Performing the East–West Archive: Reframing Cultural Memory between Germany and Romania for a Generation Z Audience

Abstract

This ‘From the Archives’ section explores the performative potential of archival practices in East–West cultural relations, focusing on the Goethe-Institut Bucharest and its historical, political, and artistic legacy. Building on performative and curatorial approaches to the archive, it situates the notion of ‘performing the archive’ within German–Romanian cultural diplomacy from 1968 to 2007. Drawing on archival research conducted in Romania and Germany, this article examines how cultural exchange functioned as both a tool of soft power and a space for subtle resistance under communist regimes. Three performative installations — In the Loop of Cultural Times, Reflections on East–West Perspectives, and Eavesdropping on Memory (in preparation) — translate these dynamics into participatory, multisensory forms for contemporary audiences, particularly Generation Z, whose relationship to archives is shaped by digital immediacy and mediated knowledge. By reframing archival material through artistic research, the installations engage questions of memory, mediation, and cross-cultural understanding, proposing the archive as a living interface between history and the present, geopolitics and the personal, and analogue documentation and digital re-interpretation.