Nomadyczne Archiwum Sztetla (Nomadic Shtetl Archive)
Nomadyczne Archiwum Sztetla (Nomadic Shtetl Archive)
2016
Poland
Photos by Natalia Romik, Monika Tarajko, and Aga Szreder
Community-based project
Romik, Natalia. "Post-shtetl: Spectral Transformations and Architectural Challenges in the Periphery’s Bloodstream." In Re-Centring the City: Global Mutations of Socialist Modernity, edited by Bach Jonathan and Murawski Michał, 129-48. London: UCL Press, 2020. Available on JSTOR.
Nomadyczne Archiwum Sztetla (Nomadic Shtetl Archive) is a mobile reading room, meeting place, and exhibition space that travelled to ten former shtetls (a term that refers to former Jewish villages in European countries) in southeast Poland, working closely with different groups of stakeholders including local citizens and NGOs. The project was primarily composed of an architectural structure designed to resemble a synagogue, finished completely in reflective surfaces such to blend into the landscapes of small towns and haunt the field of vision as a sort of disturbance or absence.