From September 6th to 8th, 2024, the first edition of MEZEKƎRƎ, a new art festival, will take place, focusing on international and diasporic Vienna with its global connections. For this purpose, the art initiative oca: will take over the entire premises of the Vienna Volkskundemuseum for three days to create immersive spaces, transforming the museum into a place that allows for synergies as well as curious engagement with the performances and exhibitions.
In a world whose future is in question, we want to be hospitable, open, and vulnerable. We want to connect with the knowledge in our bodies. We want to rest and recover so that we can dream again—of common resistance, where we encounter each other with mutual responsibility, empathy, and care.
The festival transforms the function of the museum, turning it from a place of archiving and exhibiting the so-called 'Other' into a sensory space that fosters genuine experiences of conviviality through art. We want to create immersive experiences and, against the backdrop of dystopia, engage with the politics of aesthetics, language, and knowledge.
“MEZEKƎRƎ” emanated from the Amharic word “Mäzäkərə/መዘክር,” a noun that means archives, chronicles, a place where important artifacts are preserved, a building for displaying sanatorium/care work/nursing/hospital, and the branch of knowledge of art objects. As curators of the festival, we embraced “MEZEKƎRƎ,” making minor aesthetic changes to its design. We immersed ourselves in its extensive meaning to explore the politics of remembrance for bodies from the global majority who navigate daily life in Austria, conveying this through an artistic message, which is the intention of our festival.
With the first edition of this festival, oca: aims to highlight the need for a fluctuating space for contemporary art of the Global Majority and their diaspora in Vienna, curated and designed by protagonists from these very communities.
MEZEKƎRƎ festival sees itself as a pop-up of this new art space and presents a contemporary, international, and transdisciplinary art program with installations, small exhibitions, workshops, music, discussion events, film screenings, a library, and performances, including those by Colectivo Ayllu, Naya de Souza, Amenti Movemeant, and GOTOPO, to name just a few artists.