ABSTRACT
This text introduces two different types of performance we engaged in and evaluates their respective pedagogical potential. One was a reenactment of a concrete historical event, the 1941 massacre of the Jewish population of Odessa, as depicted and reenacted in a film we screened and discussed in a transnational exchange, Radu Jude’s film “I don’t care if we go down in history as barbarians”. The second was a public art intervention we staged in the Old Town of Regensburg, in which we used metal bunk beds from a nuclear bunker, a historically contingent but evocative symbol, to get into a conversation with passers-by on issues like comfort, safety, privacy, and the loss thereof. While the conversation after the screening allowed a focused discussion on specific historical events and individual biographies, the public performance was deliberately open to various interpretations and targeted a more diverse audience. Both show that it may be challenging but also rewarding to enter conversations with people previously unknown, and they also exemplify the potential of historical reenactments and mundane enactments to forge a new perspective on the past and present in dialogue with others.
