviews from my archive with very different people talking about the stories that are present in the archive. And it will be some installation that will be possible to hear when you are sitting or exploring the space itself.