Romaniphen is a platform through which knowledge and ideas from a feminist Rromn_ja perspective are disseminated. The self-organized project includes “Rromani texts, analyses, perspectives and dialogues from the past and the present, international perspectives, sometimes multilingual, audio and video, with pop cultural as well as activist and scientific contributions.”(Excerpt from Romaniphen’s self-description).
Collected texts, images and sounds direct their gaze to different facets of societal life and oppose, among other things, denial, slander and gadjé appropriation of Rromani history.
The project is based on three pillars:
- The archive’s mission is to make public misappropriated stories and to reveal the richness of the Romanipen with the participation of the phen (sister) wetschätzend. At the same time, the archive is subject to the interpretive power of the Rromnja staff.
- The archive collects textual productions of Rromnja as historical figures, scientists and cultural actors as active creators. The material is presented with the help of different methods and clarified as a made work and brought into an everyday political context.
- New, specific and complex concepts of self-representation of Rromnja are pedagogically designed and tested in terms of content. Goals and strategies for Rromnja self-representation will be developed with the participation of nationally active Rromnja who are situated in civil rights work and political activism.
(See the self-description of the project).