What happens when a family archive is destroyed – and why? Based on a personal family event – the death of her great-aunt Lucia and the destruction of her photo archive by her grandmother – Jana Romanova has developed an artistic project that deals with family expectations, emotional vulnerability and the construction of identity. The work addresses the psychological and social effects of family secrets and offers access to reflections on memory, loss and belonging.
Image gallery
(Re)constructed images - The Broken Archive. Artistic exploration of torn family photographs
In an interactive role-playing game in the morning, Romanova invites participants to re-read and reinterpret the fragments of a family history. Participants reconstruct not only a destroyed archive, but also the hidden stories behind it – between seriousness and playful curiosity.
In the afternoon, Jana reenacts the process of repairing the destroyed family archive in a performance. As she works, she narrates the story centered on her aunt Lucia’s relentless attempts to find her place in the world, often through questionable jobs that invariably failed.
Participants
Jana Romanova is a multidisciplinary artist working with games, performance, and photography. Through role-playing, social games, and various playful experiments, she researches liminal spaces, (in)visible systems that shape us, and what agency, care, and ecological imagination might look like when we playtest other ways of living together.
Her long-term projects have been shown at international exhibitions and festivals including Prospects (Rotterdam), Copenhagen PhotoFestival, Format (UK), Chobi Mela (Bangladesh), Cortona on the Move (Italy), Encontros da Imagem (Portugal), Backlight Festival (Finland), and Encuentros Abietros (Argentina), among others, earning her several prizes and honorable mentions worldwide.
She’s particularly passionate about thinking games, play, and playfulness as tools for creating meaningful connections.
- free admission
- Tickets are only valid for the interactive role-playing game. To participate, please book a free ticket online or at the box office in the foyer (tickets will be available for booking shortly).
- Seminar room14 years and older
- English
- Belongs to: Family Matters
Dates
January 2026
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