In the framework of activities around the “Day of Memory” of the Roma in Italy, the KIOSK project aimed to create a visibility and debate of the Roma’s situation in and around Rome. The KIOSK was placed in the Foyer of Termini station. The dialogues being produced and displayed aimed to mediate the current situation of the Roma in Italy in the larger context of their cultural memory, models of oral history and their relation to space, place and territory. 
The films focussed on the overarching discussion on cultural integration, identity, and the geography of camps interviewing members of the Roma community, local activists, politicians, artists, social workers and journalists and collecting numerous personal stories and experiences, setting them into relation to recent and historical political events.

Unfortunately the whole documentation got lost somewhere on the way from Rome to Berlin.

CAMPO BOARIO
Talks with Charlotte Braidi

Campo Boario belongs to the richest and most privileged Roma camps in Rome. Its inhabitants have been living in Italy for several generations, with the last arriving in Rome during the 1970s. Their dominant occupation is the dealing with cars and cleaning of metal. There are conversations with Charlotte Braidi, the daughter of the second chief of clan in the camp, who was the first Roma to complete the 8 years of compulsory school in Italy, with Alessandro, the son of the first chief of clan and first business man of the camp, and also with his father Matteo, the first chief of clan. The conversations cover the history of the camp, memories of their oldest inhabitants of the persecution during fascism and the genocide of the Roma (Samudaripes), as well as the most urgent problems they face today: The lack of “transit places” for the nomadic months of the summer, when the families travel through Italy and clean metal. Finally they address topics such as the political representation and organization of the Roma in Rome.

VICOLO SAVINI
Talks with Dajan Percic

Conversations and Interviews with Dajan Percic, president of the Cooperative Bosnia-Herzegovina, the largest community in the camp, as well as with 98-year-old Maria, the oldest woman of the camp. Vicolo Savini is a non-authorized camp which is located centrally in Rome. The most urgent problems within the camp are the provision of sanitary facilities and nightly police raids. On top of this, there exist severe tensions among the different communities in the camp whose origins lie in the assignment of refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina to the different existing camps during the 90s. Also, the camp’s relations with its direct neighbourhood are problematic. There are massive tensions with the neighbouring residential quarters and with the university which is situated directly next to the camp. The university administration had a wall of 6 meter height erected that blocked the emergency exit of the camp and was torn down by the camp inhabitants in 2001.

VIA DEI GORDIANA
Talks with Maria Redzepova, Mattheo Ghidoni, Bojan Mohar

Via dei Gordiana is one of the few camps that after their formal “authorization” in 2000 actually got provided with mobile homes (containers), electricity and sanitary facilities. In contrast, the complete furnishing of Salone, a camp situated on the outskirts of Rome, was destroyed in the summer of 2003 with the promise of substituting the destroyed caravans with such containers.The compilation of several conversations and interviews from Via dei Gordiani portrays one of 7 “exemplary camps” of the Roma in Rome.

SALONE
Salone is located outside of Rome and is comparable to a waste dump. As part of the authorization policies adopted by the city of Rome between 2002 and 2004, the existing caravans and provisionally built barracks were destroyed with bulldozers in the summer of 2003. A policy station was erected at the camp’s entrance and a quick substitution of the caravans and barracks by containers was announced.The only result of the city’s masterplan so far has been the completion of the fence surrounding the camp. Also the inhabitants have been provided with caravans in catastrophic state at the edge of the city that are often only held together with adhesive tape. Salone is one of the poorest camps that we visited and looks like a slum. Hygienic conditions are catastrophic. There have been mounting tensions among the inhabitants, especially between refugees coming from Bosnia and Serbia.

In cooperation with ON/ Stalker and the Fondazione Adriano Olivetti, supported by the Goethe Institut Rome and the European Center for the Rights of the Roma (ERRC), Budapest.

A project by Hannah Hurtzig and Anselm Franke (Tulip House) within the framework of Samudaripen curated by ON/ Stalker.