Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, activist and cofounder of Pamoja, co-curator WIENWOCHE festival

Aktuelle Betiräge | cba – cultural broadcasting archive

When technology pauses, we find ourselves returning to the timeless tale. An hour slips away, immersed in learning, absorbing, and listening. It is a story of space transformation, tokenism, and commodification, yet also of resilience—the strength in organizing the Young African Diaspora in Austria, the nurturing spirit of the Pan-African language, and the profound vision that underscores the importance of Black people.

We also discussed the importance of the Wienwoche festival and the new German word I learned: Spannungsfeld- field of tension.

Great guest: Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, activist and cofounder of Pamoja, co-curator of WIENWOCHE festival.

Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur was an activist and cofounder of Pamoja, the Movement of the Young African Diaspora in Austria and the Researchgroup of Black Austrian History. Her transdisciplinary work and interventions as a community organizer, researcher, artistic-cultural worker, employee representative (Betriebsrat), curator, public speaker, and educator have been crucially nourished by her (un)learning journeys in Austria, Ghana, the UK and the US and by the art of collective processes of creation. Araba studied Black Politics, International Relations and African Diasporan History and, among other courses, taught the “Art of Creating Resistance in the African Diaspora in Germany, Austria, Switzerland” and at the historically Black Howard University in Washington DC. Araba worked as Artist of Change at Brunnenpassage in the framework of the Cultural Transformation Movement a project by Creative Europe and as Post-Doc researcher in the FWF-PEEK research project Conviviality as Potentiality. Currently she is working as co-curator in the artistic activist festival WIENWOCHE. Araba is also part of the directors collective of MUSMIG (Museum der Migration), struggling for self-determined historicization of migration in Austria while questioning the foundational violence of museums in Europe and teaching is at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

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