Viena Latina. Articulating Latin American migration memory in a European capital

ongoing

VIENA LATINA is a pilot project for the participative articulation of migration memory in Europe. It employs oral history, participative methods from social sciences and the arts, as well as creative dissemination strategies to build a platform for the post-migratory experience of Latin Americans in Austria’s capital Vienna. By collectively recording and reflecting biographical memory, documents and photos from this history, VIENA LATINA will build a dynamic archive of migration memory that is designed to grow and interact with other groups in the city. Thus, the project will empower communities to inscribe the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) migratory experience into the living mnemonic landscape of Vienna. VIENA LATINA tackles a key dimension of postcolonial Europe: its multicultural societies rooted both in the history of European imperialism and in the impact of authoritarian regimes in the Global South. The project seeks to identify and articulate the experience of new opportunity in Europe, as well as the challenges vis-à-vis the new homeland: alienation and difficult integration into the realms of work, education, culture, and political participation. The complex postcolonial relations in a former imperial metropolis, where museums holding key artefacts from the region such as an emblematic Aztec feather crown, add to everyday racism and continue to shape life in Vienna for those who originate from Latin America – and especially those who are not actually “Latin” but belong to indigenous peoples of the continent. With its key dimensions of participation, articulation and mnemonic empowerment, and with a team formed of experienced experts and Citizen Scientists, the community-based project will investigate this multi-faceted history and build spaces of articulation and empowerment, of communication and self-representation in the city. At the same time, VIENA LATINA includes citizens from various European countries and, through its dissemination program,